"Self" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own when that epitaph of a lady, quoted somewhere by Gilbert Murray, was written: "Bland, passionate, and deeply religious, she was second cousin to the Earl of Leitrim; of such are the Kingdom of Heaven." About that gravestone motto was a certain lack of the self-consciousness which is now the foremost characteristic of the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Nordenskold, maintains that Samodin should be written instead of Samoyed. For Samoyed means "self eater," while Samodin denotes an "individual," "one who cannot be mistaken for another," and, as the Samoyeds were never cannibals, Serebrenikoff gives a preference to the latter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, and the freedom of our laws and of our conscience, against usurping power. And as I have never ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in, they might tell the truth or might not. If they had interests, these were served by their replies. This is as in diplomacy to-day, when the interests of one's country allows prevarication, and even in Christian ethics both patriotism and self-preservation, as well as hospitality, permit flat falsehood. Our own spies are honest heroes, and the man who would not deceive a man who sought to kill him or burn his house would be considered a fool ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... she saved the pilot, John Collins, and nine of the ship's company. While on his way Nields, who was but a lad, did one of those acts, simple in intention, which appeal strongly to the feelings and imagination and indicate the calm self-possession of the doer. He was steering the boat himself, and his captain, who was watching, saw him, after pulling some fifty yards, look up and back to see if the flag was flying; missing it, he stooped down, took it out of the cover in ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... no foolish pining For the sky Dims thine eye, Or for the stars so calmly shining; Like thee let this soul of mine Take hue from that wherefor I long, Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, Not satisfied ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... should be performed; in course, if I did not, it would be very strange, and very wrong in sich a gentleman as Mr Mould, which has undertook the highest families in this land, and given every satisfaction, so to recommend me as he does. I have seen a deal of trouble my own self,' said Mrs Gamp, laying greater and greater stress upon her words, 'and I can feel for them as has their feelings tried, but I am not a Rooshan or a Prooshan, and consequently cannot suffer Spies to be set ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sat on his trunk in the tiny hall bedroom, and in the afternoon papers read of his suicide, his eyes were lit with pleasurable pride. Not at the nice things the obituaries told of his past, but because his act of self-sacrifice, so carefully considered, had been carried to success. As he read Jimmie smiled with self-congratulation. He felt glad he was alive; or, to express it differently, felt glad he was dead. And he hoped Jeanne, his late wife, now his widow, also ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... in his own alternating hopes and fears, and conscious of little in the lives of others, it seemed to him that a great difficulty had suddenly revealed itself to his apprehensions. At the same time, by a self-contradiction familiar to such natures as his, he felt himself more and more strongly drawn to the girl, and more and more strictly bound in honour to marry her. As he thought of this, his habitual contempt of the world and its opinion ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... Chinese translation of the Vinaya Pitaka in the Academy of Nov. 4, 1882. The conception of an animal sacrificing itself for the sake of others is peculiarly Buddhistic; the "hare in the moon" is an apotheosis of such a piece of self-sacrifice on the part of Buddha (Sasa Jataka). There are two forms that have reached the West, the first being that of an animal saving men at the cost of its own life. I pointed out an early instance of this, quoted by a Rabbi of the second century, in my Fables of Aesop, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... how he would—and the culture would be difficult—yet it would not serve here. If he went to Blent against Cecily's commands and his own promise, he could meet with nothing but a rebuff. Yes, he was in love; and he recognized the impasse as fully as Mina herself, although with more self-restraint. But he was glad to know the truth; it strengthened him, and it freed him from a scorn of himself with which he had become afflicted. It was intolerable that a man should be love-sick for a house; it was some solace to find that the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... look out of themselves for a law of action, to consult authority upon every occasion, to defer to official sources for guidance in every detail of municipal and personal affairs,—the lesson of self-dependence, the courage and the knowledge needful for efficiency are wanting. "Savez-vous," asks an epicure, "ce qui a chasse la gaite? C'est la politique." They rally at the voice of command, submit to interference, and take for granted a prescribed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... importance or wealth. Show in some practical form His sympathy and love for the common people as well as for the well-to-do, educated, refined people who make up the majority of the parish. Identify Himself with the great causes of humanity in some personal way that would call for self-denial and suffering. Preach against the saloon in Raymond. Become known as a friend and companion of the sinful people in the Rectangle. Give up the summer trip to Europe this year. (I have been abroad twice and cannot claim any special need of rest. I am well, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the perfidy of the act. To Bulan alone was due the entire credit of having rescued Professor Maxon's daughter, and yet in the very presence of his self-sacrificing loyalty and devotion von Horn had deserted him without making the least attempt to aid him. But the wrinkled old Chinaman was made of different metal, and had started forward to assist Bulan ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for no reply, Mr. Deane," he said; "not even for an expression of opinion. I have said all that I came to say. Apart from any question of self-interest, I can assure you, as a man who sees as clearly as his neighbours, that you could do no good, but much evil, by advising Norris Vine to hold up these men to the ridicule and contempt of the world. He might sell a million copies of his paper, but he would create ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... columns erected by Melik Jouna, the ancient King of the Indies, was nothing in comparison to it. Such great magnificence soon made him considered and respected by the world, and the pains he had given himself to preserve his riches not only flattered his self-love, but easily persuaded him that he had acquired them, and might enjoy them without remorse, the old man ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... little tale," he thought, and he saw her floating in shadowy water in pallor and beauty, and reconciliation with nature. "Why see another day? I must die very soon, why not at once? Thousands have grieved as I am grieving in this self-same place, have asked the same sad questions. Sitting under these ancient walls young men have dreamed as I am dreaming—no new thoughts are mine. For five thousand years man has asked himself why ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... was a rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh; the sword also with which he played Hamlet; and the identical lantern with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb! There was an ample supply also of Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross; of which there is enough extant to build a ship ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... let me tell you the truth before you say good-bye, and go back to pray for me—for your own dear self—that we may be patient and bear it. Time will make it easier, and by and by we can look back upon all this as ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... It cannot be avoided by excuses, nor can it be delegated. It is not enough for woman to point to the self-evident domination of man. Nor does it avail to plead the guilt of rulers and the exploiters of labor. It makes no difference that she does not formulate industrial systems nor that she is an instinctive believer in social justice. In her submission lies her error and her guilt. By ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... his self-command. Cannot you see that it is your accursed repression and dry, dreary life at home that has put ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... that mention of his name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable proportion of the assembly, for Bjoernson has always been a fighter as well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal aspirations. But whatever the opposition aroused by his political and social radicalism, even his opponents have been constrained ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... chemicals are too dear to be supplied pure to the public, which always demands cheap goods, and the result is that many of the chemicals in the market are mixed with other still worse poisons, like arsenic, for instance. Self-raising flour, which is liked by so many on account of its convenience, is nothing but ordinary flour mixed with some sort of baking powder; in the same way egg powders are simply starch powders, coloured and flavoured, mixed with baking powder. Tartaric ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... whatever way it is, I'll have to take it, because the fact is I deserve it.' But there you are, simply angelic and I'm ever so glad. The fact is I was ridicilous in those days. I don't wonder you lost your patience with me, and it was just like your honest self to be so frank with me. But marriage has just taught me everything. What I say is, every one ought to be married; no one knows anything until they're married. It's amazing what a difference it makes, don't you think so? Why, before I was married I used to chatter on in the most ridicilous ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... is the common point to which all the energies, all the powers, all the faculties of beings, seem continually directed. Natural philosophers call this direction or tendency, SELF-GRAVITATION: NEWTON calls it INERT FORCE: moralists denominate it in man, SELF-LOVE which is nothing more than the tendency he has to preserve himself—a desire of happiness—a love of his own welfare—a wish for pleasure—a ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... as boys, women as well as men. In an island like Guernsey, where from the smallness of the community many of the young people necessarily have to go and seek their fortunes abroad, the advantages for self-culture offered by an Institution like this can scarcely be over-rated. The local facilities afforded for the acquisition of French are particularly marked, while it cannot for a moment be doubted that a young man or woman who can use both French and English with ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... is the only meaning borne by many passages, an assertion which neither Philo nor Clement ventured to make in plain terms, has with Origen a negatively apologetic and a positively didactic aim. It leads to the ultimate ideas which, once attained, are self-evident, and, so to speak, pass completely over into the mind of the theologian, because they finally obtain for him clear vision and independent possession.[715] When the Gnostic has attained this stage, he may throw away the ladders by which he has ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... never failed to keep, and that is, LOVE ONE ANOTHER. All other affections, additions, accidents, accessories of men, however, from the lowest, which is Money, to the highest, which is Polite Education, I have been able to discard without concern or loss of self-respect. This fact alone should furnish good reason for my Memoirs, and commend them to the philosopher, the poet, the divine, and the man of feeling. For true it is that I have been bare to the shirt ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... appeared to have been somewhat favourably impressed by what he no doubt considered my impertinence and self-conceit, and told me that at the moment his company was full, but that if I left him my address he would communicate with me as soon as ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... cot and throne. Against the winds she tasks and braves, The tall ship paused, the sailors sighed, And something white slid in the waves. One lamentation, far and wide, Followed behind that flying dart. Things soulless and immortal died, As if they filled the self-same part; The flower, the girl, the oak, the man, Made the same dust from pith or heart, Then spoke I, calmly as one can Who with his purpose curbs his fear, And thus to both my question ran:— "What two are ye who cross me here, Upon these desolated lands, Whose open fields ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... some reputation, your honor! Bedad I believe you! There's not a jintleman in the worrld that can lay over ye in the judgmint of a dog, sir. Now I'll vinture that your honor'll know that dog's dimensions there better than he knows them his own self, and just by the casting of your educated eye upon him. Would you mind giving a guess, if ye'll be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cares?" added Clarence, "so long as the tables sell. It's lucky the Guv'nor and I have had a business training. We shall be able to check Master Xuriel's accounts—he'll do us in the eye if he can, I'll bet. We'd better start it as a private company. The Patent Self-supplying Tables Co., Limited. Under Royal ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... at which self-refutation must stop in any sane person. Amanda Gill had reached it. She knew that she had seen that purple gown in that closet; she knew that she had removed it and put it on the easy chair. She also knew that she had not taken it out of the room. She felt a curious sense of being inverted ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... "passed at no great distance from your head, Willis. You had better take a musket in self-defence. Besides, that ship is English, and you are ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... you are. When you accuse me of self-indulgence you are against me,—me, who for myself have desired nothing but to be allowed to do my duty, and to have bread enough to keep me alive, and clothes enough to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... my locker, gentle sprites; But it may serve.—Our thought being now reflexed To forces operant on this English isle, Behoves it us to enter scene by scene, And watch the spectacle of Europe's moves In her embroil, as they were self-ordained According to the naive and liberal creed Of our great-hearted young Compassionates, Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear, As puppet-watchers him who pulls the strings.— You'll mark the twitchings of this Bonaparte As he with other ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of social reform followed on the rise of modern industrialism, and, no doubt largely on this account, although an international movement, it first became definite and self-conscious in England. There were perhaps other reasons why it should have been in the first place specially prominent in England. When at the end of the seventeenth century, Muralt, a highly intelligent Swiss gentleman, visited England, and wrote his ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Hidatsa dies, his shade lingers four nights around the camp or village in which he died, and then goes to the lodge of his departed kindred in the "village of the dead." When he has arrived there he is rewarded for his valor, self-denial, and ambition on earth by receiving the same regard in the one place as in the other, for there as here the brave man is honored and the coward despised. Some say that the ghosts of those that commit suicide occupy a separate part of the village, but that their ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... thought Brereton, was Gentleman Jack's daughter—the girl of whom Bent had just been telling him. He looked at her narrowly as she stood confronting the strange group. A self-possessed young woman, he said to himself—beyond a little heightening of colour, a little questioning look about eyes and lips she showed no trace of undue surprise or fear. Decidedly a good-looking young woman, too, and not at all the sort of daughter that a man of queer ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... love of the tigress; but even the love of the tigress is yet love; and such love has its own profound depths of tenderness, its capacity of intense desire, its power of complete self-abnegation or of self-immolation—feelings which, in the tigress kind of love, are as deep as in any other, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... or a damper, as it is called, which slides like a sluice up and down in the flue, and this damper is closed more or less when the intensity of the fire has to be moderated. In wagon boilers this is generally accomplished by self-acting mechanism. In the small cistern pipe, which is called a stand pipe, the water rises up to a height proportional to the pressure of the steam, and the surface of the water in this pipe will rise ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... They are different from Ibsen's, however, and in that difference lies one of the chief explanations of Hamsun's position as an artist. All of Ibsen's problems became in the last instance reducible to a single relationship—that between the individual and his own self. To be himself was his cry and his task. With this consummation in view, he plumbed every depth of human nature. This one thing achieved, all else ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... disagreeable. And by contrast with the effusive amiabilities of her mother, she could appear nothing else. Mrs. Andrews indeed had a way of using her daughter as a foil to her own qualities, which must have paralysed the most self-confident, and Marion had never possessed any belief ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tints pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper's wife. Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... promote the establishment of substantial autonomy and self- government in Kosovo; to perform basic civilian administrative functions; to support the reconstruction of key infrastructure and ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... latter many, I judged, had newly arrived at the front and had never seen any captured enemies before. They were particularly interested in the Englishmen, who as nearly as I could tell endured the scrutinizing pretty well, whereas the Frenchmen grew uneasy and self-conscious under it. We who were in civilian dress—and pretty shabby civilian dress at that—came in for our share of examination too. The sentries were kept busy explaining to newcomers that we were not spies going north ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... blank verse affords from the necessity of closing the sense with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into such self-indulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all. Blank verse will, therefore, I fear, be too often found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... glee over the turn affairs at the new church had taken. They got together in Hanz Toodleburg's veranda, drank their beer, and smoked their pipes, and wished the devil might get the new preacher, "what comes t'down to raise t'tevil mit de peoples, and raises t'tevil mit he self." ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Cardo, for, on seeing before him Valmai in all the beauty with which his imagination and his memory had endowed her, he had felt his heart stand still and his face blanch to the lips. How he gained sufficient self-control to make a casual remark to his neighbour he never could understand, but he did; and while he was recalling the scene in "The Velvet Walk," and his promise to Valmai "that should he ever meet her again she need fear no sign of recognition from him," Gwen chattered on with volubility. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Orion of his proposed trip to England, and dilated upon his scrap-book with considerable enthusiasm. The idea had grown out of the inconvenience of finding a paste-jar, and the general mussiness of scrap-book keeping. His new plan was a self-pasting scrap-book with the gum laid on in narrow strips, requiring only to be dampened with a sponge or other moist substance to be ready for the clipping. He states that he intends to put the invention into the hands of Slote, Woodman ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... met the same qualities in their leader. Some knew and welcomed the fact that the devil was their guest of honor; perhaps others did not know it. Deluded as they all were and blinded by pride and self-seeking, the same handwriting that told Belshazzar of disaster was on the wall, but they could not or would not see it. There was no Daniel to interpret ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... interrupted, quietly. "To the end of time he would judge me by the past. He would label me 'woman to beware of' and my most innocent actions, my most impulsive attempts to show forth my true and better self he would entirely misinterpret, brilliant man though he is. Nigel, believe me, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... needs of Ireland—Peace between her warring Churches—Concord between her rulers and landlords on one side and her destitute and desperate Millions on the other. I wish the latter had sufficient courage and self-trust to demand and enforce emancipation from the Political and Social vassalage in which they are held; to demand not merely Tenant-Right but a restitution of the broad lands wrested from their ancestors by fire and sword—not merely equal rights with Englishmen in Church and State, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... good job there are so many of them that every Jack may have his Jill: else I fear that we should get fighting for them. Indeed," said he, becoming very grave, "I don't say that it does not happen even now, sometimes. For you know love is not a very reasonable thing, and perversity and self-will are commoner than some of our moralist's think." He added, in a still more sombre tone: "Yes, only a month ago there was a mishap down by us, that in the end cost the lives of two men and a woman, and, as it were, put out ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... of their country right well, and are not likely to betray them, as the noblesse are but too often induced to do, for the sake of some foolish ribband, rank, or title. The noblesse are in a manner self-exiled (so they say) from all participation in the legislative and executive power; for they have too much morgue to endure to share the government with those whom they regard as roturiers; but the real state of the case ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... tack. We were accordingly again compelled to lower sail, and drift until the ice should allow us to make sail. We made a hundred tacks on one side and the other, several times fearing that we were lost. The most self-possessed would have lost all judgment in such a juncture; even the greatest navigator in the world. What alarmed us still more was the short distance we could see, and the fact that the night was coming on, and that we could not make a shift of a quarter of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... taking care that men are selected for the higher civil and military posts whose self-reliance, activity, and resolution are not impaired by age, and who possess a knowledge of the country and the habits of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the place, and for a little while went wandering up and down. His pattering foot-steps waked soft answering echoes in the stone house. It was as if the great cathedral somehow knew that his little self was there and went on giving back an answer ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... and she liked children better still, for the same reason; and boys even better than girls, because they never expected you to play dolls with them. Peggy did not care for dolls as Alice did. When the world was so full of live things that scampered and frisked, or flew or crawled, why tie one's self down to make-believe people that could neither speak nor move? Pussy was much ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... that we examine less scrupulously the pretensions of a nation to any particular excellence, than we do those of an individual. The reason of this is, probably, that our self-love is as much gratified by admitting the one, as in rejecting the other. When we allow the claims of a whole people, we are flattered with the idea of being above narrow prejudices, and of possessing an enlarged and liberal mind; but if a single individual arrogate ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"—such was the touching speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her death-bed; and there is implied in these few words all that a man of morbid sensibility must be dependant for upon the tender and self-forgetting tolerance of the woman ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... at Arcetri was in despair; and anxiety and fastings and penances self-inflicted on his account, dangerously ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... a few of the showy sophisms which the orator of the opposition had constructed into his specious argument, I placed the war on the ground of necessity. "Nations cannot act like individuals—they cannot submit to self-sacrifice—they cannot give up their rights—they cannot affect an indolent disdain or an idle generosity. The reason of the distinction is, that in every instance the nation is a trustee—It has the rights of posterity in its keeping; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... eyes had been fixed on a woman sitting beside the fire, with her hand in a man's. It was such an attitude as sophisticated lovers would only assume in private but the pair were not sophisticated and lovers still, though married. They lacked self-consciousness, and the husband liked to feel his wife's hand in his. After all, a thing impossible until you are married may be quite seemly afterwards, and none of their amiable elders regarded their devotion ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... twelve, with a stone fireplace and a roof of clay; had laid a line of deadfalls, and rabbit snares; had made a pair of snowshoes and a number of vessels of birch bark, and except for the tea and flour had been self-supporting, items compensated for by the value ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, or Zophar the Naamathite; but there is a Widow in the soul of all men as mournful and lugubrious as the tearful sister of Mr. Peggotty, and in our weakness it is often this dismal self-comforter we are disposed to summon to our aid. "My soul is weary of my life," cried Job; "I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... but with such a mixed feeling of anger, chagrin, self-abasement, and apprehension as they had never ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... that Henry spoke to accepted their fate doggedly. They were ready to complain, but not to move a finger in self-defense. Their fathers had been ground out ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... country. It created a friendly and even parental relation between seigneur, cure, and habitant, who on each estate constituted as it were a seigniorial family, united to each other by common ties of self-interest and personal affection. If the system did not create an energetic self-reliant people in the rural communities, it arose from the fact that it was not associated with a system of local self-government like that which existed in the colonies of England. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... unfortunate island Kathleen ni Hoolihan and pretend she's a little old woman. It saves thinking. It saves working. It saves everything except imagination, imagination, imagination; and imagination's such a torture that you can't bear it without whisky. [With fierce shivering self-contempt] At last you get that you can bear nothing real at all: you'd rather starve than cook a meal; you'd rather go shabby and dirty than set your mind to take care of your clothes and wash yourself; you nag and squabble at home because your wife isn't an angel, and ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... o'clock, when we reached Godalming, where I alighted, took a slight refreshment, and resumed my seat. As we drove along, I had more leisure, and was in a fitter frame of mind to review my past conduct since I had quitted my ship at Gibraltar. My self-examination, as usual, produced no satisfactory results. I perceived that the example of bad company had swept away every trace of good resolution which I had made on the death of my mother. I saw, with grief, that I ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lose the sense of these—or rather to lessen them, and make them take their appointed places—in thinking of the individuals themselves, as separate from their decaying frames; and all along she had enough self-command to control herself from expressing any sign of repugnance. She allowed herself no nervous haste of movement or touch that should hurt the feelings of the poorest, most friendless creature, who ever lay a victim to disease. There was no ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... snake. I like hoptoads, owls, and shitepokes. I envy a buzzard the way it can fly, and polecats are beautiful; but I never could get up any sort of feeling at all for Miss Amelia, whether she was birdlike or her true self. So no one was any gladder than ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... union, may supply in a great measure the defects of the worst representative system. A people whose education and habits are such that, in every quarter of the world they rise above the mass of those with whom they mix, as surely as oil rises to the top of water, a people of such temper and self-government that the wildest popular excesses recorded in their history partake of the gravity of judicial proceedings, and of the solemnity of religious rites, a people whose national pride and mutual attachment have ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... snap-dragon, watching the little white clouds sail past upon a sea of blue; to miss these things for no other reason than that the next generation may also have an opportunity of missing them—is that admirable? What do the bees think that they are doing? If they live a life of toil and self-sacrifice merely in order that the next generation may live a life of equal toil and self-sacrifice, what has been gained? Ask the next bee you meet what it thinks it is doing in this world, and the only answer it can give you is, "Keeping up the supply of bees." Is that an admirable answer? ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... who had come to visit her, and she thought they had come because she was thinking of them. Then she told Kate about her illness. She said it dated from father Bates stroke, and the dreadful days immediately following, when Adam had completely lost self-control, and she had not been able to influence him. "I think it broke my heart," she said simply. Then they talked the family over, and at last Agatha said: "Kate, what is this I hear about Robert? Have you been informed that Mrs. Southey is back in Hartley, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... all the marks of strength; perhaps it was actual exuberance of force, a birthmark of genius. Boston thought so. The Bostonian called it national character — native vigor — robustness — honesty — courage. He respected and feared it. British self-assertion, bluff, brutal, blunt as it was, seemed to him a better and nobler thing than the acuteness of the Yankee or the polish of the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have, called her beautiful, was of an essentially delicate kind. It did not strike one at first sight, but grew upon her acquaintances. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... me from the day he did me some trifling service with Miss Leighton. Hearing it now, and after such thoughts, I was so moved by the promise it gave of news from the one quarter I desired, that I stumbled as I rose, and found difficulty in answering him. Nor did I recover my self-possession for hours; for the story he had to tell—after numerous apologies for his presumption in disturbing me—was so significant of coming evil that my mind was thrown again into turmoil, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... their estates, but when it was found that the disease was communicated by touch, even the most wealthy could obtain no aid. The son fled from the father. The brother avoided the brother. Still there were not a few examples of the most generous and self-sacrificing devotion. Medical skill was of no avail whatever, and the churches were thronged with the multitudes who, in the midst of the dying and the dead, were crying to God for aid. Multitudes in their terror bequeathed all their property to the church, and sought ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... had been for years. Mutely I asked her for more of the water, but she shook her head and, taking the cup from me, filled it again and gave it to Bickley, who drank. He flushed, seemed to lose the self-control which was his very strong characteristic, and said in a ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... in my own sex, some that were above denying me that justice, whilst others praised me yet more unsuspectedly, by endeavouring to detract from me, in points of person and figure that I obviously excelled in. This is, I own, too strong of self praise; but I should be ungrateful to nature, and to a form to which I owe such singular blessings of pleasure and fortune, were I to suppress, through an affectation of modesty, the mention ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... flinch from making himself excessively unpopular by the wide and sweeping variety of his censure. "We are confessedly a barbarian nation," fearlessly declared this unprejudiced person (who, although entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle, with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), "and in order to achieve our ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... small Voice—at whose holy and healing utterance Eric had bowed his head, and listened to the messages of God, and learnt his will; and now, in humble resignation, in touching penitence with solemn self-devotion, he had cast himself at the feet of Jesus, and prayed to be helped, and guided, and forgiven. One little star of hope rose in the darkness of his solitude, and its rays grew brighter and brighter, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... These words, and the approving smiles of the gentlemen present, ruffled me, and I said with some warmth, "How, General, can you believe that the English Government would publish officially so important an event if it were not true? Do you think that a Government that has any self-respect would, in the face of Europe, state a falsehood respecting an affair the truth of which cannot long remain unknown? Did you ever know an instance of so important an announcement proving untrue after it had been published in the London ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... upon his ancestral hacienda in a sort of barbaric luxury, with a host of semi-serfs, known as Peons, to do his bidding, as did the other "Muy Ricos," the "Dons," so called, of his class of natives. These self-styled aristocrats of the wild country all boasted of their Castilian blue blood, claiming descent from the nobles of Cortez' army, but the fact is, however, with rare exceptions, that their male ancestors, the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... eyes Honour itself in love's sweet bosom lies. What shall we say, or seem to strive with heaven, Who speechless sent her first into the world? In vain it is for us to think to loose That which by nature's self we see is bound. Her beauty, with her other virtues join'd, Are gifts sufficient, though she want a tongue: And some will count it virtue in a woman Still to be bound to unoffending silence; Though I could wish ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... beyond the cognitive faculty itself. The source upon which men again and again have seemed to fall back is Sensation; but Sensation being transitory and dependent for its existence upon its being felt can really give us no help. Some other, some self-existent thing is wanted, and with considerable insight Schopenhauer suggested that the key was to be found in ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... the manner in which this extraordinary influence was secured. In later mediaeval times all classes of the population were compelled to rely upon self-help. In other words, they were compelled to replace the defective or insufficient protection afforded by the State by corporate bodies. Thus the merchants of a Low-German German town, when in search of a common centre of trade, pledged themselves by a solemn oath ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... I present them; to you, who have so eminently distinguished your self, and whose Wisdom has been so conspicuous to the late Representatives of Great Britain, that each revolving Age will speak in your Praise; and if you vouchsafe to be the Mecoenas of these Memoirs, your Name will give ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... so indignant and irritated by this apparent boasting and self-sufficiency of Rustem, that his first impulse was to cast a dagger at him; but he kept down his wrath, and satisfied himself with giving him a scornful glance, and telling him to take a seat on his left hand. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... it! Let it be remembered that Lady Lundie had been left entirely in the dark—that she had written to Sir Patrick in a tone which plainly showed that her self-esteem was wounded and her suspicion roused—and that her first intimation of the serious dilemma in which Arnold Brinkworth stood was now likely, thanks to Julius Delamayn, to reach her from the lips of a mere acquaintance. Let this be remembered; and then let ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... feeling in the matter. Any one accustomed to study methods in fiction, to distinguish between good and bad art, to feel the joy which the delicate skill possible only from a love of truth can give, must have known a high pleasure in the quiet self-restraint of the performance; and such a reader would probably have decided that the social situation in the piece was studied wholly from the outside, by an observer with special opportunities for knowing it, who was, as it were, surprised ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... explained to her what a singularly lonely, self-sufficing man Peter Reid had been, a man without friends, almost without interests—except the piling ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... arguments; but more especially to that species of atheism which existed in Greece in the form of polytheism, admitting moral and intelligent shapers and governors of the world, but denying an intelligent ground, or self-conscious Creator of the universe; their gods being themselves the offspring of chaos and necessity, that is, of matter and ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... ironic at the expense of manners and philosophy. In view of the thousands who were dying in battle every day, her remark seemed as heartless as it was superficial and in keeping with the riotous joy of living and prosperity which strikes every returned American with its contrast to Europe's self-denial, emphasized by such details gained by glimpses in the shop windows of Fifth Avenue as the exhibit of a pair of ladies' silk hose inset with lace, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... when I first saw him that he could possibly, at his time of life, bear the rough and tumble of the heaviest fighting in history, and come through with buoyancy of spirit younger men envied and older men recognized as the sign and fruit of self-forgetfulness and the inspiration and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Resembling the work of nature in the simplicity of its growth, it will probably also resemble the work of nature in the permanence of its existence. It is not an exotic, fixed in an unsuitable soil by capricions planting; but a seed self-sown, nurtured by the common air and dews, assimilated to the climate, and strikig its roots deep in the ground which it has thus, by its own instincts, chosen. The necessities of British commerce, the urgency ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... words which had previously been used to express a variety of associated or generic meanings, were discarded for more specific ones. In the twenty-eighth month prepositions were first used, and questions were first asked. In the twenty-ninth month the chief advance was in naming self with a pronoun, as in "give me bread;" but the word "I" was not yet spoken. When asked: "Wer ist mir?" the child would say its own name. Although the child had long been able to say its numerals, it was only in this month that it attained to an understanding of their use in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... Altogether, as far as physique is concerned, he certainly has the advantage of Lieutenant Walford. As to the comparative moral qualities of the two men, the reader will have abundant opportunity to judge for him—or her—self. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... dangers that laws are now passed forbidding home manufacture on grounds of need to abolish sweatshop conditions, although to many such prohibition seems, and to some may be, the denial of parental moral protection to children and youth in families of the very poor. The training for self-supporting work, which came about so naturally from within the household in the handicraft stage of industry, now requires many public agencies of education. The new social "mores" accepted by the majority and supported by law and court may ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the boy who has courage To do what he knows to be right; When he falls in the way of temptation He has a hard battle to fight. Who strives against self and his comrades Will find a most powerful foe: All honor to him if he conquers; A cheer for the boy ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... was making a fight for recognition, all of which augured for a brighter future. Living on the frontier and absent the greater portion of the time, I took little interest in local politics, yet could not help but feel that the restoration of self-government to the best elements of our people would in time reflect on the welfare of the State. Since my advent in Texas I had been witness to the growth of Fort Worth from a straggling village in the ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... sake of promoting so holy a cause: or even where this delusion has not place, vanity, excited by so strong a temptation, operates on him more powerfully than on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances; and self-interest with equal force. His auditors may not have, and commonly have not, sufficient judgement to canvass his evidence: what judgement they have, they renounce by principle, in these sublime and mysterious subjects: or if they were ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... sa tache de moralisateur." He is his own Licenser of plays, and, it may be presumed, collars the fees for doing the official Licenser's work; that is, if there be a department of this nature in the Lord Chamberlain's Office. And His Imperial Highhandedness not only is his own licenser, but is a self-appointed Stage-Manager, for, continues the Figaro, "Il a prescrit que, dans une piece moderne, LE NOUVEAU MAITRE, une scene un peu violente ne fut pas jouee a l'avant-scene, mais au fond du theatre." If His Imperial Majesty should permit some of IBSEN'S ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... all the young men and young women of the United States to whom it may be eligible, to overhaul the well-freighted fleets, the literatures of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, so full of those elements of freedom, self-possession, gay-heartedness, subtlety, dilation, needed in preparations for the future of the States. I only wish we could have really good translations. I rejoice at the feeling for Oriental researches and poetry, and hope it will ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and sufferings, with those of civilized people. A man's life is always valuable to himself, in the proportion of what he would give to secure and prolong it. Is not this the basis of the law, which excuses homicide when committed in self-defence? Does not that law imply the equality of lives in all cases, without disparagement of rank, station, or circumstances? Yet even that law, recognised in all countries worthy of notice for their intelligence and cultivation, required something ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... affectionate and obedient; both of them were kind to the poor; and yet, a very keen observer might have discerned, that in Harriet's visits, or gifts of charity, she was actuated by a vain-glorious feeling of pride and self-satisfaction at the benefits she was conferring, which, in the sight of the All-wise Judge, must have cancelled the merit of her good action; while, on the contrary, Mary's heart turned in humble thankfulness to God for ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... he wanted his children to have the advantages of schools and books, and he decided to seek for them a home in America. He saved all the money he could from his meagre earnings to pay the expense of the voyage. It was a hard struggle, and there were many days of stern self-denial and stringent economy ere the required amount could be obtained. When one has an earnest purpose, and bends his energies to accomplish it, he is quite sure of success. It was thus with this Italian family. Both father and mother were united ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... clubs may be exclusive, even aristocratic in their tendencies, but the large organization is absolutely democratic. If the President of the International Council is an English peeress, one of the vice-presidents is the wife of a German music teacher, and one of the secretaries is a self-supporting woman. The General Federation in the United States is made up of women of various stations in life, from millionaires' wives to ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... Dalrymple to get himself married with as little delay as possible, and she would lay upon him her positive order to restrain himself from any word of affection addressed to herself. She, at any rate, would be pure, high-minded, and self-sacrificing,—although romantic and poetic also, as ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... on the other hand, shows its author completely self-assured, and rightly so. No doubt some of his ease comes from the fact that he had nothing to invent, but in large part it must derive from his ten-years' experience on the stage. Harris added nothing to the plot of The City Bride, although he commendably shifted its emphasis, as his ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... He said he was a newspaper man from Georgia, and had been taken right from the case in his office before his paper could be got out. I told him I was only a few days out of a country printing office my-self, the sheriff having closed out my business on an old paper bill. A bond of sympathy was inaugurated at once between us, and when he limped along the track to the fence, and found that his ankle was hurt by the fall, I brought a bottle ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... of the war. Americans are said to be given to bragging, and it is a sin of which I cannot altogether acquit them. But I have constantly been surprised at hearing the Northern men speak of their own military achievements with anything but self-praise. "We've been whipped, sir; and we shall be whipped again before we've done; uncommon well whipped we shall be." "We began cowardly, and were afraid to send our own regiments through one of our own cities." This alluded to a demand that had been made on the Government that troops going ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Acquired Abilities, which so brightly Adorn your Person: But I shall resist that Temptation, being conscious of the Inequality of a Female Pen to so Masculine an Attempt; and having no other Ambition, than to Subscribe my self, ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... had not even calmed them; and at his age, desires are power. He was proceeding then amazingly to push it to a third triumph, still without uncasing, if a tenderness, natural to true love, had not inspired me with self-denial enough to spare, and not over-strain him: and accordingly, entreating him to give himself and me quarter, I obtained, at length, a short suspension of arms, but not before he had exult-ingly satisfied me that he ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... the landlord, with the self-possession of a cunning old soldier-"think ye I cumbered my house with such cattle after pretty lasses like you had given me the inkling of what they were? No wizard shall fly away with the sign of the Talbot, if I can help it. They skulked off I can promise ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much a question of jurisprudence, he argued, as it was a matter of self-protection for all sides to the controversy—more particularly that side which assembled ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... upon his frank, free nature. This invitation to the Holkers', too, had one special attraction: he knew it was a house where he was almost certain of meeting Elma. And since Elma insisted now on writing to him constantly—she was a self-willed young woman was Elma, and would have her way—he really saw no reason on earth himself why he shouldn't meet her. To meet is one thing, don't you know—to marry, another. At least so fifty generations of young people have deluded themselves ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... now I cannot write down. So I judged, and judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered back to the side of the 'rickshaw. My face was cut and bleeding, and the blow of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. I had no self-respect. Just then, Heatherlegh, who must have been following Kitty and me at ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... H— took me to Dr. Bell's (the old homoeopathic doctor) to hear Lord Radstock speak about "training children." It was a curious affair. First a very long hymn; then two very long extempore prayers (not by Lord R—), which were strangely self-sufficient and wanting in reverence. Lord R—'s remarks were commonplace enough, though some of his theories were new, but, I think, not true—e.g., that encouraging emulation in schoolboys, or desiring that they should make a good position in life, was un-Christian. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... of the conditions, emotions, thoughts, and purposes (character and states or conditions) of the individual. The ring of true culture in the voice is that perfect modulation of tone and movement which, without self-consciousness, communicates exactly the meaning and purpose which impel the utterances of ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... was bad enough," cried the old man in a tone of self-reproach, "fancy forgetting Christmas—even in one's dreams! Everything seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... was Dr. Hue King Eng, who came to prepare for her life work. Gentle, modest, winning, her heart fixed on a goal far ahead, she was an example to the earnest Christian girl and a rebuke to any who had self-seeking aims." ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... miserable back-breaking money. Give it to the poor if you feel like it; it won't help them particularly." He shook his head so vigorously that his vigor seemed like anger, and hammered with his claw on the iron bunk. "Money," he cried and repeated the word, "money not earned in self-respect never helps any one. But to get rid of the damned stuff will revive you; will give you a new interest in life—will change your whole physical body, and then—if you live one hour in the big soul-bursting ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... with a whip. In the middle of the day two men arrived, who brought a parcel from the next posta to be forwarded to the general: so that besides these two, our party consisted this evening of my guide and self, the lieutenant, and his four soldiers. The latter were strange beings; the first a fine young negro; the second half Indian and negro; and the two others nondescripts; namely, an old Chilian miner, the colour of mahogany, and another partly a mulatto; but two such mongrels, with such ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... in body."[412] We hope we have done something to rescue these essays from the oblivion into which they have fallen, to show the social background from which they emerged, and to reproduce their enthusiasm for self-improvement and their high-hearted contempt for an ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... of Death by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but sudden. And there are many sins which must either be dealt with suddenly or not at all. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond |
