"Self-created" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watch the navigation of her craft among the rapids and shallows of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a thousand combinations; she dreamt "of moving accidents by flood and field"—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings, and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life. Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of affection. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... hostess into a dumb and incommunicable despair. The slightest lapse of the conventional order becomes a cloud that intercepts the sun. But the right attitude to life, if we desire to set ourselves free from this self-created torment, is a resolute avoidance of minute preoccupations, a light-hearted journeying, with an amused tolerance for the incidents of the way. A conventional order of life is useful only in so far as it removes from the mind the necessity of detailed planning, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... experience must have seen cases of self-created, unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in the household, financial ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... matter of suicides, as in that of remorse, we were too "spectacular and altruistic"; that we lived in a rather unwholesome atmosphere of self-created and foolish ideas concerning honour and duty; that the Mektoub practice of the Arabs pointed to an underlying primitive sanity which we would do ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Many people merely exist, are kept alive by others, or continue to vegetate because the persistent action of normal functions will allow of their doing no less. Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the universe, he says there are three possible suppositions: 1st. That it is self-existent. 2d. That it is self-created. 3d. That it is created by an external agency.[3] All these he examines and rejects. The first is equivalent to Atheism, by which Spencer understands the doctrine which makes Space, Matter, and Force eternal ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... assigned order of dependence on Divine Law, and "set it a-going on its own hook." But the trouble is, they have no support for this turtle; they have an earth without axis. The Public School savans would have a self-supporting, a self-adjusting, and a self-created State, balanced on nothing, resting on nothing, responsible to nothing, and believing in nothing but in its own perfection and immortality. They pretend, "through godless schools," to give virtue without morality, morality without religion, and religion without God; thereby ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... November, 1794. The Democratic clubs had been unsparing in their condemnation of the excise law, and their resolutions had more than once a treasonable sound. Washington did not hesitate to deprecate the untoward influence of these "self-created societies" and to condemn those "combinations of men, who, careless of consequences, and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse cannot always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... farther. Then, struck with a mortal chill, the heart, as though impaired by oblivion, seeks to escape into a new birth; it demands life of that which environs it, it eagerly drinks in the air; but it finds round about only its own chimeras which have just animated its failing powers and which, self-created, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... The fire which the wicked kindle is destined to enlighten the darkness in which they also are, which is especially evident from the words: "Walk in the light of your fire." They now have a light which enlightens their darkness; but this self-created light consumes them.—To gird stands for, "to surround one's self with a girdle," "to put on a girdle." In substance it is equivalent "to provide one's self with it."—The [Greek: hapax legomenon] ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... theological are not of the necessary order. Questions such as those connected with the mutations of matter, the development of life, the growth of society, or the nature and clash of human passions cannot be evaded. They are present in the facts themselves. But the problems of theology are self-created; they arise out of certain beliefs, and have no existence apart from those beliefs. They are the joint product of beliefs which are wholly useless, in conflict with facts with which they cannot ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... darkness—revealing the way before him, the perils and the obstacles—solving all problems, making all difficulties clear! The scales will fall from his eyes, the shackles will be torn from his limbs—he will leap up with a cry of thankfulness, he will stride forth a free man at last! A man delivered from his self-created slavery! A man who will never more be trapped—whom no blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten; who from tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who will study and understand, who will gird on his sword and take his place in the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... thou Great Hawk, who makest man to rejoice by thy beautiful face. When thou risest men and women live. Thou renewest thy youth, and dost set thyself in the place where thou wast yesterday. O Divine Youth, who art self-created, I cannot comprehend thee. Thou art the lord of heaven and earth, and didst create beings celestial and beings terrestrial. Thou art the God One, who camest into being in the beginning of time. Thou didst create the earth, and man, thou didst make ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Self-created! when is done his purpose high, NARAYANA leads Immortals to their dwelling in ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... and, from the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could offer her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a sort of large ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... in Guienne and Saintonge. His brothers having been killed at the States of Blois in 1588, he declared himself chief of the League, and assumed the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and crown of France; and by virtue of this self-created authority, caused the Cardinal de Bourbon to be declared King, under the name of Charles X. Having inherited the hatred of his brothers for Henri III, and his successor Henri IV, he marched eighty thousand men against the latter Prince, but was ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... of factories and furnaces, of puddling and power looms, of steam-engines and blowing machines, all self-created and "self-supporting," scorning the crutches of patronage, and high-mounted on the stilts of free, or one-sided free trade? Either they exist in the shape of matter tangible and substantial; or they exist not except ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... this fiend of the darkness—the only way to counteract his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Nannar, whose sovereignty is brought to perfection, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, who passes along in great majesty, O strong Bull,[437] great of horns, perfect in form, with long flowing beard[438] of the color of lapus-lazuli. Powerful one, self-created, a product (?) beautiful to look upon, whose fullness has not been brought forth,[439] Merciful one, begetter of everything, who among living things occupies a lofty seat, Father, merciful one and restorer, whose weapon (?) maintains the life ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... element to the very task which he has undertaken. To undertake the exhibition of human life under those aspects which confessedly bring it into unusual conflict with chance and change, is, by a mere self-created necessity, to prepare beforehand the summons to a continued series of agitations: it is to seek the tragic and the wondrous wilfully, and then to complain of it as violating the laws of probability founded on life within the ordinary ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... that Time is within ourselves—that like Space, its twin, it is only a self-created illusion of the human mind? There are hours that flash by on hummingbird wings; there are seconds that shuffle on shod in ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... grime of the man-created city, with its artificialities, into the God- created country, where he may hear the "still small voice" speaking to that subtler sense, which in animals is instinct, in man is inspiration. There is no error in the ordering of the universe. It was not jumbled together by self-created "force," operating in accordance with "laws" self-evolved from chaos, on matter which, like Mrs. Stowe's juvenile nigger, "jis growed." It is the work of a Master who "ordereth all things well." Beauty might be born of Chance, but only Omniscience could have decreed the adoration it inspires. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... land by the Gulf, Shumir, taking shape and color under the rule of Turanian settlers, the oldest known nation in the world. They drain and till the land, they make bricks and build cities, and prosper materially. But the spirit in them is dark and lives in cowering terror of self-created demons and evil things, which they yet believe they can control and compel. So their religion is one, not of worship and thanksgiving, but of dire conjuring and incantation, inconceivable superstition ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... learning, gorgeous eloquence, 295 And all the strength and plumage of thy youth, Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out From things well-matched or ill, and words for things, 300 The self-created sustenance of a mind Debarred from Nature's living images, Compelled to be a life unto herself, And unrelentingly possessed by thirst Of greatness, love, and beauty. Not alone, 305 Ah! surely not in singleness of heart Should I have seen the light of evening fade From smooth Cam's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self-created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... by invading my residence with a loaded pistol. The States, without extinguishing their sovereignty, created the Federal Government; it is the child of State legislation, and now the child seeks to chastise and control the parent. The General Government can possess no inherent or self-created function; its power, its very existence, were granted for certain uses. As regards your State's connection with that Government, no other State has the right to interfere; but as for another State's connection with it, the power that ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... so involved in her own ideas as to the possibility of Lady Maclaughlan's death, and the propriety of Sir Sampson's proposals, together with the fulfilling of Sir Eneas the seer's prophecy, that there is no saying how far she strayed in her self-created labyrinth. Such as choose to follow her may. For our part, we prefer accompanying the youthful Becky to her chamber, whither she was also attended by the lady of the mansion. Becky's destiny for the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... are able to mock the tempest-driven eagles and the swirling glacial storms. We can amuse ourselves with the illusions from which we are free. We can give the imagination unbounded scope and the fancy unrestricted licence. We have become happy children of our own self-created kingdom of heaven; the kingdom of heaven which is ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys |
