"Self-defence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stained with soilures; And all is but a mass of crime and filth; Heaven, for my punishment, I see it plainly, Would mortify me now. Whatever wrong They find to charge me with, I'll not deny it But guard against the pride of self-defence. Believe their stories, arm your wrath against me, And drive me like a villain from your house; I cannot have so great a share of shame But what I have ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... feeling blue, but fetching up my best bow. (Here was a pleasant prospect!) "I only beg to observe that I killed this man—if I have killed him—in self-defence," I added. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of you must fall, Self-preservation is the first of laws; And if, when subjects are oppressed by kings, They justify rebellion by that law, As well may monarchs turn the edge of right To cut for them, when self-defence ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... leaving us to explain, by substituting the image of our own idols, why in that case more specially they did so. Poor people! We do so cling to our particular self and self's preferences; we are so confidently material and literal! And one dreads to think of the cruel self-defence of posterity, when we shall try to push into its notice ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... of excellent efficacy," adds Tempelhof; "it disheartens your adversary, and especially his common people, and has the reverse effect on your own; confuses him in endless apprehensions, and details of self-defence; so that he can form no plan of his own, and his overpowering resources become useless to him." Excellent efficacy,—only you must be equal to doing it; not unequal, which might ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux alone was still holding out. The promoters of the insurrection which had been concerted with the English, amongst others Sires de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance rather in their own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the population; the king's artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea a king's fleet from Rochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the Gironde. "The majority of the king's officers," says ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on education and training, has pertinently said: "Remember that from the cradle to the grave struggle is the essence of life, as it is the unavoidable aim, the real life bringer of all the sons of men. Existence is a fight, and has to be fought out; self-defence is a noble art, and must be practiced. Never seek a quarrel, but never shun one, and if it seeks you, be sure and fight to the last, as long as strength is given you to stand, guard your honesty of purpose, your good faith; beware of all false seeming, of all pretence, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... times were by no means favourable to us, every one blamed the conduct of the viceroy; and those who did not commend our action made the necessity we were reduced to of self-defence an excuse for it. The viceroy's principal design was to get my person into his possession, imagining that if I was once in his power, all the Portuguese would pay him a blind obedience. Having been unsuccessful in his attempt by ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... its fathers and mothers is appalling,—the narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, ill-tempered, fretful, peevish, passionate, careworn, harassed men and women. Even we grown people, independent of them and capable of self-defence, have as much as we can do to keep the peace. Where is there a city, or a town, or a village, in which are no bickerings, no jealousies, no angers, no petty or swollen spites? Then fancy yourself, instead of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a painful death; and we are taught by God's word that the soul of man is precious in the sight of his Creator. We should be cruel were we wantonly to inflict pain upon the least of God's creatures; but to kill them in self-defence, or for necessary food, is not cruel; for when God made Adam, He gave him dominion, or power, over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and every creeping thing. It was an act of great courage and humanity in the little boy, who perilled his own life to ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... said so much already in spite of me, and he looked so dreadfully capable of saying a great deal more also in spite of me, that I declined his amiable invitation in pure self-defence. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of all civilized nations in all ages is honourable as a pursuit, and glorious as an attainment; what of all that relates to himself and his family, if only we except his moral character, can have fairer claims to his protection, or more authorize acts of self-defence, than the elaborate products of his intellect and intellectual industry? Prudence itself would command us to show, even if defect or diversion of natural sensibility had prevented us from feeling, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the offspring and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pressing his handkerchief to Green's bleeding nose; the next he was forcing a way for plucky Simmons to reach his friends: now he must needs shut Toppin up in the book-room for safety—against his will, of course; then he was heard imparting to the tearful Frere a few hints on self-defence. ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... March 6, and on April 12 the Texan treaty of annexation was signed. On April 18, Calhoun answered Lord Aberdeen's note, declaring that "the British avowal made it the imperious duty of the Federal Government to conclude in self-defence a treaty of annexation with Texas." As to this transaction, Von Holst, Calhoun's biographer, has said: "It may not be correct to apply, without modification, the code of private ethics to politics; but, however flexible political morality may be, a lie ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the quick by these sudden blows from the sea France planned a great invasion of the British Isles. She did not hide it, hoping thereby to make the British keep their fleets at home in self-defence. But though, as always happens, there were people weak enough to want to keep the Navy close beside the coast and stupidly divided up, so that plenty of timid folk could see the ships in front of them, just where the enemy with one well handled fleet could beat them bit by bit, Pitt paid no ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... all the auditors were so surprised at this that they lowered their eyes. The remark spread directly; nobody was able to blame the Pere La Chaise. He was generally regretted, for he had done much good and never harm except in self-defence. Marechal, first surgeon of the King, and possessed of his confidence, related once to me and Madame de Saint-Simon, a very important anecdote referring to this time. He said that the King, talking to him privately of the Pere La Chaise, and praising him for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Rosenblatt, dismissing his absurdly tragic story, what evidence has been brought before this court that there was any deliberate attempt at murder? A blow was struck, but by whom? No one knows. What was the motive? Was it in self-defence warding off some murderous attack? No one can say. I have as much right to believe that this was the case, as any man to believe the contrary. Indeed, from what we know of the character of this wretched traitor and thief, it is not hard ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... fortunate than ourselves in this respect. Their dilemma was fearful. The law took no account of those delicate injuries under which sensitive honor pines, though no bruise or wound appears to indicate the mischief; and, in self-defence, refinement set up the bloodiest code brutality under the guise of chivalry could imagine or invent. A quiet gentleman, sitting from morning till night in his library, interfering with the pleasures and pursuits of none, amiable in every relation of life, a stanch friend, a fond ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... been extravagant, he used to say gaily in self-defence that "one owed something to one's ancestors." Certainly, if it had not been for several of his ancestors, he would not have owed so much to his contemporaries. But in spite of their agreeable vices, or because of them, I was brought up ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... than a barely perceptible drawing together in self-defence of the minds and hearts of those who had been friends ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the last gasp, and when at length the children were quiet, as she turned her harshly outlined head so as to see who the other occupants of the glade might be, her look had in it the dull hostility of the hunted creature whose powers of self-defence ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... effect. Unfortunately for Rivers, he did not possess two hundred and fifty dollars, for as has been said, he was at this time living on borrowed money. Nothing for it then but a trial, and certain unpleasant publicity. Happily, there were no witnesses to the occurrence, and Rivers' plea of self-defence would naturally he accepted. It was an unpleasant business, however, but there was no other way out of it, seeing that he ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... for amusement. He was quite sure why the captain had sailed by Beech Cove without stopping as was his custom. Neither could he blame him. Any man would do the same who might have the misfortune to be united to such a woman as Mrs. Tobin. The captain was only acting in self-defence in his dash by his home and the wife he had chosen. John pictured to himself the state of affairs on the "Eb and Flo" had Mrs. Tobin gone aboard and there found the runaway girl. Explanation, he knew, would be useless, and it would be a very serious matter for the captain ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... the western posts under the most degrading restrictions concerning the trade with the Indians. We had gained nothing, he said, by the arrangements respecting trade and navigation, while we had parted with "every pledge in our hands, every power of restriction, every weapon of self-defence." ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... through a cross-examination to discover the extent of his convictions. In self-defence Bones, with only the haziest idea of the doctrine he defended, summarily dismissed certain of ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... only seceded from the national establishment, but the principle was virtually laid down that the Episcopal form of worship would not be tolerated in the colony. For the present such a step was to be regarded as a measure of self-defence on the part of the colonists. Episcopacy to them meant actual and practical tyranny—the very thing they had crossed the ocean expressly to get away from—and it was hardly to be supposed that they would encourage the growth of it in their new home. One ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and employer may in time be legally ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... let them not deviate from justice. If he has forfeited his fortune, his honours, or his life, let them by a legal process be taken from him; but let it always be considered, that he, like every other man, is to be allowed the common methods of self-defence; that he is to stand or fall by the laws of his country, and to retain the privileges of a Briton, till it shall appear that he has forfeited them by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... him on his coming in from supper. In the rencontre three of the assailants were killed, and the remainder of the gang fled. Immediately surrendering himself, he was incarcerated and held for trial: although assaulted with murderous intent, and acting clearly in self-defence, he was denied bail. He was a stranger, and the prejudices of the court and the people of Louisville were so manifest that he demanded and obtained a ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... been discharged, and violently flung from the premises. There had been a wild rush on the guard, a volley, a recoil, a rally in force, and an outcry for vengeance. Then the guard had to shoot in earnest and self-defence, for their lives were at stake. Some of the men had gone to Argenta to plead with the owners, but most had remained to stir all hands within ten miles to the support of their fellows. The miscreant who had ordered "fire" ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... You cannot think what a formidable weapon a wild boar's tusk is—the least touch of it cuts like a razor; and they are so swift in their jerks of the head when at bay that in a second they will rip up both dogs and horses: nor are they the least afraid of attacking a man on foot in self-defence; but they seldom or ever strike the first blow. As soon as he had disposed of both the dogs, who lay howling piteously and bleeding on the ground, the boar made at full speed for the spur of a hill close by. The pace was too good to last, especially ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... further sacrifices have vanished. The rulers were fighting for conquest and plunder. But it is now obvious that there can be no conquest nor plunder. The German people were misled into the belief that they were struggling in self-defence against the "Slav peril," but since the Ides of March in Petrograd the Russian bugbear has disappeared. They were misled into the belief that they were struggling for liberty. But the Germans are now the only people still deprived ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... festivities. The change in Algitha since her departure from home was striking. She was gentler, more affectionate to her parents, than of yore. The tendency to grow hard and fretful had entirely disappeared. The sense of self was obviously lessened with the need for self-defence. Hadria discovered that an attachment was springing up between her sister and Wilfrid Burton, about whom she wrote so frequently, and that this development of her emotional nature, united with her work, had given a glowing centre to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... fortune. If we got into trouble over the death of Rodd, unpleasant as this would be, the matter must be faced out, that was all. For even if any witness appeared against us, the man had been killed in self-defence whilst trying to bring about our deaths at the hands of Basutos. I could see now that I was foolish not to have taken this line from the first, but as I think I have already explained, what weighed with me was the terror of involving ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... whole sense and spirit of the original into English verse, and the rendering of the choral passages into lyric form gives it an advantage over the transcript of the "Alkestis." Perhaps not a little of the self-defence of Aristophanes and his statement of the case against Euripides could have been put as well or better in a critical essay in prose; but the method of Browning enables him to mingle, in a dramatic fashion, truth with sophistry, and to make both serve his purpose of presenting not only ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... hardly be denied that there is one lingering doubt in many, who recognise unavoidable self-defence in the instant parry of the English sword, and who have no great love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and Sedan. That doubt is the doubt whether Russia, as compared with Prussia, is sufficiently decent and democratic to be the ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... State, with an official religion, but perfectly tolerant of all creeds and cults, finds that a society had arisen in its midst which is uncompromisingly hostile to all creeds but its own and which, if it had the power, would suppress all but its own. The government, in self-defence, decides to check the dissemination of these subversive ideas and makes the profession of that creed a crime, not on account of its particular tenets, but on account of the social consequences of those tenets. ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... intended to make all aggressive war illegal. Exceptions were, however, made to safeguard (1) the right of a State to fight in self-defence, and (2) the position of a State acting in accordance with the provisions of the Covenant or the Protocol. A proposal, strongly urged, to substitute the words "resort to force" for the words "resort to ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... that the bulk of speculators were the Hamburgers themselves, and the great prizes of the undertaking went to swell the Danish Royal Treasury. Portions of shares could be purchased for as low a sum as fourpence, and the Hamburg Senate, in self-defence, and with a great show of propriety, prohibited the traffic of them among servants and apprentices: which prohibition passed, of course, for next to nothing, seeing that the temptation was very strong, and the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... M. Fauvel's revolver touch his breast, Raoul in self-defence seized his own pistol, and ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... including those countries that in domestic policy are democratic. And every fairminded person will recognize that, leaving China out of the reckoning, Japan's proximity to China gives her aggressions the color of self-defence in a way that cannot be urged in behalf ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... of behaviour. Disarm those enemies you may unfortunately have (and few are without them) by a gentleness of manner, but make them feel the steadiness of your just resentment; for there is a wide difference between bearing malice and a determined self-defence; the one is imperious, but the other ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... upon her," answered Alfred, "in self-defence. It's the only way I can keep her from making me utterly ridiculous." And he proceeded to read from the secretary's telegram. "'Shopped all morning. Lunched at Martingale's with man and woman unknown to me—Martingale's,'" he repeated with a sneer—"'Motored through Park with ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... men, some half a dozen in number, who had gathered around Mr. Carson, deemed it expedient for self-defence to unite and build a large log cabin, which should be to them both a house and a fort. This building of logs, quite long and but one story high, was pierced, at several points, with portholes, through which the muzzles of the rifles could be thrust. As an additional precaution they surrounded this ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... and, consequently, I did my best to persuade everybody that B—— was not haunted, but I am afraid I was not always successful. I hope you will forgive me for taking up so much valuable space in your paper, but I had to do so in self-defence against ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... a Spanish oath, lifted his hand and—fell, beneath the terrific fist of his slave, with a bang that jingled the candelabra. Dolorous stroke!—for the dealer of it. Given, apparently to him—poor, tipsy savage—in self-defence, punishable, in a white offender, by a small fine or a few days' imprisonment, it assured Bras-Coupe the death of a felon; such was the old Code Noir. (We have a Code Noir now, but the new one is a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... long it took him. Every time he was alone he was wafted away to Egypt and set down at that Pyramid. But he could not find the inscription, and if he had found it he could not have translated it. So, in self-defence, he spent most of his waking-time with Ethel. But every night the Pyramid had its own way, and it was not till he had cut an inscription himself on the Pyramid with the broken blade of his pocket-knife, and ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... upon which he labored. The time came when a change had passed over the society which had sent him forth. Others, less friendly than he to the Gospel of Christ, had studied Hinduism, and had paraded it as a rival of Christianity; and in self-defence against this flank movement, the long-neglected work of Ziegenbalg was brought ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... petticoats," and as possessing a "mind like a milk-jug." This same courteous critic remarked, "I have heard Mrs. Besant described as being, like most women, at the mercy of her last male acquaintance for her views on economics." I was foolish enough to break a lance in self-defence with this assailant, not having then learned that self-defence was a waste of time that might be better employed in doing work for others. I certainly should not now take the trouble to write such a paragraph ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... be exasperated to the point of assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his well known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would be compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegand in "self-defence." But I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... look now supercilious, now softly submissive; all the varieties of expression caught in susceptible moments, and stored by a too faithful memory. Her hair, her lips, her neck, grew present to him, and lured his fancy with a wanton seduction. In self-defence—pathetic stratagem of intellectual man at issue with the flesh—he fell back upon the idealism which ever strives to endow a fair woman with a beautiful soul; he endeavoured to forget her body in contemplation of the spiritual excellencies ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... slim young fellow in Inverness and top hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl, Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all. But I couldn't do more than deny that I took her there unless I told what I knew; and of course that was not possible, even in self-defence. But it was for you to admit that I was right. And you did not. You dared not! You let another man blunder into your private affairs and fall a victim to circumstantial evidence which you could have refuted; and it was up to you to say something! And you did not! ... And now—what are you going ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Cavendish, and with grief, if with less horror, of Mr. Burke's. I felt persuaded from the first that the assassins would aim only at Mr. Burke, who has long been regarded as the perverter of every Viceroy and Secretary; but in mere self-defence they also killed his companion, perhaps not even knowing who he was. Lord Frederick Cavendish was almost unknown to the Irish, and cannot have been hated by ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the suffrage will, perhaps, in a very few years, admit many thousands more. And it is no wonder if refined and educated women, in an age which is disposed to see in the possession of a vote the best means of self-defence, should ask for votes, for the defence, not merely of themselves, but of their lowlier sisters, from the tyranny of men who are as yet—to the shame of the State—most of them ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... melt the soul and unseal the fountain of tears. Or is it the conscience which is to be affected? The clumsy operator begins to assail it straight with denunciations of sin, but, instead of producing penitence, he only rouses the whole man into proud and angry self-defence; whereas a single touch, no heavier than an infant's finger, applied away up somewhere, remote from conscience, in the region of the imagination, may send an electric shock down through the whole being and shake the conscience from ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... anything but a "tho wind". The Red Campion, the Ragged Robin, and the Herb Robert are known in several counties by his name. His greatest claim to popularity was that he took away the goods of none save rich men, never killed any person except in self-defence, charitably fed the poor, and was in short, as an old writer tells us, "the most humane and ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... apt to be good than ill-natured, often mistake malice for wit, and have an uncharitable joy in commending it. Now, when this is the case, is not a tame silence, upon being satirically libelled, as liable to be thought guilt or stupidity, as to be the result of innocence or temper?—Self-defence is a very natural and just excuse for ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... powers of resistance are strong, strong, strong. I use them never for the aggression of others. They are for my self-defence. ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully ...
— The Emancipation Proclamation • Abraham Lincoln
... with much surprise, and could not help wondering at first that the man who had slain the other had not been put in custody till it could be proved that he killed his rival in self-defence only. However, the more I thought of it, the plainer it grew to me that no amount of examination of witnesses, who had witnessed nothing but the ill- blood between the two rivals, would have done anything ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... good stories, if they were not so familiarly known. There is a ghost much to my mind in Beaumont and Fletcher's Lover's Progress. Cleander has a beautiful wife, Calista, and a friend, Lisander, Calista and Lisander love each other, en tout bien, tout honneur. Lisander, in self-defence and in fair fight, kills a court favourite, and is obliged to conceal himself in the country. Cleander and Dorilaus, Calista's father, travel in search of him. They pass the night at a country inn. The jovial host had been long known to Cleander, who had extolled ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... sat still and minded his own business no one would have meddled with him. Had Kruger confined himself strictly to self-defence, and we had invaded him, we might have had to ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... regards the circumstances that give rise to variation, the principal are climatic changes, different temperatures of any of a creature's environments, differences of abode, of habit, of the most frequent actions, and lastly of the means of obtaining food, self-defence, reproduction," &c. {105c} I will not dwell on the small inconsistencies which may be found in the passages quoted above; the reader will doubtless see them, and will also doubtless see that in spite of them there can be no doubt that Lamarck, while ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... by John Stuart Mill, has no cause to be grateful to the Autos that wrote his biography. Mill had been threatened by several future biographers, and he therefore wrote the short biographical account of himself almost in self-defence. But besides the truly miraculous, and, if related by anybody else, hardly credible achievements of his early boyhood and youth, his great achievements in later life, the influence which he exercised both by his writings and still more by his ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... very dear and honored friends will be convinced of my perfect disinterestedness in the question; the idea of an Academy is in no way mine if I become sponsor to it, it will be in self-defence and without any connivance at paternity whatever; I even refuse to help in the procreation of the marmot [brat]; and, far from making myself, before my time, in any way its champion or propagandist, I hesitate over the difficulties which ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... The way to the door was cut off. He raised his arm in self-defence and retreated as far as possible ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... women were received with great courtesy, and when they had explained that they had a Mauser rifle in their possession, a revolver, and a pistol, begging to be allowed to keep them for self-defence, General Maxwell instantly granted them permits for the revolver and pistol, but asked them to give up their rifle. He gave them a written promise, signed by himself, that the rifle would be returned to ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... only fire in self-defence, Malachi; that is, when I have no other chance left. I had rather trust to my heels than my rifle. Were you ever hugged by ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... trying to laugh it off, "all I can say in self-defence is, that in either case my faint could not be spelled with an e. It was the first, and I hope it will be the last time I ever do ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... self-defence to express surprise while he spoke, which compelled her to meet his mastering sight and submit to a struggle of vision sufficient to show him that he had hit a sort of guilty consciousness. Otherwise she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Caffres are said to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an enormous serpent resembling it; "and being influenced by certain superstitious notions they even fear to kill it. The man who happened to put it to death, whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to lie in a running stream of water during the day for several weeks together; and no beast whatever was allowed to be slaughtered at the hamlet to which he belonged, until this duty had been fully performed. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... woman? To this we may reply that the other world was peopled with foes—Typhonian genii, serpents, gigantic scorpions, tortoises, monsters of every description—against which it was incessantly needful to do battle. The poignards placed inside the coffin for the self-defence of the soul were useful only for fighting at close quarters; certain weapons of a projectile kind were therefore added, such as bows and arrows, boomerangs made in hard wood, and a battle-axe. The ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... evidence would work out; the quarrel continued in Walter Hine's bedroom, whither Garratt Skinner had accompanied his visitor, a struggle begun for the possession of the drug, begun by a man half crazy for want of it, a blow in self-defence delivered by Garratt Skinner, perhaps a fall from the window—that is how Chayne read the story of that night, as fashioned by the ingenuity of ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... needless to repeal the act against schism, since no advantage had been taken of it to the prejudice of the dissenters. Dr. Hoadley, bishop of Bangor, endeavoured to prove that the occasional and schism acts were in effect persecuting laws; and that by admitting the principle of self-defence and self-preservation in matters of religion, all the persecutions maintained by the heathens against the professors of Christianity, and even the popish inquisition, might be justified. With respect to the power of which many clergymen appeared so fond and so zealous, he owned the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The self-assertion of this and other letters about this time was really self-defence, the invective against him, and the calumnies, being such as can hardly be credited by those not familiar with the publications ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Greeks, cannot enter the town of Kerasus in safety, unless in commanding force; and that we cannot even send in a herald to take up our dead (Klearetus and those who were slain in the attack on the Kerasuntine village) for burial; though at first those who had slain them in self-defence were anxious to give up the bodies to us. For who will take the risk of going in as herald, from those who have set the example of putting heralds to death? We generals were obliged to entreat the Kerasuntines to ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... She, in self-defence, was repellent, breathlessly saying with galloping haste: "No—I will not sit: you sit, and I will stand here: do as I say, Hogarth—or I repent and go: I know you, and you know me—or you should. Our talk must be short. You say dear to me: that is very gentle, my friend; but it ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... vast numbers and vast resources has, for all future needs of expansion the continent of Siberia into which to overflow. Russia cannot be threatened within Russia and has no need to go outside Russia. A Russian army of 4,000,000 is not necessary to self-defence. Its inspiration can be due only to a policy of expansion at the cost of others, and its aim to extend and to maintain existing Russian frontiers. As I write it is engaged not in a war of defence ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... object of an idea, as the philosopher on the other side is to demonstrate its reality, it is evident that there is an advantage on the side of the philosopher who maintains his proposition as a practically necessary supposition (melior est conditio possidentis). For he is at liberty to employ, in self-defence, the same weapons as his opponent makes use of in attacking him; that is, he has a right to use hypotheses not for the purpose of supporting the arguments in favour of his own propositions, but to show that his opponent knows no more than himself ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... woman is seldom so well equipped for self-defence as the man. Owing to her invincible ignorance of her own nature, she must be more or less at a disadvantage. And if this is true of women in general, it was doubly true of any one so specially prone to illusion as Audrey Craven, who would have had difficulty in recognising ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... from her. There is a passage in it where she practically admits that she was quite unscrupulous in accepting this offer of marriage, but says to my wife that she supposes she, my wife, will not blame her—as it was in self-defence. My wife has her own ideas, but this is an outrageous misapprehension ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... remain downstairs when these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... statesmen among its members. But even those who look upon the Appeal of Battle as occasionally unavoidable in international controversies, concur in thinking it a deplorable necessity, only to be resorted to when all peaceful modes of arrangement have been vainly tried; and when the law of self-defence justifies a State, like an individual, in using force to protect itself from imminent and serious injury. For a writer, therefore, of the present day to choose battles for his favourite topic, merely because they were battles, merely because so many ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... plan against you and your father, the first half of which, through the accident that led you to your discovery, has alone been carried out. I believed then, as I believe now, that I stood towards you both in the place of an injured man, whose right it was, in self-defence and self-assertion, to injure you. Judged by your ideas, this may read wickedly; but to me, after having lived and suffered as I have, the modern common-places current in the world are so many brazen images which society impudently worships—like the Jews of old—in the ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... did not think of this then; I did not even bestow a thought upon the narrowness of our escape, or the price which the darling of my heart might be called upon to pay for this supreme act of self-defence. My mind, my heart, my interest were with Felix, in whom the nearness of death had called up all that was strongest and most commanding in his strong ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... 6th of Spurzheim, or Courage and Self-defence, the 4th of Gall) is located with tolerable correctness by each and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... was a different scene. Javelins were thrown from other canoes and the dreadful poisoned arrows were discharged, so the death-dealing European firearms had to be used in self-defence. On this occasion Stanley's men succeeded in capturing a number of shields, of which indeed they ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... gone off, when he returned into the valley. He was again pursued, lost his remaining horse, and only escaped by scrambling up among the cliffs. For several days he remained lurking among rocks and precipices, and almost famished, having but one remaining charge in his rifle, which he kept for self-defence. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... Companies to make annual payments for a sinking fund to meet the bonds loaned to them by the Government;— Tennessee v. Davis (100 U. S. 257), as to the right of a United States officer to be tried in the Federal courts for killing a person in self-defence whilst in the discharge of his official duties;—The Civil Rights case of Strander v. W. Virginia and others (100 U. S. 303-422), in which were settled the rights of all classes of citizens, irrespective of color, to suffrage and to ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... subject, and he replied—'That if anyone, by doing wrong, necessitated another to do wrong to circumvent him, that the first party was answerable, not only for his own sin, but also for the sin committed in self-defence." ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... view to conquering fear I should not presume to offer to others ideas worked out purely for myself had I not been so invited. I do not affirm that I have conquered fear, but only that in self-defence I have been obliged to do something in that direction. I take it for granted that what goes in that direction will go all the way if pursued with perseverance and good will. Having thus made some simple experiments—chiefly mental—with what to ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... the Count's patience, and letting go the bell rope, he snatched up a walking cane that was leaning against the chimneypiece, and made a rush toward his visitor. But Mascarin did not move or lift his hand in self-defence, contenting himself ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... the non-agricultural population of the civilized world is massed in villages and cities for reasons that have nothing to do with either civilization or self-defence. The causes that bring about the massing of urban population are many and their operation is complex. In general, however, it is to facilitate one or more of several things, namely—the receiving, distribution, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... week, I had gained an advantage over him. I had a very long reach, and a body as lithe as a panther. I gave up prayer meetings, lectures, and socials, and devoted my self religiously to what is called "the noble art of self-defence." ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... grass and the gravel together and hie to the stubble-fields beyond our ken. Of the one mocking bird who made night hideous by his masterly imitations of the screaking of a wheel-barrow (regreased at an early period in self-defence) and the wheezy bark of Beppo, the superannuated St. Bernard, there could of course be no doubt. There was none of his kind to compare him with—not even a mate, for "sexual selection" could not possibly operate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... well armed; for they will certainly be attacked, if the Indians have been able to lay a plan and collect their strength. A British seaman will, at the same time, studiously avoid all cause of quarrel with these poor misguided people, and not fire upon them but where self-defence makes it indispensable. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... was introduced, a good many of the squatters (they say, in self-defence) have, in turn, availed themselves of it, to secure 'the eyes' or water-holes of the country, so far as they could by means of 'dummies,' ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... you choose," he replied, in the patient manner of one who quietly endures unjust reproaches when self-defence is useless. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... driven to this last resort, and before taking up the position which it is concerned to defend, Secularism puts forth certain preliminary pleas, partly in the way of self-defence, and partly with the view of exciting prejudice against the cause of Theism.[268] "I make no pretence," says Mr. Holyoake, "to account for everything. I do not pretend to account for what I find in Nature. I do not feel called upon to account for it. I do not know that I am required ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... together all those who were not his enemies into what, when the proper time came, should be known as the pastor's party. There was plenty of apostolic warrant for this. If there had not been, Theron felt that the mere elementary demands of self-defence would have justified his use ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... was thinking hard in English. 'This is dam'-tight place, but I think it is self-defence.' He felt in his bosom for Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly—save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir desert, he had never used the little ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... baggage was stationed, no sooner felt a shower of arrows, and saw a body of men ready to give them battle, than they turned to flight; and instantly Henry, on seeing them run, stopped the slaughter of the prisoners, and made it known to all that he had had recourse to the measure only in self-defence. Henry, in order to prevent the recurrence of such a dreadful catastrophe, sent forthwith a herald to those companies of the enemy who were still lingering very suspiciously through the field, and charged them either to come to battle at once, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... fully satisfied, it is abundantly clear that the British ministers, having at last grasped the value of Malta, created all the difficulties in their power, and determined to cancel this article of the treaty. They alleged, in self-defence, that the spirit of the treaty had been constantly violated by Napoleon, in repeated acts of hostility to British subjects, in the refusal of all redress for such grievances, and, above all, in that series of aggressions on the continent which he declared ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the hope that I, being a rich man, would be ashamed to offer him less than about four times his regular price. Poor people in abundance called upon me for aid; and all sorts of applications to give or lend money met me at every turn. And when I, in self-defence, begged off as politely as possible, hints gentle or broad, according to the characters or feelings of those who came, touching the hardening and perverting influence of wealth, were thrown out for my ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... received while at The Beeches, which had summoned him so hastily back to town. What if this old woman had accomplices—had attempted to rob Dudley? And what if Dudley, in resisting their attempts, had, in self-defence, struck a blow which had caused the death of one of his assailants? Dudley would naturally have been silent on the subject of his visit to this questionable haunt, especially to the brother ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... for an almost imperceptible moment to give him an indignant glance, and then moved on. That feminine penetration—so clever and so tainted by the eternal instinct of self-defence, so ready to see an obvious evil in everything it cannot understand—filled her with bitter resentment against both the men who could offer to the spiritual and tragic strife of her feelings nothing but the coarseness of their abominable materialism. In her anger against ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... themselves suffered many acts of molestation from the Mexican pirates." The most famous of these papers, printed at that time in the official Gazette, had recommended that the loyal town should be given a battery of thirty-six pounders for purposes of self-defence. They had been given them just in time to be turned on Rowley's boats; it is known with what deadly effect. O'Brien's report after that event had made it clear that that virtuous population of the bay, exasperated by the intrusions of the Mexicanos upon their ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... will go on. Rosalie and Ffolliott I hold in the hollow of my hand. As for you—do you know that people are beginning to discuss you? Gossip is easily stirred in the country, where people are so bored that they chatter in self-defence. I have been considered a bad lot. I have become curiously attached to my sister-in-law. I am seen hanging about her, hanging over her as we ride or walk alone together. An American young woman is not like an English girl—she is used to seeing the marriage ceremony juggled with. There's ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
