"Self-defense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to decide," he said, instructing the jury, "is whether the boy struck the blow in self-defense, or whether he assaulted with intent to do great bodily injury. The fact that he was provoked by a man older and stronger than himself naturally militates in his favor, but the next question is upon the boy's previous character. Did he carry deadly weapons? ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Landseer's pictures, mingled with which hung Taglioni and Cerito, in short petticoats and impossible attitudes; Phosphurous winning the Derby; the Death of Grimaldi (the famous steeple-chase horse, not poor old Joe); an American Trotting Match, and Jem Belcher and Deaf Burke in attitudes of self-defense. Several tandem and riding whips, mounted in heavy silver, and a double-barrelled gun, and fishing rods, occupied one corner, and a polished copper cask, holding about five gallons of mild ale, stood in another. In short, there was plenty of everything except books—the literature of the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... flags of a dozen different nations; but that did not seem to bother the ringleader of this tatterdemalion mob.... My 'prisoner' fought like a demon.... He well remembered the lessons he received from Heath in the manly art of self-defense.... Right and left he boxed like a well-trained athlete delivering his dynamic punches well.... But finally the gang overpowered him and turned their undivided attention to me.... I was vainly attempting to reach the side of ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... this," said Mr. Prideaux, "which I will try to discover tomorrow. He has been set upon by strange dogs, and rather than lose the guinea, he has allowed himself to be half killed without once opening his mouth in self-defense! Poor Turk!" continued his master, "you must have lost your way old man, in the darkness and storm; most likely confused after the unequal fight. What an example you have given us in being faithful to ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... lost their fathers, husbands, sons—well, that is the fortune of any war; but they are beginning to understand that they have lost them, not in a war of self-defense, but to gratify the insane ambitions and greed of a dynasty and a military caste that are out of date in the twentieth century. Their parents, when over sixty, have died from the same cause as the children. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... afterward, when you were captured, refused to drag me in, because I happen to be a girl! But it's not worth mentioning that you did all this for strangers, and that later you did not tell even me, because you knew it would trouble me that I had killed him, though in self-defense. And to think that all the time I've been full of hateful suspicions about you! Oh, you don't ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... good and virtuous, if it proceeds from a contempt of life. And therefore Homer always takes care to bring his bravest and most daring heroes well armed into battle; and the Greek lawgivers punished those that threw away their shields, but not him that lost his sword or spear; intimating that self-defense is more a man's business than offense. This is especially true of a governor of a city, or a general; for if, as Iphicrates divides it out, the light-armed are the hands; the horse the feet; the infantry the breast; and the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... seems so quiet and self-sustained. I thought she was bored. Why, I expected her to hail a trip to her dear Saratoga with absolute delight! She belongs to just the class of people who would find the intellectual element here too strong for her, and would have to flutter off in that direction in self-defense. Ruthie, you have the temper of an angel not to fly out at me for bringing in Saratoga every few minutes. It isn't with 'malice aforethought,' I assure you. I forget your projected scheme whenever I speak of it; but you must allow me to be astonished ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... engaged in these specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about the local industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom I could do no greater favor than sending him there, to repair my deficiency. In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school in the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that there are public night schools where those ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... to appear till dinner-time; but one is obliged in self-defense to dine early in Holland, because what seems early to a foreigner seems late to a Dutchman. At seven o'clock I went to the L.C.P.'s sitting-room (it has become a regular thing for her to have a sitting-room), and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... during the trouble with Mexico, must have clearly recognized the change. There was so much deeper sense of the tragedy of war, so much clearer appreciation of the gap between aggressive assault and necessary self-defense, so definite a recognition of the fact that murder remains murder, even though it be misnamed glory and committed by wholesale, and that any one who does not strive to stop it becomes a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... starts out in life with the determination to fight his way by physical force to the front ranks. Bruised, disfigured, or killed, he is forced back even beyond the lines again. A religiously inclined youth asked his pastor, "Do you think it would be wrong for me to learn the noble art of self-defense?" "Certainly not," replied the pastor, "I learned it in youth myself, and I have found it of great value in my life." "Indeed, sir, did you learn the Old English system or the Sullivan system" "Neither; I learned Solomon's system!" replied the minister. "Yes, you ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... lived several months in this section, it was the first time his deadly foes had attempted to molest him. Self-defense demanded that they should be shown it would not pay to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... desperate men and women who had sworn to take their lives by means of bullets or explosive bombs, fired or hurled from the centre of some dense crowd, which would destroy the life of the victim of such an outrage without a moment's warning, or without being able to even so much as raise a hand in self-defense. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... be a kind of unpledged and indifferent tabernacle, and whether, once for all to crush the saying of Thrasea, (an unaccountable one, considering that he himself was so good a man) that "he who hates vice, hates humanity," it should not, in self-defense, be held for a reasonable maxim, that none but the good ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... This man, when home conditions became intolerable, tried to secure his children's safety through the courts but did not obtain a hearing. He left home feeling that he was fully justified. The lame point in his self-defense was his failure to support his children, and it took a court order to rectify ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... her talked of with Mr. Talboys. Her natural modesty and reserve prevented her from remonstrating; nor was there any positive necessity. She was one of those young ladies who seem born mistresses of the art of self-defense. Deriving the art not from experience, but from instinct, they are as adroit at seventeen as they are at twenty-seven; so a last year's bird constructs her first nest as cunningly as can ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... remind me of how tenuous my irrigation supply actually was. We country folks have to be self-reliant: I am my own sanitation department, I maintain my own 800-foot-long driveway, the septic system puts me in the sewage business. A long, long response time to my 911 call means I'm my own self-defense force. And ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... endure the ill-suppressed and heartless satisfaction with which the fellow was about to enter into the details, and accordingly, ere he had time to proceed further, John Purcel turning a hunting-whip, loaded for self-defense, left ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... American vessels or their cargoes may be modified or discontinued at those islands. Intimations have been given to the Spanish Government that the United States may be obliged to resort to such measures as are of necessary self-defense, and there is no reason to apprehend that it would be unfavorably received. The proposed proceeding if adopted would not be permitted, however, in any degree to induce a relaxation in the efforts of our minister to effect a repeal of this irregularity ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... obliged to part with a sound tooth in self-defense, restored him for the time being. But he was not the only one to whom the retrospect brought a momentary pain. Nattie sighed as she looked back to the day that had brought Clem, but not restored as she then supposed, but ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... hard over this question, and felt her way carefully to the answer. "It might be, of course, that it is because he is a fugitive from the law. A man under such circumstances could easily convince himself that no good woman would permit herself to love him, and he would therefore, in reasonable self-defense, prevent himself from loving her ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... was almost a picture of disgust, and then, in self-defense, he said: "I'd like to go if the folks consent. As for that car, it'll do everything we've said and ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... great annoyance of those in whose faces it was thrust, and who forgot in a measure their vexation when they read the novel device it bore. Like many other people, who can sympathize with the good woman, she was always losing her umbrella, and at last, in self-defense, had embroidered upon the blue ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... setting this colossal stage for death, the entire peasant population had been mobilized to assist the soldiers. In self-defense Belgium was thus obliged to drive the dagger deep into her own bosom. It seemed indeed as if she suffered as much at her own hands, as at the hands of the enemy. To arrest the advancing scourge she impressed into her service dynamite, ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... admit that we should carry out our respect for the weaker sex so far as to lend ourselves to every caprice and every enterprise it may please a woman to direct against our peace or our dignity; but our right of legitimate self-defense in such encounters is circumscribed within narrow and delicate limits, which I feared I had over-stepped. It was enough that Madame de Palme should be alone in the world, and without any other protection than her sex, to make it seem extremely painful to me to have thoughtlessly ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... to it in all departments of life as a rule of welfare. The courts of Toulouse at first, not recognizing the forces against the Albigenses, tried to protect their subjects, but "to the public law of the period [Raymond II of Toulouse] was an outlaw, without even the right of self-defense against the first-comer, for his very self-defense was rated among his crimes. In the popular faith of the age he was an accursed thing, without hope, here or hereafter. The only way of readmission ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... aside my pad and pencil. I put on my coat and hat, pull on my gloves, and in self-defense plunge out into the cold November afternoon. I avoid the country, and try to keep my recreant thoughts on such practical subjects as trolley cars, motor-trucks and delivery wagons, rumbling noisily beside me along the street. A sudden "To Let" card appears in a new apartment. I wonder ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... pirates in these days, but for ten years or more after the close of the War of 1812 the West Indies were infested by them. Our Government saw that in self-defense they must be wiped out, for they grew bolder with every month and made it unsafe for ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... as we are, and enough aware of them to wish to keep themselves in ignorance. Then there is the great patriotism, which of course easily justifies, by the predatory example of the Europeans, the idea that this is all in self-defense. ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... instincts of pride, in pleading with a haughty foe for peace. His plea was unavailing. Three hundred thousand men were marching upon France to force upon her a detested King. It was not the duty of France to submit to such dictation. Drawing the sword in self-defense, Napoleon fought ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... written the governor to assure him that in taking up arms he was acting only in self-defense and for the country's safety. But now he sent another letter reiterating that he had no evil intentions to him or the government. "I am now going out to seek a more agreeable destiny than you are pleased to design me," ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... here in the mountains, rather than take any chances of being captured themselves. At any rate, it's foolish for you to worry, O'Toole. Of course it's not a pleasant thing to think you have shot a man, but you did it in self-defense, and were justified." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... whose lives life and death are matters of hourly business—matters of bread and butter and bank-account—acquire in self-defense a certain imperviousness; they learn to shed their responsibilities with facility in favor of digestion and sleep. Dr. Gunstone ate in a leisurely way, relishing his chops and coffee, and participating in the conversation of the family, who joined him one by ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... him!" she answered in quick self-defense, with a thrill for the authoritative tone. "I went up there, tired as I am, and told him the absolute truth," said Susan. "But ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... able and willing to endure the most terrible evils, but he did not think of doing brave things or achieving great acts. His courage was not aggressive. He could be killed, but did not think of killing. Not that he was averse to taking life in self-defense, but he had been so long the creature of another's will in the matter of locomotion that it did not occur to him to do otherwise than say: "Do with me as thou wilt. I am bound hand and foot. I cannot fight, but I ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... words did not sound kind to me, who am such a lover of dogs that nothing but the necessity of self-defense would ever make me lift a hand against one, yet, all the time he spoke, his eyes twinkled more merrily than ever, and I wondered at the man whose manner could change so quickly from the grand seigneur's to that of a king's jester, and I puzzled my brains mightily to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... would make a woman fall in love with him. But it wouldn't last a week. I'd get tired of his confounded buoyancy. His hypocrisy. He's a spiritual bully. He makes me rude to him in self-defense. Oh yes, he is glad to be here. He does like us. He's so good an actor that he convinces his own self. . . . I'd HATE him in Boston. He'd have all the obvious big-city things. Limousines. Discreet evening-clothes. Order a clever dinner at a smart restaurant. Drawing-room decorated by ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... gowned, superbly handsome brunette who is getting out of a hansom at Martin's Restaurant. She had a yataghan in her flat she brought from Paris with her, and she caught it up one night and drove it into her lover's neck, and was acquitted on the ground that it was done in self-defense. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Bart asked suddenly. He thought of the death of the elder Briscoe, and as always he shivered with the horror of it, but for the first time it came to him: Briscoe had provoked his own death. He had physically attacked the Lhari—threatened them, goaded them to shoot him down in self-defense! "I've been on shipboard with them for months. They're not ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now something else was stirring in his heart—something which might not, perhaps, be wholly unexpected, under such circumstances, to stir in the heart of a boy whose grandfather had carried a musket at Gettysburg and whose father had worn khaki at San Juan. He wondered ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... certain boredom in these monotonously voluptuous days. His senses were becoming blunted with so many indulgences mechanically repeated. Besides, a monstrous debilitation was making him think in self-defense of the tranquil life of the hearth. He timidly began calculating the time of his seclusion. How long had he been living with her?... His confused and crowded memory besought ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to bluff him out of the road, counting confidently upon his leaping to safety at the last moment; there was the other possibility that she mistook his motives and would run him down in a sort of panic of self-defense. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... allegiance and looked with suspicion upon deviations from the group ideals. But peoples that, whether from a fortunate geographical situation or because of their marked superiority in numbers and power over their neighbors have escaped this need of perpetual self-defense could afford to relax their vigilance for conformity. And the very notable increase in individual variations in conduct and ideal during the past century has been largely owing to the era of comparative peace. We seem to be reaching the age when the advantage ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the nation at all hazards. The so-called reconstruction acts, though as plainly unconstitutional as any that can be imagined, were not believed to be within the class last mentioned. The people were not wholly disarmed of the power of self-defense. In all the Northern States they still held in their hands the sacred right of the ballot, and it was safe to believe that in due time they would come to the rescue of their own institutions. It gives me pleasure to add that the appeal to our common constituents ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... conducted on such principles could, at the best, flourish only temporarily, for it would soon encounter difficulties from two sources. Its local customers, thus discriminated against, would withdraw their patronage, while its competitors, finding their territory encroached upon, would, in self-defense, offer still better terms to the public to regain their lost customers. Such ruinous competition, if long persisted in, must necessarily cripple, if it does not bankrupt, a majority of those who engage in it. It is fortunately as rare in industrial and ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... didn't have anything to say about it, did I? I did not ask to be born a minister's son. It was foreordained, and now I've got to live up to it in self-defense. There may be forgiveness for other erring ones, but I tell you ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... natural physical strength is so greatly inferior to man that she is entirely in his power, quite incapable of self-defense, trusting to his generosity for protection. In savage life this great superiority of physical strength makes man the absolute master, woman the abject slave. And, although every successive step in civilisation lessens the distance between the sexes, and renders the situation of woman safer and easier, ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... those moments of irritation and revenge we exaggerated his faults, and palliated our own. We could see every thing he had done that was harsh, or disagreeable, or unjust; we could see nothing we had done ourselves that was not forced upon us in self-defense, and capable of vindication. We had acted all throughout, upon a necessity he had woven round us like a net. We were, in fact, the victims, and he was the cool, crafty, heartless tempter and persecutor. We did all we could to forget ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... said Brother Morris, the man of the good brow and shaved face. "I tell you, Brethren, that our hand is too heavy in this valley, and that there will come a point where in self-defense every man will unite to crush us out. James Stanger is an old man. He is respected in the township and the district. His paper stands for all that is solid in the valley. If that man is struck down, there will be a stir through this state that will only ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one wild hour I discovered how my heart clung to this country. Since then, I know why I am here. For the time being, all law and order is dissolved; I carry arms in self-defense, and so do hundreds like me in the midst of a foreign race. Whatever may have led me individually here, I stand here now as one of the conquerors who, in the behalf of free labor and civilization, have usurped the dominion of the country from ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... "Only in self-defense." That was the wrong thing to say. He changed it to, "No; I won't argue with her at all," and then quoted Wade Lucas quoting Thomas Paine. Then he had to assure his mother a couple of times that there really was a Merlin, and then assure ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... legal recognition; and although the wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even in self-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in his own person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generally give evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white persons on the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercise ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... "If you must have a fight, I am ready for you." At this Floyd put his hand in his pocket. Martin, thinking, so his wife and son told me, that Floyd Tolliver was about to draw his gun, drew his own in self-defense. Though Martin was quicker on the trigger than Tolliver, who now had his gun out of the holster, Martin did not have time to get his weapon completely out of his pocket. He shot through it, killing Floyd Tolliver almost instantly. "Boys," Floyd managed to gasp, turning his eyes toward ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... judgment there, with those four other gentlemen of substantial means and excellent position, sickened as he listened to the sordid details, the relentless elementary arguments. For the girl, awed and frightened at first, grew eloquent in self-defense.—"She loved him"—he being a smart young fellow, who, with excellent recommendations from Chifney, had left the Brockhurst stables some two years before, to take service in Westchurch.—"And he always spoke her fair. Had told her he'd marry her right enough, after a bit—before God he ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... ropes, Clifford and the others finally cut them and the "nouveau" scrambled to his feet and took an attitude which may be seen engraved in any volume of instruction in the noble art of self-defense. He was an Englishman of the sandy variety. Orange-colored whiskers decorated a carefully scrubbed face, terminating in a red-brown mustache. He had blue eyes, now lighted to a pale green by the fire of battle, reddish-brown ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... also that such should be comfortably clothed and fed by his heirs. To his five nephews he left his swords, with the injunction that they were "not to unsheath them for the purpose of shedding blood, except it be in self-defense, or in defense of their country and its rights; and in the latter case to keep them unsheathed, and prefer falling with them in their hands to ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... you don't, Curly. You prefer to prey upon women who are helpless, and who cannot lift a hand in self-defense. But I am different, as you have found out to ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... did not fail to notice one thing—it was becoming hotter every minute and they could not wait much longer before entering the water in very self-defense. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... sort. Young Seymour was in a poker game with Culvera and Mendoza. They were cross-lifting him—and playing with a cold deck at that. I warned the kid. They began shooting. I could have killed either of them, but I blew out the lights instead. In self-defense the boy shot Mendoza. We escaped through the door. The trouble was ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... of the spectators also kept anxious and uneasy silence while the lictors bound Zminis's hands, and, in spite of his attempts to raise his voice once more in self-defense, dragged him away and thrust him out across the threshold of the dining-hall. The door closed behind him, and no applause followed, though every one approved of the Egyptian's condemnation, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reconnoitering patrols is to obtain the information for which they are sent out. They fight only in self-defense or if any especially favorable opportunity arises to inflict loss upon the enemy without prejudice to their mission. They usually consist of two to six men, under an ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... was thrown from his balance. One of the heavy new shoes smashed down on a paw. The dog sprang and snapped. The jaws missed, because the girl tugged at the leash in the same second. Zeke instinctively kicked at the brute in self-defense. His foot took the animal fairly in the jaw, and lifted it from the floor, just as the girl turned. She cried out in shrill anger at this rough stranger's wanton attack on her pet, for so she interpreted the event. She maintained her hold on the leash ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... himself he uses heavy and dangerous guns, with which to destroy his enemies. This is wrong. He has no right to take away what he can not bestow; to destroy what he can not create. To kill a fellow-creature is a horrid crime, even if done in self-defense. Therefore, my second gift to you is this little tube. You may carry it within your pocket. Whenever an enemy threatens you, be it man or beast, simply point the tube and press this button in the handle. An electric current will ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... out to the saboteur where the circumstances are suitable, that he is acting in self-defense against the enemy, or retaliating against the enemy for other acts of destruction. A reasonable amount of humor in the presentation of suggestions for simple sabotage will ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... Alice said, gently, and her impulsive thought was that Mildred had taken few chances, and that as a matter of self-defense her carefulness might have been well founded. This Mr. Arthur Russell was a much more responsive ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... revenge, or in self-defense, he did that also without hysteria, for it was a very businesslike proceeding which ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wrong, since Marat, Mirabeau, Robespierre, got their arguments directly from Rousseau, and no one I have ever heard made an appeal to Scripture as a defense for murdering thirty thousand men, women and children. Mirabeau quotes this from Rousseau in self-defense: "No true believer can be a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law inflicted death on an atheist, I should begin to put it into execution by burning the first man who should accuse or ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... worst of his assailants closest at hand. One factor, too, that he realized they were reckoning with, gave him no concern. No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... bunk-house over at Casa Grande," was Dinky-Dunk's reply. He tried to say it casually, but didn't quite succeed, for I could see his color deepen a little. And this, in turn, led to a second only too obvious gesture of self-defense. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... peculiar—some for that very reason judging it the more admirable, and others the contrary. Some said she was too stately, and attributed her carriage to a pride to which, in her position, she had no right, they said. Others judged that she needed such a bearing the more for self-defense, especially if she had come down in the world. Her dress, it was generally allowed, was a little too severe—some thought, in its defiance of the fashion, assuming. No one disputed that she had been accustomed to good society, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... or never," thought George. He turned back into the deserted waiting-room, entered the ticket-office, and pulled from the belt under his inner coat a large revolver—the weapon which he carried in case self-defense became necessary. Taking the barrel of the revolver, he tried to pry up the telegraphic keyboard from the table to which it was attached. But he found this impossible to accomplish; he could secure no leverage on the instrument. He was not to be thwarted, ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... self-satisfaction of savagery he emerges into close contact with one of the most ambitious and progressive of peoples. Life at once becomes far more secure and wrongs are revenged by the self-interest of the whites as well as by the feeble means of self-defense in possession of the blacks. That there were cruelties and mistreatment under slavery goes without saying, but the woes and sufferings under it were as nothing compared to those of the life in the African ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... like partridges upon the mountains, or like the timid fox by the eager sportsman, were obliged in self-defense to meet cunning with cunning, and to borrow from the birds and animals their mode of eluding their pursuers by any device which in the exigency of the case might present itself to them. They had a creed of their own, and a code of morals which we dare not criticise till we find ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... martyrs who will stand by the right "though the heavens fall" are not a majority of our people. The paths of righteousness are easy, broad and smooth, and crowded with enthusiastic shouters when self-interest can walk hand in hand with a reform. Opposition to usury is self-defense to the poor, the pensioners, the producers, and they form a ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... hovering near, Aaron's proud lieutenant, the neighbors would stuff their pipes with native tobacco, a leaf that would have gagged one of Sir Walter Raleigh's Indian friends, while the Amishman lit a stogie in self-defense. Why, the neighbor farmers demanded, did Aaron propose to dust his bean-seeds with a powder that looked like soot? Martha's microscope, a wonder, introduced the Murnans to bacteria; and Aaron tediously translated his knowledge of the nitrogen-fixing ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... battery. He said I had abused his person, and that he was sore and scarcely able to walk. The Justice told the Colonel that it seemed to him that he was the one who made the assault; for he snapped a loaded gun at me and attempted to take my life, while what I had done was in self-defense. He told Col. Tucker he would talk with him again. He then beckoned me to follow him, and I did so. We went into a room by ourselves, when ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... be almost exclusively available for defensive, scarcely at all for aggressive purposes. A federal government has not a sufficiently concentrated authority to conduct with much efficiency any war but one of self-defense, in which it can rely on the voluntary co-operation of every citizen; nor is there any thing very flattering to national vanity or ambition in acquiring, by a successful war, not subjects, nor even ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... gritted Barney, "or I'll blow your damned guts out! No—go ahead and try to hit me. I'd like nothing better than to kill you, you rat, and have a good plea of self-defense!" ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... its home in the desolate and icy wastes which border the northern seas. It has many characteristics in common with its brothers which live in warmer countries. It is very sagacious and cunning, sometimes playful, but is not a very savage beast, and will rarely attack a hunter unless in self-defense, or when driven by hunger to fall upon everything which comes in its way. Dr. Kane, the great arctic traveller, says he has himself shot as many as a dozen bears near at hand, and never but once received a charge in return. The hair of the polar bear is very coarse and thick, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... value of her own and has received evidence too complete that they are only to be preserved by her own vigilance ever to permit herself to be seduced by a love of ease or by other considerations into that deadly disregard of the means of self-defense which could only result from a carelessness as criminal as it would be fatal concerning the future destinies of our growing Republic. The result of the mission to France is indeed, sir, uncertain. It depends not on America alone. The most pacific temper ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... who help themselves. We have little admiration for the man who is forever whining. Society has no work for such people as these. When we have exhausted every means of helping such a man we must in self-defense pass him up before he contaminates our sense of justice. We must ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... marry a widow or the relict of another, he must not be admitted to the ranks of the clergy: and if he has succeeded in creeping in, he must be turned out. In like manner, if anyone after Baptism be guilty of homicide, whether by deed, or by command, or by counsel, or in self-defense." But this is in consequence not of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... case," returned the Harvard man. "Our forefathers killed in self-defense. You folks are ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... good Michael? If you'll read this week's Variety you'll find there are those who talk about my phenomenal rise! I loathe saying things like that about myself, but you make me do it, in decent self-defense. It's simply that you don't understand these things—that you're looking at them from the wrong angle." She talked on, angrily, defensively, but inwardly she was feeling attacked and abused and crushed. There had been ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... creature," thought the old gipsy. But he could not bear to think that way about his little daughter, about his Fanutza. He also feared that she could feel his thoughts. He was ashamed of what passed through his mind. Rapidly enough in self-defense he turned against her the sharp edge of the argument. Why had she given him all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... beat rapidly. He felt that he was taking upon himself a fearful responsibility in shooting this man, as he would probably be obliged to do in self-defense. But one thing he resolved upon. He would not take his life. He would only use such a degree of violence as should be absolutely necessary. He would even give him a chance by firing the first barrel in the air, in hope of frightening ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... self-defense, it is another matter, but shouldn't we rather kill off all the Kings who go to ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... efforts to self-defense. He knew that to convict Fendrick of the robbery he must first lay ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... Constitution, with such modifications as the history and condition of Germany seem to require. The local governments of the several members of the union are preserved, while the power conferred upon the chief imparts strength for the purposes of self-defense, without authority to enter upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... their path of matrimony. She imagined Cheever with Zada and wondered what peculiar incantations Zada used to hold him so long. She wished that she had positive evidence against him—not for public use, but as a weapon of self-defense. She felt that from his pulpit Doctor Mosely had challenged her to a spiritual duel in that sermon against divorce and remarriage of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... speechless wonder. Then: "I'll whistle that dirrty Tomfool, until he answers me in self-defense," he announced'to the main motor, and forthwith blew a mighty blast. Almost instantly Michael J. Murphy ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... political advantage, partly as some visionaries believed, to do justice, and partly to punish the Southerners, the Northern Republicans gave the Southern negroes equal political rights with the whites. They even handed over the government of some of the States to wholly incompetent blacks. In self-defense the whites terrorized the blacks through such secret organizations as the Ku-Klux Klan, and recovered their ascendancy in governing. Later, by such specious devices as the Grandfathers' Law, they prevented ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defense. You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... statement on the relation of lying to delinquency may be of interest here. Ferriani's discussion[4] of the lying of 500 condemned juvenile offenders, with classification of their lies, ranging from self-defense, weakness, and fancy, to nobility of purpose, does not include our field. Nor does he leave much room for appreciation of the fact we very definitely have observed, namely, that plenty of young offenders are robust speakers ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... the quicker set of nerves flashed into action, the arm shot forward, and there smote the point of flame as did once the point of steel. The victim fell, his own weapon clutched in his hand, a fraction too late. The law cleared the killer. It was "self-defense." "It was an even break," his fellowmen said; although thereafter they were more reticent with him and sought ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... principles run through all society. First comes the principle of self-care and self-love. Each man is given charge of his own body and life. By foresight he is to guard against danger. By self-defense he is to ward off attack. By fulfilling the instincts for food, for work and rest he is to maintain the integrity of his being. Upon each individual rests the solemn obligation to make the most possible of himself, and to store up resources of knowledge and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... and got him to confess the whole thing, and he was sent up for life, because it turned out his wife had stabbed him four times the week before he poured the lead into her while she slept, and frightened him so that he did it in self-defense, in ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the contrary, you become convinced that the defeat of Russia will reflect badly upon the interests of the working population, and if you will help the self-defense of our country with all your forces, our country and her allies will escape the terrible danger ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... are even yet only beginning to doubt the morality of condemning to death and imprisoning for life an unmarried girl who destroyed her infant at birth, solely actuated, against all her natural impulses, by the primitive instinct of self-defense. It cannot be said that we have yet begun to doubt the morality of killing men in war, though we no longer approve of killing women and children, or even non-combatants generally. Every age or land ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense, and I recommend to them, that in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... exactly know. It is that kind which I feel you might be. But I do know that in the problem at hand I want your actions to be governed by reason, not passion. Human life is not for any man to sacrifice unless in self-defense or in protecting those dependent upon him. What Stillwell and you hinted makes me afraid of Nels and Nick Steele and Monty. Cannot they be controlled? I want to feel that they will not go gunning ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... have been given you, you will see how my Government, and especially my Chancellor, strove up to the last moment to avert the worst. We grasp the sword in compulsory self-defense, with clean hands and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... exists, its living creatures will fit themselves cunningly into each niche where life can be maintained. On vast green plains there will be animals to graze—and there will be animals to prey on them. So the grazing things will band together in herds for self-defense and reproduction. And where the ground is covered with broad-leaved plants, such plants will shelter innumerable tiny creatures, and some of them will be burrowers. So rain will drain quickly into those burrowings and not make streams. And therefore the ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... quite prepared to credit the mysterious oracles which assure him that the time is not yet ripe. Thus even his indecision,—most damning of weaknesses in a great soldier,—does not seem to belittle him. One enters into the spirit of his self-defense, is half inclined to believe in his innocence and to sympathize with him, when the psychological moment arrives and the capture of Sesina compels him to translate a traitorous thought into a traitorous deed. And even after this, when he stands forth ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... party of friends was sitting quietly in the restaurant when Sardi Babu came in with a revolver in his hand, which he fired at Hassoun, and that then, and only then, a small dark man whose identity cannot be established—evidently a stranger—seized Babu before he could fire again, and killed him—in self-defense." ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... little pill was placed suggestively against his lips; but his head jerked backward, and his hand struck out in blind, instinctive self-defense. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... The beast's cunning and courage had aroused his admiration. Pal was kept strictly within bounds, and when his master went into the woods he carried a weapon which, however, would never be used save in self-defense. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... or even to Constantinople. Others, again, went so far as to describe our action merely as the starting point of a preventive war against Russia. I said that all this was erroneous, and that parts of it were absolutely unreasonable. The goal of our action was self-preservation and self-defense against hostile propaganda by word, in writing, and in action, which threatened our integrity. It would occur to no one in Austria-Hungary to threaten Russian interests, or indeed to pick a quarrel with Russia. And yet we were absolutely determined ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... beetles out one by one; and he says: 'Capital, by Jove!' And I call Kitty and we pull off another nice little scrap on the fallen tree, though it's hard to make the beetles take much interest in it now, except in the way of self-defense. Even at ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... but because the Anglicans would not keep them, so the Christians, not because they planned to, but because the synagogue was not large enough to hold them, had to leave the synagogue. They began building creeds; they had to. Every one of the first Christian creeds was written in sheer self-defense. If we had been Christians in those first centuries, when a powerful movement was under way called Gnosticism, which denied that God, the Father Almighty, had made both the heaven and the earth, which said that God had ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion, and so in sheer self-defense I am going to give a formal dinner to a lot of these bores, and then cut the whole lot when I've once done the decent thing." Circling and circling, and yet never daring to approach the subject, old Hugh Johnstone ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... responsibility. Thus Servia called the world to witness that her answer to Austria was the limit of submission and conciliation. Austria, through her ambassador to the United States, solemnly declared that her assault upon Servia was a measure of "self-defense." Russia explained her action as "benevolent intervention," and expressed "a humble hope in omnipotent providence" that her hosts would be triumphant. Germany charged France with perfidious attack upon the unarmed border of the fatherland, and proclaimed a holy war for "the security of her territory." ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... to. The man who reported the crime has finally confessed that he lied about it. Cree Johnny was drunk, and attacked Seguis, who killed him in self-defense. The man who brought the news to Fort Dickey had been Johnny's partner for years, and lied about it out of revenge. Speaking of murders, I would like to know who killed Indian Tom. I really think that a passing hunter mistook him for an ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... I didn't. I wouldn't have fired if it hadn't been in self-defense and because I hadn't time to think." He spoke with difficulty, for his mouth was bleeding ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... became more and more beautiful. There was indeed one sad mistake; and I feel bound, in self-defense, to state that it was made during an absence of mine in Europe: this was the erection of the chemical laboratory upon the promontory northwest of the upper quadrangle. That site afforded one of the most beautiful views in our own or any other country. A very eminent American ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... sir, and here is a carbon of the letter I sent her, not with any encouragement to come to New York at all," and in self-defense he handed out to Mr. Vandeford a copy of the letter Roger had delivered to Patricia among her roses and young ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... is so difficult to do anything," said Val sadly. "She does not understand the state of the case properly, though I've tried to make it plain to her. The fellow is an avowed Free Mason. He can not practise his religion, and in a kind of self-defense he rails against it—though not openly to Catholics, I believe. She is deluded enough to imagine that the influence of herself and the children will win him over to the right path again. But it's far more likely that he will win the children ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... in self-defense or in order to prevent the enemy's patrols from gaining valuable information, or when necessary in order to accomplish their mission. In such cases, a patrol should fight resolutely even though ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department |
