"Self-sufficing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-sufficing, lawful order of Nature, and the adequacy of the natural powers of our mind to understand the mysteries (popularly so appraised) of heaven and earth, the singular expository style of the Ethics emphasizes ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... impulses Save those of selfish passion moving it! And that, by nature desperately wicked,[1] The child learns good through evil; having no Innate ideas, no inborn will, no bias. Here, in this infant, is our confutation! O self-sufficing physiologist, Who, grubbing in the earth, hast missed the stars, We ask no other answer to thy creed Than this, the answer heaven ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... to whose smooth-rubb'd soul can cling Nor form nor feeling, great nor small; A reasoning, self-sufficing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... worship of a man Hot with the first rich flush of ripened life?' Realities, like phantoms, glided by, Unnoted 'midst the torment and delights Of my conflicting spirit, and I doffed the modest Christian weeds of charity And fit humility, and steeled myself In pagan panoply of stoicism And self-sufficing pride. Yet constantly I gained men's charmed attention and applause, With the wild strains I smote from out my lyre, To me the native language of my soul, To them attractive and miraculous, As all things whose solution and whose source Remain a mystery. Then came suddenly The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the poet can neither be made on the one hand, nor repressed if he is there, on the other, has become deeply rooted in modern literary thought. And yet if we look through the epochs that have been most fertile of great poets, the instances of such self-sufficing hardiness are rare. In Greek poetry we question whether there is one to be found. In Latin poetry there is only Lucretius. In modern times, it is true, they are more numerous, owing to the greater ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... forgetfulness or of parsimony; no, I have been in a happier mood than that; for I, for my part (ego: slightly emphatic), have learnt (emathon: our perfect tense best gives this aorist) to be, in my actual circumstances, self-sufficing (autarkes); "carrying with me all I have"; independent, not of ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... reaching in its sensitiveness, was solitary, sad, thoughtful, yearning, prescient of an early death; yet, by the whole impression of her being, she gave birth, in those who lovingly looked on her, to the surmise that she was mysteriously self-sufficing and happy. Bettine writes to her, "I begin to believe thy feelings are enthroned beyond clouds which cast their shadows on the earth; while thou, borne on them, art revelling in celestial light." The best way to indicate ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... person—away from that God in whom he lived and moved and had his being: the personality remained; he could still, like Medea, fall back, even when he knew that he had rebelled against his Creator, on his indomitable self, and reign a self-sufficing king, even ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... course, the two are but parts of a still larger whole, neither being an independent, self-sufficing entity. The larger whole is the educational system of the State, of which there is one other part equally important with the two named, even the elementary school. And all three parts forming the whole are creations of the State, devised, controlled, and maintained for a very definite purpose—namely, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... are there not objects nobler, which should have attained higher value, and led to larger results in the soul which Providence assigned to you; was not the proper place of the object you vindicate that of an auxiliary—a subordinate, rather than that of the all-directing, self-sufficing leader and autocrat of such various powers of mind? I picture you to myself—a lone, bold-hearted boy—in this ancient hall, amidst these primitive landscapes, in which old associations are so little ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the confiscated commons in domestic industry, owning their houses with lots of land and the tools of their trade. Defoe has left a charming description of the region about Halifax in Yorkshire, toward the year 1730, where he found the whole population busy, prosperous, healthy, and, in the main, self-sufficing. He did not see a beggar or an idle person in the whole country. So, favored by circumstances, the landed oligarchy met with no effective resistance after the death of Cromwell, and achieved what amounted to being autocratic ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... himself the right to govern another. By the law of nature all men have equal rights, are equals, and equals have no authority one over another. Nor has an individual the sovereign right even to himself, or the right to dispose of himself as he pleases. Man is not God, independent, self-existing and self-sufficing. He is dependent, and dependent not only on his Maker, but on his fellow-men, on society, and even on nature, or the material world. That on which he depends in the measure in which be depends ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... declared, the sincere friendship which once existed between ourselves and the Dual Monarchy may be reestablished, but many years must pass before we forgive or forget the Huns. They are boasting to-day that as a nation they are self-sufficing and self-supporting. Amen! Most of us desire nothing better than to leave them alone till they have mended their manners and purged themselves of a colossal and unendurable conceit. I cannot envisage Huns playing tennis at Wimbledon, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... passed rapidly by us. We walked and rode and boated and read. Little Marian came and went, a living sunbeam, a self-sufficing thing. It was soon obvious that she was far less demonstrative toward her parents than toward me; while her mother, gracious to her as to all, yet rarely caressed her, and Kenmure, though habitually kind, was inclined to ignore her existence, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sculpture, music and the literature of the theatre are not self-sufficing arts. They require an interpreter. Before a dramatic work can exist completely, scenery, and actors to give it voice and gesture, are necessary; before music can be anything more than hieroglyphics, the signs must be transmuted into sound by singers or ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Phoenicians to settle in their southern capital, Memphis, and to build a temple and inhabit a quarter there.[319] It is also curious and interesting that the Phoenicians should have been able to ingratiate themselves with another most exclusive and self-sufficing people, viz. the Jews. Hiram's friendly dealings with David and Solomon are well known; but the continued alliance between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has attracted less attention. Solomon took wives from Phoenicia;[320] Ahab married the daughter of Ithobalus, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... were so many women whose husbands' affairs were the talk of the town. Even her predecessor, Mrs. Wormser, had passed over the expensive immorality of her husband with a self-sufficing smile and a condescending jest, and the world had bowed down to her respectfully, as it always does when scenting a temperament that it is powerless ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... people together in several of their chief interests. The community can support institutions impossible in the neighborhood, such as a grange, lodge, library, various stores, etc. The community is more or less self-sufficing. A community may include a variable number of neighborhoods. The community is the smallest geographical unit of organized association of the chief ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... proud natures condemned to solitude, he tried to convince himself that he had no need of society, that he despised its attractions, and could be self-sufficing. So far was this from the truth that he often regarded with bitter envy those of his fellow-students who had the social air, who conversed freely among their equals, and showed that the pursuits of the College were only a part of their existence. These young men were either preparing ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... alterations were made in the text after 1853. The allegory Tennyson explains in the dedicatory verses, but the framework of the poem was evidently suggested by 'Ecclesiastes' ii. 1-17. The position of the hero is precisely that of Solomon. Both began by assuming that man is self-sufficing and the world sufficient; the verdict of the one in consequence being "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," of the other what the poet here records. An admirable commentary on the poem is afforded by Matthew Arnold's picture of the Romans before Christ taught the secret of the only real happiness ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... vanishing veil, Shimmers the dew on lawn and lea, And milk foams in the pail; Now that June's sweltering sunlight bathes With sweat the striplings lithe, As fall the long straight scented swathes Over the crescent scythe; Now that the throstle never stops His self-sufficing strain, And woodbine-trails festoon the copse, And eglantine the lane; Now rustic labour seems as sweet As leisure, and blithe herds Wend homeward with unweary feet, Carolling like the birds; Now all, except the lover's vow, And nightingale, is still; Here, in the twilight ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the mystical connection of the spiritual and material worlds, and nothing could be more amazing than the power of imagination which had enabled these mystical thinkers to people with spirits and daemons every circle of the ladder-like structure which connected the incomprehensible and self-sufficing One with the divine manifestation known as Man. It became quite intelligible that many Alexandrians should fear to fling a stone lest it might hit one of the good daemons of which the air was full—a spirit of light perhaps, or a protecting spirit. The more obscure their theories, the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to be sure, had been declared by the oracle of Apollo also to be "the supremely wise man." For those who commonly go by the name of the Seven Sages are not admitted into the category of the wise by fastidious critics. Your wisdom people believe to consist in this, that you look upon yourself as self-sufficing and regard the changes and chances of mortal life as powerless to affect your virtue. Accordingly they are always asking me, and doubtless also our Scaevola here, how you bear the death of Africanus. This curiosity has been the more excited from ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... chief features of this new life: Industrially, we have the decline of the old system of production in the countryside in which each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most part self-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almost entirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, and where such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the form of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the beginnings of a national-market and ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... gratefully. She really was a nice girl! He had thought that she would be one of those disagreeable, forward, self-sufficing, modern young women, who are absorbed only in themselves, and in the effect they produce on other people. But Miss Bubbles was not ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the quality of all for him. In that forty-years 'struggle against despotism,' he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union! This man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... be mentioned, to check needless sympathy, that there was no rivalry between the two. John Pitt had not the slightest desire to marry the lady of his brother's choice, or any other lady. He was a self-sufficing man who from an early age showed signs of becoming some day ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... as it was a complete error about Parnell, to suppose that he took the Prussian pose of disdaining and disregarding everybody; that he settled everything in solitary egoism; that he was a Superman too self-sufficing to listen to friends and too philosophical to listen to reason. It will be noted that every crisis of his life that is lit up by history contradicts the colours of this picture. He could not only take counsel with his friends, but he was abnormally successful in taking counsel with ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... world we have always assumed almost as an axiom that America has nothing to do with Europe, is only in the faintest degree concerned with its politics and developments, that by happy circumstance of geography and history we are isolated and self-sufficing, able to look with calm detachment upon the antics of the distant Europeans. When a European landed on these shores we were pretty certain that he left Europe behind him; only quite recently, indeed, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... come next to him in the series." On the other hand, Prof. Wm. James says ("Principles of Psychology," Vol. II. page 289.) that man is probably the animal with most instincts. The true position is that man and the higher animals have fewer complete and self-sufficing instincts than those which stand lower in the scale of mental evolution, but that they have an equally large or perhaps larger mass of instinctive raw material which may furnish the stuff to be elaborated by intelligent processes. There is, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... as Russia and China, where a life of economic isolation was possible had they been willing to dispense with the higher products of civilized industry and with the fertilizing streams of capital without which progress is impossible. No civilized European country was self-sufficing in the vital factors of a productive and progressive civilization—food, raw materials, machinery, fuel, transport, finance, and adequate supplies of skilled labor. The services which countries near or distant rendered to one another were becoming constantly ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... universe contains nothing that can be represented by that figure. Indeed if anywhere such a self-sufficing organism did exist, we could never know it. For, by the hypothesis, it would be altogether adequate to itself and without relations beyond its own bounds. And if it were thus cut off from connection with everything except itself, it could not ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in me, sequestered and self-sufficing; but the stream of my love beareth this along with it, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which the creator of the fairest and best of created things associated with himself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect God, using the necessary causes as his ministers in the accomplishment of his work, but himself contriving the good in all his creations. Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of causes, the one divine and the other necessary, and may seek for the divine ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... her what a singularly lonely, self-sufficing man Peter Reid had been, a man without friends, almost without interests—except the piling ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... noon we were well among the mountains. We came to the last New-Hampshire house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self-sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... care twopence one way or the other. If the professor were friendly, he was willing to talk to him by the hour on any subject, pleasant or unpleasant. If, on the other hand, he wished to have nothing more to do with us, it did not worry him. He was content to let him go. Ukridge was a self-sufficing person. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... that concern the moralist are rather such as these: Is it advisable to keep our own people self-sufficing, producing all they need to consume? Is it permissible to protect (by a subsidy, which is equivalent to an import duty in other matters) our foreign merchant marine, so as to have the satisfaction of seeing our flag flying in foreign ports and the assurance of plenty of transports, colliers, etc, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Gwynplaine. Up to that moment he had believed himself to be firm: he was self-sufficing. To be self-sufficing is to be powerful. He had lived isolated from the world, and imagined that being alone he was unassailable; and now all at once he felt himself under the pressure of a hideous collective ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... age—the law of organic evolution. As Paul says of those manifold endowments of the earliest Christians, "A diversity of gifts and a diversity of graces, but in them all worketh the self-same spirit," so say we of the reason at the very heart of our being, the sole, self-sufficing explanation of the multitudinous phenomena of our mental life. Hence we arrive at a definition of conscience as "the practical dictate of the reason in us prescribing obedience to the good and avoidance of the evil". Two elements, therefore, are discernible in this ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... this dimmed light the trees had the May magnificence—all but the oaks, which still dreamed of a best to come. Here and there a few tufts of primroses, on the bosom of the crag above the river, lonely and self-sufficing, like all loveliest things, starred the dimness ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... belong to another creation, in which white has taken the place of green. As one gazes at these alleys, these clumps, these groves and arcades, these lace-like garlands and festoons, one feels no wish for anything else; their beauty is original and self-sufficing, all the more because the ground powdered with snow, the sky dimmed with mist, and the smooth soft distances, combine to form a general scale of color, and a harmonious whole, which charms the eye. No harshness anywhere—all is velvet. My enchantment beguiled me out both before and after dinner. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a miss, and not quite a miss, of a very striking, original, possible, and even probable character. His mother, with something more of the Dickensian type-character, can stand by her unpleasant self, and came ten years before "the Campaigner." Susan, her pleasanter servant, is equally self-sufficing, and came five years before Peggotty, to whom she is not ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... assistants. The very size of the factory made such a social change inevitable, the personal relation which marked medieval industry was no longer possible. Machinery then did two things. On the one hand, it destroyed the position of the workman as a self-sufficing industrial unit, and made him dependent on a capitalist for employment and the means of supporting life. On the other hand, it weakened the sense of responsibility in the employer towards his workmen in proportion as the dependence of the ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... classical school produced no great drama in Portugal: it is impossible to except even Antonio Ferreira's Ines de Castro from this sweeping assertion. But that is not to say that Vicente stands entirely isolated, self-sufficing and self-contained. Genius is never self-sufficing. Talent may live apart in an ivory palace but genius overflows in many relations, is acted on and reacts and has the generosity to receive as well as to give. The ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... wonderful that, being such as she was, she should recoil with antipathy from one whose nature had a tendency to ripen over soon, and stunt its slow orbicular expansion to the premature and false completeness of a narrow and self-sufficing conscientiousness. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... went to the Cape specially for the purpose of treating the Basutoland question, it may be well to describe briefly what that question was. Basutoland is a mountainous country, difficult of access, but in resources self-sufficing, on the eastern side of the Orange Free State, and separated from Natal and Kaffraria, or the Transkei division of Cape Colony, by the sufficiently formidable Drakensberg range. Its population consisted of 150,000 stalwart and freedom-loving Highlanders, ruled ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... mistake. You are in another land, another century, down on the bed-rock of society, where the family merely, and not the community, is all-important. The average Oriental cannot be brought to look beyond his clan. His life, too, is naore complete and self-sufficing, and less sordid and low-thoughted than you might imagine. It is bovine and slow in some respects, but it is never empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before the horse, and to forget that it is the man that is elemental, not ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... may illustrate negatively by the example of the body. Suppose you were to ask me whether the body is self-sufficing or has wants, I should reply: Certainly the body has wants; for the body may be ill and require to be cured, and has therefore interests to which the art of medicine ministers; and this is the origin and intention of medicine, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... another you must not call them a Christmas pudding until they have been mixed together and cooked. Those areas of the globe, coloured red on the maps, may have all the resources requisite for a great, self-sufficing, economic unit of a new order. Their peoples may desire that new order. But until it is achieved you must remember that the British Empire belongs to the region of dream and not to ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle |
