"Self-will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the septic materials swallowed. It would not, however, be fair to say that all indigestion is thus caused; not infrequently indigestion is due to errors of diet, and here the blame must be divided between the poverty and ignorance of many parents and the self-will of adolescents. The foods that are best for young people—such as bread, milk, butter, sugar, and eggs—are too frequently scarce in their dietaries owing to their cost; and again, in the case of many girls whose parents are able and willing to provide them with a thoroughly satisfactory diet-sheet, ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... languid rather than brisk like her mother's, and she either has, or is desirous of having, more of the fine lady in her manners and appearance. We discern, as she talks, more of obstinacy than reason, and more of pride than sense, in her conversation, and the face rather expresses self-will than intellect, although not deficient ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... stop the transaction of pressing business of state; the greatest unanimity existed between the three councils, the best understanding between the court and the states. From the obliging temper of the Flemish nobility everything was to be had, as soon as their pride and self-will was flattered by confidence and obliging treatment. The regent took advantage of the first joy of the nation to beguile them into a vote of certain taxes, which, under the preceding administration, she could not have hoped to extort. In this, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... waywardness, for all his self-will, the younger son had loved his father well, and it was a terrible shock to him (having come to his senses) to find that he had returned too late. And for all his hardness and narrowness the eldest son also ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... resolved that his niece's first visit to her father's grave should not be spent in fruitless dreams of him or of his presence, alluring because involving neither self-reproach nor resolution; but in thoughts which might lead to action, to humility, and to the yielding up of self-will. ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... best and most exemplary of mothers, entirely from anxious solicitude about a son, who, in spite of all admonition and remonstrance, had allowed the growth and practice of disobedience for several years to embitter his kind parents' lives; and whose headstrong violence and self-will at last brought the being whom he most loved on ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... for years, and this was the first chance he had had of visiting his displeasure on the woman who had "ruined" George, and who had now come to get "rights," which he was determined she should not have. He had steeled himself against seeing any good in her whatever. Self-will, self-pride, and self-righteousness were big in him, and so the supper had ended in silence, and with a little attack of coughing on the part of Cassy, which made her angry at herself. Then the boy had been put to bed, and she had come back to await the expected ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the Sun to you? Do you count all that to be darkness which does not come form and accord with His light: all that to be disorder which does not implicitly accept and delight in His rule? "O LORD of Hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth to Thee!" Self-will is unmingled folly, and can only end in ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... sufficiently explained. At first sight the president's expedient seemed childishly puerile to Ford. Then suddenly in a flash of revealment he saw beyond the puerilities—beyond the stubborn old man who, with all his narrow self-will and obstinacy was merely playing the game ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the reins, and using all provocations to further them: bad by nature, worse by art, discipline, [1633]custom, education, and a perverse will of their own, they follow on, wheresoever their unbridled affections will transport them, and do more out of custom, self-will, than out of reason. Contumax voluntas, as Melancthon calls it, malum facit: this stubborn will of ours perverts judgment, which sees and knows what should and ought to be done, and yet will not do it. Mancipia gulae, slaves to their several lusts and appetite, they precipitate and plunge ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... VIII, about twenty-two years of age, a prince (if we are to believe La Tremouille) little of body but great of heart; a child (if we are to believe Commines) only now making his first flight from the nest, destitute of both sense and money, feeble in person, full of self-will, and consorting rather with fools than with the wise; lastly, if we are to believe Guicciardini, who was an Italian, might well have brought a somewhat partial judgment to bear upon the subject, a young man of little wit ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... end. What secret reasons those patrons may have given for such a return of brotherly love, I shall not inquire: "For, O my soul come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly mine honour be not thou united. For in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... bad, who is more despicable in our eyes than the decided villain. There are the irretrievably wretched education, and the unquenchably manly instincts, both contending in the confirmed roue, which melt us to the tenderest pity. There is the selfishness and self-will which the possessor of great wealth and fawning relations can hardly avoid. There is the vanity and fear of the world, which assist mysteriously with pious principles in keeping a man respectable; there are combinations ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... This too arose out of the deepest depths of Germany's yearnings; it sounded like an eagle-cry of our most ancient longings. Germany's soul has long pined to tear itself from its narrow confines (verwerden, as Eckhart, or sich entselbsten, as Goethe put it), to lay aside self-will and sacrifice itself, to be absorbed in the whole, and yet still to serve (Wagner). And this eternal German yearning had never reached fulfilment, but self-interest and egoism have always been stronger; every German has been at war with all ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... word "body" includes more than outward, sensual vices and crimes, as gluttony, fornication, murder; it includes everything not of the new spiritual birth but belonging to the old Adam nature, even its best and noblest faculties, outer and inner; the deep depravity of self-will, for instance, and arrogance, human wisdom and reason, reliance on our own good works, on our own spiritual life and on the gifts wherewith God has endowed ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... Because thou did thy father's bed defile. Simeon and Levi 're brethren. Instruments Of cruelty lodged in their tents. Come not, my soul, their secret councils nigh, My honour, with them have no unity: For in their wrath they caused a man to fall, And in their self-will digged down a wall. Curs'd be their anger, fierce, yea cursed be Their wrath, for it was full of cruelty. In Jacob therefore let their seed be spread, And every where in Israel scattered. Judah shall have his brethren's praise, and they Shall bow before him; he his foes shall slay. Judah's a lion's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Government in St. Petersburg with rage. The persistent reluctance of human beings to be parted almost for life from those near and dear to them, or to see their little ones carried off to an early grave or to the baptismal font, was regarded as a manifestation of criminal self-will. Accordingly, the former measures of "cutting short" and "curbing" this self-will were improved upon by new ones. In December, 1850, the Tzar gave orders that for every missing Jewish recruit in a given community three men of the minimum age of twenty from the same community and one more recruit ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... if it would counterbalance the dreadful anxieties of the past night. What a pure pleasure I now tasted a few moments! In a freak, I sat down and sketched The Demons' Palace, laughing defiance upon it all the while, with the wayward self-will and harmless spite of a child, I took this vengeance on ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... please,' I said hastily. 'It is enough that your infernal egotism and self-will have ruined my happiness. I have allowed you to usurp the rule, to reverse our natural positions. I shall do so no more. I intend to teach you a lesson ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... too. For she is particularly sensible for her age, especially since she has got her head clearer of fairy-tales and witches and enchantments and ogres and all the rest of it; and even then, there was a good deal of sense and reasonableness below her self-will and impatience. ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the hardest substance; and despite his native intellect and affected superiority over others, no one, perhaps, was more human, in his fitful moods,—his weakness and his strength, his passion and his purpose,—than that strange man, who had dared, in his dark studies and arrogant self-will, to aspire beyond humanity. ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... only a brief time can pass ere they will discover that the harmonious progression of two minds, each of which has gained an individual and independent movement is not always a thing of easy attainment. Too soon, alas! is felt a jar of discord—too soon self-will claims an individual freedom of action that is not fully accorded; and unless there is wisdom and forbearance, temporary or permanent unhappiness is ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... out-door, cold-tub-in-the-morning genus, he had a square-jawed, rather ugly face, roofed with a crop of brown hair a trifle sunburnt at its tips as a consequence of long days spent in the open. His mouth indicated a certain amount of self-will, the inborn imperiousness of a man who has met with obedient services as a matter of course, and whose forebears, from one generation to another, have always been masters of men. And, it might be added, masters of their women-kind as well, in the good, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... right; only Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not many months after, in the Prologue to "Aurengzebe," are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... present at the time, and did my best to soothe his last moments with such consolations as can be offered by a relative who is not a clergyman. I wished to wire the sad event to you, but Mary, in whom natural grief develops a self-will that perhaps is also natural, peremptorily refused to allow it, alleging that it was useless to alarm you and waste money on telegrams (how like a woman to think of money at such a moment) when it was quite impossible that you could arrive here in time for the funeral (for he wouldn't be brought ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... subdued, and knew what was coming. She sat down, and waited. Had he looked in her face, instead of in the fire, he would have seen an expression there which he would little have liked—a smile of obstinacy and self-will. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... smile was haughty, though so sweet; Her very nod was not an inclination; There was a self-will even in her small feet, As though they were quite conscious of her station— They trod as upon necks; and to complete Her state (it is the custom of her nation), A poniard deck'd her girdle, as the sign She was a sultan's bride (thank Heaven, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was silent for a few moments, and then raised her abashed eyes to Major Van Zandt. A single glance satisfied her that he knew nothing of the imposture that had been practised upon her,—knew nothing of the trap into which her vanity and self-will ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... there was little amusement, there was, on the other hand, great devotion; the Princess, as a child, had that peculiar combination of self-will and warm-heartedness which is apt to win for a child a special love from its elders. The Princess Feodore wrote to the Queen, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... would yet not by any means do justice to her attractions. My honour being very dear to me, and she being very young, as well as beautiful, I took all possible care to guard her at all points; but my best precautions have proved vain; the self-will of Cornelia, for that is her name, has rendered all useless. In a word, and not to weary you—for this story might become a long one,—I will but tell you, that the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d'Este, vanquishing the eyes of Argus by those of a lynx, has rendered ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... your mellifluous union, scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do. They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... ingenious and scientific, he had not the business capacity of the elder, whose rebukes led to a sharp quarrel between them; and they parted in bitter estrangement—never to meet again as it turned out, owing to the dogged obstinacy and self-will of the younger man. He, after this, seemed to lose his moral ballast altogether, and after some eccentric doings he was reduced to a state of poverty, and took lodgings in a court in a back street of a town we will call Geneva, considerably in doubt as to what steps he should ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... accepting the gift in a right spirit. His self-will, however, was aroused. He had determined to fight Castrillon, and ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... str. 1. (O woman's judgment!) Misled by seeming Success of crime? And ask, if sometimes The Gods, perhaps, allow'd you, O lawless daring of the strong, O self-will recklessly indulged? ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... been victorious. They are not fond of keeping up a remembrance of their defeats. There was a good picture of the late Emperor, with his haughty brow, fierce eyes, and determined lips, the very impersonification of self-will and human pride, now brought down to the very dust; but, haughty as was that brow, the expression of the countenance gave no sign of talent or true genius. It was indeed wanting. He had the sense to take advantage of the ideas of others, and the determination ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... was pierced to the core by the great mercy shown by his parents, and the brilliancy of his own original good heart was enticed back to him. The sunlight came forth, and what became of all the clouds of self-will and selfishness? The clouds were all dispelled, and from the bottom of his soul there sprang the desire to thank his parents for their goodness. We all know the story of the rush-cutter who saw the moon rising between the ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Self-will, love of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce any ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... light. The light He gave and gives through nature, and within every man's breast, has been awfully darkened through refusal and neglect to use it, through stubborn self-will. It is so darkened that ofttimes it seems to have been quite put out. His coming amongst us as one of ourselves, living our life, dying on our behalf to free us from sin, rising again victorious over death, sending His Holy Spirit to make ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... great estate fell desperately in love with a great beauty of very high quality, but as ill-natured as long flattery and an habitual self-will could make her. However, my young spark ventures upon her like a man of quality, without being acquainted with her, or having ever saluted her, until it was a crime to kiss any woman else. Beauty is a thing which palls with possession, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned this, perhaps He ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... desire to advance our principles, nor let the heat of human eagerness give a false fervour to our words and work. We cannot scold nor dragoon men to love Jesus Christ. We cannot drive them into the fold with dogs and sticks. We are to be gentle, long-suffering, not doing our work with passion and self-will, but remembering that gentleness is mightiest, and that we shall best 'adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour' when we go among men with the light caught in the inner sanctuary still irradiating our faces, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ground on this question. We have found that only on that could we stand. When the very foundations of what we held most awful and reverential have been assailed by mad traitorous hands, as though they were vulgar things, when frenzied self-will has laid its profane grasp upon the Ark of the Covenant, we have been forced back to those strong foundations on which nations stand, for hope and confidence, to those tremendous sanctions that girdle in, as with the fires of God, the sanctity of Law, the majesty of Order, and established Right. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... than those of his companions, was particularly noticeable on account of a pair of dark gray eyes, cold and calculating, and which had at times a steel-like glitter. Though an attractive face, it was not altogether pleasing; it was too sensuous, and indicated stubbornness and self-will rather than ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... parents is to be the great cause of pride of birth, I, too, have reason to be ashamed of mine, for I think my mother's love was worn out before many years of married life were over, and my father's never was anything but self-love and self-will. But whatever our birth may be, we are all God's children, and equal in His eyes, in that respect at least.——Did Madame Lenoir speak to you ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... something worse on that of her brother; and she therefore wrote with every effort to make the whole appear her own voluntary act—though the very effort made her doubly conscious that the sole cause for her passive acquiescence was, that her past self-will in trifles had left her no power to contend for her own opinion in greater matters—the common retribution on ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of each nook and niche. Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first, Came jasper pannels; then, anon, there burst Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees, 140 And with the larger wove in small intricacies. Approving all, she faded at self-will, And shut the chamber up, close, hush'd and still, Complete and ready for the revels rude, When dreadful guests would come to ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... deepest event of my life! I would have united myself to any one of the Protestant sects if I had found any that would have answered the demands of my nature. Why should I now hesitate when I find the Catholic Church will do so? Is not this the self-will which revolts against the involuntary ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... frequent and familiar guest, Whose life and manners well could paint Alike the student and the saint; Alas! whose speech too oft I broke With gambol rude and timeless joke; For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child; But, half a plague and half a jest, Was still ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... sceptre in his hand and a crown on his head. The oath of fidelity to his people, usual on such occasions, was not taken, and in fact Charles had no thought of being faithful to anything but his own ambitious designs and his obstinate self-will. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... self-seeking. "When the creature claimeth for its own anything good, such as life, knowledge, or power, and in short whatever we commonly call good, as if it were that, or possessed that—it goeth astray." Sin is nothing else but self-assertion, self-will. "Be assured," says the "Theologia Germanica," "that he who helpeth a man to his own will, helpeth him to the worst that he can." He, therefore, who is "simply and wholly bereft of self" is delivered from sin, and God alone reigns in his inmost soul. Concerning the highest part or ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... greater weight with me: to whose commands, Alas! I've nothing to reply withal; Nor is there man more wretched than myself. For Clinia here (though he, I must confess, Has cares enough) has got a mistress, modest, Well-bred, and stranger to all harlot arts: Mine is a self-will'd, wanton, haughty madam, Gay, and extravagant; and let her ask Whate'er she will, she must not be denied; Since poverty I durst not make my plea. This is a plague I have but newly found, Nor is my ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... relative position of the observer,—were those contrarieties and changes not less startling, which his character so often exhibited, as compared with itself. He who, at one moment, was seen intrenched in the most absolute self-will, would, at the very next, be found all that was docile and amenable. To-day, storming the world in its strong-holds, as a misanthrope and satirist—to-morrow, learning, with implicit obedience, to fold a shawl, as a Cavaliere—the same man who had so obstinately refused to surrender, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... did not love to love; but hated him For making her to love, and so her whim From passion taught misprision to begin; And all this sin Was because love to cast out had no skill Self, which was regent still. Her own self-will made void her own ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... and all carnal courses are mistaken and unspiritual. God is often moved to delay that we may be led to pray, and even the answers to prayer are deferred that the natural and carnal spirit may be kept in check and self-will may bow ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the service. And yet his whole conduct was regulated by the strictest sense of duty, and his letters—even those in which he shows most independence—never give the slightest occasion to suspect that his actions arose from self-will and disobedience. On this point he is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... very cleverly with the less open waters of domestic strife. While what it shows of human nature in general is the most important thing, what is shown of Russian life is of great interest. The position of the countess, and the habit of her mind with its over-bearing self-will and ingenious self-approval, are studies possible, of course, anywhere, but pretty sure to be found especially in a land like Russia, where the habit of command was until recently so strongly fostered by the existence of serfdom. The condition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... out of Egypt, and set them free. One of the first lessons which they have to learn is, that freedom does not mean license and discord—does not mean every one doing that which is right in the sight of his own eyes. From that springs self-will, division, quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness, profligacy, and ruin to the whole people. Without order, discipline, obedience to law, there can be no true and lasting freedom; and, therefore, order must be kept at all risks, the law obeyed, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... It is possible, perhaps probable, that as the House of Commons becomes more democratic in its composition, and consequently more arrogant in its bearing, it may cast off the shackles which the other powers of the State impose on its self-will, and even utterly abolish them; but I venture to believe that those who last till that day comes, will find that they are living under a very different constitution from that which we now enjoy; that they have traversed the interval which separates a temperate and cautious administration ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa's could so ill bear comparison; or the perfect, the unrivalled hold it possessed over his own. There he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind; there he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there had begun to deplore the pride, the ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Europe, Philip has existed all his days above men, not among them. Locked up within himself, a stranger to every generous and kindly emotion, his gloomy spirit has had no employment but to strengthen or increase its own elevation, no pleasure but to gratify its own self-will. Superstition, harmonising with these native tendencies, has added to their force, but scarcely to their hatefulness: it lends them a sort of sacredness in his own eyes, and even a sort of horrid dignity in ours. Philip is not without a certain greatness, the greatness of unlimited external ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... sudden quarrel with one of her husband's old friends; Mademoiselle Louie (who was already her cherie) had taken a fancy to pose for this statue; it was surely better to indulge her than to rouse her self-will, but she could assure monsieur that she had looked after her as though it had ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the sunny distance. "I did wrong," she said, as though she were speaking to herself. "I should not have allowed that quarrel with your father. I regret it now very deeply. But we always see too late the consequences of our proud self-will." She ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more conspicuous than in the determination with which he thus persisted in giving the preference to one or two works of his own which, in the eyes of all other persons, were most ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... intellect refused to acknowledge the possibility of discomfiture; his soul raged mightily against the hint of bafflement. Humour would not come to his aid; the lighter elements of race were ousted; he was solid insolence, wooden-headed self-will. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... was ready early in 1720, and produced at the Royal Academy of Music, as the theater was now called. The success of the production was tremendous. But Handel, by his self-will had stirred up envy and jealousy, and an opposition party was formed, headed by his old enemy from Hamburg, Buononcini, who had come to London to try his fortunes. A test opera was planned, of which Handel wrote the third act, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... "for the good of the community." During a temporary absence of the mistress, a ray of kindliness seemed to touch the woman O'Kin. She pointed to the square of some six feet, to the rings fastened in the rafters. "Don't carry self-will to extremes. Here you are to be stripped, hauled up to those rings, and beaten until the bow breaks. Look at it and take warning. Kin is no weakling." She shoved back her sleeve, showing an arm as hard and brawny as that of a stevedore. With disapproval she observed ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... by a black self-will, The sons the father kill, The children chase the mother, and would heal The wounds they ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the girl whose energy keeps things whirling in the Berry Patch. Judge Berry was the great authority on what's what among them, and John Tabor, the school teacher, was the romantic character in the community. All the human excitements of pride and self-will enter into the various ambitions. Even generous impulses were taught restraint in the experiences of various kinds, showing that there is an appropriate time and ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... whose service the stronger members have to devote themselves. This is the reason why all who purpose to enter the Order have to resolve to make war to the death against their private judgment, and still more against their self-will and self-love. This is why all ought to mortify all their passions and affections, and absolutely to bend their understanding under the yoke of obedience, to live, in short, no longer according to the old man, but entirely according to the new man, in holiness and in justice. So ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... prayer can melt or soften thy resolve; But, as a colt new-harnessed champs the bit, Thou strivest and art restive to the rein. But all too feeble is the stratagem In which thou art so confident: for know That strong self-will is weak and less than nought In one more proud than wise. Bethink thee now— If these my words thou shouldest disregard— What storm, what might as of a great third wave Shall dash thy doom upon thee, past escape! First shall the Sire, with thunder ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... was her father's sister, an austere dignified old party who resided most exclusively in her ancestral home on Beacon Street, and lived in a rut worn ages deep by tradition, conviction and self-will. Virginia was, so-to-speak, heiress-presumptive. Not that she was likely to be supplanted by the birth of some one having greater claim to her aunt's fortune. Her possible rivals for the very substantial income which her aunt enjoyed were foundling asylums, a new religious cult just ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... naturally intractable and played the rogue voluntarily and far surpassed the other in his gift of language. For these reasons his designs were more mischievous, his daring more spontaneous, and his self-will greater in all junctures alike. He was the first to walk up and down in the assemblies while he harangued and the first to bare his arm; hence neither of these practices has been thought improper, since he did it. And because his speaking was characterized by great condensation ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... she felt she was not ready. One corner for self-will and doing her own pleasure she wanted somewhere; and wanted so obstinately, that she felt, as it were, a mountain of strong unwillingness rise up between God's requirements and her; an iron lock upon the door of her heart, the key of which ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... beauty of the character sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its tenderness hardened; where there was gentleness, we see roughness and coarseness; where there was obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will, and pride; where there was a true and blameless conversation, we find now something of falsehood, something of profaneness, something of impurity. I can well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his child ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... from the identical primal ground. The possibility of the separation, it is answered, lies in the fact that the finite is like the infinite realiter, and yet, ideally, is different from it; the actuality of the coming forth, however, lies in the non-deducible self-will of the finite. Then after Eschenmayer[1] (Philosophy in its Transition to Not-philosophy, 1803) had characterized the procession of the Ideas out of the Godhead as an impenetrable mystery for thought, before which philosophy must yield ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... eye fixed on a picture on the wall, his lip curled with a sort of disdain, and an expression in his whole motionless figure that, had his cause but been good, would have been resolution, whereas it now was only indomitable self-will and pride. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... himself,' said Patience; and as she spoke her round dark eyes assumed a look of more than ordinary self-will. If Miss Le Smyrger had intended to carry the conversation any further she changed her mind as she looked at her companion. Then, as I said, the summer ran by, and towards the close of the warm days of July, ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... manor were much alarmed for Arthur's safety, for a violent fever had ensued, and, to judge from the physician's evasive answers, the event was doubtful. The family were unremitting in their attentions, and Oriana, quietly, but with her characteristic self-will, insisted upon fulfilling her share of the duties of a nurse. And no hand more gently smoothed the sick man's pillow or administered more tenderly the cooling draught. It seemed that Arthur's sleep was calmer when her form was bending over him, and even ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... too much of the fellow," said Peters, with assumed contempt. "Why, he is a mere obstinate boor, whose self-will and vanity led him to set up and persevere in a defence in which he knows there ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... human power, such a mind which is befogged and begrimed by the agitation of its own dust is not a cause in itself—it is an effect. The cause is the reaching and grasping, the unreasonable insistence on its own way of kicking, dust-raising self-will at ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... of meekest heart, Lost Canaan by self-will, To show, where grace has done its part, How ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... out on the spot, but something in Mary's look withheld her. She went away, stepping high and feeling stately and proud; but when she had walked up and down her own room a few times, her better sense began to revive, and she saw that she had acted in anger and self-will quite as much as from a sense of propriety, and she threw herself on her bed and shed some ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things, have a particular niche and path and work appointed for him; and just in proportion as a man finds out his exact work, and walks in or strays from his peculiar path, will be the success of his life. He may miss his aim altogether, and his life turn out a failure, because of his self-will, or, perhaps, his mistaken notions; and there are few sights more depressing than that of a round young man rushing into a square hole, except that of a square young man trying to wriggle himself into ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... as the restraint and self- communion of inactivity may be good for an unruly soul—not, indeed, that I mean to say that ships are unruly; on the contrary, they are faithful creatures, as so many men can testify. And faithfulness is a great restraint, the strongest bond laid upon the self-will of men and ships on this globe of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... only for earth but for heaven—the boy he had loved and idolized, then cast off, and allowed to become a wanderer on the face of the earth. It may be that his stern, sullen pride, his imperious self-will, his resolute trampling upon the voice of nature and duty, confronted him in the new light shining upon him. Perhaps his own words returned to him, that until he lay dead Ronald should never see Earlescourt again; for suddenly the voice they thought hushed forever sounded ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... With all his self-will, Henry was never blind to the distinction between what he could and what he could not do. Strictly speaking, he was a constitutional king; he neither attempted to break up Parliament, nor to evade the law. He ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... a patient, melancholy smile. "If I am prejudiced," said she gently, "it is because of what her misconduct cost my son years ago. Do you think I can ever forget that but for her caprice and self-will you would never have had those years of suffering, Floyd? But we women know each other. It is at times a sad knowledge, and for our prescience the men whom we would serve misjudge us and tell us we hate each other. Georgina is in love this summer. You do not guess what man she has set ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... oft thy stiff-neck'd self-will hath To bitter need reduc'd thee! When heart and mind deluded, death To take for life, seduc'd thee! And had the Lord thy work and deed Along the path allow'd proceed That thou thyself had'st taken, Lost wert thou ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... was over, and summer and hope were dead. Tears trembled in the mother's eyes. Poor little Virginia, so young, so inexperienced, and, in spite of her self-will and recklessness, so sweet ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... sorrow risen. We perceive the first small cracks of incurable divisions in the royal household; the breaking out of fountains of bitterness, which by and by spread wide enough. A young sprightly, capricions and vivacious Boy, inclined to self-will, had it been permitted; developing himself into foreign tastes, into French airs and ways; very ill seen by the heavy-footed ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... most perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord Scales, beyond the greatest of their grandees. With all this, it must be said of them that they were marvelous good men in the field, dexterous archers, and powerful with the battleaxe. In their great pride and self-will, they always sought to press in the advance and take the post of danger, trying to outvie our Spanish chivalry. They did not rush on fiercely to the fight, nor make a brilliant onset like the Moorish and Spanish troops, but they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... floating suggestion: those which are his own he cannot keep pure, for he breathes a dust of decayed ideas, wreck of the souls of dead nations, driven by contrary winds. He may stiffen himself (and all the worse for him) into an iron self-will, but if the iron has any magnetism in it, he cannot pass a day without finding himself, at the end of it, instead of sharpened or tempered, covered with a ragged fringe of iron filings. If there be anything better than iron—living wood fiber—in him, he cannot be ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... rather a masculine voice, and it grated on one slightly, being scarcely expected from so beautiful a face. In it was power, self-will, ambition—but no tenderness nor that voice, soft and low, which "is ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... men. An autobiography of such a man was more needed than that of any other; but we could not expect an autobiography from Shelley. He felt nothing but pain and sorrow in the retrospect of his life, and, like Byron, shrank from the task of explaining the mixture of self-will, injustice, falsehood, and impetuous defiance that made up the greater part of his history; and when he died, he left everything at sixes and sevens, as regarded his place and acts in the world. Accordingly, until lately, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... of a young and untamed girl, possessed of none of the attractions of her sex, and neither supported by bodily nor mental strength, must soon yield to the still rougher and more capricious but assumed self-will of a man: such a lesson can only be taught on the stage with all the perspicuity of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... incessantly, sometimes muttering to himself. Every time he came within the circle of lamplight his face was visible to Elizabeth, wrinkled and set, with angry eyes; and she saw him as a person possessed by a stubborn demon of self-will. Once, as he passed her, she heard him say to himself, 'Of course I can write another at once—half ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of pride cannot understand the beauty of humility, and the spirit of self-will cannot understand the beauty of obedience; and, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose the devil could not understand our Lord. If He be the Son of God, so might Satan argue, He has all the more reason to be proud; and, therefore, it is all ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Guinevere of some Lancelot, or the Fata Morgana of all men—in her own idea. She can't stop having an idea of herself. She can't get herself out of her own head. And there she is, functioning away from her own head and her own consciousness of herself and her own automatic self-will, till the whole man and woman game has become just a hell, and men with any backbone would rather kill themselves than go on with it—or ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... conscience, my daughter. You have no vocation such as your brother had. You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will and anger, not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them. The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and freedom, and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... new castellan was exercising his power with unsparing and immoderate severity. Oliver de Wortshorn was almost heartbroken; the old man suddenly found himself reduced to the condition of a mere dependant on the self-will and caprice of this petty tyrant, his authority having been usurped, and his office wrested from him, by the hand of a stranger. Adam de Dutton[51] was the name of this new functionary, and he rode it out bravely over the necks of the servants and retainers, discharging some, punishing others, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... very barren of such characters. Not but that many precious children of God suffered in much patience and charity. But those who suffered with very much of a different spirit, found no pastor to discountenance their self-will and false zeal: a sure sign that the true spirit of martyrdom was less pure than it had formerly been. Moreover the prevalence of superstition on the one hand, and the decay of evangelical knowledge on the other, are equally apparent. Christ crucified, justification purely by faith, and the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... better class of Spaniards the richest people in the world naturally heightened their pride and arrogance. The long and eventful religious wars of Charles V. and Philip II. gave employment and distinction to thousands of families whose vanity was nursed by the royal favor, and whose ferocious self-will was fed and pampered by the blood of heretics ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... It was true he carried the cross upon his banner, and claimed the benediction of the successor of St. Peter; true also he spoke the speech of France, and claimed a French paternity; but the lust for dominion, the iron self-will, the wily devices of strategy, bespoke the Norman of the twelfth, the lineal descendant of the Dane of the tenth century. When, therefore, tidings reached Ireland of the battle of Hastings and the death of Harold, both the apprehensions and the sympathies of the country were deeply ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Moor in becoming robbers. On the other hand, the play was of too powerful a cast not in any case to have alarmed his serenity the Duke of Wurtemberg; for it argued a most revolutionary mind, and the utmost audacity of self-will. But besides this general ground of censure, there arose a special one, in a quarter so remote, that this one fact may serve to evidence the extent as well as intensity of the impression made. The territory of the Grisons ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... appears not merely as a substantial feeling but at the same time as law, there arises from it the subordination of the abstract obedience of the woman as wife to the husband, of children to the parents, of the younger children to the elder. In this obedience man first renounces his self-will and his natural roughness; he learns to master his passions, and to ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... being the more spirited course, without any mixture of gravity and self-restraint, virtues so necessary for political life. He had never learned how essential it is for one who undertakes to deal with men, and engage in public business, to avoid above all things that self-will which, as Plato says, is of the family of solitude, and to become longsuffering and patient, qualities which some foolish people hold very cheap. Marcius, plain and straightforward, thinking it to be the duty of a brave man to bear down all ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... emotions were but ill-concealed, and Lucy saw the muscular frame before her heaved and convulsed by passions which were more intense and rending because it was only for a few moments that they conquered his self-will ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to what this announcement might be followed up by, in the way of special naughtiness. But her fears were misplaced. Hoodie was perfectly good and gentle all day—almost too much so indeed; Lucy would have liked to see a touch of her old self-will and petulance, for she could not help fearing she was to blame for the strange depression of Hoodie's spirits. She was very kind and good to the little girl, and did her utmost to amuse her, but it was a strange, sad time. The house, lately so cheerful with children's voices and the patter of their ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... invites; but it is not that we may work a performance of our own, but receive His own good things. Oh, the folly, the ingratitude, of being inattentive to such a blessing! Oh, the rebellious pride of choosing our own self-will, and our own way, when the privilege may be ours of becoming the obedient and loving children of God—of receiving from Him the willing and the obedient heart which we may offer up to Him again, and which He ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... class by their over-indulgence, by their anxiety to pamper the child by yielding to all his caprices and artificially protecting him from the natural results of those caprices, so that instead of learning freedom, he has merely acquired self-will. These parents do not indeed tyrannise over their children but they do worse; they train their children to be tyrants. Against these two tendencies of our century Ellen Key declares her own Alpha and Omega ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... must caution you to be on your guard to-day against any exhibition of self-will and ill temper, if your wishes are overruled by those ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... "The Choughs," glorifying himself in the thought that now, at any rate, he had shown Hardy that he wasn't to be dragooned into doing or not doing anything. He had had a bad time of it all day, and his good angel had fought hard for victory; but self-will was too strong for the time. When he stayed behind the rest, it was more out of bravado than from any defined purpose of pursuing what he tried to persuade himself was an innocent flirtation. When he left the house some hours ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... not know to be the token of heart complaint. He was confined to his room, and it was kneeling by his bedside that Eutacie poured out her thankfulness for her child's preservation, and her own repentance for the passing fit of self-will and petulance. The thought of Rayonette's safety seemed absolutely to extinguish the fresh anxiety that had arisen since it had become evident that her enemies no longer supposed her dead, but were probably upon her traces. Somehow, danger had become almost a natural element to ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'You must remember this is only my second visit, and I have not made much way with her. She is in a state of bodily and mental discomfort very painful to witness. If I am not mistaken, she is driving herself half-crazy with introspection and self-will. You must not give way to this morbid desire to increase her own wretchedness. She needs firmness ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... vainly he labored to sully with blame The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame! Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind On himself fell the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... admirers. He has too much of her self-will and dogged pride to pull with her. Do you remember, Agatha, how we used to enjoy their wordy combats? I always thought that at the bottom of all her antagonism to him she really liked him; but she ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... employ the power of self-inspection with that carefulness and sedulity with which they ought. Hence men generally, and unrenewed men always, are unacquainted with much that goes on within their own minds and hearts. Though it is sin and self-will, though it is thought and feeling and purpose and desire, that is going on and taking place during all these years of religious indifference, yet the agent himself, so far as a sober reflection upon the moral character of the process, and a ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... "regulation" bonnet of the "Friends" a very slight protection from the cold. So she ordered one made of fur, large enough to protect both head and face. For this departure from usage, she was admonished, "It was a grief to 'Friends,'" "It looked like pride and self-will," "It was an evil example," etc. While adhering strictly to the principles of "Friends," neither she nor her sister Sarah could conform to all their distinctive usages, nor accept all their rules. Consequently, their examples were regarded as quiet protests against some of the settled customs of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Even then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction, which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal. Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... necessary, to put those polluting, damning questions. My infallible Church was mercilessly forcing me to oblige those poor, trembling, weeping, desolated girls and women to swim with me and all her priests in those waters of Sodom and Gomorrha, under the pretext that their self-will would be broken down, their fear of sin and humility increased, and that they would ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... long in icy chains confin'd; No selfishness and no self-will are nigh, For at her advent they were ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... receive instruction, or to hear any thing contrary to their minds, lest their conscience, receiving more light, speak with a higher voice against their inclinations and former ways, and so create more trouble to them; while, as now they enjoy more quiet within, so long as the cry of their self-will and biassed judgments is so loud, that they cannot well hear the still and low ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... and sweet were distilled into this one, he had not done it. It had grown much easier not to do it. Sometimes it had been illusory love, sometimes ambition, sometimes towering pride and self-seeking, sometimes mere indolent unreadiness, dreamy self-will. On he had gone out of the lower end of the Valley of Decision, where the tendrils became arms of giants and decisions might ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... of mark on earth. Men who feel culture of all God's gifts worth, A thorough abnegation of self-will, To fit them life's work ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... for all his proud self-will, Be humbled. On a wedlock he is bent Whereof the fateful offspring shall one day Hurl him from sovereignty to nothingness, And so fulfil the curse old Chronos spake, When from his immemorial throne he ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... laid her hand on the gate, which Ted held shut, and her mouth was obstinately set. Something in his voice conquered her self-will. She turned and led the way to ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... his doctrine of sin, of the dark places in his doctrine of God.[245] In fact, he adds very little to the Neoplatonic doctrine of the nature of evil. Like Dionysius, he identifies Being with Good, and evil, as such, with not-being. Moral evil is self-will: it is the attempt, on the part of the creature, to be a particular This or ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... course of the book. The paradox, probably nowhere else discussed, of man's thinking and willing to all appearance all by himself, and of the fact that volition and thought come to him from beyond him, receives a similar, cumulative answer. The tension between the divine will and human self-will is a subject that pervades the book; to that subject the profoundest insights into the hidden activity of providence and into human nature are brought. On the question, "Is providence only general or also detailed?" the emphatic answer ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... to depend upon the liking of the individuals for one another's company. The tendency of individuals to over self-assertion is kept down by fighting. Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear come into play, and enforce a greater or less renunciation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins to be checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the former, just as the "governor" in a steam-engine is part of the mechanism of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... around him, had wakened to the vigor of a previous century; but it was so different from Vesta's nature that, while it but made nobler her soul of tranquil piety and ease of ladyhood, Vesta was interested in Rhoda's self-will ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... 'to-morrow,'(670) 'made like unto almonds,'(671) 'and will rise up.' "(672) "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" or, "thou shalt be accepted even if thou doest not well." "Cursed be their anger for it was fierce," or, "for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they houghed cursed oxen." "To-morrow I will stand" or "go out, fight with Amalek to-morrow." "Made like unto almonds with their knops, and their flowers," or "four bowls made like unto almonds." "And this people ...
— Hebrew Literature
... we profess there are no failures in love in our homes. These things happen every day and we think nothing of them. They are all of them the opposite of love, and the opposite of love is hate. Impatience is hate, envy is hate, conceit and self-will are hate, and so are selfishness, irritability and resentment! And hate is SIN. "He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now." What tensions, barriers and discord it all causes, and fellowship ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... equanimity which enters so largely into the virtues of the statesman. He had never learned how essential it is for any one who undertakes public business, and desires to deal with mankind, to avoid above all things that self-will, which, as Plato says, belongs to the family of solitude; and to pursue, above all things, that capacity so generally ridiculed, of submission to ill treatment. Marcius, straightforward and direct, and possessed with the idea ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... sometimes pleased to conduct certain fervent souls through extraordinary paths, in which others would find only dangers of illusion, vanity, and self-will, which we cannot sufficiently guard ourselves against. We should notwithstanding consider, that the sanctity of these fervent souls does not consist in such wonderful actions, or miracles, but in the perfection of their unfeigned charity, patience, and humility; and it was the exercise {092} ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... judgment. They could not show what they had not: and it was now too late for the king to become prompt and active, and for the queen to learn to view people and things as the rest of the world did, brought up, as she had been, in ignorance and self-will. She often complained (and we cannot wonder) at having to live and act among people who showed no presence of mind and good sense: but, really, the king, and everybody concerned, might well have complained of the ruin which her folly and self-will brought ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... Buonapartist. He is always of the militant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show of magnanimity. But his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wants principle; for though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents he might do great things, if he would go right forward to any useful object, make thorough stitch-work ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... itself. He declared in loud tones how well he felt, and quite resented my efforts to take care of him. I reminded him of his gracious vows and promises in the days of his low spirits, but to no effect. The fact is, his self-will has not left him yet, and I have now no fear of his immediate translation. He is going to ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the works of self? I might mention many, but let us take the simplest words that we are continually using,—self-will, self-confidence, self-exaltation. Self-will, pleasing self, is the great sin of man, and it is at the root of all that compromising with the world which is the ruin of so many. Men can not understand why they should not please themselves ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... all the ills which flesh is heir to; all the children of the four great bogies, Self-will, Ignorance, Fear, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... the fury of his self-will had been scattered, for want of concentration[19] on one object only, manhood, like a flash of lightning, suddenly revealed to him that very object, in the form of woman: and he discovered, in the storm of his delight, that women were the very victims for whom ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... freedom, the freedom of self-will, can turn its back upon its highest realisation, but it cannot cut itself away from it altogether, for then it will lose its own meaning. Our self-will has freedom up to a certain extent; it can know what it is to break away from the path, but it cannot ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... from her beloved solitudes to her own quarters in Paris,—a journey of sorrow, and the beginning of sorrows. In her childhood Aurore had often longed for this mother's breast as her natural refuge, and the true home of her childish affections. But it "was one of those characters of self-will and passion which deteriorate in later life, and in which no new moral beauties spring up to replace the impulsive graces of youth. Regarding Aurore now as the work of another's hands, she made her the victim of ceaseless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... greatest difficulty in steering her partner through the maze, on account of his self-will, and when at last they reached the bottom of the long line, she was breathless with her hard labour.. Resting here, she watched Nic and his lady; and, though she had decidedly cooled off in these later months, began ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... was the Mayflower; those men and women who crowded her decks were that little handful of God's own wheat which had been flailed by adversity, tossed and winnowed till every husk of earthly selfishness and self-will had been beaten away from them and left only pure seed, fit for the planting of a new world. It was old Master Cotton Mather who said of them, "The Lord sifted three countries to find seed wherewith to ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... division between these two mad creatures?' she returned. 'Don't you know that they are both mad with their own self-will and pride?' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What I have I acquire, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... said her husband, "your self-will is getting up very strong to-night! What if? Dolly's future does not depend upon us; though we will do what we ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... all the words they use describing the faults of children. In all, this gave 914 faults, far more in number than their virtues. These were classified as native and of external origin, acute and chronic, egoistic and altruistic, greed, perverted honor, self-will, falsity, laziness, frivolity, distraction, precocity, timidity, envy and malevolence, ingratitude, quarrelsomeness, cruelty, superstition; and the latter fifteen were settled on as resultant groups, and the authors who ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... pitch. But it must be remembered, in fairness, that if they obeyed their supposed superiors, they had first chosen their superiors themselves; that as the becoming a monk at all was an assertion of self-will and independence, whether for good or evil, so their reverence for their abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they fancied had a right to rule them, because he was wiser and better than they; ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley |
