"Assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at no time had he been divorced from philosophy[68]. He was entitled to repel the charge made by some people on the publication of his first book of the later period—the Hortensius—that he was a mere tiro in philosophy, by the assertion that on the contrary nothing had more occupied his thoughts throughout the whole of a wonderfully energetic life[69]. Did the scope of this edition allow it, I should have little difficulty in showing from a ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in the days of Saint Dominic was the Vice Inquisitor the hunting hound of the Lord, now he was but the dog of the Bishop, a poor monk, who dared neither to do nor to abstain from doing. Such was the result of the assertion of Gallican independence against papal supremacy. Dumb and timid, Brother Jean Lemaistre was the last and the least of all the brethren in that assembly, but he was ever looking for the day when he should be sovereign judge and ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... She made this assertion with such evident pride and with such absolute confidence that Mr. Green, although inclined to smile, felt it might be poor judgment to do so. So he agreed that there was no doubt of Shadrach's ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... behaved well. However, she was glad to have ocular demonstration of the success of the cookery, which she had feared might turn out uneatable; and her gentle feelings towards Philip were touched, by seeing one wont to be full of independence and self-assertion, now meek and helpless, requiring to be lifted, and propped up with pillows, and depending ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... surmised why the licentious King "should become gossip in so mean a house." Hume adds: "People thence accounted for that resemblance which was afterward remarked between young Perkin and that monarch." The surmise of Bacon, grounded upon the error of Speed, is clinched into the positive assertion of Hume as to a popular belief for which there is not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... "the night when I handed you the rough sketch I had made of the scaraboeus. You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... such cases we are sure to find a prudent vagueness—an assertion of the fact of the connection, expressed in general terms, without any specification of the particulars on which ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... of humanity, they tell us, "won't pay." Much they know of what will and what won't pay! This comes of partial education,—of one-sided, of warped, and biased education. It puts one out of patience, this arrogance of the University, this presuming upon the ignorance of the million, this assertion of an indispensable necessity to make the boy of the nineteenth century a mere expert in some subdivision of one of the sciences. The obstinacy of an hereditary absolutism, which the world has outgrown, still lingers in our schools of learning. Let us admit ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... might venture my opinion against an almost universal notion, I would say most men mistake the proceedings of Providence in this case, and all the world at this day are mistaken in their practice about it. And, because the assertion is very bold, I desire to ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... some supposed advantages attributed to the New, over the Old, testament; and whether the doctrine of a Resurrection and a Life to Come, is not taught by the Old testament, in contradiction the assertion, that "life and immorality were brought to light by ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... seasonable during the present inclement weather. As the Army sympathises with the Government, and the sister service with the rioters, you can suggest "that knaves would, of course, be supported by the Navy!" This may lead up to a really magnificent burst of waggery in the assertion that the dissentients must of necessity be "all ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... that ridiculous assertion, I wonder? I think I may say that I know as much about the Chateau Larouge and its history as anybody, Miss Lorne, but I never heard of this supposed 'legend' before ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... one other member of the party of whom we will make mention just now, because she appears again somewhat prominently in our tale. This was a little elderly female who seemed utterly destitute of the very common human attribute of self-assertion, and in whose amiable, almost comical, countenance, one expression seemed to overbear and obliterate all others, namely that of gushing good-will to man and beast! Those who did not know Reni-Mamba thought her an ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... advance that he had made since the days when we had acted together at the Queen's Theater did not occur to me. I was just spellbound by a study in cruelty, which seemed to me a triumphant assertion of the power of the actor to create as well as to interpret, for Tennyson never suggested half ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... confuse—originality of design. "By what accident," asks the Quarterly Reviewer (George Agar Ellis), "has it happened that no other English poet before Lord Byron has thought fit to employ his talents on a subject so well suited to their display?" The question can only be answered by the assertion that it was the accident of genius which inspired the poet with a "new song." Childe Harold's Pilgrimage had no progenitors, and, with the exception of some feeble and forgotten imitations, it has had no descendants. The materials of the poem; the Spenserian ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... up from the hold, raging like a maniac, cursing the weather, the provisions, and everything else that he could think of, including myself, whom he denounced as a Jonah, his ill-luck having commenced, according to his assertion, with the sparing of my life and my reception on board the Francesca. As for the calm, he declared that it should detain him no longer; and, having searched the sky and examined the barometer in vain for any signs of a change, he gave orders ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... some silly letters to the public deriding the power of the North. No one could know better than Davis how silly these utterances were. He "hated and despised the Yankees." Davis feared and recognized their power. Beauregard's assertion that the South could whip the North even if her only arms were flintlocks and pitchforks had ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... correctness of the assertion. Champignac was very fond of ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings, while Becky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for Truffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the Travellers', where he owed money to the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her over the top of Lily's golden head. After all, she told herself, in the case of Mrs. Volsky she could see the point of Dr. Blanchard's assertion! She had known many animals who apparently were quicker to reason, who apparently had more enthusiasm and ambition, than Mrs. Volsky. She looked at the dingy apron, the unkempt hair, the sagging flesh upon the gray cheeks. ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... either. But now my awakened artistic impulse was irresistible. My first self-imposed lesson was a free-hand copy of an illustration on a cover of Life. Considering the circumstances, that first drawing was creditable, though I cannot now prove the assertion; for inconsiderate attendants destroyed it, with many more of my drawings and manuscripts. From the very moment I completed that first drawing, honors were divided between my literary and artistic impulses; ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... informed that men of high official position among us" were "calling for a General Convention of the Confederate States to depose him and set up a military Dictator in his place." The Mercury retorted that, as to the plot against "our Moses," there was no evidence of its existence except the Courier's assertion. Nevertheless, it considered Davis "an incubus to the cause." The controversy between the Mercury and the Courier at Charleston was paralleled at Richmond by the constant bickering between the government organ, the Enquirer, and the Examiner, which shares with the Mercury the first place among ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... well with us, when it is well with Sophy Traill, and we have the home weather she lets us have," Janet often remarked. The assertion had a great deal of truth in it. Sophy, from her chair in Mistress Kilgour's workroom, greatly influenced the domestic happiness of the Binnie cottage, even though they neither saw her, nor spoke her name. But her moods made Andrew happy ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally annexed. The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals. They continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the force of the west-going current was felt more severely. Columbus, believing that the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured against the current, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... things of this world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." The truth of this scriptural assertion was peculiarly evident in the ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... of the fourteenth century Italy was in the full swing of the intellectual renaissance.[8] In 1341 Petrarch, recognized by all his contemporary countrymen as their leading scholar and poet, was crowned with a laurel wreath on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. This was the formal assertion by the age of its admiration for intellectual worth. To Petrarch is ascribed the earliest recognition of the beauty of nature. He has been called the first modern man. In reading his works we feel at last that we speak with one of our own, with a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... unexpectedly indeed, of my deserting the profession to which I was educated, and in which I had sufficiently advantageous prospects for a person of limited ambition. * * I may remark that, although the assertion has been made, it is a mistake to suppose that my situation in life or place in society were materially altered by such success as I attained in literary attempts. My birth, without giving the least pretension to distinction, was that of a gentleman, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... a peacock among daws, he now walked serene, a peacock among peacocks. He wore the raiment, frequented the clubs, ate the dinners of the undeservingly rich and the deservingly great. His charm and his self-confidence, which a genius of tact saved from self-assertion, carried him pleasantly through the social world; his sympathetic intelligence dealt largely and strongly with the public affairs under his control. He loved organizing, persuading, casting skilful nets. His appeal for subscriptions was irresistible. He had the magical gift of wringing ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the opinion expressed by Julian Ralph concerning the officers with whom he fraternized:—"They were emphatically the best of Englishmen," said he; "well informed, proud, polished, polite, considerate, and abounding with animal health and spirits." As a whole that assertion is largely true as applied to those with whom it was my privilege to associate. Most of them had been educated at one or other of our great public schools, many of them represented families of ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... powder in a mine—the same person. And opposite to him was Mr. John Mattock, a worthy antagonist, delightful to rouse, for he carried big guns and took the noise of them for the shattering of the enemy, and this champion could be pricked on to a point of assertion sure to fire the phlegm in Philip; and then young Patrick might be trusted to warm to the work. Three heroes out skirmishing on our side. Then it begins to grow hot, and seeing them at it in earnest, Forbery ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and true, he would openly say what he found. Louvois, piqued, grew angry. The King, who was not less so, allowed him to say his say. Le Notre, meanwhile, did not stir. At last, the King made him go, Louvois still grumbling, and maintaining his assertion with audacity and little measure. Le Notre measured the window, and said that the King was right by several inches. Louvois still wished to argue, but the King silenced him, and commanded him to see that the window was altered at once, contrary ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not an insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby's assertion that Eve was made of Adam's backbone, was very apparent in their mute acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various articles, according to his directions, to make ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... long and tapering. No Gooch ever had a hand like that. The Gooch hands were broad and strong: like her own. All this, notwithstanding the fact that Sara's hand lay exposed all the time she was speaking, a physical contradiction to her assertion. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... that, old weather bureau prophet," laughed Alec; for the scout who had just made that bold assertion had long been looked up to as an authority on the subject of changes of the weather, and could reel off a dozen reasons for the prediction he was making, all founded ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... latter course was the "History of the Revival of Letters," which some of the learned Thebans thought not germane to the matter; and, consequently, after he had delivered three lectures, he desisted in disgust. This fact seems somewhat to contradict Dr. Johnson's assertion, that "Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success, and placed himself in view by all the common methods." Had he been a thoroughly self-seeking man, he never would have committed the blunder of choosing literature as a subject of predilection ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... Virginia's assertion that the "South Sea" mentioned in her charter as her western limits entitled her to the land as far west as the Pacific, if British authority should ever extend so far, was declared preposterous by delegates from ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... interest; and there was nothing whatever for me to do but stare at him. I had no weapon. One spring and a jump and I was his meat. To run was cowardice as well as foolishness, the one because the other. And without pretending to be able to read a lion's thoughts I dare risk the assertion that he was puzzled what to do with me. I could very plainly see his claws coming in and out of their sheaths, and what with that, and the switching tail, and the sense of impotence I could not take my eyes off him. So I did not look at the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... fatherhood and human brotherhood. When Nicodemus testified to his superior power, Jesus did not trace its origin to a special interposition of Providence in his birth or life, but he made of general application the law that governed his conception by the emphatic assertion that all men must realize themselves as begotten and born from above before they can understand the forces of the unseen universe within and without. He affirmed the kingdom of God and of heaven to be latent in the life of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... compact are destroyed or invaded. These peculiar causes might operate upon them; but without these, we all know, that human nature itself, from indolence, modesty, humanity or fear, has always too much reluctance to a manly assertion of its rights. Hence perhaps it has happened, that nine-tenths of the species, are groaning and gasping in ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... yet there is great force in M. Sismondi's observation (Hist. des Francais, xviii. 264): "Malgre leur assertion, il est difficile de ne pas croire qu'au moment ou ils se reunissoient en armes pour disputer aux protestans l'exercise public de leur culte que leur accordoit l'edit de janvier, c'etoit un coup premedite que l'attaque du duc de Guise contre une congregation de huguenots, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... could not contradict this assertion, I proposed that we should follow, and examine into the mystery; but Fanny cried out, "O, for goodness' sake, don't! I'm afraid. If they have the power to make themselves invisible, they may be hiding to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... impossible Bartja could have committed the crime laid to his charge. He then called on the accused himself to answer the charge of disloyalty and perfidy. Bartja rejected the idea of an understanding with Nitetis in such short, decided, and convincing words, and confirmed his assertion with such a fearful oath, that Croesus' persuasion of his guilt first wavered, then vanished, and when Bartja had ended, he drew a deep breath, like a man delivered from a heavy burden, and clasped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... before, when Banks had been chosen, Slavery was then the issue. Good humor, courtesy and reason ruled the contest which lasted three days longer than the fight over Sherman. Instead of courtesy and reason—hatred, passion, defiance, assertion were now the order of the day. Four years before a threat of disunion was made on the floor. The House received it with shouts of derision and laughter. Keitt's dramatic threat had thrown the House into an uproar which had to be quelled by ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... and Miss Arthuret had been duly called upon and invited about by the neighbourhood; but it was a scanty one, and they had not wealth and position enough to compensate for the girl's self-assertion and literary pretensions. It was not a superior or intellectual society, and, as the Rockstone Merrifields laughingly declared, it was fifty years behindhand, and where Bessie Merrifield, for the sake of the old stock and her meek bearing of her ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well as the other knights," said Zadig, "but another here wears my arms; and while I wait for the honor of proving the truth of my assertion, I demand the liberty of presenting myself to explain the enigmas." The question was put to the vote, and his reputation for probity was still so deeply impressed in their minds, that ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... error to be unveiled? What but my own assertion had I to throw in the balance against it? Would this be permitted to outweigh the testimony of his senses? I had no witnesses to prove my existence in another place. The real events of that night are marvellous. Few, to whom they should be related, would scruple to discredit them. Pleyel is ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... whose howl had occasioned this assertion was even then considering the possibilities of which Collins spoke. Men called those of his kind breed-wolves, half coyote and half wolf. He stood on the high divide which was the roughly separating line between ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... own sacrifices, I have, I trust, clearly shown. But that, during this short period of action, he did not do well and wisely all that man could achieve in the time, and under the circumstances, is an assertion which the noble facts here recorded fully and triumphantly disprove. He knew that, placed as he was, his measures, to be wise, must be prospective, and from the nature of the seeds thus sown by him, the benefits ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... don't care so much about bonnets, Mary!" This the doctor said as an assertion; but there was, nevertheless, somewhat of a question involved ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... saying that to advance far in any branch of physical research a fair proficiency in no inconsiderable number of the sister sciences is an absolute necessity. But if this is true in general, none, I think, will question the assertion that a proficient in any of the physical sciences must be fairly conversant with photography as a science, or at least as an art. If we take for example a science which has of late years made rapid strides ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... helpless. Not the slightest trace of her usual brilliant self-assertion was at her command. Saving the squad of men sawing and hacking, digging and hammering, the fort appeared as deserted as her mind. She stood gazing after Clark. He did not look back, but strode right on. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... this assertion without a smile; I was not in a smiling humour. On the contrary, I felt singularly excited, and I kept my hand on the lock of the gate. I believed (or I thought I believed) what my companion said, and I had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of her throwing herself upon consular ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... sent a request that they might speak with him. It seems almost certain that the mother's errand was to try to get him away from his exhausting work; he was imperilling his health and his safety. Jesus refused to be interrupted. But it was really only an assertion that nothing must come between him and his duty. The Father's business always comes first. Human ties are second to the bond which binds us to God. No dishonor was done by Jesus to his mother in refusing to be drawn away by her loving interest from his work. The ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... greater pirates than the Americans; nor are they a race more destructive to the happiness to mankind. The depredations of the latter on the coast of Africa, and upon the Indians' Territory make the truth of this assertion manifest. The piratical depredations of the Algerines appear to be a judgment from heaven upon the nations, to punish their perfidy and atrocious violations of justice; and never did any people more justly merit the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... swim our outfit across a certain stretch of the Merced River, I climbed him bareback. He bucked me off so quickly that I never even got settled on his back. Then he gazed at me with sorrow, while, laughing irrepressibly at this unusual assertion of independent ideas, I picked myself out of a wild-rose bush. He did not attempt to run away from me, but stood to be saddled, and plunged boldly into the swift water where I told him to. Merely he thought it disrespectful in me to ride ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... his impatience; for although he would have laughed to scorn any assertion of his friend's guilt, it annoyed him that a shadow should remain on Adrien's name for a single instant, and especially when a few words from Leroy himself would end ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Parliament, and since Treasury tradition insisted on a 10 per cent. Bank rate whenever such a breach was permitted or contemplated, it will be seen that the Cunliffe Committee proposed some considerable modifications in our system and hardly justified Sir Edward's assertion that it "proposed that the Bank should continue to work under the Act of 1844 ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... broken spirit of the people than in the oppression of the Sultan. His government might be overthrown in a day, but it would take ages to lift up that empire of prostrate slaves and to cultivate in them the self-assertion and self-reliance necessary to ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... what she had meant to happen. It was an inglorious declension from her contemplated pose of dignified assertion. She was impelled to do her utmost to get away from this lie she had uttered at once, to eliminate Agatha from the argument by an emphatic generalization. "I've a perfect right," she said, suddenly nearly breathless, "to go to Hampton Court with anyone I please, talk about anything ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Ravenswood as precipitate, and even unkind. "It was my father," she repeated with a sigh, "who welcomed him to this place, and encouraged, or at least allowed, the intimacy between us. Should he not have remembered this, and requited it with at least some moderate degree of procrastination in the assertion of his own alleged rights? I would have forfeited for him double the value of these lands, which he pursues with an ardour that shows he has forgotten how much I am implicated in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... where we are for the most part sprung from the Barbarians, we have never had the prejudice against them which prevails among the races of Latin origin. The Barbarians brought with them that stanch individualism, as the modern phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central idea of English life, and of which we have at any rate a very rich supply. The stronghold and natural seat of this passion was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... succinctly summed up the Shinto faith in reference to the Japanese people when he remarked, "The more immediate end which they propose to themselves is a state of happiness in this world." In other words, if this assertion be correct, Shintoism preaches utilitarianism. As to the origin of this religion there is very much the same uncertainty and quite as large an amount of theorising as is the case in reference to the Japanese race and language. The most generally received opinion is that Shintoism is closely ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Monday I saw a marble or stone statue, as large as the life, tumbled from the top of the Hotel de Ville into the Place de Greve, at that time full of people, by which two men were killed, as I was told, and I did not wish to verify the assertion myself, but retired. ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... immediate retort, but later he delivered himself of a new stanza of his trail song, wherein the first line ended with "Pelly" followed by the rhymed assertion that the gentleman who bore that peculiar name had slivers in his anatomy due to a fondness for leaning against the bar ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... had been taken to some other tilt, for when he arrived here early in the afternoon his first care was to look for it, but not a skin had he found, and he was disappointed, for it was the purpose of his visit. Bob, absolutely honest and guileless himself, in spite of Dick's constant assertion that Micmac was a thief and worse, was easily deceived by the half-breed's bland manner. Unfortunately he had not learned that every one else was not as honest and straightforward as himself. Micmac's attempt upon his life he had ascribed to a sudden burst of anger, and it was forgiven and forgotten. ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... was Peggy's positive assertion. "How do you do, Mr. Bolivar? Why, Nelly, have you been ill?" for the girl looked almost too ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... through her frame denied her assertion, and with a keen pang he saw the footprints of the Destroyer. She must not know, however, that he doubted her words, and, with an effort, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... body and the mind, meaning by the mind the Conscious Personality, there is also within our material frame the soul or Unconscious Personality, the nature of which is shrouded in unfathomable mystery. The latest word of advanced science has thus landed us back to the apostolic assertion that man is composed of body, soul and spirit; and there are some who see in the scientific doctrine of the Unconscious Personality a welcome confirmation from an unexpected quarter of the existence ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... any of the family of Israel?'' "I am one,'' responded a young man, whose face corroborated his assertion; and then another and another stepped forth until I saw before me representatives of six out of the seven families into which the colony is divided. They confessed with shame and grief that their holy and beautiful house had been demolished by their own hands. It had for a long time, they ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... whatever with any secession movement in Alabama, and the fact that a Massachusetts-born man and of Puritan descent was selected to inaugurate the system, will, or ought to be, accepted as confirmatory of this assertion. ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... moreover that he should not take command in person except when the whole body of the militia was called out; nor, even then, without consulting his rival.[694] His ire and vexation produced an access of jealous self-assertion, and drove him into something like revolt against the ministerial command. "If the English attack Quebec, I shall always hold myself free to go thither myself with most of the troops and all the militia and Indians I can assemble. On ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... with an equall minde, not swayed by prejudice, but indifferently resolved to assent unto that truth which upon deliberation shall seeme most probable unto thy reason, and then I doubt not, but either thou wilt agree with mee in this assertion, or at least not thinke it to be as farre from truth, as ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... thank you, now, for your generous forbearance. I want to tell you how your keeping my secret made a different being of me. If you had betrayed me to justice, I might have been now an inmate of a prison cell. Margie Harrison, your silence saved me! Do me the justice to credit my assertion, when I tell you that I did not enter my grandfather's house because I cared for the plunder I should obtain. I had taken a vow to be revenged on him for his cruelty to my parents, and Sharp, the man who was with me, represented to me, that ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... some chimneys of Caryatides, and did not for a moment hesitate in assenting to the assertion of Skindeep that the Vraibleusians were the most architectural nation in the world. True it was, they had begun late; their attention as a people having been, for a considerable time, attracted to much more important affairs; but they ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... manner which admitted of no doubt, that, soon after we were gone, she arrived; that she staid between ten and twenty days, and had been gone ten months. They likewise asserted that neither she, nor any other ship, had been stranded on the coast, as had been reported. This assertion, and the manner in which they related the coming and going of the Adventure, made me easy about her; but did not wholly set aside our suspicions of a disaster having happened to some other strangers. Besides what has been already related, we had been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... had evinced a rather marked tendency toward over-anxiety in all matters relating to sickness—was very particular in his inquiries as to the invalid's condition, and was with difficulty reassured by the professor's assertion that there was certainly nothing worse the matter with him than, possibly, a slight attack of biliousness. The remaining five men, therefore, went away in the boats after breakfast, Sir Reginald taking the precaution to carry his ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and over and above this, and as a tangible proof of the infallible particularity of every syllable of my assertion," observes the elder Jurgen, "if you will look in the garret of Heaven you will find the identical ladder upon which I descended hither, and which I directed them to lay aside until I was ready to come up again. Indeed, I was just ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Lord Advocate Hope said in Parliament, that more crime was tried at one Quarter Sessions at Manchester than over all Scotland in a whole year; and the proceedings of the criminal courts to the north of the Tweed, at that period, amply demonstrated the truth of his assertion. In the year 1805, eighty-nine criminals were brought before the whole tribunals, supreme and inferior, in Scotland; but in the year 1842, the committals for serious offences were nearly four thousand—in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... She alone is eternal. It is pure naivete to say that reason is not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the assertion that they are simply symbolical! And what an extraordinary attitude is that of the Catholic Church, expressly forbidding all those who may discover a truth contrary to the sacred writings to pronounce upon it in definitive fashion, and ordering them to await events ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... independent science is to some degree established in the oft-repeated dictum that whatever is valid in its simplest outline must be capable of extension and development. No man doubts that there are intelligent faces and foolish ones, kind ones and cruel ones, and if this assertion is admitted as it stands it must follow that still other faces may be distinguished so that it is possible to read a certain number of spiritual qualities from the face. And inasmuch as nobody can indicate the point at which ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... said, and believed the assertion; just as though at forty to weigh nails correctly and to sell so many yards of garden hose a week was a fine measure of success. "And your name will go ringing down the ages." She would never let ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... chestnut blight. On several occasions before this notable body I told of the successes and failures I had encountered, still believing that I was on the right road and insisting that an antigen would be absorbed in sufficient amount to stimulate immunity. Science has since vindicated that assertion and men are now injecting all sorts of chemicals, and even dyes to stain ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... particularly the testimony about his selection by Washington for this great confidence when scarcely twenty years of age, bears to his eminent qualities, one would think, honor enough to satisfy the most pious of sons. But from this moment, according to the innuendoes, if not the broad assertion of Mr. Hamilton, Washington was chiefly of use to sign the letters and papers prepared by his military secretary, and to carry out the plans he had conceived. On the theatre of the world's history, from this time forth, Washington ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... then. The matter of identification was not really droll, for there was literally no one to vouch for Felicia Day. He found it difficult to explain to her that while he did not in the least doubt her assertion that she was Felicia Day she would have to prove, legally, ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... literary men of high reputation," I answered quietly, though I had an instinctive feeling that my father would make sport of this assertion. But experience had taught me that with him it was best to call a spade ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... past been dry and useless, but their walls, twenty or thirty feet high, and many miles in length, remain as the most conspicuous monument of the fallen greatness of Mesopotamia. That they will again be put to their original purpose was the confident assertion of Sir William Willcocks, and with Turkish misrule finally banished from the land, a few years may see these canals again filled with water, bringing wealth and plenty to a happier generation. But to-day they seem to have but the one use of acting as tactical features on the battlefield, as ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... spite of his dislike of the small creature his vanity resented the bald assertion that she had not lunched with him ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... assertion!" the baronet said, with concentrated scorn; "but in the present instance, my good mother, a little out of place. The mystery is of your own making. The late Mrs. Harold Hunsden was a native of New York. There she was married—there ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... sentence are: some name for the object of thought (to which the general term substantive may be given); some word or group of words to make assertion concerning the substantive (general term, assertive); and, in case of an incomplete assertive, one of the above given completions of its meaning (object complement, attribute complement, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... "I trust you will soon have space and time in which to fully discuss theosophy, and its bold assertion that Spiritualism is but the manifestation of dangerous elementals or of the souls of those sent untimely from this life as suicides and executed criminals, who until their selfish desires are gratified, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... a friendship to comfort and rest me. But no, That dream, like full many another, must go. The love that is based on attraction of sex Is a love that has brought me but sorrow. Why vex My poor soul with the same thing again? If you love With a higher emotion, you know how to prove And sustain the assertion by conduct. Maurice, Love must rise above passion, to infinite peace And serenity, ere it is love, to my mind. For the women of earth, in the ranks of mankind There are too many lovers and not enough friends. 'Tis the friend who protects, 'tis the lover who rends. He who can ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... rather particularly famous as the best dressed woman in our great city is, perhaps, to make a pretty strong assertion, in the face of very serious competition offered by women notable for the perfection of their wardrobe, but this claim really stands on good grounds. Even among her compatriots, she seems always astonishingly well gowned, and really, if we ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... matter still farther, and not only asserts, that the idea of a vacuum is real and possible, but also necessary and unavoidable. This assertion is founded on the motion we observe in bodies, which, it is maintained, would be impossible and inconceivable without a vacuum, into which one body must move in order to make way for another.. I shall not enlarge upon this objection, because it principally belongs to ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... in that silent state which the most insignificant person holds immediately after death, for three days, and there was still another to come before he could be laid away in the dark and noisome bed in the family vault, where all the Warrenders made their last assertion of superiority to common clay. This long and awful pause in the affairs of life was intolerable to the two people now walking softly through the paths of the little wood, where the moonbeams shone through the trees; to the son, because he was ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... life, which has commonly escaped the notice of observers. Thanks to Europe, America has never been powerless in the face of Nature; therefore has never felt Fear; therefore never known Reverence; and therefore never experienced Religion. It may seem paradoxical to make such an assertion about the descendants of the Puritan Fathers; nor do I forget the notorious fact that America is the home of the sects, from the followers of Joseph Smith to those of Mrs. Eddy. But these are the phenomena that illustrate my point. A nation which knew what religion was, in the European sense; ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... conflict was actually on she found herself rather enjoying it. She wondered a little at herself, and thought that she must be wicked. She was not given to self-analysis, or she might have concluded that it was the sudden assertion of her own personality, so long dominated by her mother's, which she was finding ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that, if he hadn't turned up at that particular hour on that particular day, she would have taken to her bed, and never risen from it again. But as it was Jack's inveterate habit to doom to death all the ladies who had cherished a tender passion in his behalf, the assertion may not be absolutely true. Louie might possibly have rallied from the blow, and regained the joy and buoyancy of her old life; yet, however that may be, it was certainly best for her that things should have turned out just as ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... of teaching may be divided into three classes: (1) Dogmatic assertions that such and such a method is right and that all others are wrong—assertions based entirely upon a priori reasoning. For example, the assertion that children must never be permitted to learn their lessons "by heart" is based upon the general principle that words are only symbols of ideas and that, if one has ideas, one can find words of his own in ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... thing to me, and not entitled to much credit. I think so for this reason: if the University had actually known it was those three, it would for very consistency's sake have told how it knew it, and not stopped with the mere assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she knew they were not fiends. Does not that seem reasonable? To my mind the University's position was weak, and I will tell you why. It had claimed that Joan's angels were devils in disguise, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... was the work of a gentleman before his thirtieth year, not a recluse nor trained in a cloister, but active in a calling which keeps closest touch with the passions and frailties of humanity, seems to justify his assertion, "I have shaken hands with delight [sc. by way of parting] in my warm blood and canicular days." So uniformly lofty and dignified is its tone, and so austere its morality, that the book might be taken for the fruit of those later and sadder years that bring the philosophic mind. Its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... see, though these scenes out of every-day life are no digression from the principal events, nothing episodical which one may pass over. In order still sooner to arrive at a clear perception of this assertion, we will yet tarry a few moments in the house of Mr. Berger, the merchant; but in the mean time we have advanced three weeks. Wilhelm and Otto had happily passed their examen philosophicum. The latter had paid several visits, and was already regarded as an old ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... seem surprising that one out of every sixteen persons who are accustomed to use accurate expressions should speak of their mental imagery as perfectly clear and bright; but it is so, and many details are added in various returns emphasising the assertion. One of the commonest of these is to the effect, "If I could draw, I am sure I could draw perfectly from my mental image." That some artists, such as Blake, have really done so is beyond dispute, but I have ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... consideration of circumstances which Donna apparently had overlooked; circumstances which, while savoring slightly of girlish indiscretion, might, nevertheless, be construed as a distinct slip from virtue. An attack, whether by innuendo or direct assertion, on a sister's virtue is ever the first weapon of a mean and disappointed woman, and having no other charms to speak of, Miss Pickett chose to assume that of superior virtue; so, with the subtle sting of her species, she ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the first, (if we may be sure that she had a first,)—and which seems clearly to have been elevated, if not purified, by a true and deep affection. That it was so appears not by any protestation or even calm assertion of her own, which in an autobiography might be reasonably doubted, but from the unstudied tenderness of her allusions to him; from the fact, which indirectly appears, that he first cooled towards her, and the pang—not of wounded vanity—which this gave her; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... beyond all actual record. Throughout the poem there are repeated references to the old authors of Trojan histories who are named in "The House of Fame"; but Chaucer especially mentions one Lollius as the author from whom he takes the groundwork of the poem. Lydgate is responsible for the assertion that Lollius meant Boccaccio; and though there is no authority for supposing that the English really meant to designate the Italian poet under that name, there is abundant internal proof that the poem was really founded on the "Filostrato" of Boccaccio. But the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Erth, I told you there was good reason when I asked you to back young De Levis. WINSOR and I knew of this insinuation; I wanted to keep his tongue quiet. It's just wild assertion; to have it bandied about was unfair to Dancy. The duel used to keep people's tongues ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... over-anxiety of mistresses that servants should know their position." In a democratic country like this, where young people are brought up with the idea that one man or woman is as good as another, we can easily understand that any assertion of superiority on the part of employers, or attempt to exact an outward show of deference, is very galling to undisciplined minds. Those who have been accustomed to be waited on from childhood upwards, are never very careful to insist on those forms and modes of address which at one time servants ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... not escape the accusation of dogmatizing, from the Dogmatics, even in stating the grounds of their Scepticism, we know from Diogenes.[1] To avoid this dogmatic tendency of the ten Tropes, Sextus makes the frequent assertion that he does not affirm things to be absolutely true, but states them as they appear to him, and that they may be otherwise from what he ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... land often sell their daughters, not as Jewish parents did, to be the wives and daughters-in-law of the man who buys them, but to be the abject slaves of petty tyrants and irresponsible masters. Is it not so, my friends? I leave it to your own candor to corroborate my assertion. Southern slaves then have not become slaves in any of the six different ways in which Hebrews became servants, and I hesitate not to say that American masters cannot according to Jewish law substantiate their claim to the men, women, ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... This assertion on the part of the apprentice, which he thought himself justified under the circumstances in making, produced a strong effect on Chowles. He appeared startled and confounded. "What right have you to play the spy ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... emphatic assertion that the truth had been told. At school we had a pious faith in these words. Any narrative clenched with them was invariably believed. If anything was said of a questionable nature, the listener would say, "Say ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... address included in this passage has three main sections: his noble and dignified assertion of his official purity, his summary of the past history, and his solemn declaration of the conditions of future wellbeing for the nation with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... He was asleep. Christine watched him. On her return from the Albany she had found him apparently just as she had left him, except that he was much less talkative. Indeed, though unswervingly polite—even punctilious with her—he had grown quite taciturn and very obstinate and finicking in self-assertion. There was no detail as to which he did not formulate a definite wish. Yet not until by chance her eye fell on the whisky decanter did she perceive that in her absence he had been copiously drinking again. He was ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... at this sort of game," returned one of the detectives. "He is a wonder at opening safes. Somebody told me once that he made the assertion he could open any ordinary office safe inside of fifteen minutes. He's got it all in his finger ends. They are so sensitive that when he turns the safe knob, he can feel every movement of ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... neighbouring chief's people when he wasn't at home, and had them tied to trees and little arrows fired into them, one by one, so that in the end they died. The cruel chief's wives were said to be the instigators of this "most bloody business" and the leading lady's photograph warranted the assertion. Her face was tattooed and was curiously like a Red Indian's. I have read in a book that the Chins tattoo their wives' faces to prevent them being stolen for their beauty! I gather this punitive expedition that we have come across unexpectedly, was carried out without a shot being ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... you, and salaam to you when he meets you on the road. If he left your service in disgrace, he is so much the more punctilious in observing this ceremony, which is not an expression of gratitude, but merely an assertion of his right to public recognition at your hands, as one who had the honour of eating your salt. I am certain an Oriental salaam is essentially a claim rather than a tribute. For this reason your peons, as they stand in line to receive you at your ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... anything of the kind. He hardly knew me by sight. He thought only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... at what I have said in "Domestic Animals" (Volume I., pages 402-5) against this doctrine. It seems to me more probable that the gemmules affect the ovaria alone. I remember formerly speculating, like you, on the assertion that wives grow like their husbands; but how impossible to eliminate effects of imitation and same habits of life, etc. Your letter has ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... from men who have not acquired their hardiness of assertion from the profundity of their thinking, about the omnipotence of a majority, in such a dissolution of an ancient society as hath taken place in France. But amongst men so disbanded there can be no such thing as majority or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
