"Self" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great-grandmother. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at us with shy appeal in her blue-gray eyes. Plainly she found it hard to tell us her secret, yet all the time there was an air of pride and exultation about her; somewhat, also, of a new dignity. Aunt Olivia could never be self-assertive, but if it had been possible that would have been ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... on Nelson's face. No smarter sailor could be found in all that noble fleet than this Lieutenant Blyth, who once had been the captain of all smugglers. He had fought his way up by skill, and spirit, and patience, and good temper, and the precious gift of self-reliance, failing of which all merit fails. He had always thought well of himself, but never destroyed the good of it by saying so; and whoever praised him had to do it again, to outspeak his modesty. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... life there. Overseers are all enraged at that season, and if he takes part with his slave against the overseer, he would destroy his authority, and very likely provoke him to leave his service—which would of course be a very great injury to him. Thus, in nineteen cases out of twenty, self-interest would prevent the master from paying any attention to the complaints of his slaves. And, if any should complain, it would of course come to the ears of the overseer, and the complainant would be inhumanly punished ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of fire, of water, and of clouds, With "small gray men," "wild yagers," and what not, To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott: Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please, [b]St. Luke's alone can vanquish the disease; Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... what a steward to be sure! Always awake, as you may remember, always in motion; his pockets ever full of the materials unceasingly required by the indefatigable builders of that human edifice in which it has pleased God to house your dear little self. If you wish really to understand what follows now, we must carry on the simile ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... with a beating heart, called the birds to him, and they came quite readily, standing heart to heart while he cut off their heads with one blow of his sword, so that they fell dead at the self-same moment. ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... and Lottie rubbing her hands and growing hysterical in delight. Then Pixie was marched up to the desk to be presented with the envelope containing the crisp new note, and when she had taken it she must needs turn round and face the audience, instead of scuttling back to her seat in abashed, self-conscious fashion like other girls, and even address a word of acknowledgment for the applause bestowed upon her. "I'm very much obliged to ye!" she said in the broadest of Irish accents, and all the fathers and mothers lay back in their chairs and laughed until ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... temporal advantage, some useful or agreeable friend. Perhaps we were overcome by the difficulties which arose barely from ourselves, and wanted resolution to deny our senses, to subdue our passions, to renounce dangerous occasions, or to enter upon a penitential life. Blinded by self-love, have we not sheltered our dastardly pusillanimity under the cloak of pretended necessity, or ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... many things. Mostly it is two things.—love, and money. But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art—many things. But it is some objective. Something outside the self. Perhaps many ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... of chuckling whisper, "And now, Donald, my man, I think I've checkmated you for ance." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of judicial humor; and "I' faith, Walter," said he, "this old big-wig seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Afghanistan, yet it continues a brutal war and props up a regime whose days are clearly numbered. We are ready to support a political solution that guarantees the rapid withdrawal of all Soviet troops and genuine self-determination ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... and the countries of the mainland were begun without any authority from, or even the knowledge of the Spanish government. No Spanish sovereign ever authorised the invasion or conquest of any of the countries, on which their distant and self-styled representatives embarked, for motives of personal aggrandisement or in a pure spirit of adventure. Both Velasquez in Cuba and Cortes in Mexico were destitute of any royal authority for their undertakings, and only the splendour of their ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... sparkled. Her nostrils fluttered. She felt indifferent to everything but the certain pleasure of the day. Rezanov was sure to be charming. What mattered the morrow, and possible nights of doubt, despair, hatred of life and wondering self-contempt? ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... roofs, the domes, the spires, And rockets blew self driven, To hang their momentary fire Around ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... they cease moving, until they tread, as it were, under that superficies with their tails; the hanging of these in this posture, put me in mind of a certain creature I have seen in London, that was brought out of America, which would very firmly suspend it self by the tail, with the head downwards, and was said to keep in that posture, with her young ones in her false belly, which is a Purse, provided by Nature for the production, nutrition, and preservation of her young ones, which is described ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... know, but I think if you go on being patient with her," hazarded Toni, "she will come to her better self again. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Fyn, Kobenhavn, Kobenhavns*, Nordjylland, Ribe, Ringkobing, Roskilde, Sonderjylland, Storstrom, Vejle, Vestsjalland, Viborg note: see separate entries for the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which are part of the Kingdom of Denmark and are self-governing overseas administrative divisions ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... diseased are egotists, whether the disease be of the mind or body; whether it be sin, sorrow, or merely the more tolerable calamity of some endless pain, or mischief among the cords of mortal life. Such individuals are made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an object with them that they cannot but present it to the face of every casual passer-by. There is a pleasure—perhaps the greatest of which the sufferer is susceptible—in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to define or restrict them, but they cannot take them away altogether. To do so would be to take away an essential incident of the judicial power. Nor can they so far reduce the penalty that may be inflicted as to deprive the court of a reasonable measure of the right of self-protection.[Footnote: Batchelder v. Moore, 42 California Reports, 412.] It is, to say the least, doubtful if they can even restrict its exercise by any court created by the Constitution itself.[Footnote: State v. Morrill, 16 Arkansas Reports, 384; State v. Shepherd, ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... subtle intellect and all the machinery of Tudor government at his disposal; Queen Mary had not a man, nor a shilling. Yet Mary, by popular favour, prevailed without shedding a drop of blood. Henry himself was often compelled to yield to his people. Abject self-abasement on their part and stupendous power of will on Henry's, together provide no adequate solution for ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... no more. I have ever been averse to talking of my relations to another world, or of what I believe, or of what I am led thereby to do in hours of self-communion. I sat wishing my father were like this, a tender-hearted yet ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Satyaki's car, proceeded in that battle in the wake of his brother Savyasachin, the son of Pandu. Then Dhananjaya, with eyes red in wrath, aiming at Karna, quickly sped a shaft like the Destroyer urging forward Death's self. That shaft shot from Gandiva, like Garuda in the welkin in quest of a mighty snake, quickly coursed towards Karna. The son of Drona, however, that mighty car-warrior, with a winged arrow of his, cut it off in mid-air, desirous of rescuing Karna from fear of Dhananjaya. Then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... [2]cried Etarcumul;[2] "for the [3]wonderful[3] terms thou didst exact of the men of Erin, [4]that fair play and[4] combat with one man [5]should be granted thee,[5] none other of the men of Erin but mine own self will come to-morrow [6]at morn's early hour on ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... market, they open many new markets to its produce. Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which can never be universally established, but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces every body to have recourse to it for the sake of self defence. It is not more than fifty years ago, that some of the counties in the neighbourhood of London petitioned the parliament against the extension of the turnpike roads into the remoter counties. Those remoter counties, they pretended, from ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... interrupted Violante again, "that I should force your gallantry to make so painful an avowal. Nonsense! Let us put aside all such trash: the question is, not—how we shall mutually make what the circumstances require us to say to each other agreeable to the self-love of either of us, and to silly rules of conventional gallantry, but there is a real question of fairness between us; and it is this: how much should each of us expect that the other will contribute towards the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... said ruefully. "You're quite right, Miss Bellairs. Don't have anything more to say to me. I wish I was—I wish I had some—some self-control—and self-respect, you know. If I were a fellow like Ashforth now, I should never have done that! Of course you can't forgive me," and, in his extremity of remorse, he buried his face ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... "Isn't it a beauty?" she said. "And, dear me, how he has slaved over it—ever since daylight, I think, and only finished it awhile before you came." She stood it against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it. "He drew the pictures his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn't so very good, I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge—any one can recognize the bridge in a minute. He asked me to bring it up.... Dear me! it's seven minutes past ten, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (Esthonia), to Russia. In Esthland she was sold as a slave, quite parted from her boy,—who also was sold, and again sold; but did at last fall in with a kinsman high in the Russian service; did from him find redemption and help, and so rose, in a distinguished manner, to manhood, victorious self-help, and recovery of his kingdom at last. He even met his mother again, he as king of Norway, she as one wonderfully lifted out of darkness into new life and happiness ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... interest her manner evoked, or possibly realizing how nearly she had come to an unnecessary if not unwise self-betrayal, she suddenly smoothed her brow and, catching up a piece of embroidery from the table, sat down with it ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... and fortunately it happened to be one of the unsavoury portions, including the spot known as "The Froggery." As there was a Duck Lane close by, the place most likely was originally so christened from its lowlying and watery position, the connection between ducks and frogs being self-apparent. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... doubt of it. Really, I'm not being funny, Miss Wetherford, when I say you've done something heroic. It's no easy thing to come into a place like that and make it habitable. It shows immense courage and self-reliance on your part. It's precisely the kind of work this whole ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... whole, the Asiatic provinces enjoyed self-government under the supremacy of Egypt, and the disadvantages of this condition of things are revealed in numerous letters. These end almost invariably with a request to the king to come in person to the aid ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... all the chief Italian cities became distinct, self-governing states, with just a nominal dependence upon the pope or the emperor. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, Northern and Central Italy was divided among about two hundred contentious little city- republics. Italy ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... rasp of nails on rock, waved his arms in a manner likely to cause envy in any mere flag-wagger, and recovered himself with all the clatter and confusion inseparable, under such circumstances, from the saving of self-respect and the knees ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the information which it may be my painful lot to take to him. I think of it with dread. It has been my pleasure to stand your friend—you must prove mine. I shall expect you to act with fortitude and calmness, and not, by weakness and self-indulgence, to increase the pain that will afflict the parent's heart—for it will be sufficient for Fairman to know only what has happened to give up every hope and consolation. You must be firm on his account and chiefly for the sake of the dear girl, who should not see your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... hear. I know, as having myself told you, that you know my kinsfolk and my husband, who loveth me more than his life, nor is there aught I desire but I have it of him incontinent, he being a very rich man and one who can well afford it; wherefore I love him more than mine own self and should I but think, let alone do, aught that might be contrary to his honour and pleasure, there were no woman more wicked or more deserving of the fire than I. Now one, whose name in truth I know not, but who is, meseemeth, a ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that the Irish were really a nation, at the time we speak of, than the remarks just set forth. When all minds are so unanimous, the wills so ready, the arms so strong and well prepared to strike together, it must be admitted that in the whole exists a common feeling, a national will. Self-government may be wanting; it may have been suppressed by sheer force and kept under by the most unfavorable state of affairs, but the nation subsists and cannot ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Tarakaksha, Kamalaksha and Vidyunmalin, O king, practising the austerest penances, lived in the observance of high vows. By those penances they emaciated their bodies, O scorcher of foes. In consequence of their self-restraint, their penances, their vows and contemplation, the boongiving Grandsire became gratified with them and gave them boons. Unitedly they solicited the Grandsire of all the worlds, O king, for the boon of immunity from death at the hands of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... theories of verbal inspiration which we find in the later theological writings; it is indeed but another expression of that deepfelt dependence on the Deity, of that surrender and denial of all that seems to be self, which was felt more or less by every nation, but by none, I believe, more strongly, more constantly, than by the Indian. "It is He that has made it,"—namely, the prayer in which the soul of the poet has thrown off her burden,—is but ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... should always be prepared for the advent of danger in their own quarters. The course of war cannot be foreseen, and its attacks are generally dictated by the impulse of the moment; and where overweening self-confidence has despised preparation, a wise apprehension often been able to make head against superior numbers. Not that confidence is out of place in an army of invasion, but in an enemy's country it should ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... plunged her head into the basin her new friend held for her. She dipped her forehead into it several times, and checked the incipient inflammation. After this douche she completely recovered her self-command. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... sufferings of the girls, and that they must be caused by some one. The amount of what she had said was, that, if caused by one or the other of them, "then it must be Osburn," for she was sure of her own innocence. This expression, to which she was driven in self-exculpation, was perverted by the reporter, Ezekiel Cheever, and by the magistrate, into an indirect confession and a direct accusation of Osburn. In the absence of Good, the magistrate told Osburn that Good had confessed and accused her. This ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... eight, it is true, but emotion has no age, and I understood then as well as I ever could, what heroism and devotion and self-forgetfulness mean. I understood, too, the meaning of the words "our country," and my heart warmed to it, as in the older times the hearts of boys and girls warmed to the name of their king. The new knowledge was ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... there may be in my hastily written and unrevised manuscript score. Though I trouble myself but little about the spread of my compositions, yet I do not wish them to be offered to the public in a mutilated form. As I flatter myself that I possess a sufficient portion of self-criticism, other criticism remains only valuable and instructive ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... moaning of the suddenly displaced air, and the noise of falling stones. My uncle leaning over the abyss followed the descent of his luggage with a perfectly self-satisfied air, and did not rise until it ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... ordinances they should cast all malice and wickedness out of their hearts. In like manner, when the great Teacher warned his followers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, he meant that they should eschew on the one hand the lie of self-righteous superstition, and on the other the lie of libertine unbelief. The Apostle Paul, too, while he does not forbid another use, employs the conception, in point of fact, to illustrate the presence ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Blackfoot men surged on and tore out the ropes tied to their skins. It is merely the carrying out of a religious idea that is as old as history and as widespread as the globe, and is closely akin to the motive which to-day, in our own centres of enlightened civilization, prompts acts of self-denial and penance by many thousands of intelligent cultivated people. And yet we are horrified at hearing described the tortures ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... as if he could not possibly hear another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my self- command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for having been shy and mute before ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Scott says, 'inclined to be exceedingly self-satisfied; we had accomplished our object with unexpected ease, we had done a record march, and we had endured record temperatures—at least, we thought so, and thought also how pleasant it would be to tell these ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... one must avoid the rhyming dictionary. When the verse maker once gets the habit of referring to its pages there is more hope for the amateur popular song writer than for him. Better to think half an hour and get the right word one's self than to tread the primrose path of the rhyming dictionary. It has one use, nevertheless, which is perhaps allowable. There are certain words, such as "chimney," "scarf," "crimson," "window," "widow," and others which have no rhyme. To ascertain whether a word belongs to this class or not the ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... self-existent and independent; the most rightful monarchs and established monarchies in the world cannot possibly be supported but by the conjunction of arms and laws,—a union so necessary that the one cannot subsist without the other. Laws without the protection of arms sink into ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... whom he had not seen for more than twenty years, than at that of the orphan's standing before him, trying hard not to cry, but to start bravely in this new strange home. What most of all helped Lois in her self-restraint was her aunt's unsympathetic look. Born and bred in New England, Grace Hickson had a kind of jealous dislike to her husband's English relations, which had increased since of late years his weakened ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at you! You mean your daddy couldn't, nor his lawyer couldn't. Of course not. But you haven't tried it your own self yet." ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... have told why he kept silent so long in regard to the truth of the trial. It might have been a vague liking to watch the workings of his son's real self and a desire to test him to the full. From a hint dropped in Betty's letter he guessed shrewdly at the truth of the situation. He knew now that Richard and his young friend of the mountain top were actuated by the same motives, and he understood at last ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... words 'severely remarked on,' p. 2, l. 41, it followed thus—For my part, I confess, had I seen things in this view at first, the public had never been troubled either with my writings, or with this apology for them. I am sensible how difficult it is to speak of one's self with decency: but when a man must speak of himself, the best way is to speak truth of himself, or, he may depend upon it, others will do it for him. I'll therefore make this preface a general confession of all my thoughts of my own poetry, resolving with the same freedom to expose ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... other body than of GOD and himself, through the grace of GOD, all such men and women may find sufficient means to come to GOD's mercy, and so to be clean assoiled of all their sins.' This sentence I said, Sir, to this man of yours, and the self words, as near as I ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... of sins, and he believes the United States will ultimately need his ministration in both respects . . . . They form not, therefore, a rival power as against the Union, but an apostolic ministry to it, and their political gospel is state rights and self-government. This is political ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... papers says about bad crops, sis," says I one morning when a bunch of red roses come in about as big as a sheaf from a self-binder, "the flower crop is shore copious this year, ain't it? Likewise it seems to be ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... Remorse had long since tortured my heart. I was not happy with the lover of my choice—I never had been happy with him; but now the stings of my conscience became too strong to bear. Tormented by my bitter self-reproaches, I decided upon quitting my seducer, who had long proved cold and heartless. But I had borne him a child—a daughter; and to quit my offspring, the only child left to me, was agony; to take it with me, to bear it away to partake a life ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... and other occupations, to go forth at their country's call, and had never encountered the perils of war or seen a hostile shot fired in their lives. But the high spirit of courage and patriotism which animated the hearts of all, rendered them self-reliant and determined to do their utmost in performing their sacred duty to ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... some parts of Europe, certain outlaws, Banditti, or whatever other appellation you'll please to bestow on them, have endeavoured to preserve themselves by force from the punishments which should have been executed upon them by justice, and finding mankind, from a spirit of self preservation, were become their enemies, they exerted themselves the utmost they were capable of in order to render their bodies so formidable as still to carry on their ravages with impunity, and in open defiance of the laws made against them. But ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... accounts for 10% of GDP; principal crops - turnips, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, wheat; livestock - meat and dairy products; 85% self-sufficient in food; food shortages include bread ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... returned to Ireland and, dividing his property among his brothers, devoted himself to a religious life by joining the Teaching Order of the Christian Brothers. Two years thereafter he d., worn out by self-inflicted austerities. His chief novel, The Collegians, was adapted by Boucicault as The Colleen Bawn, and among his dramas is Gisippus. His novels ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Since an effect is preserved by its proper cause on which it depends; just as no effect can be its own cause, but can only produce another effect, so no effect can be endowed with the power of self-preservation, but only with the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... house. From one part to another, over the whole of it, he now led Lady Florimel. In the big shadowed glimmer of his one candle, all parts of the garret seemed to him frowning with knitted brows over resentful memories—as if the phantom forms of all the past joys and self renewing sorrows, all the sins and wrongs, all the disappointments and failures of the house, had floated up, generation after generation, into that abode of helpless brooding, and there hung hovering above the fast fleeting life below, which now, in its turn, was ever sending up like fumes ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... through life seeing and understanding almost as little of the world about us as if we were blind. Our early ancestors were obliged to understand many things about Nature and to cultivate clear and close observation for the sake of self-preservation. The very life of the savage depends upon the training of his eyes. He must be able to tell the meaning of a distant object or an indistinct trail, for his enemies may have passed that way recently. If we could bring the sharp eyes of ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... heaped injuries upon me, they should not crush me. If I had a self-respect like yours, I would lift my ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... resumed after infinite trouble on the pope's part. He had to send again and again for Angelo and after forty years, the work was finished. There the sequel of the sculptor's forty-years war with self and the world stands to-day in "Moses," the wonderful, commanding central figure which seems to reflect all the fierce power which Angelo had to keep in check during ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... repose was pleasant, a little anxious; only by her eyes was the suspicion awakened that she was a woman of some character. They had that peculiar look of belonging to two worlds, so often to be met with in English eyes, a look of self-denying aspiration, tinctured with the suggestion that denial might not be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... without really seeing it. Instead, he was busily talking to himself, or rather to his other self. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I should not have played as I did, an hour ago," she wrote. "It stirs me too greatly and I am afraid it makes me inclined to self-pity afterward, and I must never let myself feel that! If I once begin to feel sorry for myself. . . . But I will not! No. You are here in the world. You exist. You are! That is the great thing to know and it must be enough for me. It is. I played to You. I played just love ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... from matter to manner. In the case of an author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate; nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of his style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passage of complacent self-scourging ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... that's old enough to know that nine-tenths of your 'nice human people' are self-seeking vampires living on the generosity of the other tenth. Besides, you have only to wait till you come out professionally and you can have as many so-called friends as you choose. You'll scarcely need to lift your little finger and they'll come flocking ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... manliness. The sword of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty. Its temper had been tried by a thirty years' war. It was not broken, not even blunted; but rather strengthened and sharpened by the blows it gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made literature his profession; as if he had been divinely commissioned to write. He seems to have cared for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else, than living quietly and making books. He says, that he felt it his duty, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... emphasis—and would have said more; but, as if struggling in vain for words, she seemed to give up speech for lost, and dropped her head down once more, with a deep sigh, upon her left arm; her right, as if she had not the use of it (numbed, I suppose) self-moved, dropping ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... round for some way to get off with-out be-ing seen, she saw a strange thing in the air, which she at last made out to be a grin, and she said to her-self, "It's the Cat; now I shall have some one to ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... shades The green sward of the bank before his porch, Are to him as companions;—whilst he turns With more endearment to the living smile Of those his infants, who, when he is dead, Shall hear the music of the self-same trees Waving, till years roll on, and their gray hairs Go to the dust in peace. Away, sad thought! Lo! where the morning light, through the dark wood, 190 Upon the window-pane is flung like fire, Hail, Life and Hope; and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... the elimination of the superfluous was the result of the Greek idea of restraint—self-control in all things and in all expression. The immense authority of the law-makers enforced simple austerity as the right and only setting for the daily life of an Athenian, worthy of the name. There were exceptions, but as a rule all citizens, regardless of their wealth and station, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... be hoped for—at least upon the metaphysical assumptions of this paper. With that conceded, we may go on to consider the more hopeful ways in which that great Being may be presented in a comprehensible manner. Essentially this presentation must involve an element of self-expression must partake quite as much of the nature of art as of science. One finds in the first conference of the Sociological Society, Professor Stein, speaking, indeed a very different philosophical ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... With a self-conscious abandonment, lacking just a shade of utter security, Margaret Ormsby, beautiful in body and beautifully clad, went here and there among the outcasts of the First Ward. She like all women was waiting for an opportunity of which she did not talk even to herself. She ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... French scenery; but if I did they would doubtless appear English enough. It is the fashion among sundry to maintain that the English landscape is of no use for la peinture serieuse, that it is wanting in technical accent and is in general too storytelling, too self-conscious and dramatic also too lumpish and stodgy, of a green—d'un vert bete—which, when reproduced, looks like that of the chromo. Certain it is that there are many hands which are not to be trusted with it, and taste and integrity have been known to go down ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Smollett in after life appears by a letter from David Hume to the latter, in which his "strange adventures" are alluded to; and there is considerable resemblance between these, as narrated by Stobo himself, and those assigned by the novelist to Lismahago. And, bearing in mind the ineffable self-complacency with which Stobo always dwells on himself and his belongings, the description of his person given in the "Memorial" coincides very well with that of the figure which the novelist makes to descend in the yard of the Durham inn. One circumstance further may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... be omnipotent. Though the identification of Sivaism and Buddhism became so complete that we actually find a Trinity composed of Padmodbhava (Brahma), Ambhojanetra (Vishnu) and the Buddha,[301] the inscriptions of the Buddhist ministers are marked by a certain diplomacy and self-congratulation on the success of their efforts, as if they felt that their ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... flowers might signify? The maiden replied: 'These are all human beings on the earth whose thoughts are turned to the Land of Enlightenment. The very first longing after the Paradise of Amita produces a flower in the Celestial Lake, and this becomes daily larger and more glorious, as the self-improvement of the person whom it represents advances; in the contrary case, it loses in glory and fades away.'[2] The matron desired to know the name of an enlightened one who reposed on one of the flowers, clad in a waving ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... loveliness—the beauty of the human countenance and form. This, they perceived, could only be reached by continual exercise of virtue; and it was in Heaven's sight, and theirs, all the more beautiful because it needed this self-denial to obtain it. So they set themselves to reach this, and having gained it, gave it their principal thoughts, and set it off with beautiful dress as best they might. But making this their object, they were obliged to pass their lives in simple exercise and disciplined employments. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. The most pleasant stories of ambition, of difficulties overcome, and of ultimate success, are but as episodes to this great epic of self-help. The epic is composed of individual heroisms; it stands to them as the victorious war which subdued an empire stands to the personal act of bravery which spiked a single cannon and was adequately rewarded with a medal. For in emigration the young men enter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as well as water, capable of great expansion, but still a substance. A certain portion has been allotted to the world for its convenience, and there is a regularity in its apparent variability. It must be self-evident, when all the wind has been collected to the eastward, by the north-west gales which prevail in winter, that it must be crowded and penned up in that quarter, and, from its known expansive powers, must return and restore the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Seigneur de Sainte Marie, was a hard and self-contained man, but a groan and a bitter curse burst from him when he saw his Indian wife in the hands of her kinsmen, from whom she could hope for little mercy. Yet even now his old-fashioned courtesy to his guest had made him turn to De Catinat with some words of sympathy, when ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... window-sills, save for a flat white outer wall as bare as the sea. I woke up again; but it was not dark. There was a full moon, as I walked to the window; I could have seen a bird on the bare battlement, or a sail on the horizon. What I did see was a sort of stick or branch circling, self-supported, in the empty sky. It flew straight in at my window and smashed the lamp beside the pillow I had just quitted. It was one of those queer-shaped war-clubs some Eastern tribes use. But it had ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... two thousand dinars and made off; and when he was gone, the merchant said to his friend, the [self-styled] man of wit and intelligence, 'Harkye, such an one! Thou and I are like unto the hawk and the locust.' 'What was their case?' asked the other; and the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... deposits of sins. He grew pale at the thought that he was about to detail to another man all his dirt, to acknowledge his most secret thoughts, to say to him what one dares not repeat to one's own self, lest one should despise ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... of talking, he proceeded to doing, thereby illustrating Lessona's maxim of Volere e potere. After thinking the subject fully over, he trusted to self-help. He found that with his own means, carefully saved, he could make a beginning; and the beginning once ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... a divorce!" she passionately uttered, apparently losing all self-control. "I might have got one, over and over again, since we married, but there would have been the expose and the scandal. If I could but change my child's name! Tell me—does any chance of redress remain ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... round the table; and a joyous and almost continuous ha! ha! ha! made the ceiling ring. This, we venture to say it, was laughter—genuine, unmistakable laughter, proceeding from no sense of triumph, from no self-gratulation, and mingled with no bad feeling of any kind. It was a spontaneous effort of nature, coming from the head as well as the heart: an unbending of the bow, a reaction from study, which study ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... small supply of water. They were then about seven hours from the well of Nabah. The distance was tempting to the rash European. With a little courage and dispatch could not the well be reached before night? Why not? thought he. The youth was self-willed and peremptory. He knew better than the old Arab camel-drivers, traversing this route all their life-time. The Tuscan had also with him a horse. But what does he do? Having about a bucket of water left, he gives it to the horse; and then starts, taking off with ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... as we advance in life!—Our responsibility is increased with each fleeting year. In youth we live but for ourselves—self predominates in every thing. In mature age, if we have fulfilled the conditions of our tenure, we feel that we must live for our children. Fortunately, increase of years weans us from those selfish and frivolous expenses which ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... life, was therefore dependent on patrons; but illegitimate birth creates strong and determined characters, and Toland had all the force and originality of self-independence. He was a seed thrown by chance, to grow of itself wherever ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... genius of Smith—a man of very ordinary name, but of no ordinary character—kept hope flickering in its socket, an attack of Indians made him a prisoner, and left them hopeless. Then, how romantic the tale of his captivity! He betrayed no fear, but retained perfect self-possession; and remembering how easy their superstitious minds could be worked upon, he drew forth, and with great solemnity commenced looking steadily at his pocket-compass, and thence to heaven, alternating between the two, until he impressed them with a feeling of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the truth," said the prisoner, sighing likewise, "since your father crushed that unfortunate bulb, I feel as if part of my own self had been paralyzed." ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... hope you have safely arrived in Salem. I have nothing particular to inform you of, except that all the card-players in college have been found out, and my unfortunate self among the number. One has been dismissed from college, two suspended, and the rest, with myself, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the President intends to write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that be the case, you must show the letter to nobody. If ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... disposed to admit that Lamb would in all probability have been as good a man as everyone agrees he was—as kind to his father, as full of self-sacrifice for the sake of his sister, as loving and ready a friend—even though he had paid more heed to current speculations, it is yet not without use in a time like this, when so much stress is laid upon anxious inquiry into the mysteries of soul and body, to ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... have to abandon something if you are to go to Christ to be healed. I dare say you know well enough what it is. I do not; but certainly there is something that entangles your legs and keeps you from finding your way to Him. If there is nothing else, there is yourself and your trust in self, and that is to be put away. Cast away the 'garment spotted with the flesh' and go to Christ, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... are going the wrong way to work. I decline to be made a party to your matrimonial fortunes, as you claim in what appears to be intended for the flower of your letter; and in your next, if you would please me, I advise you to display less wit and more evidence of honest self-examination. To that—which is the beginning of repentance—you do not appear to have attained. Yet it would teach you that your troubles, if you have any, flow from your own sin, and that for any inconveniences you may find in marriage you are probably as ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
