"Self-will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excommunication. On every hand men are believing. Things are getting desperate for these leaders. They determine to use all the authority at hand arbitrarily and with a high hand. What strange blindness of stubborn self-will to ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... adventure was over, and summer and hope were dead. Tears trembled in the mother's eyes. Poor little Virginia, so young, so inexperienced, and, in spite of her self-will and recklessness, so sweet ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... said hastily. 'It is enough that your infernal egotism and self-will have ruined my happiness. I have allowed you to usurp the rule, to reverse our natural positions. I shall do so no more. I intend to teach you a lesson ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... applaud her were found equally ready to criticise her. Her mother's natural pangs at settling down into their new relationship were maliciously interpreted as consequences of the Queen's coldness and self-will. It was said that she 'began to exhibit slight signs ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... necessary, to put those polluting, damning questions. My infallible Church was mercilessly forcing me to oblige those poor, trembling, weeping, desolated girls and women to swim with me and all her priests in those waters of Sodom and Gomorrha, under the pretext that their self-will would be broken down, their fear of sin and humility increased, and that they would be purified ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Gwen's old admirers. He has too much of her self-will and dogged pride to pull with her. Do you remember, Agatha, how we used to enjoy their wordy combats? I always thought that at the bottom of all her antagonism to him she really liked him; but she never would ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... noble phenomenon resides not in St Paul but in Jesus Christ. "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. i. 15, 16). The man had seen his Saviour with his whole soul. And because of—not the man who saw but—the Saviour who was seen, behold, the life is lifted off the pivot of self-will and transferred to that of "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The same "revealing" grace can lift us also. We are not St Pauls; but the Jesus Christ of St Paul is absolutely the same, in Himself, for us. We will, in His name, place ourselves in the way of His working, that ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... book, 'Science and Health,' and there was one sentence just got hold of me:[1] 'Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error—self-will, self-justification, and self-love!' Jewel's helped me to dissolve enough so I could face handing over the keys of this house to her mother. I'm not saying I could have offered ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... she felt she was not ready. One corner for self-will and doing her own pleasure she wanted somewhere; and wanted so obstinately, that she felt, as it were, a mountain of strong unwillingness rise up between God's requirements and her; an iron lock upon the door of her heart, the key of which ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... which Louisa's could so ill bear comparison; or the perfect, the unrivalled hold it possessed over his own. There he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind; there he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there had begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... himself to the continent. But though ingenious and scientific, he had not the business capacity of the elder, whose rebukes led to a sharp quarrel between them; and they parted in bitter estrangement—never to meet again as it turned out, owing to the dogged obstinacy and self-will of the younger man. He, after this, seemed to lose his moral ballast altogether, and after some eccentric doings he was reduced to a state of poverty, and took lodgings in a court in a back street of a town we will call Geneva, considerably in doubt ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... and in the bitterness of my heart spoke to her. 'Mademoiselle,' I said, bowing low—for, as I have stated, she was small, and more like a fairy than a woman, though her face expressed both pride and self-will—'Mademoiselle,' I said sternly, 'such as I am, I have fought for France! Some day you may learn that there are viler things in the world—and have to ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... for Arthur's safety, for a violent fever had ensued, and, to judge from the physician's evasive answers, the event was doubtful. The family were unremitting in their attentions, and Oriana, quietly, but with her characteristic self-will, insisted upon fulfilling her share of the duties of a nurse. And no hand more gently smoothed the sick man's pillow or administered more tenderly the cooling draught. It seemed that Arthur's sleep was calmer ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... kingdom of heaven." "Except ye become as this little child, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is based upon proper principles. The heart of the child is purely devotional and confidential. It is a helpless dependent upon the parent. It abdicates its self-will with joy; silently do the laws of home control it; its reverence and love are the melody of its being; its life is an exchange of obedience for protection. Its path is chosen for it by the lamp of parental experience, and the calm pure light of a mother's love. How close it keeps ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... deepest event of my life! I would have united myself to any one of the Protestant sects if I had found any that would have answered the demands of my nature. Why should I now hesitate when I find the Catholic Church will do so? Is not this the self-will which revolts against the involuntary ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... extremes of subjection and independence, is exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves" had been too slow a messenger; ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the freezing rules of regularity and deference were invariably and immediately visited by the sharp and haughty glances of the Queen. Yet Her Majesty's eyes, crushing as they could be, were less crushing than her mouth. The self-will depicted in those small projecting teeth and that small receding chin was of a more dismaying kind than that which a powerful jaw betokens; it was a self—will imperturbable, impenetrable, unintelligent; a self-will dangerously akin to obstinacy. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... together into general ideas; on the abstraction of new notions and images from these; till a new world is built up within, full of desires and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation, curiosity, self-will, self-interest. ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... to believe La Tremouille) little of body but great of heart; a child (if we are to believe Commines) only now making his first flight from the nest, destitute of both sense and money, feeble in person, full of self-will, and consorting rather with fools than with the wise; lastly, if we are to believe Guicciardini, who was an Italian, might well have brought a somewhat partial judgment to bear upon the subject, a young man of little wit concerning the actions of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mistake and showed your foolishness and self-will. The murder was the work of Fedka, and he carried it out alone for the sake of robbery. You heard the gossip and believed it. You were scared. Stavrogin is not such a fool, and the proof of that is he left the town at twelve o'clock after an interview ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... servant, and I envy you," said Baron von Stein, "for your services are gratefully accepted; you are not treated with contumely, and your zeal is not regarded as malice and self-will. You may assist your country with your head, your arm, and your heart. You are not doomed to step aside, and idly dream away your days instead of seeking relief in useful activity. Oh, I repeat again, I envy you!" While he was speaking, his pale cheeks had assumed ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of the tribe of Simon my soul will not come when they foregather at Shittim to do vicious deeds, and my glory will not be united unto the assembly of Korah, the descendants of Levi. In their anger Simon and Levi slew the prince of Shechem, and in their self-will they sold Joseph the bull into slavery. Accursed was the city of Shechem when they entered to destroy it. If they remain united, no ruler will be able to stand up before them, no war will prosper against them. Therefore will I divide and scatter their ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... with great interest. There was something about Delia's short, compact figure; her firm chin; the crisp, wavy hair which rose from her broad, low forehead like a sort of halo, which gave an impression of strength and reliability not unmingled with self-will. This last quality, however, was not so marked while she was playing. Her face then was at its best, and its usual somewhat defiant air softened into a wistfulness which was almost beauty. Before the tune was finished, Anna was quite ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... His lordship declared at the outset that lie did not intend to cast any censure upon the conduct of the house of assembly in Lower Canada. He considered their course to be so much the same with that which other popular assemblies had followed in similar circumstances, that instead of an act of self-will, or caprice, or presumption, it seemed to be rather the obligation of a general law which affects all these disputes between a popular assembly on the one hand, and the executive government on the other. The course of these controversies, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was true—rather than what he knew he deserved; that was what enticed him to listen to Zedekiah and the false prophets, rather than to Micaiah the son of Imlah. THAT is what entices us to sin—the lust of believing what is pleasant to us, what suits our own self-will—what is pleasant to our bodies— pleasant to our purses—pleasant to our pride and self-conceit. Then, when the lying spirit comes and whispers to us, by bad thoughts, by bad books, by bad men, that we shall prosper in our wickedness, does ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a whirlpool; all boundaries disappeared. Unfamiliar powers arose, and the most good-natured became suspicious or were frankly bewildered. People who had hitherto crawled like dogs in order to win their food were now filled with self-will, and preferred to be struck down rather than bow down of their own accord. Prudent folks who had worked all their lives in one place could no longer put up with the conditions, and went at a word. Their hard-won endurance was banished from their minds, and those who had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and premature, and all carnal courses are mistaken and unspiritual. God is often moved to delay that we may be led to pray, and even the answers to prayer are deferred that the natural and carnal spirit may be kept in check and self-will may bow before the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... whose energy keeps things whirling in the Berry Patch. Judge Berry was the great authority on what's what among them, and John Tabor, the school teacher, was the romantic character in the community. All the human excitements of pride and self-will enter into the various ambitions. Even generous impulses were taught restraint in the experiences of various kinds, showing that there is an appropriate ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... pierced to the core by the great mercy shown by his parents, and the brilliancy of his own original good heart was enticed back to him. The sunlight came forth, and what became of all the clouds of self-will and selfishness? The clouds were all dispelled, and from the bottom of his soul there sprang the desire to thank his parents for their goodness. We all know the story of the rush-cutter who saw the moon rising between the trees on a moorland hill so brightly, that he fancied ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... just recovered from her passion—one of them rather congratulating himself on the obstacles which lay before the young couple, the other tossing his youthful head a little in the first impulses of self-will, feeling the reins lie loose upon him, and making up his mind to have ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... though, thank God, only 'apparently,' conflicting duties, whose rival claims it is not always easy to measure. And it is not till some stages later in our journey that we come to see how our own prejudices or shortsightedness or self-will are really at the root of the perplexity. For God demands no impossibilities. As has been quaintly said, 'He neither expects us to be in two places at once, nor to put ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... of self-will, and of that loud crying out about I, and me, and mine, which is the very bird-call for all devils, and the broad road which leads ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... state; the greatest unanimity existed between the three councils, the best understanding between the court and the states. From the obliging temper of the Flemish nobility everything was to be had, as soon as their pride and self-will was flattered by confidence and obliging treatment. The regent took advantage of the first joy of the nation to beguile them into a vote of certain taxes, which, under the preceding administration, she could not have hoped to extort. In this, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hundred scenes before me,—all momentary, intense, as if each was the present moment. And in each of these scenes I saw what I had never seen before. I saw where I had taken the wrong instead of the right step, in what wantonness, with what self-will it had been done; how God (I shuddered at the name) had spoken and called me, and even entreated, and I had withstood and refused. All the evil I had done came back, and spread itself out before my eyes; and I loathed it, ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... must not feel like this," she returned, gently. "Poor Carrie will purchase wisdom dearly; depend upon it, the knowledge that she has brought on this illness through her own self-will will be the sharpest pang of all. You must go home and be a comfort to them all, as you have been our comfort," she added, sweetly; "and, Esther, I have been thinking over things, and you must trust Dot to me. We shall all return to the Cedars, most likely to-morrow, and I will ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... works. And to say truth, in many a place, And other great towns beside this same, The priests and parishioners be in the like case, Which to the churchwardens may be a shame. How should the priest his office fulfil, Accordingly as indeed he ought, When that the clerk will have a self-will, And always in service-time must be sought? Notwithstanding at this present there is no remedy, But to take time, as it doth fall, Wherefore I will go hence and make me ready, For it helpeth ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... irresolute and unsteady; he was PHYSICALLY brave to rashness. Nor is this uncommon: scepticism and presumption are often twins. When a man of this character determines upon any action, personal fear never deters him; and for the moral fear, any sophistry suffices to self-will. Almost without analysing himself the mental process by which his nerves hardened themselves and his limbs moved, he traversed the corridor, gained Mejnour's apartment, and opened the forbidden door. All was as he had been accustomed to see it, save that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... mother looking none the worse for her journey, her clear brown skin neither sallow nor lined, and the soft brown eyes as bright and sweet as ever; but the father must be learnt over again, and there was awe enough as well as enthusiastic love to make her quail at the thought of her record of self-will. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almonds,'(671) 'and will rise up.' "(672) "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" or, "thou shalt be accepted even if thou doest not well." "Cursed be their anger for it was fierce," or, "for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they houghed cursed oxen." "To-morrow I will stand" or "go out, fight with Amalek to-morrow." "Made like unto almonds with their knops, and their flowers," or "four bowls made like unto almonds." "And this people will rise up," or, "thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and thou shalt rise ...
— Hebrew Literature
... three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is always of the militant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show of magnanimity. But his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wants principle; for though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents he might do great things, if he would go right forward to any useful object, make thorough stitch-work of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his wife. What could he do to dissipate it? he was asking himself. Anything, except speak the word which he was well aware would have the desired effect, and, were she still alive, restore to her mother's arms the child for whom she pined; but not yet was the strong self-will so broken down that those words could be spoken by him, not yet had he so felt the need of forgiveness for his own soul that he could forgive as ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... not love to love; but hated him For making her to love, and so her whim From passion taught misprision to begin; And all this sin Was because love to cast out had no skill Self, which was regent still. Her own self-will made void ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... conscience, receiving more light, speak with a higher voice against their inclinations and former ways, and so create more trouble to them; while, as now they enjoy more quiet within, so long as the cry of their self-will and biassed judgments is so loud, that they cannot well hear the still and ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... his temptations to our peculiar tempers and circumstances. In youth, he allures us by pleasure, and bright hopes of worldly prosperity. In manhood, he seeks to bury up our hearts in the cares of life. In old age, he persuades to the indulgence of self-will and obstinacy. In prosperity, he puffs up the heart with pride, and persuades to self-confidence and forgetfulness of God. In poverty and affliction, he excites feelings of discontent, distrust, and repining. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... making jam in the kitchen, I believe. Miss Deyncourt most good-naturedly offered to take her with her; but,"—with a shake of the head—"the poor child's totally unrestrained appetites and lamentable self-will made her prefer to remain where ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... and knew what was coming. She sat down, and waited. Had he looked in her face, instead of in the fire, he would have seen an expression there which he would little have liked—a smile of obstinacy and self-will. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... smile was haughty, though so sweet; Her very nod was not an inclination; There was a self-will even in her small feet, As though they were quite conscious of her station— They trod as upon necks; and to complete Her state (it is the custom of her nation), A poniard decked her girdle, as the sign She was a Sultan's bride (thank Heaven, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... breath which even the Duchess did not know to be the token of heart complaint. He was confined to his room, and it was kneeling by his bedside that Eutacie poured out her thankfulness for her child's preservation, and her own repentance for the passing fit of self-will and petulance. The thought of Rayonette's safety seemed absolutely to extinguish the fresh anxiety that had arisen since it had become evident that her enemies no longer supposed her dead, but were probably upon her traces. Somehow, danger ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... restless and dissatisfied, and so ready to take responsibilities upon themselves. It is a temptation of Providence to send such calamities as the one we are suffering from. You will know more about life when you are forced to work for yourself, and do not set about it out of pure presumption and self-will, with a good home to fall back upon when you ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... in steering her partner through the maze, on account of his self-will, and when at last they reached the bottom of the long line, she was breathless with her hard labour.. Resting here, she watched Nic and his lady; and, though she had decidedly cooled off in these later months, began to ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... man's thinking and willing to all appearance all by himself, and of the fact that volition and thought come to him from beyond him, receives a similar, cumulative answer. The tension between the divine will and human self-will is a subject that pervades the book; to that subject the profoundest insights into the hidden activity of providence and into human nature are brought. On the question, "Is providence only general or also detailed?" the emphatic answer ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... law, stand up now, stand up now, Their self-will is their law, stand up now; Since tyranny came in, they count it now no sin To make a goal a gin, to starve poor men therein. Stand ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Mission'd her viewless servants to enrich The fretted splendour of each nook and niche. Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first, Came jasper pannels; then, anon, there burst Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees, And with the larger wove in small intricacies. Approving all, she faded at self-will, And shut the chamber up, close, hush'd and still, Complete and ready for the revels rude, When dreadful guests would come to ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... may lay at his door; whatever share in the ruin of the South, the future historians may ascribe to his unswerving self-will and unvarying faith in his own power—no one who traces his career from West Point to the New Saint Helena—will call ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... attack of the justice's had affected the mind more than the body. He was brought down to the sitting-room that day for the first time; but, of his mind, there was little hope. It was in a state of half imbecility; the most wonderful characteristic being, that all its self-will, its surliness had gone. Almost as a little child ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of faults inherent, in his own sensitive nature, he added also many of those which a long indulgence of self-will generates,—the least compatible, of all others, (if not softened down, as they were in him, by good nature,) with that system of mutual concession and sacrifice by which the balance of domestic peace is ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... our story the two young people, after some years of estrangement, brought about by an unfortunate misunderstanding on his part, pride and self-will on hers, had reached the delightfully unsettling stage of exchanging photographs, the sequel of which took place under the most romantic circumstances, not to ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... impressed by her many vicissitudes and by serious reflections, her noble, dreamy brow harmonized delightfully with the slow, majestic glance of her blue eyes. It was impossible for the ablest physiognomist to imagine calculation or self-will beneath that unspeakable delicacy of feature. There were faces of women which deceive knowledge, and mislead observation by their calmness and delicacy; it is necessary to examine such faces when passions speak, and that is difficult, or after they have spoken, which ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... disesteem sometimes. He did that too, now and then,—for he was human like the rest of us! But mark you this, my brothers, for, in an age which, under one figment or another, whether of more ancient or more modern license, is an age of much self-will,—we shall do well to remember it,—his was a life of orderly and consistent obedience to rule. He kept to the Church's plain and stately ways: kept to them and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... the persistence, on the other hand, of one idea in one line of men. The eighteen centuries already past are yet only a part of an unknown future. But to construct such a Rock amid the sea and the waves roaring in the history of the nations reveals an abiding divine power. It leaves the self-will of man untouched, yet sets up a rampart against it. The explanation attempted three hundred and fifty years ago of an imposture or an usurpation is incompatible with the clearness of an idea which is carried out persistently through so many generations. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... abilities, and might do much for himself, but is too like the father, but with this difference, Edward was good-natured and careless to a fault; this boy is haughty and petulant, with the unmanageable obstinacy and self-will of old Geoffrey. He is not grateful for the many obligations he owes to me, and gives me frequent cause to regret that I ever adopted him ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... cruel and shameless one; for he would certainly make miserable, if he were believed, the hearts of many virtuous persons who had never harmed him, for no immediate or demonstrable purpose except that of pleasing his own self-will; and that much more, were he ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... and rather a masculine voice, and it grated on one slightly, being scarcely expected from so beautiful a face. In it was power, self-will, ambition—but no tenderness nor that voice, soft and low, which "is an excellent thing ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the condemned foreigner. His intellect refused to acknowledge the possibility of discomfiture; his soul raged mightily against the hint of bafflement. Humour would not come to his aid; the lighter elements of race were ousted; he was solid insolence, wooden-headed self-will. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... catch a glimpse of her going out or coming in, even at that late hour. It might be well to accustom himself to the sight of her. There would be the less chance of his being abashed to-morrow before those sorceress eyes. And moreover, to tell the truth, his self-dependence, and his self-will too, crushed, or rather laid to sleep, by the discipline of the Laura, had started into wild life, and gave him a mysterious pleasure, which he had not felt since he was a disobedient little boy, of doing what he chose, right or wrong, simply because he chose it. Such moments come ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... that pay the willing loan; That's for thy self to breed another thee, Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; Ten times thy self were happier than thou art, If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee: Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart, Leaving thee living in posterity? Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair To be death's conquest and make ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... Their narrow minds, which found real pleasure in worrying the poor child, passed insensibly from outward kindness to extreme severity. This severity was necessitated, they believed, by what they called the self-will of the child, which had not been broken when young and was very obstinate. Her masters were ignorant how to give to their instructions a form suited to the intelligence of the pupil,—a thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public and private education. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Self-will, love of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... are brethren ... into their assembly be not thou united: in their self-will they digged ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... these frames, and lay me low before God in tears of sorrow. I often think what a happiness it would be if his love were so fixed in my heart that I might willingly obey him with alacrity and delight, and gradually mortify the power of self-will, passion, and pride. This can only arise from a good hope through grace that we are washed in that precious blood which cleanses us from every sinful stain, and makes us new creatures in Christ. Oh that we may be the happy witnesses of the saving power ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... was little amusement, there was, on the other hand, great devotion; the Princess, as a child, had that peculiar combination of self-will and warm-heartedness which is apt to win for a child a special love from its elders. The Princess Feodore wrote to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... a peremptory command. "I—I have forgiven you long ago, my son; only pride and self-will stood in the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... so himself," said Patience; and as she spoke her round dark eyes assumed a look of more than ordinary self-will. If Miss Le Smyrger had intended to carry the conversation any further, she changed her mind as she looked at her companion. Then, as I said, the summer ran by, and towards the close of the warm days of July, Miss Le Smyrger, ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... employ the power of self-inspection with that carefulness and sedulity with which they ought. Hence men generally, and unrenewed men always, are unacquainted with much that goes on within their own minds and hearts. Though it is sin and self-will, though it is thought and feeling and purpose and desire, that is going on and taking place during all these years of religious indifference, yet the agent himself, so far as a sober reflection ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... quality—those were the very words—should ever inherit a shilling of his money. Such a ridiculous whim! But these London merchants, who make great fortunes from nothing, are apt to have their little eccentricities; and then, they have so much pride in their own way, and so much self-will and mercantile downrightness in their manners, that there's no managing them but by humouring their fancies. I'm convinced, if Mr. Palmer suspected that I even wished Amelia to marry Sir John, he would never leave any ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Then she resumed her stand at the window, her eyes lost in the sunny distance. "I did wrong," she said, as though she were speaking to herself. "I should not have allowed that quarrel with your father. I regret it now very deeply. But we always see too late the consequences of our proud self-will." She turned then. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... not say so!' said Elizabeth; 'it was entirely mine. I was led away by my foolish eagerness and self-will, I was bent on my own way, and cast aside all warnings, and now I see what mischief I have done. Cannot you do anything to repair it, Papa? cannot you say that it was all my doing, my wilfulness, my carelessness ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Israelites out of Egypt, and set them free. One of the first lessons which they have to learn is, that freedom does not mean license and discord—does not mean every one doing that which is right in the sight of his own eyes. From that springs self-will, division, quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness, profligacy, and ruin to the whole people. Without order, discipline, obedience to law, there can be no true and lasting freedom; and, therefore, order must be kept at all risks, the law obeyed, and ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... ourselves of all self-seeking. "When the creature claimeth for its own anything good, such as life, knowledge, or power, and in short whatever we commonly call good, as if it were that, or possessed that—it goeth astray." Sin is nothing else but self-assertion, self-will. "Be assured," says the "Theologia Germanica," "that he who helpeth a man to his own will, helpeth him to the worst that he can." He, therefore, who is "simply and wholly bereft of self" is delivered from sin, and God alone reigns ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... youthfulness, he, as already hence anticipating his descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing in that tumult of the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its Creator, and becometh enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself, through the fumes of that invisible wine of its self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the very basest things. But in my mother's breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, and the foundation of Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but a Catechumen, and that but recently. She then was startled with a holy fear ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... also, lately, in blind adoration of it. When shall we learn to see it as it was?— the dawning manhood of Europe—rich with all the tenderness, the simplicity, the enthusiasm of youth—but also darkened, alas! with its full share of youth's precipitance and extravagance, fierce passions and blind self-will—its virtues and its vices colossal, and, for that very reason, always haunted by the twin-imp of ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... weaned from us; and secondly, because the next year will be the most important of his life with reference to managing his will; and in this I cannot but distrust you. I know, my darling mother, you could not wage war with his self-will so resolutely as to subdue it. And then my child would be ruined, for he must ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... of earthly feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned this, perhaps he will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... in a French city by Frenchmen either to carry out their own self-will or to exasperate and insult their fellow-citizens, or ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... her brother; and she therefore wrote with every effort to make the whole appear her own voluntary act—though the very effort made her doubly conscious that the sole cause for her passive acquiescence was, that her past self-will in trifles had left her no power to contend for her own opinion in greater matters—the common retribution on an ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... happiness was the absence of self-discipline, self-denial and self-conquest. They could overcome difficulties, brave danger, set the world at defiance, if need be, for each other, and not a coward nerve give way; but when pride and passion came between them, each was a child in weakness and blind self-will. Unfortunately, persistence of character was strong in both. They were of such stuff as martyrs were made of in the fiery times ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... age was bitter, like that of a great genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. What public man—what statesman projecting a coup—what king determined on an invasion of his neighbour—what satirist meditating an onslaught on society or an individual, can't give a pretext for his move? There was ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... another's company. The tendency of individuals to over self-assertion is kept down by fighting. Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear come into play, and enforce a greater or less renunciation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins to be checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the former, just as the "governor" in a steam-engine is part of the mechanism of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... singularly deficient in his nature. He never seems to have passed through that erotic period out of which some poets have never emerged. A soaring, speculative imagination, and an impetuous, resistless self-will, were his distinguishing characteristics. From first to last he concentrated himself within himself; brooding over his own fancies and imaginations to the comparative disregard of the incidents and impressions which suggested them; and was little susceptible of ideas originating ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... mellifluous union, scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do. They pay, but they grumble; you must ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... till then, the fury of his self-will had been scattered, for want of concentration[19] on one object only, manhood, like a flash of lightning, suddenly revealed to him that very object, in the form of woman: and he discovered, in the storm of his ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... silenced the wish, for Barbara did not often give the rein to her self-will so freely, and her objectionable traits of character had been inherited from her mother. She was a good girl at heart, and how much pleasure and favour her beautiful gift brought, how much honour came to him and his ancient name through this rare ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... default through absence of the person cited.. By such absence the absentee discredits himself; whatsoever may be the justice of his cause, it is prejudiced at the outset. But how to persuade of this truth a man so blind with pain and rage and so dogged in self-will as Adone had become, Don Silverio did not see. He shrank from renewing useless struggles and disputes which led to no issue. He felt that Adone and he would only drift farther and farther apart ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... subjects the soul to God, conforms it to all His pleasure, causes self-will gradually to die. Lastly in drawing with it the other powers, by means of the charity with which it is filled. It causes them gradually to be reunited in the Center, and lost there as to their own ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... in those days of early summer, had he wavered in his determination to make this lady his wife. Pride was at the root of his being,—pride and a deep self-will; though because they were so sunken, and because poisonous roots can flower most deceivingly, he neither called himself nor was called of others a proud and willful man. He wished Evelyn for his wife; nay, more, though on May Day ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Awhile didst thou defend them, when the storm Lour'd at safe distance. When the clouds frown'd darker, Fear'd for yourself, and left them to their fate. Oh, I have mark'd thee long, and through the veil Seen thy foul projects. Yes, ambitious man, Self-will'd dictator o'er the realm of France, The vengeance thou hast plann'd for patriots, Falls on thy head. Look how thy brother's deeds Dishonour thine! He, the firm patriot; Thou, the foul parricide ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... from the time that she took his sister from his dying mother's arms. Some deadly fear constrained her to lock the door behind her. For the lad's looks were terribly altered. There was a sullen, callous dourness where bright self-will had once had its dwelling. His clothing had once been fashionable, but it was now torn at the buttonholes and frayed at ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... pride cannot understand the beauty of humility, and the spirit of self-will cannot understand the beauty of obedience; and, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose the devil could not understand our Lord. If He be the Son of God, so might Satan argue, He has all the more reason to be proud; and, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and almost destroyed for ever by the interference of Ferdinand Lopez. But Mrs. Lopez never for a moment forgot that she had done the mischief,—and that the black enduring cloud had been created solely by her own perversity and self-will. Though she would still defend her late husband if any attack were made upon his memory, not the less did she feel that hers had been the fault, though the punishment had ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... with us. I scanned his physiognomy, which varied as he spoke, yet was beautiful in every change. The usual expression of his eyes was soft, though at times he could make them even glare with ferocity; his complexion was colourless; and every trait spoke predominate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often curled his lips—lips which to female eyes were the very throne of beauty and love. His voice, usually gentle, often startled you by a sharp discordant note, which shewed that his usual low tone was rather the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Spaniards the richest people in the world naturally heightened their pride and arrogance. The long and eventful religious wars of Charles V. and Philip II. gave employment and distinction to thousands of families whose vanity was nursed by the royal favor, and whose ferocious self-will was fed and pampered by the blood of heretics and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the fear of her husband's disapproval, even though Mrs. Minturn was constantly admonishing, "Let not your heart be troubled," and working to demonstrate that there could be no opposition to Truth and that the work, so well begun, could not be hindered by bigotry, pride or self-will. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness." Her marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the Westminster Review, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... me. "We will both pray, my dear heart, to be kept out of temptation; but let us watch likewise that we slip not therein. They be safe kept that God keepeth; and seeing that not our self-will nor folly, but His providence, brought us to this place, I reckon we have a right to ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... emulate it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the light. The light He gave and gives through nature, and within every man's breast, has been awfully darkened through refusal and neglect to use it, through stubborn self-will. It is so darkened that ofttimes it seems to have been quite put out. His coming amongst us as one of ourselves, living our life, dying on our behalf to free us from sin, rising again victorious over death, ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... swallow-tail coat and white shirt, and the knee breeches and buckled shoes that he wore by reason of the touch of picturesque and defiant romanticism that was so obvious a part of his nature. Then she had begun, little by little, to perceive the egotism that was even more apparent; his self-will, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... gift in a right spirit. His self-will, however, was aroused. He had determined to fight Castrillon, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... may be caused by the levity and self-will of a beautiful woman! From the time of Helen of Troy up to the present moment, the world has known this well; but, alas! this was but the beginning of that tragedy which Sidonia played in Pomerania, as that other wanton ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... devoted attentions of the stranger prince, and to hear every day and every hour repeated the earnest solicitations of her father that she should school herself to regard the stranger as her future husband, her little fairy heart was quite broken with its ceaseless struggles. Her pride and self-will were entirely vanquished, and she felt herself truly the most miserable of fairy maidens. Suicide is of course a thing strictly prohibited among immortals; but had it been otherwise, I sadly fear that one of the lady Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would some morning have been found without ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... of the fellow," said Peters, with assumed contempt. "Why, he is a mere obstinate boor, whose self-will and vanity led him to set up and persevere in a defence in which he knows there is neither ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... and self-will. God is grieved every time Mary is self-willed and selfish. He wants her to give up ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... to seek union with Him.... In consequence of His atoning death, everything which lives and breathes may know itself redeemed.... Only love rooted in sympathy and expressed in action to the point of a complete destruction of self-will, is Christian love." (Wagner's Letters, 1880, ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... resolution in difficulty, nor promptitude and energy in action. Her nature was so placid and docile, that we never hear, even in her childhood, of the least of those ebullitions of anger or manifestations of self-will, usual in ordinary children. It was so enduring and forgiving, that while inoffensive herself, she was incapable of taking offence, and absolutely inaccessible to resentment. It was so kind and tender, that sympathy for the troubles of others, especially ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... equal justice be given to Ellen Huntley. She was a lovely girl, three or four years older than Harry, with pretty features and soft dark eyes. What is more, she was a good girl—a noble, generous-hearted girl, although (you know no one is perfection) with a spice of self-will. For the latter quality I think Ellen was more indebted to circumstances than to Nature. Mrs. Huntley was dead, and a maiden sister of Mr. Huntley's, older than himself, resided with them and ruled Ellen; ruled her with a tight hand; not a kind one, or a judicious one; ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Newspaper Enterprise, Mails, Eleemosynary Institutions. American Character. Temperance Reform. The Land of the Free. Religion. Anti-masonic Movement. Banking Craze. Moon Hoax. Party Spirit. Jackson as a Knight Errant. His Self-will. Enmity between Adams and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... public. The turn the poet[81] gives it is very happy; but the foundation is from a real accident which happened among my acquaintance.[82] A young gentleman of a great estate fell desperately in love with a great beauty of very high quality, but as ill-natured as long flattery and an habitual self-will could make her. However, my young spark ventures upon her, like a man of quality, without being acquainted with her, or having ever saluted her, till it was a crime to kiss any woman else. Beauty is a thing ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... "Just the old story—self-will and stupidity. That domineering fellow Lord Charles Somerset, intending to check the plundering of the colony by Kafirs, chose to enter into treaties with Gaika as paramount chief of Kafirland, although Gaika himself told him plainly that he ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... self-will of ours, which did but shackle and confine our soules, our wills shall then become truly free, being widened and enlarged to the extent of God's own will."—Cudworth, Sermon before the House of ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Lancelot, or the Fata Morgana of all men—in her own idea. She can't stop having an idea of herself. She can't get herself out of her own head. And there she is, functioning away from her own head and her own consciousness of herself and her own automatic self-will, till the whole man and woman game has become just a hell, and men with any backbone would rather kill themselves than go on with it—or ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... towards the like issues. It is possible, perhaps probable, that as the House of Commons becomes more democratic in its composition, and consequently more arrogant in its bearing, it may cast off the shackles which the other powers of the State impose on its self-will, and even utterly abolish them; but I venture to believe that those who last till that day comes, will find that they are living under a very different constitution from that which we now enjoy; that they have traversed the interval ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Huon took heart of grace, and, confessing his folly, prayed for pardon, which Oberon granted him for very pity, knowing, he said, that Huon would have much to suffer, some things through the wicked ways of others, but more from his own pride and self-will. Then, bidding the young man farewell afresh, the fairy king rode back ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... are his own he cannot keep pure, for he breathes a dust of decayed ideas, wreck of the souls of dead nations, driven by contrary winds. He may stiffen himself (and all the worse for him) into an iron self-will, but if the iron has any magnetism in it, he cannot pass a day without finding himself, at the end of it, instead of sharpened or tempered, covered with a ragged fringe of iron filings. If there be anything better than iron—living wood fiber—in him, he cannot be allowed any natural ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... thy stiff-neck'd self-will hath To bitter need reduc'd thee! When heart and mind deluded, death To take for life, seduc'd thee! And had the Lord thy work and deed Along the path allow'd proceed That thou thyself had'st taken, Lost ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... have not written. I don't know whether you have heard any of the details from Ireland, but the conduct of the Irish is beyond all conception of loyalty and adulation, and I fear will serve to strengthen those feelings of self-will and personal authority which are at all times uppermost in The Mind. The passage to Dublin was occupied in eating goose-pie and drinking whiskey, in which his Majesty partook most abundantly, singing many joyous songs, and being in a state, on his arrival, to double in sight even the numbers ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... are also a number of large pictures of the battles in which the Russians have been victorious. They are not fond of keeping up a remembrance of their defeats. There was a good picture of the late Emperor, with his haughty brow, fierce eyes, and determined lips, the very impersonification of self-will and human pride, now brought down to the very dust; but, haughty as was that brow, the expression of the countenance gave no sign of talent or true genius. It was indeed wanting. He had the sense to take advantage of the ideas of others, and the determination to carry them into execution. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... it is beaten back on the side of reasoning, by the plummet of a logic based on false premises; on the side of feeling, by the level of conventional ideas; and on the side of will, by the hammer of a short-sighted self-will, which gives the finishing blow; and it is not until the true perception of the Principle of Life is resurrected within us, that the Temple can be completed according to ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Friedrich, born to govern, determines to govern to the best of his faculty. That "best" may sometimes be unwise; and self-will, or love of glory, may have their oblique hold on his mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are never principal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and maintains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in the work of it to the day ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... went up to her room and sat herself down to think. All that passed through her brain on that night I may not now tell; but the grief which pressed on her at this moment with peculiar weight was the self-will and obstinacy of her boy. She said to herself that she would be willing now to die,—to give back her life at once, if such might be God's pleasure; but that her son should bring down her hairs with shame and sorrow to the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... unknown ship was the Mayflower; those men and women who crowded her decks were that little handful of God's own wheat which had been flailed by adversity, tossed and winnowed till every husk of earthly selfishness and self-will had been beaten away from them and left only pure seed, fit for the planting of a new world. It was old Master Cotton Mather who said of them, "The Lord sifted three countries to find seed wherewith to ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... flew all the ills which flesh is heir to; all the children of the four great bogies, Self-will, Ignorance, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... ability to act as necessary. Theoretically, he could have forcefully taken possession of the body and mind of any suitable subject, but the mere thought of such a violation was impossibly abhorrent. Respect for the right of the individual to self-will was so deeply ingrained as to make the deliberate unseating of another's reason virtually impossible. On the other hand, free-willed cooeperation and understanding were equally out of reach; to enter the conscious mind of these ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... cussedness [U. S.]; perseverance &c. 604a; immovability; old school; inflexibility &c. (hardness) 323; obduracy, obduration[obs3]; dogged resolution; resolution &c. 604; ruling passion; blind side. self-will, contumacy, perversity; pervicacy|, pervicacity[obs3]; indocility[obs3]. bigotry, intolerance, dogmatism; opiniatry|, opiniativeness; fixed idea &c. (prejudgment) 481; fanaticism, zealotry, infatuation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... points that the interest of a certain number of followers of the movement was fastened. Conclusions which they had a perfect right to come to, practices innocent and edifying to themselves, but of secondary account, began to be thrust forward into prominence, whether or not these instances of self-will really helped the common cause, whether or not they gave a handle to ill-nature and ill-will. Suspicion must always have attached to such a movement as this; but a great deal of it was provoked by indiscreet defiance, which was rather glad to ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... seem exaggerated, would yet not by any means do justice to her attractions. My honour being very dear to me, and she being very young, as well as beautiful, I took all possible care to guard her at all points; but my best precautions have proved vain; the self-will of Cornelia, for that is her name, has rendered all useless. In a word, and not to weary you—for this story might become a long one,—I will but tell you, that the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d'Este, vanquishing the eyes of Argus by those of a lynx, has rendered ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... at gaze. The only sounds in the room were the whirring of the fire in the chimney and the child's breathing. At last Philip's intemperate self-will gave way. There was no withstanding that cold, still face, that unwavering eye. Only brutality could go further. The nobility of her nature, her inflexible straight-forwardness came upon him with overwhelming force. Dressed in molleton, with no adornment save the glow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... such characters. Not but that many precious children of God suffered in much patience and charity. But those who suffered with very much of a different spirit, found no pastor to discountenance their self-will and false zeal: a sure sign that the true spirit of martyrdom was less pure than it had formerly been. Moreover the prevalence of superstition on the one hand, and the decay of evangelical knowledge ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... by a black self-will, The sons the father kill, The children chase the mother, and would heal The wounds they ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... other words, he represents a phase of teaching and influence through which we must needs pass if we are properly to discover and appreciate the grace of Christ. With us, too, a preparatory work has to be done. There are mountains and hills of pride and self-will that have to be levelled; crooked and devious ways that have to be straightened; ruggednesses that have to be smoothed—before we can fully behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In proportion to the thoroughness and permanence of our repentance will be our glad realization ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... over something the other has done or left undone! Yet we profess there are no failures in love in our homes. These things happen every day and we think nothing of them. They are all of them the opposite of love, and the opposite of love is hate. Impatience is hate, envy is hate, conceit and self-will are hate, and so are selfishness, irritability and resentment! And hate is SIN. "He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now." What tensions, barriers and discord ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... visit to her father's grave should not be spent in fruitless dreams of him or of his presence, alluring because involving neither self-reproach nor resolution; but in thoughts which might lead to action, to humility, and to the yielding up of self-will. ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the eyes of the seekers from seeing, until they are ready for the revelation. When man, in his search for Truth, has given up all selfish striving after unworthy things, and has ceased to use his self-will in conflict with the greater Will of the Whole, he is ready for the revelation of his oneness with the Infinite. Yielding implicitly to the Will of the Whole may seem, to the unillumined, an act of weakness, yet it is the entrance to a ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... to understand," she cried out with resolute self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything is calculated, and I don't like ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had not imbued him with that solidity and equanimity which enter so largely into the virtues for the statesman. He had never learned how essential it is for any one who undertakes public business, and desires to deal with mankind, to avoid above all things that self-will, which, as Plato says, belongs to the family of solitude; and to pursue, above all things, that capacity so generally ridiculed, of submission to ill-treatment. Marcius, straightforward and direct, stand together, and come in to their assistance. The ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... over others, no one, perhaps, was more human, in his fitful moods,—his weakness and his strength, his passion and his purpose,—than that strange man, who had dared, in his dark studies and arrogant self-will, ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... room. Then, I put down my needle and laid my head on the table, and shook from head to foot with the trembling she had given me. And a longing to see Christian took possession of me; a sick, crying thirst for the sight, if it were only for a minute; the impatient agony of self-will. Necessity's bands and manacles put it down after ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... entire sanctification that I ever heard says that the consecration must be complete; but how am I to know when it is complete? I have consecrated over and over, but I do not feel certain that all, really all, is given up. Might there not be some self-will left that I do not know ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... own. If he had one to guide as well as love him—a woman with sound heart and brain, such as this Agnes Aird was represented to be, what a happy future might be before this youth! Without such a wise counselor, how easy it would be, and how likely, for him to drift on the tide of self-will and self-indulgence to the devil! The decision rested in Richard's own hands, he knew. Should he blast this young life in the bud, in revenge for acts for which he was in no way accountable, and which were already being so ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... aunt was her father's sister, an austere dignified old party who resided most exclusively in her ancestral home on Beacon Street, and lived in a rut worn ages deep by tradition, conviction and self-will. Virginia was, so-to-speak, heiress-presumptive. Not that she was likely to be supplanted by the birth of some one having greater claim to her aunt's fortune. Her possible rivals for the very substantial income which ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... "Radamisto" was ready early in 1720, and produced at the Royal Academy of Music, as the theater was now called. The success of the production was tremendous. But Handel, by his self-will had stirred up envy and jealousy, and an opposition party was formed, headed by his old enemy from Hamburg, Buononcini, who had come to London to try his fortunes. A test opera was planned, of which Handel wrote the third act, Buononcini the second and a third musician the first. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... the sound of friendly voices becomes silent in death, but at that hour when God draws near and the eyes of the spiritual understanding are opened, and the soul sees how beautiful Christ is, how hateful sin is; the hour when self-will is crucified, and the God-will is born in the resolutions of a new heart." Then Heaven has begun, the Heaven that will continue ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... colour of a light silk one. 'Misfortunes never come alone,' it is said; and though I am not myself a firm believer in this proverb, it certainly proved true with regard to Mabel Ellis, though these misfortunes were entirely the results of her pride and self-will, so she does ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... Passion and self-will were ready with their answers to these questions. In detecting this secret, I was in all probability about to do service to Sir Hildebrand, who was probably ignorant of the intrigues carried on in his family—and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... each individual worshipper should forget himself, should renounce his particular inclinations, should abandon himself and long to do not his own will but that of God. But before self can be consciously abandoned, the consciousness of self must be realised. Before self-will can be surrendered, its existence must be realised. And self-consciousness, the recognition of the existence of the will and the reality of the self, comes relatively late both in the history of the community and in the personal history ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... new castellan was exercising his power with unsparing and immoderate severity. Oliver de Wortshorn was almost heartbroken; the old man suddenly found himself reduced to the condition of a mere dependant on the self-will and caprice of this petty tyrant, his authority having been usurped, and his office wrested from him, by the hand of a stranger. Adam de Dutton[51] was the name of this new functionary, and he rode it out bravely over the necks of the servants and retainers, discharging ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is a little i, and over every one of us there is a little dot of self-importance, self-will, self-interest, self-confidence, self-complacency, or something to which we cling and for which we contend, which just as surely reveals self-life as if it were a mountain of ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... observance in favour of the convictions of the ruling power. After all, this talk of conscience and sincere convictions is but the canting phrase of the day, according to which conscience means mere wild humour and headstrong self-will. Such teachings as those which we would have the State to suppress, e.g.: An oath is a folly: There is no law of purity: There is no harm in doing anything that does not annoy your neighbour: are not the teachings of men sincerely convinced: they deserve no respect, consideration, or tenderness ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... obstinacy of a young and untamed girl, possessed of none of the attractions of her sex, and neither supported by bodily nor mental strength, must soon yield to the still rougher and more capricious but assumed self-will of a man: such a lesson can only be taught on the stage with all the perspicuity ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... is more than dominion of body over spirit; more than an incident of growth; more than a result of undeveloped judgment, tinged with emotion, and applied to questions of motive and conduct. Sin is the abnormal; sin is a variant from standard; sin is self-will and selfishness throttling duty. Where men accept a God, it is opposition to His law and government.[7] If no personal God be believed in, then sin is willful opposition to the course of nature and to law, as proved by experience. So, in every case, it is unworthy, injurious, and guilty, and must ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... Protector and the Protectorate in his Defensio Secunda. Even then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction, which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal. Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... or less disorderly: fanciful; changeable; fond of doing not what we ought, but what we like; fond of showing our power, not by keeping rules, but by breaking rules; and we fancy too often that God is like ourselves, and make him in our image, after our own likeness, which is disorder, and self-will, and changeableness; instead of trying to be conformed to his image and his likeness, which is order and law eternal: and, therefore, whenever God seems (for he only seems to our ignorance) to be making things suddenly, as we make, or working arbitrarily as we work, then we acknowledge his ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... distrust, as putting God to proof whether He would keep His promises or no. It looked like the very perfection of that worship with which He had overcome in the second round of the fight; it wag really self-will in the mask of devoutness. It tempted God, because it sought to draw Him to fulfil to a man on self-chosen paths His promises to those who walk in ways which He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... its normal condition moves and works by law. When self-will, blinded by passion or lust, enters her realm, and breaks her protecting laws, mind then loses her sweet liberty of action, and becomes a transgressor. Chaos usurps the throne of liberty, and mind becomes at enmity with law. How many, many times the words ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... and song Of raptur'd angels drowns In self-will's peal of blasphemies, And hideous ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... to love, and to the Lady? he's old, Wrathful, perverse, self-will'd, and full of anger, Which are his faults; but let them not be thine; He thrusts you from his love, she pulls thee on; He doubts your Vertues, she doth double them; O either use thine own eyes, or take mine, And with them my heart, then thou wilt love her, Nay, dote upon her more than ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Thine own self-will and anxiety, thy hurry and labor, disturb thy peace, and prevent Me from working in thee. Look at the little flowers, in the serene summer days; they quietly open their petals, and the sun shines into them with his gentle influences. ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston |
