"Self-assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the outlaw and the bully found congenial refuge, the celestial did not belie his name. He was indeed of another world, and his capacity for patience, his native dignity without suspicion of hauteur, baffled the loud self-assertion of the Irish and ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... Queen showed more self-assertion in her treatment of the Court Godmother, which was characterised ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... rising and retiring, the times of meals and their nature and substance, all the activities of the household—in which he himself takes little or no part—are still arranged primarily to suit his work, his play, and his tastes. This is an accepted matter of course, and not the result of any violent self-assertion on his part. It is equally an accepted matter of course that the wife should be constantly occupied in keeping this little solar system in easy harmonious movement, evolving from it, if she has the skill, the music of the spheres. She has no recognised independent personality of her ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... a reserved nature, forced into open self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two sisters—so strangely dissimilar in person and character—faced one another, without ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Then he was content; and then only appeared in his letters and diary that good-natured, self-satisfied feeling which arose from the consciousness that he was one of the most fortunate authors who had ever lived. There was nothing cynical in his sense of superiority, but an amiable self-assertion and self-confidence that only made men smile,—as when Lord Palmerston remarked that "he wished he was as certain of any one thing as Tom Macaulay was of everything." This self-confidence rarely provoked opposition, except when he was positive ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... "Quite as well! better!" said Nettie to herself. "Other people never will understand. Now, I know better than to try anybody." If that hasty breath was a sigh, there was little sound of sorrow in it. It was a little gust of impatience, indignation, intolerance even, and hasty self-assertion. She alone knew what she could do, and must do. Not one other soul in the world beside could enter into her inevitable work ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... ostentation, there is a fatal moral hollowness which infects both serious conduct and social diversion. The result is seen in imitative manners, affected culture, and a mixture of timorous self-consciousness within and noisy self-assertion without, which completes the most distasteful scene that any collected spirit ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the method was fundamentally artificial. A sentimentalism arose, which is in art what the metaphysical method is in philosophy. Yet a literature was born of it, whose freshness, force, elevation, and, above all, a self-assertion and peculiar aspiring freedom that have never been surpassed, still exert an irresistible attraction, even over minds that are furthest removed from the moral storm and disorder, and the confused intellectual convictions, of that extraordinary group. Perhaps ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... respectfully, although he did not fawn over the dignitary or lose his own quiet self-assertion. He was an American. He told of finding the tortured prospector and of the plight of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each other. He seized the opportunity, but—for some reason, he knew not why—awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic manner that was unreal. Suddenly the ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... day, this provincialism, which impregnates all our culture, is liable to have disastrous consequences politically, as well as for the civilization of mankind. We must make room for Asia in our thoughts, if we are not to rouse Asia to a fury of self-assertion. ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... his militant egoism, there had developed in Godwin Peak an excess of nervous sensibility which threatened to deprive his character of the initiative rightly belonging to it. Self-assertion is the practical complement of self-esteem. To be largely endowed with the latter quality, yet constrained by a coward delicacy to repress it, is to suffer martyrdom at the pleasure of every robust assailant, and in the end be driven to the refuge of a moody solitude. That encounter ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... was one of the most bitter elements in his existence. Don Paolo imposed respect by his quiet dignity, while Marzio asserted himself by speaking loudly and working himself voluntarily into a state of half-assumed anger. In the contest between quiet force and noisy self-assertion the issue is never doubtful. Marzio lacked real power, and he felt it. He could command attention among the circle of his associates who already sympathised with his views, but in the presence of Paolo he was conscious of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... days of his power was that of a despot. He was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... means that I am to serve my father's table like a paid waitress. Katy, I have run for over three years on Eileen's schedule, but this past year I am beginning to use my brains and I am reaching the place of self-assertion. That programme won't do, Katy. It's got to be completely revised. You just watch me and see ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... modern people have an unselfishness so completely free from morbidity, so fully capable of deciding a moral question without exaggerating its importance. No eminent person of our time has been so utterly devoid of that disease of self-assertion which is often rampant among the unselfish. She had one most rare and valuable faculty, the faculty of letting things pass—Acts of Parliament and other things. Her predecessors, whether honest men or knaves, were attacked every now and then with a nightmare ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... photographs can do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced. At once one would perceive that she had the temperament to dominate, to lead, to control, not by any crude self-assertion, but a spiritual animus. Of course such a personality, with the wonderful tumult in the air that her large and enthusiastic following excited, fascinated the imagination. What had she originated? I mentally questioned this modern St. Catherine, who was dominating her followers ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... by the events of the day, his mind was full of that sourly savage resistance to the inevitable self-assertion of wealth, so amiably deplored by the prosperous and the rich; so bitterly familiar to the unfortunate and the poor. "The heather-bell costs nothing!" he thought, looking contemptuously at the masses of rare and beautiful flowers that surrounded him; "and the buttercups ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... shares perhaps with some social beasts, but far more so as a conscious thing with men alone. These desires and motives all centre on a clearly apprehended "self" in relation to "others"; they are the essentially egotistical group. They are self-assertion in all its forms. I have dealt with motives toward gratification and motives towards experience; this set of motives is for the sake of oneself. Since they are the most acutely conscious motives in unthinking men, there is a tendency ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the South and its peculiar civilization. Many of the expensive precautions which the southern people have taken to keep the Negroes down, much of the terrorism incited to restrain the blacks from self-assertion will no longer be considered necessary; for, having the excess in numbers on their side, the whites will finally rest assured that the Negroes may be encouraged without any apprehension that they may develop enough power to subjugate or embarrass ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... "Enthusiasm, self-assertion, had as usual, transformed her, and he saw the colour glowing under her olive skin. Was she accusing him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an exquisite old house!' he said, turning to her, and feeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentle matronly dignity of the one sister and the young self-assertion of the other. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worth while to write. The girl did have the grace to keep reasonably quiet, though occasionally she would feel that this silence was not doing herself justice, and would break into the cheerful conversation of the others with a boldness and self-assertion that made Amy stare. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of the spirit ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Miss Gainsborough's; but she felt the slighting regard in which low-bred people held her on account of her work and position. And so large a portion of the world is deficient in breeding, that to a young person at least the desire of self-assertion comes as a very natural and tolerably strong temptation. Esther had felt it, and trodden it under foot, and yet Mrs. Barker's words made her wince. How could anybody reasonably suppose that a gentleman would choose such a house and such ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... breathe into my soul renewed inspiration, saying, "Pity rather than blame those who persecute us." So closely interwoven have been our lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling of incompleteness—united, such strength of self-assertion that no ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us insurmountable. Reviewing the life of Susan B. Anthony, I ever liken her to the Doric column in Grecian architecture, so simply, so grandly she stands, free from every extraneous ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... would take, struck, as your Sandro was, by a nympholepsy, or, as Lorenzo was, by the rhymer's appetite for wherewithal to sonnetteer? If I understand you, it was never pique or a young girl's petulance drove you to Phryne's one justifiable act of self-assertion. It was honesty. Madonna, or I have read your grey eyes in vain; it was enthusiasm—that flame of our fire so sacred that though it play the incendiary there shall be no crime—or where would be now the "Vas d'elezione"?—nor though it ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... that one of his qualities is a strange gentleness. He told me, in that manner of his, that he would take only a minute of my time, and while I sat perfectly tongue-tied before him, as if I were a schoolgirl, this is what he said, without any passionate declaration, or any self-assertion. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and diviner one of self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life which lives in and for others, like her Redeemer ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... daintily enough, but as if she meant to have a breakfast that should last her till luncheon—when plainly the active little furnace of her life would want fresh fuel. But it was of another kind of fuel she was thinking now. In the man who stood there, so independent, yet so free from self-assertion, she saw a prospect of learning something. She was hungry after knowing, but, though fond of reading, was very ignorant of books. She thought like a poet, but had never read a real poem. She was full of imagination, but very imperfectly knew ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... friendly interest in each other's doings. Volunteered advice comes, so he thinks, from pure self-conceit, and is intolerable; help that he has not asked for conveys the assumption that he is a fool, and the helper ever so much wiser than he. It is in his eyes simply a form of self-assertion, an attempt at governing other people, an infringement of good manners not ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... well pleased with me now, sure!" retorted Ethelinda, stung to a blunt self-assertion. "He keered mo' about a good-lookin' road than a good-lookin' gal then. Whenst the squad kem back an' reported the passage full safe for man an' beastis the leader tuk a purse o' money out'n his pocket an' held it out to me—though he said it couldn't express his ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... grows broader and deeper. Number one restates his case somewhat differently. Number two takes it up on its new ground. Argument is followed by vociferation and abuse; a momentary self-restraint by a fresh outbreak of self-assertion. All tempers come into play, all modes of attack are employed, from pounding with a crowbar to pricking with a pin. And where all this time is music? Where is the gold of truth? Spun over and blackened by the tissue of jangling sounds, as is the ceiling ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... They sat in silence, but neither felt that the other was satisfied. Mr. Withers knew that Daphne was not lightened of her trouble, nor was he in his heart content with the point he had gained. The unwonted touch of self-assertion it had called for rested uneasily on him; and he could not but own that he had made himself Daphne's apologist, which no confessor ought to be, in this disguise by which he named the deception he was now helping her ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... have fallen in popularity. This is a pity, as their lilliputian self-assertion is most amusing. As pets they are most affectionate, excellent as watch-dogs, clever at acquiring tricks, and always cheerful and companionable. They have good noses and will hunt diligently; but wet weather or thick ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... General Halleck in an interview the two generals had with Mr. Lincoln. I was rather young in appearance —looking even under than over thirty-three years—but five feet five inches in height, and thin almost to emaciation, weighing only one hundred and fifteen pounds. If I had ever possessed any self-assertion in manner or speech, it certainly vanished in the presence of the imperious Secretary, whose name at the time was the synonym of all that was cold and formal. I never learned what Mr. Stanton's first impressions of me were, and his guarded and rather calculating ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to observe children. It is fascinating to watch the individuality in them struggling for self-assertion. I could see that the other children's things had tremendous charm for the red-haired boy, especially a toy theatre, in which he was so anxious to take a part that he resolved to fawn upon the other children. He smiled and began to play ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... the Spanish character is probably derived in its germ from the Gothic blood of their ancestors. Their intense self-assertion has been, in the Northern races, modified by the progress of intelligence and the restraints of municipal law into a spirit of sturdy self-respect and a disinclination to submit to wrong. The Goths of Spain have ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... loneliness. A sense of insignificance fell heavily upon her, bearing down her high sufficiency, making her feel that she was a purposeless spectator on the outside of life. She struggled against it, struggled back toward cheer and self-assertion, and in her effort to get back, found herself seeking news of less ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Greek, breathes an air of self-assertion; the other one of self-abnegation. Benevolence, Purity, Humility and Unworldliness are not to be found in the former; Justice, Courage and Veracity appear to be missing in the latter. Wisdom, insight, has given place to the Obedience appropriate to a man clearly conscious of a Law, not man-made, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... tending to bring about a state of things to which the most patient of wives might find it hard to submit. A role of complete self-effacement was not one it was in her power long to sustain, and the utter moral solitude into which she was thrown consolidated those forces inclining her to the extreme of self-assertion. For together with trials without came the growing sense of superiority, the ennui and unrest springing from mental faculties with insufficient outlet, and moreover, denied the very shadow of appreciation at home, where she saw the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... capacity to duly perform all his undertakings, bore himself in a manner calculated to enhance even the high estimation of his fellow-traveler. After the custom of a gentleman, however, he was most augustly free from unwarrantable self-assertion, but he could not have failed to be flattered by the phrase of the trader, could he have heard it, in delivering over his charge to the herders on the Keowee River. "Gadzooks, neighbors, but I shouldn't be a whit surprised if that old party ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Life his own life clogged his feet; to act was like wading in treacle. He had an impulse of utter wild rebellion, of ferocious self-assertion. Then: ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door. On the threshold stood a woman, the self-assertion and audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... from his pleasant revery by the rather noisy entrance of a young man, who, with flushed face, and manner more indicative of self-assertion than self-possession, passed down the car and took a seat facing himself. This was none other than our friend, Rutherford, who, having secured his berth in the sleeper, and arranged his belongings to his entire satisfaction, immediately repaired to the smoking car ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... proper place in the world as a great man's wife—and a good and beautiful woman—was always conceded to her with due honor, even by the most impertinent among the highly placed of her own sex, without any necessity for self-assertion on her part ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of a superior force to her own, and was checked into silence. I had always felt sure that there was a reserve of force in the timid nature of our Coach which seemed to peep forth at times and then retire again. It was curious to mark on these rare occasions how the more boisterous self-assertion of Mrs. Porkington seemed for a time to cower before the gentler but finer will. Natures are not changed in a day, but the effect of the singular scene which had been enacted at that time was never effaced, and a ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... most impressed me, so suddenly become a stranger in my own city, I know not. Wretched men, I was moved to cry, who, because they will not learn to be helpers of one another, are doomed to be beggars of one another from the least to the greatest! This horrible babel of shameless self-assertion and mutual depreciation, this stunning clamor of conflicting boasts, appeals, and adjurations, this stupendous system of brazen beggary, what was it all but the necessity of a society in which the opportunity to serve the world according ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... abiding-place as a scene of coming pleasures and conquests, and who feels sure every glance toward her is one of admiration. There were eyes, however, that noted disapprovingly her jaunty self-assurance and self-assertion, and when she met those eyes her complacency seemed disturbed at once, for she flushed and promptly turned her back upon them. In fact, from the time she had first seen Van Berg's frowning face it had been a disagreeable ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... "Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and pertinently enough note what is passing there." He has reached—strangely enough through self-assertion—the centre of indifference to self, and of interest in other people and things. And the supreme lesson of it all is the value of efficiency. Napoleon "was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... you're older," said Moppet, disgusted at this superfluous self-assertion on her sister's part. "I am always good at parties—ain't I, Uncle Tom?" turning an appealing face ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... had their way in spite of a thousand obstacles. They were challenged by prophets of a better world, the Ruskins and Carlyles who soundly rated the ethics of selfishness and the political economies of competition and the politics of self-assertion and who stirred deeply the more sensitive of their time. And finally they were challenged, and here we begin to approach again the genesis of New Thought, by a philosophic movement which found its point of departure in certain great aspects of earlier thinking which had been much obscured ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... suffering sage. "Of course...it arises from...a volcanic eruption! ... and the mystery of the red river.. is.. solved!" Here an irrepressible moan of anguish broke through his heroic effort at equanimity;—"It is NOT a phenomenon!".. and a gleam of obstinate self-assertion lit up his poor glazing eyes, "Nothing is phenonmenal! ... only I am not able...to explain. ... I have no time...no time...to analyze.. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... supported his inner man rather than his family. Apparently his deep interest in spiritual physics, rather than metaphysics, gave a kind of hypnotic mellifluous effect to his voice when he sang his oracles; a manner something of a cross between an inside pompous self-assertion and an outside serious benevolence. But he was sincere and kindly intentioned in his eagerness to extend what he could of the better influence of the philosophic world as he saw it. In fact, there is a strong ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... all things, respect the public," he said to his subordinates. Nothing so much stimulates the disapprobation of the unbiassed as extravagant applause. Reaction certainly ensues; men begin to hiss by way of self-assertion, and out of self-respect. They resent an attempt to coerce their opinion, and to compel a favourable verdict in spite of themselves. The attempt to encore the prologue to "Mr. H." was most unwise. It was a strong prologue, but ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... self-assertion is a great virtue even in a Julius II. There is a vast deal of humbug in the use we make of the word humility. We talk about Christ's humility, but whose self-assertion has ever been more unmitigated? "I am the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... brilliant passage, she stops, and lifting one finger she says, so that all can hear: "F natural." The first violins are caught napping, and without a book, and while playing her own part, she detects and corrects a mistake of a semitone in the accompaniment. There is no self-assertion or parade, but only an arch smile and a merry shake of the head, as if it was a good joke to catch them thus. A hearty laugh from orchestra and audience, and then the work is resumed. As the piece returns, ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... man turned sixty, handsome, grey-haired, healthy, somewhat florid, and carrying in his face and person external signs of prosperity and that kind of self-assertion which prosperity always produces. But they who knew him best were aware that he did not bear trouble well. In any trouble, such as was this about the necklace, there would come over his face a look of weakness which betrayed ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... content with sour bread or a soiled table-cloth; never again will they mistake arrogant self-assertion for good-breeding, or a dull, half-furnished "living-room" for a cheerful parlor. They have all been taught the virtue which lies in mother earth, and the fragrance she gives to her flowers; they know the health and power given by the labor of their hands and the use ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... more intimately than in our conversation of the days gone by. Ryecroft had never erred by lack of reticence; as was natural in a sensitive man who had suffered much, he inclined to gentle acquiescence, shrank from argument, from self-assertion. Here he spoke to me without restraint, and, when I had read it all through, I knew ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... is unfair to represent Hinduism as characterized by licence and cruelty. Such tendencies are counterbalanced by the strength and prevalence of ideas based on renunciation and self-effacement. All desire, all attachment to the world is an evil; all self-assertion is wrong. Hinduism is constantly in extremes: sometimes it exults in the dances of Krishna or the destructive fury of Kali: more often it struggles for release from the transitory and for union with the permanent and ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... some exclusive convention in favour of the Roman Catholic religion, in which the other powers had no interest, and which they felt to be invidious and improper. The French also, in their co-operation with the British, were avaricious of glory, and by their self-assertion, vanity, ambition, and ostentatious depreciation of everything not performed by themselves, offended the self-respect of the English, who were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... exclaimed, badgered into self-assertion, "I was wonderin'; but since you two lads come in I been thinkin'. Since them two twins o' mine come in, Davy," he repeated, turning to me, his eyes sparkling with fatherly affection, "I been thinkin' 'twould be a fine plan t' tack this letter t' the wall for a warnin' t' the household ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... declaration of our text: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." The new heart, and the right spirit,—the change, not in the mere external behavior but, in the very disposition and inclination of the soul,—excludes every jot and tittle of self-assertion, every particle ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... as my diligent revision can give it, "Hide And Seek" now appeals, after an interval of seven years, for another hearing. I cannot think it becoming—especially in this age of universal self-assertion—to state the grounds on which I believe my book to be worthy of gaining more attention than it obtained, through accidental circumstances, when it was first published. Neither can I consent to shelter myself under the favorable opinions ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... was wanted at the store,—was a mere boy anyhow, and could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather, excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, a little more rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiant self-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the centre of ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... another, extending back continuously to the "witenagemot" of the Anglo-Saxons. During the reign of Henry the name "Parliament" was coming to be more regularly applied to it, its meetings were more frequent and its self-assertion more vigorous. But most important of all, a new class of members was added to it. In 1265, in addition to the nobles and great prelates, the sheriffs were ordered to see that two knights were selected from each of their shires, and two citizens from each of a long list of the larger ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... strangers was rarely in his favor. To this we have the concurrent testimony of those who knew him slightly, and of those who knew him well. It was due to a variety of causes. He had infinite pride, and there was in his manner a self-assertion that often bordered, or seemed to border, upon arrogance. His earnestness, moreover, was often mistaken for brusqueness and violence; for he was, in some measure, of that (p. 080) class of men who appear to be excited when they are only ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... touch, had been loving. Had she known the world better she might have felt, perhaps, that something was expected where so much was given. Perhaps a rougher manner, with some little touch of marital self-assertion, might be a safer commencement of married life,—safer to the wife as coming from her husband. Arthur Fletcher by this time would have asked her to bring him his slippers, taking infinite pride in having his little behests obeyed by so sweet a servitor. That also would ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... importance and distinction, who had quietly and unconsciously taken a seat by his side, and the recognition appeared equally unexpected and awkward. The new-comer was the older and more decorous-looking, with an added formality of manner and self-assertion that did not, however, conceal a certain habitual shrewdness of eye and lip. He wore a full beard, but the absence of a moustache left the upper half of his handsome and rather satirical mouth uncovered. His dress was less pronounced than ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the Pope. If the former is held by "faith," then the latter may be. If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private judgment, why not the former? Even if the Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own infallibility, the value of that self-assertion to those who dispute the point is not obvious. On the other hand, if the infallibility of the Bible was rested on that of a "primitive Church," the admission that the "Church" was formerly infallible was awkward in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... policy having represented, as is believed by some, the self-assertion of a proud Imperialism, it has been ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... establishing the solid foundation of a formidable and independent power. The Manchu generals and ministers had always been jealous of the greater fame of Wou Sankwei. When they saw that Kanghi wanted an excuse to fall foul of him, they carried every tale of alleged self-assertion on the part of the Chinese viceroy to the imperial ears, and represented that his power dwarfed the dignity of the Manchu throne and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... committal to the Tower a few days later caused nothing less than consternation in England and of furious indignation on the Continent. It was evident that greatness would save no man; the best hope lay in obscurity, and men who had been loud in self-assertion now ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... this was self-assertion. She had not the assurance to intrude, and she contented herself with keeping Cherry on thorns by threatening to go in, and declaring that the whole must be untrue, since Wilmet had not ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man at all hazards. There is a kind of "moralic acid," as Nietzsche styles it, which is corroding the strength of humanity in our modern day. We have discoursed too much of character, too little of power; too much of self-sacrifice and too little of self-assertion; too much of right, too little of might. Conscience not only interferes with success, but also prevents the evolution of a superior type of man, that superman who is not constrained by duty nor limited by law, living his life "beyond ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... tamed him a good deal. Smallbones said the letting out of malapert blood was wholesome, and others thought him still under a spell; but he seemed to have parted with much of his arrogance, either because he had not spirits for self-assertion, or because something of the grand eastern courtesy of Abenali had impressed him. For intercourse with the Morisco had by no means ceased. Giles went, as long as the injury required it, to have the hurt dressed, and loitered in the Inner Ward a long time every day, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Baltimore died in 1714-15. The proprietaries after this being Protestants, were intrusted again with their old political headship. By this time a spirit of independence and self-assertion had grown up among the citizens, enforcing very liberal laws, and the vices of the sixth Lord, succeeding in 1751, made his subjects more than willing that he should, as he did, close ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... not be supposed that the commoner sort of dreamers are never jealous of these figments of their fancy. They are often so, and rouse themselves to self-assertion as frequently as our Better Element flings off the yoke of Tammany. At a fair, open to any who would pay, for some forgotten good object, such as is always engaging the energies of society, I saw moving among ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... lines, Lady Janet addressed it, as usual, to "Miss Grace Roseberry." She was just rising to ring the bell, when the maid appeared with a message from the boudoir. The woman's tones and looks showed plainly that she had been made the object of Grace's insolent self-assertion ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... is the foil to Mary. His sullen, black selfishness, stretching out hands like talons in eagerness to get, makes more radiant, and is itself made darker by, her shining deed of love. Goodness always rouses evil to self-assertion, and the other Evangelists connect Mary's action with Judas's final treachery as part of its impelling cause. They also show that his specious objection, by its apparent common sense and charitableness, found assent in the disciples. Three hundred pence worth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... "paid agency" Roebuck was tolerably industrious with his pen; but in literature and journalism he proved his utter incapacity for joining in any combined action. Such was his dogged self-assertion and indomitable egotism that none of the ordinary channels would answer his purpose; and so he issued a series of political papers, entitled "Pamphlets for the People," to which the curious may sometimes refer, but which have now lost all their significance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hornet's nest buzzing about your ears," exclaimed Mary Wilson, disregarding all the rules of Parliamentary law which Dr. Kitchell tried to teach them. She was on her feet, moving to the front, talking as she went. "I really haven't the self-assertion to walk up to strange students and tell them the error of their ways. To me, that course of action savors too much of conceit of our own virtues. The best we can do is to be perfectly honorable about the examinations. Our ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... be popular at Rome, where there is so much self-assertion, such unbridled freedom, so much licence allowed to all men;—where there are so many courts of appeal open, so many means of help, where the people have so much power and the Senate so much authority; how grateful beyond measure will moderation be in the governor of Asia, a province ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... first attention, was year by year becoming more and more intolerable to the British spirit. It cannot be said that we acquiesced. Indeed, it must be admitted that our country-people usually met the German claims to be the supermen of Europe with rather unnecessary self-assertion. If an unmannerly German pushed before us at the counter of a booking-office we pushed him back; if he shouted over our shoulders at a telegraph office we told him to hold his tongue; and if, in stiflingly hot weather, he insisted (as he often ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... that accumulation. It must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy. Its residents must be emptied of all conceit of opinion and all self-assertion, and ready to arouse and interpret the public opinion of their neighborhood. They must be content to live quietly side by side with their neighbors, until they grow into a sense of relationship and mutual interests. Their neighbors are held apart by differences of ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Reformed Church at Hamburg Four Corners. But Charley Millard did not boast of these lights of his family, who would hardly have availed him in New York. Nor did he boast of anything, indeed; his taste was too fastidious for self-assertion of the barefaced sort. But if people persisted in fitting him out with an imaginary pedigree, just to please their own sense of congruity, why should he feel obliged to object to ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Silas had grown lazy, or he understood his position better than poor Austin, or he distrusted his powers, or possibly he really is in ill-health; but he objected his religious scruples. Your poor papa thought self-assertion possible, where an injured man has right to rely upon, but he had been very long out of the world, and the theory won't do. Nothing is harder than to get a person who has once been effectually slurred, received again. Silas, I think, was right. I ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... must beware of the refined selfishness which shrinks from righteous self-assertion because it is painful. You must make sure of your real motive; you must consider whether your sacrifice is not going to do more harm than good. But why do you come to me with your trouble? Why don't you go to ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... her normal position by one single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed face—a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it wore before it had grown ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... lands, neither had he any pride, they said, and was as happy sitting with any old woman, and sharing her tea, as at a lord's table. Nor was he less of a favourite at school, though, being incapable of self-assertion, his inborn consciousness of essential humanity rendering it next to impossible for him to claim anything, some of the bigger boys were less than friendly with him. One point in his conduct was in particular ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... a tone of self-assertion which grated a little on the Doctor's ear, in spite of his good-humour towards the speaker. "I don't want to go into that," he said. "A man never can say what his intentions may be ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... stiff and self-conscious. I should fancy there would be an opening for some clever woman to teach people how to dress for the occasion and how to sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the review with an eye to the market. So history ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... that he has left it to you?' asked Curdie, half in doubt from the self-assertion ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... did not pay attention to the Father Superior's threat that, if Brother Athanasius could not keep his tongue quiet, he must be sent away. Mark made friends with him, and when he found that, in spite of all his blatancy and self-assertion, Brother Athanasius could not keep the tears from his bright blue eyes whenever he spoke of Shorncliffe, he was sorry for him and vexed with himself for accepting the surrender of Sandgate priory so much as a matter of course, because he had no ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... transition is obvious and direct. Be the explanation what it may, the whole atmosphere of this school is evidently fatal to selfishness and self-assertion; and in such an atmosphere good manners will spring up spontaneously among the children, and will scarcely need to be inculcated, for the essence of courtesy is forgetfulness of self and consideration of others in the smaller affairs of social life. The general bearing of the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... sage holds in his embrace the one thing (of humility), and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged; from self-complacency, and therefore he acquires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... in the Revolution. It could seem for a moment as if, with the proclamation of the freedom and independence of the individual, all the barriers were down that hemmed in his free motion, as if there were no limits to his self-assertion. His separate personal life got a new amplitude, its possibilities expanded infinitely, and its interest was vastly increased. The whole new world of ideas and impulses urged the individual to pursue and to express his own personal experience of ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... have left Darwan without replying to my messages, you know," said Charteris. Sher Singh's self-assertion collapsed. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... with his clerk, who, instead of being overwhelmed with awe and shame at his unexpected appearance, was haughty and even defiant. One of the strongest impulses of this man was to crush out of those in his employ a spirit of independence and individual self-assertion. The idea of a part of his business machinery making such a jarring tumult in his own house! He proposed to instantly cast away the cause of friction, and insert a more stolid ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... constant et flamboyant automne. Something of the colour and fever of autumn is in all he wrote. Another writer since Cladel, who has probably never heard of him, has made heroes of peasants and vagabonds. But Maxim Gorki makes heroes of them, consciously, with a mental self-assertion, giving them ideas which he has found in Nietzsche. Cladel put into all his people some of his own passionate way of seeing 'scarlet,' to use Barbey d'Aurevilly's epithet: un rural ecarlate. Vehement ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... or Boston, he will find Unitarians in possession. So it is in many of the oldest towns founded by the American colonists of the seventeenth century. In their centres the parish churches, 'First,' 'Second,' or otherwise, stand forth challenging everybody's attention. There is no lack of self-assertion here, nothing at all like the shrinking of the Old English Presbyterian into obscure alleys and corners. Spacious, well appointed, and secure, these Unitarian parish churches, in the words of a popular Unitarian poet, 'look the whole world in the face, ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... operations and of great successes. "I have not a thought," he writes to the minister at Genoa, "on any subject separated from the immediate object of my command, nor a wish to be employed on any other service. So far the allies," he continues, with no unbecoming self-assertion, "are fortunate, if I may be allowed the expression, in having an officer of this character." He felt this singleness of mind, which is so rare a gift, to be the more important, from his very consciousness that the difficulty of his task approached the border ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... say of him, as He said once of that Apostle, 'I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.' Luther's enemies in the Romish Church have thought to see in these words an instance of boundless self-assertion on the part of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... responsibility of any kind. His keenest critic remarked that in the tentative period of political issues assumed by his party, Mr. Buchanan could always be found two paces to the rear, but in the hour of triumph he marched proudly in the front rank. He was not gifted with independence or self-assertion. His bearing towards Southern statesmen was derogatory to him as a man of spirit. His tone towards administrations of his own party was so deferential as almost to imply a lack of self-respect. He was not a leader among ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... as courage, temperance, and justice did not attain to their true meaning or yield their full implication. Paul, as we have seen, did not disparage heroism, but he thought that it was exhibited as much, if not more, in patience and forgiveness as in self-assertion and retaliation. What Christianity really revealed was a new type of manliness, a fresh application of temperance, a fuller development of justice. It showed the might of meekness, the power of gentleness, the heroism ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... making his own shoes and cutting his own and the peasants' grain, lived it, showing how he thought the world's work ought to be done. What were factories or the culture of the west to him in later years—Shakespeare or no Shakespeare? Destructive ideals of life. Competition, money and land greed, self-assertion—all things that are the anthitheses of Slavophilism—he shunned; mocking the palsied heart and poisoned ideals of the west, and indeed of the "upper class" section of his own land as no other Slavophile did. And following its teaching, he journeyed through self-renunciation ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon my word there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right. Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness—and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a certain ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... first to know and to do the will of the actual lord of the household. The father is the master without being a tyrant; the mother is a subject without being a slave; the children have not yet learned self-assertion in opposition to their parents: consequently, there is no constraint in family intercourse. The Seminole household is cheerful, its members are mutually confiding, and, in the Indian's way, intimate ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... consciousness also and is able to regard it as being the last of the "me" collections, then it will lose its sense of relativity and separation and the real individuality, the "I AM" consciousness, will have been realized. What do I mean? This "I AM" is not the petulant self-assertion of the relative ego. "I" but really means GOD CONSCIOUSNESS as perfect Existence, perfect Knowledge or perfect Bliss. It means the realization of an Infinite and Eternal Self or Individuality. "He that has lost the self has ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... Bowles of Cambridge, and Rev. Olympia Brown, of Racine, Wis., opened the various sessions with prayer—striking evidence of the growing self-assertion of the sex, and the rapid progress of events towards the full recognition of the fact that woman's hour has come. Touching deeper and tenderer chords in the human soul than words could reach, the inspiring strains of the celebrated organist, Mr. Ryder, rose ever and anon, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... incessantly buzzing up and down and striking against a window pane, we two tenacious and autocratic persons tried to thrust upon one another our own peculiar individuality. My mother with a more aggressive love, I more on the defensive, but in my self-assertion, none the less militant. Possessed by the universal conceit of the reasonableness of our feelings and convictions, neither one of us noticed that this was simply a struggle between two natures whereof one was trying to subject the other. And accustomed as almost ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... that they will continue to displace men in many of the simpler mechanical jobs. Many individual women wage earners have risen to tasks of responsibility and direction. This number will be greatly added to by improvement in the education of women for industry and by their continued self-assertion. Nevertheless, it is likely that the great bulk of women wage earners will continue to be employed as at present upon relatively ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... our sakes, so must we empty 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, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun of Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, "The angels in heaven were lately learning his last pieces." He says, "The fishes shed their pearls, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... expense of his peculiar ideas of personal freedom—and he was forced, in consequence of this abnegation, to submit to an executive government as strong, one might almost say as tyrannous, as any which a Republic has ever displayed—a government which was a product of the restless spirit of self-assertion and self-aggrandisement which the Roman felt in himself, and therefore had sufficient ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... in awe; and he calculated that this feeling, if it did not make his task easy would yet take from it some of its difficulty. Emily would be, not exactly cowed, by the prospect of Lady Milborough's dinner, but perhaps a little reduced from her usual self-assertion. He would say a word to her when he was dressing, assuring her that he had not intended to animadvert in the slightest degree ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... instance, to exclude others. 'Tis like the tension of a muscle, this constant keeping the consciousness aware by repeating "Mine—mine—mine and not theirs; not theirs, but mine." And this wearisome act of self-assertion leaves little power for appreciation, for the appreciation which others can have quite equally, and without which there is no reality at ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... longs for some means of employment by which to procure at least sufficient for her own personal expenses, would cause him a new and strange sensation, did she not deem it her duty to suppress all evidence, even the existence, of such self-assertion, and quietly shoulder this with the rest, as a portion of the burden to be borne through the valley of humiliation into which she has entered, and wherein, by reason of the especial power granted her of knowing and loving God, she usually finds herself Heaven's own missionary, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... him with a storm of words. M. Emanuel was eloquent; but Madame Panache was voluble. A system of fierce antagonism ensued. Instead of laughing in his sleeve at his fair foe, with all her sore amour-propre and loud self-assertion, M. Paul detested her with intense seriousness; he honoured her with his earnest fury; he pursued her vindictively and implacably, refusing to rest peaceably in his bed, to derive due benefit from his meals, or even serenely to relish his cigar, till she was fairly rooted out of the establishment. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Alden and with herself. Why couldn't the man go to sleep? It must be past midnight, now, and she would walk, if she wanted to. Defiantly and in a triumph of self-assertion, she went to the open window and peered out into the stillness, illumined by neither moon nor stars. The night had the suffocating quality ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... innocent admiration for his wisdom, which seemed to act like a nerve stimulant. A subtle physician might possibly have reached the conclusion, had he been fully aware of all the circumstances, that Ida, with her radiant superiority, her voiceless but none the less positive self-assertion over her husband, was actually a means of spiritual depression which had reacted upon his physical nature. Nobody knows exactly to what extent any of us are responsible for the lives of others, and ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... herself to her docile, gentle sister-in-law, treating her like a sort of embodiment of her better mind. Violet's serenity and lowliness seemed to breathe peace on a storm-tossed ocean; and her want of self-assertion to make Theodora proud of submitting to her slightest wish without a struggle. Those vehement affections were winding themselves about her and her children; and the temper that had flown into fierce insubordination ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what is known of his disposition it seems probable that the sarcasms aimed by public writers at his infirmity inclined him to justify their attacks rather than to disprove them by his subsequent demeanor, and that some of his most extravagant outbursts of self-assertion were designed in a spirit of bravado and reckless good-nature to increase the laughter which satirists had raised against him. However this may be, his conduct drew upon him blows that would have ruffled the composure of any less self-complacent or less amiable man. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... his imagination knew no bounds to its sweep, oftentimes even disdaining the bounds of art in its audacity and impatience. This big, virile nature, thwarted and embittered by opposition, became hardened into violent self-assertion; this naturally resolute will settled back into fierce obstinacy; this fine nature, sensitive and sincere, got torn and ragged with passion under the stress of his unfortunate life. But, at one breath ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... hard-favoured, it cannot be denied that she had a certain style about her. Some ugly people do. Country style, no doubt; but these things are relative; and in a smart black silk, with sheer muslin neckerchief and a close-fitting little cap, her natural self-possession and self-assertion were very well set off. Very different from Diana's calm grace and simplicity; the mother and daughter were alike in nothing beyond the fact that each had character. Perhaps that is a common fact in such a region and neighbourhood; for many of the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... suffer, buoyed up, poor people, by the conviction that by so doing they will prevent the Prussians from entering the town. If one of them ventures to hint at a capitulation, she is set on by her neighbours. Self-assertion, however, carries the day. Jules and Jaques will hereafter quaff many a petit verre to their own heroism; and many a story will they inflict upon their long-suffering friends redounding to their own special glory. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... that an immense change has taken place. It is a correlate of the transformed character of the gods, and of the parallel disciplining of men's valuations. In the words of Fosdick, prayer may be considered as dominant desire. But it is also a way of securing domination over desire. It is indeed self-assertion; sometimes it is the making of one's supreme claim, as when life reaches its most tragic crisis; yet it is, even in the same act, submission to an over-self. Here, then, is our greater problem as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... interference to this planning, from no other than Flossy herself. To the utter amazement of each of the girls, she quietly refused to be taken to Saratoga; nor did she offer any other excuse for this astonishing piece of self-assertion than that she was having a good time and meant to finish it. And to this she adhered with a pertinacity that was very bewildering, because it was so very new. Marion laughed over her writing, to which she had returned the moment dinner ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... persecuting, in Tom's reproof of her for this unnecessary act. "I don't like my sister to do such things," said Tom, "I'll take care that the debts are paid, without your lowering yourself in that way." Surely there was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and self-assertion of that little speech; but Maggie held it as dross, overlooking the grains of gold, and took Tom's rebuke as one of her outward crosses. Tom was very hard to her, she used to think, in her long night-watchings,—to her who had always ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... intention; but as her sobs subsided she felt more the hurt of the treatment she had received. And this hurt stirred within her a self-assertion that was becoming a more prominent characteristic of Ruth every day. Why should she relapse into tears because her chum had done a cruel thing? Hurt as she was, why should she give The Fox the satisfaction of knowing she ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... is on trial. Self-assertion and dictation bring their own penalty with them. That so experienced a leader as Colin Robertson, who had been in both Companies, who knew the native element, and was acquainted with the daring and recklessness of the Nor'-Wester leaders, hesitated about demolishing ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... surrounding light. He was as certain of the truth of the presentation as if a gradual revival of memory had brought with it the clear conviction of its own accuracy. His explanation of the phenomenon was, that, in some cases, all that prevents a vivid conception from assuming objectivity, is the self-assertion of external objects. The gradual approach of darkness cannot surprise and isolate the phantasm; but the suddenness of the lightning could and did, obliterating everything without, and leaving that over which it had no power standing alone, and ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... arm, and the horse with drooped head walked on the other side of him, while Mr. Thorold led me on in this fashion. I do not know how far. I do not know what he said or what I answered, except in bits. I know that he made me answer him. I was not capable of the least self-assertion. What startled me at last out of this abstraction, was the sudden fear that we might be observed. I looked up and said something about it. Only to my confusion; for Thorold laughed at me, softly, but how he laughed - at me. I ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... some of the hard glitter of such a jewelled fabrication, as well as its splendor. Cecilia Ingles, who could not but admire her beauty and her readiness, thought that her tone was a little too hard, and that in her excess of aplomb she pushed self-possession to the verge of self-assertion. Rosy, in fact, entered society not with the tentative step and slow advance of one who cautiously feels an unaccustomed way, but by a single confident and intuitive leap. As she stood there beside her mother, dressed in a pale yellow gown and playing carelessly with her bunch of red roses, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... 18, 1830. Two of these are signed with his initials, but the one here given has no signature. That it is his is made evident by the fact that all but one stanza of it appears in "Moll Pitcher," published two years later. It was probably because of the self-assertion of the concluding lines that the omitted stanza was canceled, and these lines reveal the ambition then ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... will bring his usual iron rule to bear upon this new element in the household, else her impertinent self-assertion will be unendurable. Will you be ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... thought of Esther, giddy, flirting, useless Esther, as Tom's wife, was almost more than she could bear. The sting of it put even into her crushed humility a certain honest self-assertion. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... English statesmen to avoid the suspicion that, on the sea as on land, the Germans meant by liberty the right to unlimited self-assertion. Common prudence dictated close attention to the German Navy Laws; especially as they proved capable of unexpected acceleration. The 'Two Power' standard, under the stress of German competition, became increasingly difficult to maintain, and English Liberals were ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... that, as insoluble, they are also negligible problems. To all such stupid moralizing it prefers the click of the castanets! The law, then, of this naturalism always and everywhere is the law of rebellion, of ruthless self-assertion, of whim and impulse, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... modest politeness and feeble little jokes. He has never been softened by either, but continues to "chuck" the worst places out to me (no matter how early I arrive, the best have always been given to the speculators), and to frown down my attempts at self-assertion. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined communities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; and throughout the minor States the most advanced of the Liberals were opposed to a closer union with Berlin, from dislike of its absolutist traditions ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... result of the positive and negative reaction from the primary centers of consciousness. From the first great center of sympathy the child is drawn to a lovely oneing with the mother. From the first great center of will comes the independent self-assertion which locates the mother as something outside, something objective. And as a result of this twofold notion, a twofold increase in the child. First, the dynamic establishment of the individual consciousness in the infant: and then the first shadow of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... was proposed to build ocean-going vessels on the Ohio that should carry the produce of the interior down the Mississippi and thence abroad through the open port of New Orleans. The idea was typically Western in its arrogant originality and confident self-assertion. Two vessels were built: the brig St. Clair, of 110 tons, at Marietta, and the Monongahela Farmer, of 250 tons, at Elizabeth on the Monongahela. The former reached Cincinnati April 27, 1801; the latter, loaded with 750 barrels of flour, ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... touch; a destiny enduring and immortal. The door to this larger destiny can only be opened after we have laid down the weapons of egotism; after we have become veritably humane. There must be a death to militant self-assertion, a new birth to wide and universal purposes, before this larger life can be understood ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... gratitude. She had found an object in life, had splendidly emerged from her old sensations of incompleteness and inferiority. No longer that morbid humility struggling in vain to transform itself into a violent self-assertion. Not since she had become the virtual creatrix of beauty, even ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... two hostesses and their humbler though proud dependent. The social evolution of Mrs. Bradley and Louise Macy from some previous Minty was neither remote nor complete; the self-sufficient independence, ease, and quiet self-assertion were alike in each. The superior position was still too recent and accidental for either to resent or criticise qualities that were common to both. At least, this was what he thought when not abandoning himself to the gratification of a convalescent appetite; ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... his answer; and Matilda's eyes were all glittering, while her little head took its inexpressible air of self-assertion. ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... Gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper,—you could not use any of these forces, if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred,—that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... inevitable that such a man should make bitter enemies: his preferences, his position, his activity, his business shrewdness, his necessary self-assertion, yet must have created secret hate and jealousy even when open malevolence might not dare to show itself. And to the these natural results of personal antagonism or opposition were afterwards superadded various resentments—irrational, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... infringed our own, the resort should have been to the remedy with which nations defend their rights, as distinct from their interest. The American people, then poor, and habituated to colonial dependence, failed to create for themselves in due time the power necessary to self-assertion; nor did they as a nation realize, what men like John Adams and Gouverneur Morris saw and preached, that in the complicated tangle of warring interests which constitutes every contemporary situation, the influence of any single factor depends, not merely upon its own value, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... long letter to 'mamma,' to the outpouring of confidence to the almost unknown friend she had learned to trust. But common-sense and a certain docility, which was strongly developed in her, in spite of her superficial self-assertion and blunt, even abrupt outspokenness, made her ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... that of the Old Man nor of his wife. It was the voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature self-assertion can give. It was the face of a small boy that looked up at theirs,—a face that might have been pretty and even refined but that it was darkened by evil knowledge from within, and dirt and hard experience from without. He had a blanket around his shoulders and had evidently just risen from ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... inn brake, by undulating roads and scented valleys, shamed his cheek to a little flush of self-assertion. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... this confession, frowns, and administers a tart reproof. He describes Eve, somewhat grudgingly, as "an outside—fair, no doubt," and peremptorily teaches Adam the duties of self-appreciation and self-assertion:— ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... poisoning, the procuring of abortion, and the fomentation of conspiracies in private families. These facts speak much for the superior civilization of the Italian people considered as a whole. We discover a common fund of intelligence, vice, superstition, prejudice, enthusiasm, craft, devotion, self-assertion, possessed by the race at large. Only in districts remote from civil life did witchcraft assume those anti-social and repulsive features which are familiar to Northern nations. Elsewhere it penetrated, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there to find it in its true perspective. To see ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... many rights and privileges as these other people have?" The aristocrat who descends is always thinking, "Why shouldn't these other people have as many rights and privileges as I have?" The one type begets aggressive self-assertion, the other type begets a certain gentle spirit of self-effacement. You don't often find men of the aristocratic class with any ethical element in them—their hereditary antecedents, their breeding, their environment, are all hostile ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... restraint on Buckley Simmons, her present companion. His immobile face, with its heavy, good features and slow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loud self-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his clean shaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatient opinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmons was a close second. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer |
