"Self-help" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the Thanatopsis ought to help the poor of the town. She was ever so correct and modern. She did not, she said, want charity for them, but a chance of self-help; an employment bureau, direction in washing babies and making pleasing stews, possibly a municipal fund for home-building. "What do you think of my plans, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as Chaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank, grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help, blind to all earthly things save that glaring, bait, thrust between them in a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring "x ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... now to perform Mrs. Birtwell found a delicate one. She soon saw that Ethel had a sensitive feeling of independence, and that in aiding her she would have to devise some means of self-help that would appear to be more largely remunerative than it really was. From a simple gratuity the girl shrank, and it was with some difficulty that she was able to induce her to take a small sum of money as an advance on some almost pretended service, the nature of which ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... considered justified in murdering their personal enemies. Among all classes it has long been customary to deal individually with those who have committed certain crimes. The horrible legal conditions existing in both Spain and Italy have developed among these peoples the idea of "self-help." They have taken law into their own hands, and, according to their lights and passions, have meted out their rude justice. Assassination has been defended in these countries, as lynching has been defended recently, as some will remember, by a most eminent ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... put before them the proper authorities, than to spend your time in turning for them to the volume and page. This, for two reasons—first, it leaves your own time free to help other readers, or to attend to the ever-waiting library work; and, secondly, it induces habits of research and self-help on the part of the reader. It is enough for the librarian to act as an intelligent guide-post, to point the way; to travel the road is the business of the reader himself. Therefore, let the visitor in quest of a quotation, look it ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... the English. We were never intended to be a nation of shopkeepers, if a shopkeeper is doomed to be merely a shopkeeper, which of course he is not. Our brutal commercialism has been a temporary aberration; the quintessential Englishman is not the hero of Smiles' 'Self-help'; he is Raleigh, Drake, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, or Wordsworth, with a pleasant spice of Dickens. He is, in a word, an idealist who has not quite forgotten that he is descended from an independent ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... of cold water and rough toweling, and rosy in her old blue sailor-suit, came downstairs, she found her mother frying pancakes for her in the kitchen blue with smoke from the hot fat. She was touched, almost shocked by this strange lapse from the tradition of self-help of the house, and said with rough self-accusation: "My goodness! The idea of your waiting on me!" She snatched away the handle of the frying-pan and turned the cakes deftly. Then, on a sudden impulse, she spoke to her mother, standing by the sink. "I came back because I found I didn't ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... to prevent pauperism, and that no help should be given where it led to dependence and reliance upon charity. Registration, investigation, prevention of duplication of alms, and the fostering of self-help were the methods brought to bear by Dr. Tuckerman in the organization ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... great Depression, however, the laissez faire tenet of self-help was supplanted by the belief that it is peculiarly the duty of government to help those who are unable to help themselves; and to sustain remedial legislation enacted in conformity with the latter philosophy, the Court had to revise extensively its previously formulated concepts ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... promoting kinds of knowledge, enterprise or research that bring no certain remuneration proportioned to their value; in assisting poor young men of ability and industry to develop their special talents; in encouraging in their many different forms thrift, self-help and co-operation; in alleviating the inevitable suffering that follows some great catastrophe on land or sea, or great transitions of industry, or great fluctuations and depressions in class prosperity; in giving the means of healthy recreation ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the development of its Social Work on the lines of self-help, self-management and self-support. Whenever a new development came under consideration, the question arose—How is it to be financed? The work they had in hand at present took all their funds. One of their great underlying principles was that of the necessity of self-support, without ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... vital, condition of any sound legislation for the relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial qualities, or weaken these vast voluntary organisations of self-help which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy is ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of dreams, you who while your companions play and sleep will toil upward in the night! You have read Mr. Smiles' "Self-Help," Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," and so strengthened attack with confidence "French Without a Master," "Bookkeeping in Six Lessons." With a sigh to yourselves you turn aside from the alluring streets, from the bright, bewitching eyes, into the stuffy air of Birkbeck Institutions, Polytechnic ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... them a wider life and more variety of career. While the special graces of the feminine character do not appear to have suffered, there has been produced a sort of independence and a capacity for self-help which are increasingly valuable as the number of unmarried women increases. More resources are open to an American woman who has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way of employment, but for the occupation of her mind and tastes, than ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... failing. It was a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses in the son throughout the passing years were winked at. Never from his mother did Lawrence know that sympathy, sometimes hard, often abrupt, never pampering, which breeds self-help. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... "You'll only have to work out of hours as a carpenter, take odd jobs in your vacations, live plainly, and there you are." In England there are few schools where such a plan would be practicable; but in rough-and-ready America, where self-help is no disgrace, there are many, and they are all well attended. In the neighbouring town of Chester, a petty Baptist sect had started a young school which they named Geauga Seminary (there are no plain schools in America—they are all ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... effects an insurance with the savings bank so that his repayments terminate at his death. On the 31st of December 1903 nearly 25,000 advances were in course of repayment. In Germany, building societies are recognized as a form of societies for self-help, but are not many in number, being overshadowed by the great organization of credit societies founded by Schulze-Delitzsch. In other countries there has been no special legislation for building societies similar to that of the United Kingdom, and though ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... escutcheoned and fame-enrolled, is even more starvation diet than a future of affection and self-confidence. No help was to be had from either of their homes; it was the day of self-help ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... abolishes private property, and places the control of the capital, labor, and combined industries of the country in the hands of the state. The essence of modern socialism is the appeal to state-help and the weakening of individual self-help. Collectivism is also a term now used by German and French writers to describe an organization of the industries of a country under a collective instead of an individual management. Collectivism is but the French expression for the system ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... and who, if he fell, would jump up quickly, saying, "O, that didn't hurt." Which child had been better protected—the one who had been cared for by an overindulgent parent, or the one who, by judicious stimulation to self-help, had learned ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... bewildered, so utterly helpless, so agonizingly delusioned, so pitifully searching for some familiar face; something to make it discover its lost self. Oh, what power ever made us so tender, so incapable of self-help, as to have us undergo and feel such terrific suffering! It is injustice enough when adults are made to suffer mental and physical ills, without inflicting such a ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... think it is a good fable of self-help. Does it quite illustrate the case? I mean, the virtue of impatience. But I like the fable and the moral; and I think it would do good if it were made popular, though it would be hard to condense it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these chapters the student should begin by practising that self-help which is essential to success. He must read with pen and notebook. It is with the object of compelling this valuable habit that no illustrative examples are given in the text. It would have been easy to fill many pages with script illustrations, but experience shows that a much greater ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... the unbroken warlike spirit of the times of Deborah and David," Ewald further remarks. But is there in the fourth (third) chapter any trace of self-help on the part of the people? Judgment upon the Gentiles is executed without any human instrumentality, by God,—not by His earthly, but by His heavenly "heroes," who are sent down [Pg 295] from heaven to earth, and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. In one word, he was a ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... was the career of Paul Jones, the winds did not always set in his favor. Many times was his life bark driven through the waters of bitter disappointment. But "all that he was, and all that he did, and all that he knew, was the result of self-help to a degree unexampled in the ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... amount of assistance will give a jellyfish a backbone. No outside propping will make some men stand erect. All material help from without is useful only in so far as it develops moral strength within. And some men seem to have lost even the very faculty of self-help. There is an immense lack of common sense and of vital energy ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... nature of the subject nationality becomes soft and dependent. Instead of working out its own salvation, it looks to the government for direction or assistance in every difficulty. Atrophy destroys its power of action. It loses the political sense and grows incapable of self-help or self-reliance. The stronger faculties, if not extinguished, become mutilated. In Ireland, even to-day, we see the result of domination in the continued belief that the British Government which has brought the country to ruin possesses the sole power of restoring ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... time that life consisted not in getting, but in giving. It's a wonderful giving, this giving of one's self, and people do appreciate it. When you have ministered to a person's self-respect, when you have contributed to his self-reliance, when you have inspired him to self-help, you have given him something. And you are conscious of it, and so is he, though you both find it hard to express in the old terms. All the old Christmas cheer is in these reciprocities of friendship ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... expected to develop an effective program to respond to an earthquake or a credible earthquake prediction in that part of the State. The emphasis is being placed on public safety, reduction of property damage, self-help on the part of individuals, socioeconomic impacts, improved response and long-range recovery planning, mitigation activities, and public participation for both the post-prediction and immediate post-earthquake periods. This pilot effort is expected to be usable in other highly seismic areas of ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... from those who have known the case over a long period, preferably through the charity organization society. Actual relief may be required temporarily and must be adequate to the occasion, but the problem of the visitor is to devise a method of self-help, and to furnish the courage necessary to undertake and carry it through. It is important to consider in this connection the character and ancestry of the family, its environment and the social ideals and expectations of its members, if the steps taken are ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... and execution, more like his "Self-Help" than any of his other works. Mr. Smiles always writes pleasantly, but he writes best when he is telling anecdotes, and using them to enforce a moral that he is too wise to preach about, although he is not afraid to state it plainly. By means of it "Self-Help" at once became a ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... marketable. Far more important, however, than these not inconsiderable economic advantages are the social benefits which are derived by bringing people together to achieve in a very definite and practical way the aim of all cooperative effort—self-help ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... Breathing," "Food Stored," and other suggestive and important subjects. Throughout abundant illustrations were presented impressing upon these Indian boys and girls important lessons in independence and self-control and self-help essential to development and progress. Santee is to be commended surely for this new departure, which must prove not only interesting but of permanent ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... a sequel to "Self-Help," and "Character." It might, indeed, have appeared as an introduction to these volumes; for Thrift is the basis of Self-Help, and the foundation of much that ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... was therefore hard to get at. Moreover, even if a decision was obtained from it, there was no way for the aggrieved party to secure the execution of the judgment, for the emperor had no force sufficient to coerce the larger states. The natural result was a resort to self-help. Neighborhood war was permitted by law if only some courteous preliminaries were observed. For instance, a prince or town was required to give warning three days in advance before attacking ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... against a thrust in the side or the back no skill or coolness could defend him. And presently he was so jammed up by retreating soldiers that he could not use his arms, and then he was quite powerless for self-help. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... in reading the more practical books offered to boys in our own time, if we had had them. There were some books then on scientific subjects, reduced to the comprehension of the young; but not so many as there are now. One of my uncles recommended the works of Samuel Smiles—"Self-Help" I think was his favourite; but Samuel Smiles never appealed to me. My small allowance, paid weekly, could not have been affected by "Thrift", and when my uncle quoted passages from this tiresome book I astounded him by replying, in a phrase ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... than even the influence of the Cromwells and other Puritan gentlemen, we may attribute that strong Calvinist element which has endured for now nigh three centuries in the fen; and attribute, too, that sturdy independence and self-help which drove them of old out of Boston town, to seek their fortunes first in Holland, then in Massachusetts over sea. And that sturdy independence and self-help is not gone. There still lives in them some of the spirit ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... little Lilian, and of the sick mother and baby, with Caroline's sad confession of distress, and of her need of sympathy and help, wakened springs of love and pity in the young girl's heart. She forgot that she had anything to forgive. All her half-formed schemes for self-help and self-culture were at once discarded, and she ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... both. It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than 5,000,000 people, and has opened to each one of them a career of freedom and usefulness. It has given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both races by making labor more honorable to the one and more necessary to the other. The influence of this force will grow greater and bear richer fruit ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various |
