"Self-sufficiency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which are simple, and requiring less of ingenuity and skill than those which engage the attention of the other portion of their fellow-creatures, are less favourable to the engendering of self-conceit and self-sufficiency, so utterly at variance with that lowliness of spirit which constitutes the best ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... disconcerted; if any of the ministers of grace fall a sacrifice to the violence of those whom they go to bless in the name of the Lord—these are events which ought to exercise our faith and patience, to wean us from self-sufficiency, to teach where our strength lies, and where our dependence must be fixt; but not to enfeeble hope nor relax diligence. Let us not "despise the day of small things." Let us not overlook, as an important matter, the very existence ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... trail of smoke still hung, dissolving to a thread. The fleeing figure of Leff brought no comments to their lips. They did not think about him, his cowardice was as unimportant to them in their mutual engrossment as his body was to the indifferent self-sufficiency of the landscape. They knew he was hastening that he might be first in the camp to tell his own story and set himself right with the others before they came. They did not care. They did not even laugh at it. They would do that later when they had returned to the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... nation, may cherish visions of self-sufficiency, may stretch its tentacles forward to the consumer and backwards to its supplies of raw material; but each fresh extension of its activities serves only to multiply its points of contact with the outside world. When those points are reached, the largest business, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... I always do, at this particular stage, with his compatriots: not so much perhaps for the compliment to myself and my poor country, as for the revelation (which is ever fresh to me) of Britannic self-sufficiency and taste. And he was so far softened by my gratitude as to add a word of praise on the American method of lacing sails. "You're ahead of us in lacing sails," he said. "You can say that with ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... within their red border, an open smile rested on his thick lips, which, in parting, discovered a range of long yellow teeth. His face, otherwise, expressed nothing in particular. It was a nearly equal mixture of timidity, self-sufficiency, and contentment. It was quite impossible to concede the least intelligence to the possessor of such a phiz. One involuntarily looked for a goitre. The retail haberdashers, who, having cheated for thirty years in their threads and needles, retire with large incomes, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty Italians, to say nothing of a number ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... will know that this is your practice, and many a one will repose in the belief that you consider him or her a Christian, and you will thus increase the number, already unfortunately too large, of those who maintain the form and pretenses of piety without its power; whose hearts are filled with self-sufficiency and spiritual pride, and perhaps zeal for the truths and external duties of religion, while the real spirit of piety has no place there. They trust to some imaginary change, long since passed by, and which has ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater than their own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Utopian philosophy and too much insistence on the self-sufficiency of the individual, Walden has proved a regenerative force in the lives of many readers who have not passed the plastic stage. The book develops a love for even commonplace natural objects, and, like poetry, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... of the lightning when it strikes its object. I stood confounded, yet enlightened, all ablaze!—but the subject of this discovery did not seem in the least to apprehend it, or to believe it possible, in his mad, mole-like effrontery of self-sufficiency, that by his own ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... he retorted indignantly. "Perchance thou wouldst like to go to the Continent, and swagger through Europe clad in thy loud-patterned checks and thine insular self-sufficiency." ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... noise as he could while parleying with Berenice, he at last obtained speech of Lucien; and, arrogant publisher though he was, he came in with the radiant air of a courtier in the royal presence, mingled, however, with a certain self-sufficiency and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... deception the senses might be generally, and as sole and primary proofs unsupported by antecedent grounds, 'praecognitis vel preconcessis.' And that St. John never thought of advancing the senses to any such dignity and self-sufficiency as proofs, it would be easy to shew from twenty passages of his Gospel. I say, again and again, that I myself greatly prefer the general doctrine of our own Church respecting the Eucharist,—'rem credimus, modum nescimus,'—to ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... its aspect has changed. Our fathers are not butchered in feuds, our sons are not sold into slavery, and except in war or in street robberies we are not insulted by brute physical force. Nevertheless we are cheated by scoundrels, oppressed by financial tyranny, wounded by injustice, suppressed by self-sufficiency, rasped by harsh tempers, annoyed by snobbery, and often ruined by unconscious selfishness. We long to strike back at the human traits which have wronged us, and the satiric depiction of hateful characters whose seeming virtues are ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... origin, had resided since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To her uncle, a surgeon in Norwich, she was mainly indebted for her education. Her home-life was not a happy one, and unquestionably its austere influences did much to develop in her that colossal egotism and self-sufficiency which marred her character, and has left its injurious impress on her writings. She tells us that only twice in her childhood did she experience any manifestation of tenderness—once when she was suffering from ear-ache, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... two plain things. There have been people in the Christian Church who have said, 'We have all the Spirit, and therefore we do not need one another.' There may be isolation, and self-sufficiency, and a host of other evils coming in, if we only grasp the thought, 'The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man,' but they are all corrected if we go on and say, 'to profit withal.' For every one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... despotic self-sufficiency of this easy and indifferent existence may expose us to taunts; but how sublimely ineffective the taunts which are never heard and which, if heard through echoing mischance, would provoke but serene smiles; for have we not avoided ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... truth he did not look it. Cornelia's glance took in the magnificent proportions of the man, the indefinable air of birth and breeding, the faultless toilette; the strong, dark features. To one and all she paid a tribute of admiration, but the expression on the face was of concentrated self-sufficiency. At this point admiration stopped dead, to be replaced by an uneasy dread. Was Geoffrey Greville, even as his friend, frankly indifferent to everything but his own amusement, and if so, what of poor Elma and her dream? It was an awful reflection that in such a case she herself would be largely ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... at ease and by choice, and had no evils to suffer or to fear; yet the imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens, a flattering notion of self-sufficiency, a placid indulgence of voluntary delusions, a secure expansion of the fancy, or a cool concentration of the mental powers. The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... character had not been at fault. Hers was a brave soul, not easily daunted or discouraged, better worthy of this life which was teaching its stoicism, charity and self-abnegation than of that other life which denied by self-sufficiency their very existence—a gallant spirit which for once soared free of the worldly, venal and time-serving. It pleased him to think it was by his means that she had been bought into his valley of contentment ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... victorious close before she had dispatched half the troops she could easily have spared. She had not entered the conflict with any motives of aggrandizement or of territorial extension. She felt her self-sufficiency and could well afford proudly to refuse to join the League of Nations on the ground that she did not wish to be involved in European wrangles or sacrifice a tittle ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... new lady which was quite foreign to all her experience,—a bewildering grace and ease of manner arising from high education and social cultivation, that confused her and robbed her of all her usual self-sufficiency; and for once in her life she checked her customary volubility and decided that it was perhaps best to say as little as possible till she saw exactly how things were going to turn out. Miss Maryllia was very kind,—but who could ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and they hated the idolaters who gloried with haughty self-sufficiency in their intellectual inheritance; the traditions of a brilliant past. They, who had been persecuted and contemned, now had the upper hand; they were in power, and the more insolently they treated their opponents, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... distressed women under their protection," returned Leo promptly. "Every woman who needs my help is my sister," he added with a look of self-sufficiency which ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... the face commonly give a man a certain fierce and martial air, which sets him off to advantage; but it was quite the contrary with him, and this remarkable plaister so well suited his mysterious looks, that it seemed an addition to his gravity and self-sufficiency. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... imbibing instinctively of what is eminently a fine, manly, and graceful convention. Its good side is a certain chivalrous code of courage, honour, efficiency, courtesy, and duty. Its fault is a sense of perfect rightness and self-sufficiency, an overvaluing of sport and games, an undervaluing of intellectual interests, enthusiasm, ideas. It is not that the sense of effortless superiority is to be emphasized or insisted upon—modesty entirely forbids ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to laugh at the French for their braggadocio propensities, and intolerable vanity about La France, la gloire, l'Empereur, and the like; and yet I think in my heart that the British Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is without a parallel. There is always something uneasy in a Frenchman's conceit. He brags with so much fury, shrieking, and gesticulation; yells out so loudly that the Francais ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for timber and several minerals, Finland depends on imports of raw materials, energy, and some components for manufactured goods. Because of the climate, agricultural development is limited to maintaining self-sufficiency in basic products. Forestry, an important export earner, provides a secondary occupation for the rural population. Rapidly increasing integration with Western Europe - Finland was one of the 11 countries joining the euro monetary system (EMU) on 1 ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... feel its equal. It is courtesy without condescension; affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity without snide. It weighs sixteen ounces to the pound without the package, and it doesn't need a four-colored label ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... and instruments of war are only part of what has to be considered if we are to provide for the supreme matter of national self-sufficiency and security in all its aspects. There are other great matters which will be thrust upon our attention whether we will or not. There is, for example, a very pressing question of trade and shipping ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... end of July Maud was married. Between Mr Dolomore and Jasper existed no superfluous kindness, each resenting the other's self-sufficiency; but Jasper, when once satisfied of his proposed brother-in-law's straightforwardness, was careful not to give offence to a man who might some day serve him. Provided this marriage resulted in moderate happiness to Maud, it was undoubtedly a magnificent stroke of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... impatiently to be caressed and admired by Margaret. His real feelings had been told to her, because she flattered them and shared them, he had been reserved and guarded with the father who would have perceived and repressed that ambition and the self-sufficiency which he himself had never known to exist, nor regarded as aught but sober truth. It had been his bane, that he had been always too sensible to betray outwardly his self-conceit, in any form that could lead to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saying a word? She knew well the arguments he would adduce! Henceforward and for ever there would be a gulf between them! The poor religion he had would never serve to keep him straight! What was it but a compromise with pride and self-sufficiency! It could bear no such strain! He acknowledged God, but not God reconciled in Christ, only God such as unregenerate man would have him! And when Ian came home, he would be ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... You blacken your crime by your self-sufficiency. It ill becomes one who ... is accused of anything to set ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms abruptly imported into political and administrative language, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... cruelly his best friend. He took no thought of another Friend, still kinder, whom he was wounding. And indeed had Donald been able, by an effort of his will, to be at that moment all his uncle desired, he would have done so. But he had cast away his anchor, in a moment of self-sufficiency and it would be hard to find it again. He could not know that a season was coming swiftly upon him, a season of storm and stress, when that discarded anchor would be his only stay, and the nearness with which he came to missing his hold upon it forever changed ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... and drew up a smoking horse at my Lord Advocate's door. I had a written word for Doig, my lord's private hand that was thought to be in all his secrets—a worthy, little plain man, all fat and snuff and self-sufficiency. Him I found already at his desk, and already bedabbled with maccabaw, in the same anteroom where I rencountered with James More. He read the note scrupulously through like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and in fact I held his tenets scarcely short of blasphemy; they were such as I had never heard before, and his congregation, which was numerous, were turning up their ears and drinking in his doctrines with the utmost delight; for Oh they suited their carnal natures and self-sufficiency to a hair! He was actually holding it forth, as a fact, that "it was every man's own blame if he was not saved!" What horrible misconstruction! And then he was alleging, and trying to prove from ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... ourselves and antiquity. Since the decline in the study of Greek and Latin, this is a factor to be seriously considered. It is the fashion today to berate the past, to speak of the dead hand of tradition, and to flatter ourselves with the delusion of self-sufficiency. To be sure, the aim of education is never to pile up information but to "fit your mind for any sort of exertion, to make it keen and flexible." But the best way to encompass this is to feed the mind on ideas, and ideas are not produced every day, nor for that matter every ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... behind the blinds into the streets. The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City's face. The fretful noises of the day have come again. Silence, her lover of the night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away. And you, gentle Reader, return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... years and travel for this result. If they had had a loftier opinion of themselves, their indifference to others might have made them offensive; but with their modest estimate of their own value in the world, they could have all the comfort of self-sufficiency, without its vulgarity. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Churches' surrender? It was through their internal quarrels; through their fruitless controversies and paralysing mutual accusations and self-sufficiency. ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... happy couples with children gave her and which made her shun other women and their company, the fear that her husband was unfaithful (which fear was probably justified), and the lack of any fixed or definite purpose, the lack of a great pride or self-sufficiency, brought on symptoms that necessitated her removal to ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... had opened. It was then he had hoped he might be far from Valmy the day his passion of soul was stirred. It expressed his mood of the moment, but now he knew he had said more, much more, than he had meant, as youth so often does in its gay self-sufficiency, and the words as they stood—if Tristan had caught them—were no commendation to either favour or confidence. How could the King trust him when his foolish satire had so plainly hinted that he did not trust the King? It would be unreasonable: faith begets faith. For an instant it flashed ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... of it. Now and then Miss Burns came in to inspect his work and exchange a few words with him. He liked this. Her companionable presence soothed him and even made him happy. Her figure, her gestures, her conversation seemed to be the very essence of firmness and repose, and her self-sufficiency always aroused Frederick's silent admiration. When he told her how perceptibly his new work acted as a sedative upon him, she replied that she had had the same experience, and if he did not fly off at a tangent but remained steadily at the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was I urged to do this, that I had actually set out to find the first lieutenant when reflection and common sense came to my aid and asked me what was this thing that I was about to do. The answer to this question was, that with the self-sufficiency and stupendous conceit which my father had especially cautioned me to guard against, I was arrogating to myself the possession of superhuman sagacity, and (upon the flimsy foundation of a wild and extravagant fancy, backed by a mere chance resemblance, which after all might prove to be ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... snobbery of the mind, so encrusted with the rankest and grossest egotism, that soon they must flutter and die out, leaving him stone-blind against the sunshine and the morning. No scratch could penetrate that Achilles-armor of self-sufficiency. There must be a shock to break it apart, or a vicious stabbing to cut through it to such ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... privilege to you "gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," or otherwise, that you cannot hear how the whole Continent is talking of you at this moment. We have, as a nation, no small share of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. If we do not thank God for it, we are right well pleased to know that we are not like that Publican there, "who eats garlic, or carries a stiletto, or knouts his servants, or indulges in any other taste or pastime of 'the confounded foreigner.'" The 'Times' proclaims how ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... had changed. She had not tried to change, but it was hard for her to get the old point of view now, to laugh at the old jokes, to listen to the old gossip. She had been cold and wretched only a year before, but she had had the confident self-sufficiency of a gypsy who walks bareheaded and irresponsible through a world whose treasure will never come her way. Now Rachael, tremulous and afraid, was the guardian of the great treasure, she knew now what love meant, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... world, having a manifest tendency to subvert revealed religion, and expose the exercise of serious godliness, under the notion of enthusiasm; to advance self-love, as the leading, principle and motive in all human actions whatever, and to destroy the self-sufficiency of God, making him a debtor to his creatures: yet though these, with a number of God-dishonoring, creature-exalting, and soul-ruining errors, were notorious from his books, and were defended by him; the heretic, instead of being duly censured, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... destruction; but God was entreated not to destroy them utterly, and Moses was assured that God would extend mercy as He should see fit. The quotation has a bearing upon the position of the Jews and Paul's argument. They were filled with self-sufficiency and pride, and in great danger. In the reply to Moses, God claimed the right of extending mercy as He pleased, and would not allow Moses to interfere with His prerogative. The Jews were reminded by the quotation that ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... "There is no self-sufficiency about him," said Margaret. "I hope not, and he is so transparent, that it would be laughed down at the first bud: but the universal good report, and certainty of success, and being so often put in comparison ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... identified merely with the opportunity of securing material prosperity, and the love of liberty was apt to become, what indeed it too often is everywhere, a purely self-regarding emotion. The distance of the republic from Europe and its controversies, its economic self-sufficiency, its apparent security against all attack, fostered and strengthened this feeling. While the peoples of the Old World strove with agony and travail towards freedom and justice, or wrestled with the task of sharing their own civilisation with the backward races of the globe, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... expressed themselves in very arrogant, absurd terms, about the wise man's self-sufficiency; they elevated him to the rank of a deity.[A] But these were only talkers and lecturers, such as those in all ages who utter fine words, know little of human affairs, and care only for notoriety. Epictetus and Antoninus both by precept and example ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... should be so in her place—immensely. She was never a woman of any mind, but she may now pass for one of genius. I am sure you will describe her in one of those delightful novels you write. And pray don't forget Vandenesse; put him in to please me. Really, his self-sufficiency is too much. I can't stand that Jupiter Olympian air of his,—the only mythological character exempt, they ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... for the first time realized that his ex-subaltern had not a friend among the captains and senior officers now on duty at the fort. His indifference to duties, his airy foppishness, his conceit and self-sufficiency, had all served to create a feeling against him; and this had been intensified by his conduct since coming to Sibley. The youngsters still kept up jovial relations with and professed to like him, but among the seniors there were many men ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... masked cannon, right in their very faces, added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion. The terror of the unknown seized officers and men alike. In five minutes the crest was cleared, and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief. A melee of miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued. The rebel sharpshooters, hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... to Miss Messiter, and perched himself on the fence, where he might be the observed of all observers. It was curious, she thought, how his vanity walked hand in hand with so much power and force. He was really extraordinarily strong, but no debutante's self-sufficiency could have excelled his. He was so frankly an egotist that it ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... trousered being. I declare, although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the note of Diana's horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched by the commotion ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feel that in those meagre lines there is indeed an expression of aristocracy in its worst characters; coldness, perfectness of training, incapability of emotion, want of sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank, hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency. All these characters are written in the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if they were graven on it in words. For, observe, all other architectures have something in them that common men can enjoy; some concession to the simplicities of humanity, some daily bread for the hunger of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... be amazed at their self-sufficiency. How many are there not who seem capable of anything for the sake of the church or Christianity, except the one thing its Lord cares about—that they should do what he tells them! He would deliver them from themselves into the liberty of the sons ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Spencer Smith dropping to secretary of embassy, and his brother remaining on the Egyptian coast. Elgin was far from being in accord with Smith's general line of conduct, which was marked with presumption and self-sufficiency, and in the end he greatly deplored the terms "granted to the French, so far beyond our expectation;" but he shared the belief that to rid Egypt of the French was an end for which considerable sacrifices should be made, and his correspondence with Smith expressed ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... only themselves but each other. The ensuing conversation showed that Mr. Prince was somewhat disgusted with the mundane movement, and that Marguerite was his disciple. They were more and more leaving the world alone; their self-sufficiency was increasing with the narrow regularity of their habits. They seldom went out; and when they did, they came home the more deeply convinced that all was not well with the world, and that they belonged to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... arrived; but when he called at the Consulate on the subject, some minor official ordered him off with a contemptuous "Barra! barra!" and he accordingly yielded to the solicitations of his crew and embarked without seeing me. There is too much of this self-sufficiency and off-handedness in all Consulates in the Levant, where a grain of authority is apt at once to magnify a man, in his own estimation, into a mighty potentate. I regret my Jerbine captain very much; ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... of being and activity, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his repudiation of inclusion in a genus; his actualized infinity; his "personality," apart from the moral qualities which it may comport; his relations to evil being permissive and not positive; his self-sufficiency, self-love, and absolute felicity in himself:—candidly speaking, how do such qualities as these make any definite connection with our life? And if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what vital ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... a German philosopher, born at Muenich; was patronised by the king of Bavaria, and became professor in Muenich, who, revolting alike from the materialism of Hume, which he studied in England, and the transcendentalism of Kant, with its self-sufficiency of the reason, fell back upon the mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and taught in 16 vols. what might rather be called a theosophy than a philosophy, which regarded God in Himself, and God even in life, as incomprehensible ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... other ball. For Washington is itself, and something else besides. Along beside it ever runs that dark and haunting echo; that shadowy world-in-world with its accusing silence, its emphatic self-sufficiency. Mrs. Cresswell at first demurred. She thought of Elspeth's cabin: the dirt, the smell, the squalor: of course, this would be different; but—well, Mrs. Cresswell had little inclination for slumming. She was interested in the under-world, but intellectually, not by personal ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... man had suspected Tom of such a feeling, I fear he would have cared little, save how to restore the balance by making a fool of the man who fancied him a fool: but no male self-sufficiency or pride is proof against the contempt of woman; and Tom slunk along by the schoolmistress's side, as if he had been one of her naughtiest school-children. He tried, of course, to brazen it out to his ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... left her, was quite determined to carry his project through. Cecilia had thrown him over with most abominable unconcern and self-sufficiency. He had intended to honour her and she had monstrously dishonoured him. He had endeavoured to escape this by taking upon himself falsely the fault of having been the first to break their engagement. But there was a doubt as to this point, ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It expressed, more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying self-sufficiency. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... is the duty of the State to see that the means for the higher education of the youth of the country are adequate in quantity and efficient in quality. The better technical training of our workmen is necessary if we are to secure their economic self-sufficiency and fit them to become socially useful as members of a community. One aim therefore underlying any future organisation of education must be to secure the industrial efficiency of the worker and to ensure that the results of science shall be utilised in the furtherance of ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... berated for coarseness and charged with the half-culture of the West. His sagacity had been caricatured as cunning; his presence of mind taken for vulgar audacity; he was held up as a half-educated debater, filled with a miserable self-sufficiency. He was attacked as a demagogue. The East held itself aloof from him in unctuous self-righteousness, because of his stand in the Mexican War. His fight for Oregon had aligned against him the friends of England in America. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... carriage over a rough road disturbed the pleasing reveries of revenge, to awaken him to the more probable and less agreeable consequences likely to occur to himself for the blunder he had made; for, with all the puppy's self-sufficiency and conceit, he could not by any process of mental delusion conceal from himself the fact that he had been most tremendously done, and how his party would take it was a serious consideration. O'Grady, another horrid Irish squire—how should he face ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... of not, having seen anything so common to disconcerted people who wish to conceal their disturbance. Into the vacant place dropped the stranger, stretching out his feet, throwing his head back against the wall, and half closing his eyes with the drunkard's own leer of self-sufficiency. During a few moments of agonizing suspense the world waited. Then from those whiskey-scorched and tobacco-stained lips came a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... doctrine? Grant that love is self-sacrifice (I had rather say that self-sacrifice is a part, and but a part, of love): is love also self-sufficiency? ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... raw darkness of the coming dawn. He met nobody. His mind was beautifully still and thoughtless, like a still pool, and his body full and warm and rich. He went quickly along towards Shortlands, in a grateful self-sufficiency. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to transfer the judicial functions to a mixed body of 300 Senators and 300 Knights, the selected Knights to be included in the now attenuated ranks of the Senate. 14. ad dandam civitatem Italiae. The claims of the Italians to the franchise were just and pressing, but the overbearing pride and self-sufficiency of the Roman citizens ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... will,' said Theo humbly. She had come full of the spirit of putting everything and everybody to rights, and she told herself that her own pride and self-sufficiency had earned its well-merited fall. Theo Carnegy's heart was too gentle and single in thought to harbour arrogant pride. Her quick repentance for the ill-advised words she had suffered to spring off her lips gave ample proof that it was so, and that in her the ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... perfection of his own conceptions. He slaved for months and years perfecting each of his plays, recasting the action and curtailing the dialogue and polishing the verse; yet the action was always heavy, the dialogue unnatural to the last degree, the verse unpoetical. But all this extraordinary self-sufficiency was not a delusion, all this extraordinary labour was not a waste: Alfieri, who never had a single poetical thought, nor a single art-revolutionising notion, was yet a great genius and a great innovator, inasmuch as he first moulded in his own image the Italian patriot of the nineteenth century. ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... avoid the grotesque and the extremes of mere animal vivacity. Incessant gesture and action, undue emphasizing with hand and head, and all suggestion of self-sufficiency in attitude or manner should be guarded against. All the various instruments of expression should be made ready and responsive for immediate use, but are to be employed with that taste and tact that characterize the well-balanced man. Too much action and long-continued emotional ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... said looking hard at me. 'The best of it is Albertus asks for nothing. You can neither bribe nor buy him; your flattery will not move him; your approbation or blame alike are vain ... he has the self-sufficiency of the Master ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... contemptuously, rather, from the point of view supposed to be authoritatively settled. The self-sufficiency of egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow-creatures given by the dogmatists who have "gone back," as the vulgar phrase ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upon the rung of his tilted chair, forming his knees into a sort of desk upon which lay a French newspaper. The tilting of his knees, the tilting of his chair, the tilting of his hat and the rakish tilt of his cigar, gave him the appearance of great self-sufficiency, as if, away down in his soul, he knew what he was there for, and cared not a whit whether anyone else did ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... genius which he had given them when he first came. But in all school sports he had improved, and was the acknowledged leader and champion in matters requiring boldness and courage; his popularity made him giddy; favour of man led to forgetfulness of God; and even a glance at his countenance showed a self-sufficiency and arrogance which ill became the refinement of his features, and ill replaced the ingenuous modesty ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... as a cushion. The Akali did not attempt either to give him his blessing or to shake hands with him. The proud expression of his face also changed, and showed confusion and anxious humility instead of the usual self-respect and self-sufficiency. The brave Sikh knelt down before the Takur, and instead of the ordinary "Namaste!"—"Salutation to you," whispered reverently, as if addressing the Guru of the Golden Lake: "I am your servant, Sadhu-Sahib! give ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... from me, and I value such a declaration too much to neglect it. To have a friend, and a friend like you, may be numbered amongst the first felicities of life; at a time when weakness either of body or mind loses the pride and the confidence of self-sufficiency, and looks round for that help which perhaps human kindness cannot give, and which we yet are willing to expect from one another. I am at this time very much dejected.... I am now preparing myself ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... lank, he was a great disciplinarian—had military subordination strong in respect—and the birch gyrated freely; but when he was full blown in powder, he was unbearable,—there was then combined all the severity of the soldier and the dogmatism of the pedagogue, with the self-sufficiency and domineering nature ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... centres of Negro prosperity and culture it would be almost, if not quite, as impossible for a white man to be received into the best Negro society as it would for a Negro to be received into the best white society. This growing independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leads inevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segregation based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... and least of all for the silent happiness of the German, which last, alas! appears since the dissipation of the intoxication of the Revolution of March, 1848, to consist, as far as the great mass of the population is concerned, merely in the egotistic repose of self-sufficiency, weakness, and ignorance. The American finds repose only in his house, in his family circle, and among his children; all without the walls of that home is an incessant working and striving, in politics as in trade—by the streets and canals, as in the woods ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... principle between magic and religion sufficiently explains the relentless hostility with which in history the priest has often pursued the magician. The haughty self-sufficiency of the magician, his arrogant demeanour towards the higher powers, and his unabashed claim to exercise a sway like theirs could not but revolt the priest, to whom, with his awful sense of the divine majesty, and his humble prostration in presence of it, such claims ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... always what may be termed a remarkably clean-looking boy, from the peculiarity of my skin and complexion; my teeth were small, but were transparent, and I had a very deep dimple in my chin. Like all embryo apothecaries, I carried in my appearance, if not the look of wisdom, most certainly that of self-sufficiency, which does equally well with the world in general. My forehead was smooth, and very white, and my dark locks were combed back systematically, and with a regularity that said, as plainly as hair could ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... certain temptations of which he appears to be ignorant. Even should he have successfully resisted them, the struggle, the contest, the necessity of choice would have robbed his manner of that easy self-sufficiency which is one of its greatest charms. Had he succumbed, he would often have fallen away from sober fidelity to Nature. As the matter stands, his great felicity is that he never goes beyond his depth,—and this, not so much from fear, as from ignorance. His ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the army, a Russian officer remarked, with much self-sufficiency, "That his country fought for glory and the French for gain."—"You are perfectly right," answered Napoleon; "every one fights for that which he does ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... the shock that covered his Jove-like head was iron-gray. His form was that of an Apollo who had arrived at years of discretion. He weighed an even two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain, check, cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast; and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and withal a cleanliness, a sweetness and a gentleness, that told that, although he had a giant's strength, he did not use it like a giant. Whitman used no tobacco, neither did he apply hot and rebellious liquors to his blood and with unblushing forehead ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... for inexcusableness was her self-support—and, worse, self-sufficiency. Gilfoyle had sent Kedzie no money beyond returning what he had borrowed, and she had not used that to buy a ticket to Chicago with. She had written rarely, and had not asked him for money. That was mighty convenient for him, but it was extremely suspicious, and he cherished ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... that was starving to death, and all Mungold's hampers could not appease that hunger. Stanwell was not shocked by the discovery—he was only the more sorry for the little man, who was, after all, denied that solace of self-sufficiency which his talk so noisily proclaimed. His lot seemed hard enough when Stanwell had pictured him as buoyed up by the scorn of public opinion—it became tragic if he was denied that support. The artist wondered if Kate had guessed her brother's secret, or if ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... not sacrificing the faculty of reverence in her clever protege to her need for amusement. Hudson made no serious rejoinder to Rowland's compliment on his statuette until he rose to go. Rowland wondered whether he had forgotten it, and supposed that the oversight was a sign of the natural self-sufficiency of genius. But Hudson stood a moment before he said good night, twirled his sombrero, and hesitated for the first time. He gave Rowland a clear, penetrating glance, and then, with a wonderfully frank, appealing ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... destruction's law; I have already told you plainly, the law of things 'joined' is to 'separate'; the principle of kindness and of love is not abiding, 'tis better then to reject this pitiful and doting heart. All things around us bear the stamp of instant change; born, they perish; no self-sufficiency; those who would wish to keep them long, find in the end no room for doing so. If things around us could be kept for aye, and were not liable to change or separation, then this would be salvation! where then can this be sought? You, and all that lives, can seek in me this great deliverance! That ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... spirit of superior self-sufficiency, only two things momentarily aroused him during his university years—the English attacks upon Copenhagen; and a series of lectures ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... class of travelling oddities—the dandy voyageurs of Britain, who, teeming with the proud consciousness of their excellence in comparison with the rest of human kind, swoln with self-sufficiency, float like empty bubbles on the water's surface, and who seem as if they would break and be dissolved by contact with a vulgar touch. They contrive to swim by means of their air-blown vanity until ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... Champlain the disputed shield is unalloyed gold, reflecting all that is strong and brave, all that is courageous and magnanimous, all that is patriotic and generous, while from the other shore its appearance is as brass engraven by vanity and vulgarity, by self-sufficiency and infidelity. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... to sketch, I should esteem it an honour to have her on my visiting list. But I am a theological oddity, and my wallet of prejudices, it is to be feared, is sadly unfurnished. I never could rise to that sublimated self-sufficiency of intellect that I could consign any fellow-creature to everlasting pains for the audacity of differing in dogma with myself. I have met good and bad of every creed, Mahometans I could respect—whose word was their bond—and so-called Christians and Christian ministers with a most uncharitable ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... "I sometimes think that when I'm properly drunk one day I'll murder that man. His self-sufficiency and conceit are an insult to the Cathedral. But the Cathedral knows. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... adequate for all ordinary affairs, and it is only when we find ourselves in overpowering situations that we recognize we are not self-sufficient, and may then turn to God. But when the crisis passes we are likely to lapse into an assumption of self-sufficiency. ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... consumer goods, textiles, sawmills Agriculture: the agriculture and forestry sectors provide employment for the majority of the population, contributing nearly 25% to GDP and providing a high degree of self-sufficiency in staple foods; commercial and food crops include coffee, cocoa, timber, cotton, rubber, bananas, oilseed, grains, livestock, root starches Economic aid: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $440 million; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with which this new view of the life of civilisation has won acknowledgment from men of all classes is amazing. It rests upon a belief in the self-sufficiency and the all-sufficiency of the life of this world, of the bearings of which it may be assumed that few of its votaries are aware. In reality this view cannot by any possibility be described as the result of knowledge. On the contrary, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... assumption and arrogance in his tone, and he is rarely mentioned by them except in a slighting manner. "I think the Monarch a literary puppy, from what little I have seen of him," writes Hazard to Belknap. "He certainly does not want understanding, and yet there is a mixture of self-sufficiency, all-sufficiency, and at the same time a degree of insufficiency about him, which is (to me) intolerable. I do not believe that he is fit for a superintendent; that the persons mentioned will be his coadjutors, ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... he had led to victory, and whose dominions he was administering. The exercise of power without a check had made the exercise of such power necessary to him, and he continued to wield it with all the self-sufficiency of a ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... own national salvation, not only without aid, which we had no reason to ask, but without sympathy, which we had every honorable right to expect. But, to be a truly independent people, we must practically prove our self-sufficiency; and at this moment patriotism shows itself not only in defending the nation against the Rebellion, but in the heartiest encouragement of every art and manufacture for which our opportunities and capacities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... equally without exaggeration and without self-sufficiency. Her reliance on God was cheerful and full of hope, while it was of the humblest and most dependent nature. She had been accustomed from childhood to address herself to the Deity in prayer; taking example ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... them. They have a patriarchal, self-satisfied, suburban manner of complete importance. The old gentleman bosses his harem outrageously, and each and every member of the tribe walks about with short steps and a stuffy parvenu small-town self-sufficiency. One is quite certain that it is only by accident that they have long tusks and live in Africa, instead of rubber-plants and self-made business and a pug-dog within commuters' distance of New York. But at the slightest alarm this swollen and puffy importance ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... their minds have been enlarged, and not narrowed, by their special studies—a defect which was too apt to mar the qualities of the seekers into natural facts in what must now, I would hope, be called the just-passed epoch of intelligence dominated by Whig politics, and the self-sufficiency ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... referred, but the application of the metaphor goes far beyond the petty strife in Corinth and carries for us the wholesome lesson that one main cause which keeps men back from Christ is a too high estimate of themselves. Some of us are enclosed in the fortress of self-sufficiency: we will not humbly acknowledge our dependence on God, and have turned self-reliance into the law of our lives. There are many voices, some of them sweet and powerful, which to-day are preaching that gospel. It finds eager response ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... impression, on returning to their own country, of its superiority or inferiority in other respects, they cannot but have felt one thing about it—the comfortable look of its towns and villages. Foreign towns are often very picturesque, very beautiful, but they never have quite that look of warm self-sufficiency and wholesome quiet, with which our villages nestle themselves down among the green fields. If you will take the trouble to examine into the sources of this impression, you will find that by far the greater part of that warm and satisfactory appearance depends upon the rich ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... on so infirm a purpose. Vague recollections of these great abortive schemes of mine left a deceptive glow in my soul and fostered my belief in myself, without giving me the energy to produce. In my indolent self-sufficiency I was in a very fair way to become a fool, for what is a fool but a man who fails to justify the excellent opinion which he has formed of himself? My energy was directed towards no definite aims; I wished for the flowers of life without the toil of cultivating them. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... suggestion? Why this infatuate thirst for sympathy, this eagerness to violate the seals of reticence at the wish of a strange woman? Was there any reasonable explanation of the strange lack of his wonted self-sufficiency in ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... very prepossessing but for a cold, reserved English-like manner, and a certain air of self-sufficiency which spoiled his ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... valued her liberty too highly to part lightly with it; but the reason in her heart was not this, and with all her wilfulness, her childish self-sufficiency, she knew that it ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... independent thought which were beginning to stir at Oxford; influences which were at first represented by such men as Davison, Copleston, and, above all, Whately; influences which repelled Keble by what he saw of hardness, shallowness, and arrogance, and still more of self-sufficiency and intellectual display and conceit in the prevailing tone of speculation, but which nevertheless powerfully affected him, and of which he showed the traces to the last Sir John Coleridge is disappointing as to the amount of light which he throws on the process which was going ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... slavery of a provincial newspaper to the foremost ranks of the journalists of the world and on into literature, into literature worth the writing. The man won his place in England much as his hero won his, by defiance, by strong shoulder blows, by his self-sufficiency and inexhaustible strength, and when he finished his book he did not know that his end would be so much less glorious than his hero's, that it would be his portion not to fall manfully in the thick of the combat and the press of battle, but to die poisoned ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... allies now undertook an enterprise, which, in the opinion of the French generals, savoured of rashness and inconsiderate self-sufficiency. This was the siege of Lisle, the strongest town in Flanders, provided with all necessaries, stores of ammunition, and a garrison reinforced with one and twenty battalions of the best troops in France, commanded by mareschal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... last," said my heart, "what I write is my own!" Let no one mistake this for an accession of pride. Rather did I feel a pride in my former productions, as being all the tribute I had to pay them. But I refuse to call the realisation of self, self-sufficiency. The joy of parents in their first-born is not due to any pride in its appearance, but because it is their very own. If it happens to be an extraordinary child they may also glory in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... is over, whatever its outcome may be, we must try to introduce a new era into the history of the world. But our fathers and our fathers' fathers have tried to do this same thing, and we shall not succeed if we go about the work in a spirit of self-sufficiency and hasty pride. Only knowledge of the truth will enable us to succeed. Knowledge of the truth is not an easy thing; it is a question of laborious thought, mental discipline, the humility which is content to learn and the moral courage which can face the truth when it ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... about at the other laborers. Fully three-quarters of them were beri-rabza ridden. A cure for the skin fungus had not yet been found; the men's faces and hands were scabbed and red. The colony had grown to near self-sufficiency, would soon have a moderate prosperity, yet they still lacked ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... and which had been universally attributed to him; but enough remained, which he could not deny, to tarnish, if not to cancel his fame. To these he has since, with the reckless and inconsiderate greed that cares not for the public, so long as it finds a publisher, considerably added. His self-sufficiency is unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published under the comprehensive and presumptuous title of "La Comedie Humaine," he puts himself on a level with the first of poets and philosophers, proposing himself the modest aim of portraying human nature ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... a fund of self-sufficiency and instigation, she repaired to the academy on the instant, and inquiring for Mr. Fathom, was introduced to his apartment, where she found him in the very act of writing a billet to the jeweller's daughter. The artful agent having asked, with the mysterious ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... interpose a little of our skepticism, if but to gratify an habitual craving in us. We do not doubt that Khalid's self-sufficiency is remarkable; that his courage—on paper—is quite above the common; that the grit and stay he shows are wonderful; that his lofty aspirations, so indomitable in their onwardness, are great: but we only ask, having thus fortified his soul, how is he to fortify his stomach? He is going to work, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... love were not wanting, but they were vague and without heartiness. They savoured of insincerity, though there was nothing in the words themselves to convict them. Few liars can lie with the full roundness and self-sufficiency of truth; and Crosbie, bad as he was, had not yet become bad enough to reach that perfection. He had said nothing to Lily of the hopes of promotion which had been opened to him; but he had again spoken of his own worldliness,—acknowledging ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... little children, in which we shall bear some resemblance to our Lord's humility."[29] This, in the language of the Holy Ghost, is called the foolishness of the cross of Christ,[30] in which consists true wisdom. That prudence of the flesh and worldly wisdom, which is the mother of self-sufficiency, pride, avarice, and vicious curiosity, the source of infidelity, and the declared enemy of the spirit of Christ, is banished by this holy simplicity; and in its stead are obtained true wisdom, which can only be found in a heart freed ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... stared at the object, a strange, sudden flush of confident vanity and self-sufficiency seemed to pass through him, but it was so momentary that he could ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... is seen to follow also from the notion of self-sufficiency, a quality thought to belong to the final good. Now by sufficient for Self, we mean not for a single individual living a solitary life, but for his parents also and children and wife, and, in general, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... least brief mention should be made of the global effects resulting from disruption of economic activities and communications. Since 1970, an increasing fraction of the human race has been losing the battle for self-sufficiency in food, and must rely on heavy imports. A major disruption of agriculture and transportation in the grain-exporting and manufacturing countries could thus prove disastrous to countries importing food, farm machinery, and fertilizers—especially those ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... seem to me, between ourselves, indefensible. He to whom God has intrusted a child, and an only child at that, must employ for her preservation all the means that God has made available, and not become careless of them through fatalism or self-sufficiency. If writing tires you, ask your mother to send us news. Moreover, it would seem to me very desirable if one of your friends could be prevailed upon to go to you until you are better. Whether a doctor can help you or not—forgive me, but you cannot judge ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke |
