"Assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Slegge's assertion that Glyn was there to keep the juniors from tumbling down; for the slow, steady lowering and drawing up of the big buckets had a peculiar fascination for some of the youngest boys, notably the little set whose playtime was nearly ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... that the battle of Evesham, literally speaking, was not the origin of the House of Commons, and wish our correspondent P.T.W. had furnished us with the name of the "modern writer" who has made the assertion. At the same time it must be conceded that the fall of Simon de Montfort, at Evesham, led to the more speedy consummation of the wished for object. Thus Sir James Mackintosh, History of England, vol. i. p. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... This might have been interrogative, or uttered as an assertion, but I took it as the former, and ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... nothing beyond the law; and the law, which has hitherto supported us, will support us still. To affirm that we have employed the highest court of the kingdom as an instrument of oppression and extortion is an assertion too monstrous to obtain a moment's credit. The Star-Chamber is too jealous of its honour not to resent the imputation; and such a charge will ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... preface, and enters upon his argument with a secondary title: "The First Blast to awake Women degenerate." We are in the land of assertion without delay. That a woman should bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire over any realm, nation, or city, he tells us, is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, and a subversion of good order. Women are weak, frail, impatient, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if you will think twice or twenty times, it cannot but dawn on you that there is something wrong in the reasoning by which the placing of diamonds in a safe proves that they are "rightly subject" to a burglar. The incessant assertion of such things can do little to spread your superior culture; and if you say them too often people may even begin to doubt whether you have any superior culture after all. The earnest friend now advising you cannot but grieve at ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... he stated. "Quite free from error or embarrassing mistake, sir. I am Mr. Jesse Hogarty. You, however, if I may be permitted that assertion, have me ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... with which science abounds, myriads of truths transcending all fictions, melt and remove from the path of faith every supposed difficulty. Any quantity of facts have been scientifically established as real which are intrinsically far more strange and baffling to belief than the assertion of our immortality is. Indeed, "there is no more mystery in the mind living forever in the future than in its having been kept out of life through a past eternity. The authentic wonder is the fact of the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his new thought without using their old quaint expressions. Though these essays are all criticisms or appreciations of the life of his age, they are all intensely personal. In other words, they are an excellent picture of Lamb and of humanity. Without a trace of vanity or self-assertion, Lamb begins with himself, with some purely personal mood or experience, and from this he leads the reader to see life and literature as he saw it. It is this wonderful combination of personal and universal interests, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Pope feared that the painter would follow his example. And if the Grand Duke Cosmo uncovered before Michael Angelo, and stood hat in hand while speaking to him, we may have the explanation in another assertion, that 'sovereigns asked Michael Angelo to put on his cap, because the painter would ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Psyche,' and 'The Snail and the Rose Tree,'—all in Andersen's usual happy and successful vein; for he is preeminently an equal writer, and never falls behind himself. Perhaps the highest compliment which can be paid them is the truthful assertion that any person may read them with keen interest, and never reflect that they were written for young people. Poetry and prose meet in them on equal grounds, and any of them in verse would be charming. The main reason for ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hands together in disappointment and grief. This confirmed to him the lady's assertion that she knew nothing of Fanny. In that assertion she had ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... than the audacity of his assertion, she looked down, pondering intently a little space; then, not considering what the admission involved, she said in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... intimates, of the half-dependent order; so we may suppose them to have gone at his bidding. That they met the procession of the Welsh, and claimed to take charge of the countess's carriage, near the Kentish border-line, is an assertion supported by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... United States, but that his name has become of world-wide renown,—it is most extraordinary that he should so far forget all the suggestions of justice to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him to be wholly false. I can only account for his having done so upon the supposition that that evil genius which has attended him through his life, giving to him an apparent ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... by Napoleon III (B. 2, ch. 1) it is objected to this view, first, that the -lex annalis- would point for Caesar's birth-year not to 652, but to 651; secondly and especially, that other cases are known where it was not attended to. But the first assertion rests on a mistake; for, as the example of Cicero shows, the -lex annalis- required only that at the entering on office the 43rd year should be begun, not that it should be completed. None of the alleged exceptions to the rule, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... I return to my assertion, that in entering Canada from the States one clearly comes from a richer to a poorer country. When I have said so, I have heard no Canadian absolutely deny it; though in refraining from denying it, they have usually expressed a general conviction, that in settling himself for life ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... there you've a bit o' my mind.' And a very unsatisfactory bit it was. I did not know what to answer to the glimpse at the real state of the case implied in the shrewd woman's speech; so I tried to put her off by assuming surprise at her first assertion. ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the figures round the grotto, representing the scene at the eighteenth appearance of the Virgin to Bernadette—who is the foremost figure kneeling in the grotto—is particularly fine; but how that huge crowd standing there were content with Bernadette's assertion that she saw the vision, when none of them saw anything but the stones, is a practical question that few probably could answer, and least of all the priests. Returning by the way we had come, we bore up the Rue du Fort ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... ascetic view of sex,—for the ascetics, as we see, freely but not quite legitimately, based their asceticism largely on aesthetic considerations,—that insistence on the proximity of the sexual to the excretory centres which found expression in the early Church in Augustine's depreciatory assertion: "Inter faeces et urinam nascimur," and still persists among many who by no means always associate it with religious asceticism.[48] "As a result of what ridiculous economy, and of what Mephistophilian irony," asks Tarde,[49] "has Nature imagined ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... longer daring to resist, took his razor, and with a trembling hand separated two of the handsomest ears from one of the finest heads in the world: for be it known, that the princess only made a pretext of this assertion, because she had taken a fancy ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... say, "Good day, lad!" as heartily as if they thought him the best boy in the place. No one seemed to bear Martin Rattler ill-will, notwithstanding his alleged badness. Men laughed when they said he was a bad boy, as if they did not quite believe their own assertion. The vicar, an old whiteheaded man, with a kind, hearty countenance, said that the child was full of mischief, full of mischief; but he would improve as he grew older, he was quite certain of that. And the vicar was a good judge, for he had five boys of his own, besides three other ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... disputing, and of disputing in such a way as to hold one's own, whether one is in the right or the wrong—per fas et nefas.[1] A man may be objectively in the right, and nevertheless in the eyes of bystanders, and sometimes in his own, he may come off worst. For example, I may advance a proof of some assertion, and my adversary may refute the proof, and thus appear to have refuted the assertion, for which there may, nevertheless, be other proofs. In this case, of course, my adversary and I change places: he comes off best, although, as a matter of fact, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the foolish things of this world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." The truth of this scriptural assertion was peculiarly evident in the case of ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... to take me, that's all," he pronounced it. "My dear girl, that stiff-necked martinet knows nothing of forgiveness for a military offence. Discipline is the god at whose shrine he worships." And he afforded her anecdotes to illustrate and confirm his assertion of Lord Wellington's ruthlessness. "I tell you," he concluded, "it's nothing but a trap to catch me. And if you had been fool enough to yield, and to have blabbed of my presence to Sylvia, you would have had ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... very long interval to prove that there was some foundation for Mr. Tolman's last assertion, for within a short time the travelers were standing on Fifth Avenue amid the rush of traffic, and feeling of as little importance as dwarfs in a giant's country. The roar of the mighty city, its bustle and confusion, ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... said the final convincing word about it, summing it all up, saying what everyone else had been trying to say but no one else had entirely succeeded in saying, simplifying it, and all with an air of service, not of self-assertion. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... just as womanly purity and innocence quail before unwomanly self-assertion and voluptuousness, so manly loyalty and unselfishness give way before unmanly treachery and self-seeking. It is true that the bad men do not finally triumph, but they triumph over the good with whom they happen to come in contact. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... English writers, therefore, its existence and general principles must have been familiar, and it is consequently remarkable that, in view of their claim, they have given us no more particulars of the game of rounders. Are we to accept this assertion without reserve, when an investigation would seem to indicate that baseball is really the older game? If this English game was then a common school-boy sport, as now claimed, it seems almost incredible that it should have escaped the notice of all the writers of the first half of the century; ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... been considered to be more than tantamount in suffering to the occasional "pleasing punishment which women bear." Although this cannot be proved until ladies are endowed with beards (which Heaven forfend!), or some modern Tiresias shall appear to decide the point, the assertion appears to be borne out, if we reason by analogy from human life; where we find that it is not the heavy blow of sudden misfortune tripping the ladder of our ambition and laying us prostrate, which constitutes ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... "Visibly embarrassed," he writes, "he told me that the Prussian Government was absolutely ignorant of the matter and that it did not exist for them." This was the only answer to be got; in a despatch sent on the 11th to the Prussian agents in Germany, Bismarck repeated the assertion. "The matter has nothing to do with Prussia. The Prussian Government has always considered and treated this affair as one in which Spain and the selected candidate are alone concerned." This was literally true, for it had never been brought before the Prussian Ministry, and no doubt the records ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Occasion, as that of a Son's taking leave of his Father in the most emphatical and serious Manner. And therefore, whatever Actor proceeds upon this Supposition (as I have seen some do in parallel Cases) does only shew his Ignorance and Presumption. This Assertion of mine will appear indisputable, if my Reader considers well the whole Tenour of this Scene, with the grave and excellent Instructions which it contains, from Polonius to Laertes, and from both to Ophelia. It is impossible ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... million pounds sterling a year, or double that amount in modern values, to be the property of the nation. Talleyrand carried a measure decreeing the sale of the ecclesiastical domain. The clergy were as intensely irritated as laymen would have been by a similar assertion of sovereign right. And their irritation was made still more dangerous by the next set of measures ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... sat. She shook hands with Mrs. Makely, who introduced me to her, and then presented the Altrurian. She bowed very civilly to me, but with a touch of severity, such as country people find necessary for the assertion of their self-respect with strangers. I thought it very pretty, and instantly saw that I could work it into some picture of character; and I was not at all sorry that she made a difference ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... as they do rape and murder, adultery, incest, and the sin of the Cities of the Plain—no single grain of real evidence is forthcoming. Indeed, at this time of day evidence is no longer called for where the sins of the Borgias are concerned. Oft-reiterated assertion has usurped the place of evidence—for a lie sufficiently repeated comes to be credited by its very utterer. And meanwhile the calumny has sped from tongue to tongue, from pen to pen, gathering matter as it goes. The world absorbs the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... no dissenting voice raised to this assertion; eating is so essential to the average boy that nothing on earth can compensate for a dearth of food ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... from her own book, and she was gay; she laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously joined in his jocose assertion that Clare was positively and by all hymeneal auspices betrothed to the owner of that ring, be he who he may, and must, whenever he should choose to come and claim her, give her hand to him (for everybody agreed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... us, "won't pay." Much they know of what will and what won't pay! This comes of partial education,—of one-sided, of warped, and biased education. It puts one out of patience, this arrogance of the University, this presuming upon the ignorance of the million, this assertion of an indispensable necessity to make the boy of the nineteenth century a mere expert in some subdivision of one of the sciences. The obstinacy of an hereditary absolutism, which the world has outgrown, still lingers in our schools of learning. Let ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... phonograph. Moreover, one element of music is certainly due to the sense of locomotion, the rhythm; so that sound, to become music, requires the attention of something more than the mere ear. Nay, it would seem, despite the contrary assertion of the learned Stumpf, that the greater number of writers on the vexed science of sound incline to believe that the hearing of music is always attended with movements, however imperceptible, in the throat, which, being ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... inform him, that all these enormous pretensions are so many lying delusions, intended only to bring people in crowds to the shop, where they are effectually fleeced by the jackals in attendance. If the lady reader doubt the truth of our assertion, let her go for once to the establishment of Messrs Grabble and Grab last named. An omnibus from any part of the city or suburbs will, as the circular informs you, set you down at the door. Upon entering the shop, you are received by a polite inquiry from the 'walker' as to the purpose of your ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... learn that Miss Corelli has authoritatively denied it 'She objects very strongly,' so says an inspired defender, 'to a notion which was started by one of the most distinguished of her interviewers, and absolutely denies the assertion that she described herself as "Mavis Clare" in "The Sorrows of Satan."' Miss Corelli, of course, knows the truth about this matter, and nobody else can possibly know it, but it is at least permissible to examine the evidence which led many separate ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... legion. We may safely say that of all the works of art between A.D. 800 and 1000, the greater and better part are due to that brotherhood—always faithful and often secret—of the Magistri Comacini. The authority and judgment of learned men justify the assertion.[77] / ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... great expenditure, and twice the committee have considered that it was not unreasonable. I cannot conceive a stronger case for the resolution than this statement of fact as to the expenditure going forth to the public accompanied by the committee's assertion that it is reasonable. Now, to separate this question from details, let us remember what the committee and their supporters asserted last year, and, I hope, will re-assert this year. It seems to be rather the model kind of thing than otherwise now that ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... gifts, and the consumption of any amount of rice porridge. Even the grave pastor had grown playful as the evening went on. This had prompted one of the boys to exclaim that he was the very best father in the world—a comprehensive assertion that was approved by all parties present. The power to cast off care and even serious thought for a time, and frolic with children, was one of the secrets of the curate's personal power. In his sacred ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... little collection of laws, which has indeed been taken up into the Priestly Code, but which in many respects disagrees with it, and particularly in respect of this prohibition of profane slaughterings. With reference to the Priestly Code as a whole, Noldeke's assertion is quite off the mark. The code, on the contrary, already allows slaughter without sacrifice in the precepts of Noah, which are valid not merely for all the world, but also for the Jews. Farther on this permission is not ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... allowance; but either 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 ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... to posture and use grandiose words! Why did she shrink from the complete submission that her presence here implied? No amount of self-assertion would do away with the natural law of which he had contemptuously reminded her, the law which distinguishes man and woman, and denies to one what is ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Constitution in Church or State. These teachers profess to scorn all mediocrity,—to engage for perfection,—to proceed by the simplest and shortest course. They build their politics, not on convenience, but on truth; and they profess to conduct men to certain happiness by the assertion of their undoubted rights. With them there is no compromise. All other governments are usurpations, which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the "I am" ceases to be the petulant assertion of our limited personality and becomes the affirmation that the Great I AM affirms its own I AM-ness both in us and through us, and thus our use of the words becomes in very truth the Great Affirmative, or that which is the root of all being as distinguished from ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... xiii. 2, the words, [Greek: elathon tines xenisantes angelous], clearly indicate that "all three were finite spirits made visible." This assertion, however, which was long before made by the Socinian Crellius, has been sufficiently refuted by Ode de Angelis, p. 1001. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews intends to connect the events which happened to Abraham and Lot equally—[Greek: ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... The assertion of Tacitus, that Germany was destitute of the precious metals, must be taken, even in his own time, with some limitation, (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.) According to Spener, (Hist. Germaniae Pragmatica, tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and abuses which the Evangelicals had attacked; confirmed the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops; demanded the restoration of all abolished rites identified himself with the Confutation; and repeated the assertion that the Lutheran Confession had been refuted from the Scriptures. (Foerstemann, 2, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... irritated other, "My brother, When at Calcutta Beheld them bona fide growing; He wouldn't utter A lie for love or money, sir; so in This matter you are thoroughly mistaken." "Nonsense, sir! nonsense! I can give no credit To the assertion—none e'er saw or read it; Your brother, like his evidence, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... making of that solid land loose soil for the service of the vegetable system, are parts in the economy of this world which must be every where distinguishable. But this the reader is not to take upon my bare assertion; and I would wish to carry him, by the observations of other-men, to all the quarters of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... could mean; and he then told me that he had seen the two young ladies in a wood close to the house, amusing themselves by playing with venomous snakes, which he was sure they could not do if they were like other human beings. "Come, you see them," he said, wishing to prove his assertion correct; and he led me round the house, through the grove of palms, where, sure enough, seated on a bench, from whence there was a lovely view of the lake, were the two daughters of our host. I confess I was almost startled on seeing them ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... while it is true that modern Astronomy has superseded the ancient system, and people have ceased to believe that the stars are intervening in mundane affairs, nothing could be further from the truth than the assertion that "Astronomy has shattered the fallacies of Astrology;" and those of our readers who will accord to this work an unprejudiced perusal can hardly fail to be convinced that a large majority of the people of Christendom are dominated as much by these fallacies as were ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... Friends at the time of his marriage, he retained a respect for their views which accorded well with his own nature. When he had to speak or write on behalf of what he believed to be the truth, it was from no motive of self-assertion or combativeness. He had the calm contemplative mind of the student, whereas Bright, the Quaker tribune, the champion of Repeal, had all the fervour of the man of action. Lister's family had been Quakers ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the earl. "Yes, we'll have a little tea. I've heard every word you've been saying." It was that assertion on the part of the earl which always made Lady Julia so angry. "You cannot have heard what I have been saying, Theodore, because I have said nothing," she would reply. "But I should have heard it if you had," the earl ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... laughed at his notions; one or two even went so far as to accuse him of being a snob and to twit him on having changed the spelling of his name and dropped the first "r" for the sake of a stylishness he pretended to despise. He protested hotly; they stuck to their assertion. He declared his name was Patridge, always had been Patridge, and never could be anything else; they disbelieved him, and so the dispute remained a drawn battle for want of an umpire till long afterwards, when Robert Hart himself proved the point in ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, the draper, addressing himself to me at this moment, informed me that I had a great deal. Supposing that I could not be possessed of such a treasure without knowing it, I ventured to confirm my first assertion, by saying, that if I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it could be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... most cultured of that generation did not reach the zenith of fame to which the modern commander has risen. The average present-day captain has little in common with his predecessors. His political creed goes beyond the mere assertion of the superiority of Britishers over foreigners. He claims association with a party, and knows a good deal about prominent statesmen and politicians. He is up to date in the causes which led to the Boer War, the Coal Tax, the Corn Duty, Irish Land Purchase, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... even more important than to know the differences of things. Indeed, if we are not interested in the former, our pleasure in the latter is a mere scrap-book pleasure. If we are not interested in the latter, on the other hand, our sense of the former is apt to degenerate into guesswork and assertion and empty phrases. Shakespeare is greater than all the other poets because he, more than anybody else, knew how very like human beings are to each other and because he, more than anybody else, knew how very unlike human beings are to each other. He was master of the particular as well as ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... passing hints, to be taken only by those who at once understand such matters, and really wish to know the truth; while young ladies in general will still look on Henry as a monster in human form, because no one dares, or indeed ought, to undeceive them by anything beyond bare assertion without proof. ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance, the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain naive self-assertion and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and although Bjoernson had as yet published nothing ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Not that you haven't done your work well enough, so far as I know. But you have more than a young man's self-assurance and self-assertion. I have noticed also a note of condescension, of criticism in your bearing to those about you. The critical attitude to society and individuals is a bad one for a successful practitioner of medicine to fall into. It is more than that—it is ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the grotto is scarcely raised above the level of the river Gave, which has had to be thrust back to make room for a passage to the mouth of the cavern. The whole story of the apparition of the Virgin there rests on the unsupported assertion of an hysterical scrofulous peasant girl. But who can say that the cult of sacred grottoes is a thing of the past when tens of thousands of pilgrims visit Lourdes annually, and believe in the story that confers ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the moment all the past was forgotten. The loving mother's happiness would now have been complete had not Aides asserted his rights. These were, that if any immortal had tasted food in his realms they were bound to remain there for ever. Of course the ruler of the lower world had to prove this assertion. This, however, he found no difficulty in doing, as Ascalaphus, the son of Acheron and Orphne, was his witness to the fact.[25] Zeus, pitying the disappointment of Demeter at finding {56} her hopes thus blighted, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... general—most probably the nervous—system. In none but perhaps the very mildest and recent cases have I ever seen rapid results follow electrical treatment of any kind whatsoever. In support of my assertion however that in the majority of cases the sexual sphere can be influenced only through the system at large, I will state first, that I have seen cases where local electrical treatment had utterly failed to do the slightest good, respond favorably to the baths, and second, ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... books of contemporary writers. Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who travelled in New England in 1759-1760, says that though it may "at first appear to be the effects of grossness of character, it will upon deeper research be found to proceed from simplicity and innocence." To this assertion, after some research, I can give—to use Sir Thomas Browne's words—"a staggering assent to the affirmative, not without some fear of the negative." Rev. Samuel Peters, in his General History of Connecticut, speaks at length upon the custom, and apparently endeavors ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of curious intelligence and rare physical powers. Their wonderful instinct for organization, their attachment to particular localities, their occasional journeys in large numbers over mountains and across rivers, their obstinate assertion of supposed rights, and the ridiculous caricature which they exhibit of all that is animal and emotional in man, would naturally create a deep impression.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Indeed the habits of monkeys well deserve to be patiently studied; not as they appear in confinement, when much that ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... even by the Devil, it would nevertheless be false. I have often indeed heard the saying, On peut etre plus FIN qu'un autre, mais pas plus FIN que tous les autres. But observe that 'fin' means cunning, not wise. The difference between this assertion and the one you refer to is curious and worth examining. It is quite certain, there is always some one man in the world wiser than all the rest; as Socrates was declared by the oracle to be; and as, I suppose, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... ourselves. Think of love in the forgiveness of injury; the love which 'thinketh no evil', 'envieth not', the love which 'worketh no ill to his neighbour'. Where does grudge-bearing, backbiting, or uncharitableness come in? Pride, passion, self-assertion, and such things belong not to the results of sanctification; the opposites are found in those who ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... address. You are well acquainted with the dissection of human nature; nor do you need the assistance of a fellow-creature's bosom to inform you, that man is always a selfish, often a perfidious being.—This assertion, however the hasty conclusions of superficial observation may doubt of it, or the raw inexperience of youth may deny it, those who make the fatal experiment we have done, will feel.—You are a statesman, and consequently are ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... see that he follows some of the Raja Yoga methods, and that Concentration is one of his strongest weapons. And from all reports, Prof. Elmer Gates, of Washington, D.C., whose mind has unfolded many wonderful discoveries and inventions, is also a practical Yogi although he may repudiate the assertion vigorously, and may not have familiarized himself with the principles of this science, which he has "dropped into" unconsciously. Those who have reported upon Prof. Gates' methods, say that he fairly "digs out" the inventions ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... conscious of his worth and dignity. His pride then urges him to assert his independence. He becomes better able to assert it also; and better able to assist others or his country, when they or she stake all, even existence, upon the same assertion. But mere knowledge makes no one independent, nor fits him to be free. It often only makes him a more useful slave. Liberty is a curse to the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... questions. A society which inevitably represses what is highest in the best sort of men is an evil society. A civilization which destroys faith in genius, in heroism, in sanctity, is the forerunner of barbarism. Individuality is man's noblest triumph over fate, his most heavenly assertion of the freedom of the soul; and a world in which individuality is made impossible is a slavish world. There man dwindles, becomes one of a multitude, the impersonal product of a general law; and all his godlike strength and beauty are lost. Is not one true poet more precious than ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... studied anthropological questions in my time; and I feel bound to remark, that this assertion of Professor Virchow's appears to me to be a typical example of the kind of incautious over-statement ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... leg as he spoke, as a clencher to his assertion, and in his eagerness was going to use a strong expression, when, recollecting that he was on the quarterdeck, and to whom he was ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... other Mathematicians, wrote against this strange assertion; and, among other things, M. Konig cited some sentences of a Letter by Leibnitz, in which that great man says, He has observed 'that, in the modifications of motion, the Action usually becomes either a Maximum or ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... mischief, but were instigated to it by parties whom Franklin little suspected of such an agency. When the Doctor expressed his incredulity, the friend promised to give him decisive evidence of the full truth of his assertion. It came to Franklin in a form which astounded him, while it opened his eyes and fixed his indignation upon a class of men who from that moment onward were to him the exponents of all malignity and baseness. The evidence came in the shape of the originals, the autographs, of the above-named letters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... roast beef. More than once it was brought in having a peculiar blackish-crimson hue and stringy grain, with a sweetish flavor, and an odor which was singular but not tainted, and which required imperatively that either we or it should vacate the room instantly. Mikhei stuck firmly to his assertion that it was a prime cut from a first-class ox. We discovered the truth later on, in Moscow, when we entered a Tatar horse-butcher's shop—ornamented with the picture of a horse, as the law requires—out of curiosity, to inquire prices. We recognized the smell and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... spot in his life had never passed out of the lad's memory, and it might be from the lurking want of self-respect that there was about him so much of self-assertion, in attention to trifles. He was very reserved, and no one except Norman had ever found the way to anything like confidence, and Norman had vexed him by the proposal he had made ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the same time. All these things are so joined with the principal fact in his mind, that his remembering them distinctly, seems to him, and he expects will seem to others, demonstration of the truth and accuracy of his principal assertion. When a lawyer tells him he has nothing to do with these ideas, he is immediately at a stand in his narrative; he can recollect nothing, he is sure of nothing; he has no reason to give for his belief, unless he may say ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... not venture to guarantee the assertion), that "they will descry a fly at the distance of a quarter of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... I find (Nor think my friend th' assertion bold) 20 This languid age-enfeebled mind, As in life's prime, it's powers unfold—- Again th' ideal scenes arise, The visions stream before my eyes, Resistless on the rous'd imagination pour, And paint themselves ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... not hear of this accursed loss—be secret on that head, I charge you! but in regard to this man's bold assertion, I must consult him instantly—haste and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... have observed, reiterates the assertion that the errors of Gil Blas are such as no Spaniard could commit, leaving altogether unguarded against the goring horn of the dilemma which can only be parried by an answer to the question—how came ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... at home, and had them tied to trees and little arrows fired into them, one by one, so that in the end they died. The cruel chief's wives were said to be the instigators of this "most bloody business" and the leading lady's photograph warranted the assertion. Her face was tattooed and was curiously like a Red Indian's. I have read in a book that the Chins tattoo their wives' faces to prevent them being stolen for their beauty! I gather this punitive expedition that we have come across unexpectedly, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... in their habits and instincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsical and capricious as superior beings. One is not safe, for instance, in making any absolute assertion as to their place or mode of building. Ground-builders often get up into a bush, and tree-builders sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... good, beautiful, right, just, ornamental, honourable, &c. &c. they will find it to originate from, and end in, some moral or religious principle. Indeed, some objects (the highest in the scale of our perceptions of excellence) bring with them an immediate conviction of the truth of this assertion; witness the devotional sentiment which the view of the main ocean inspires; the rising and setting sun; the contemplation of the celestial orbs, &c. witness the noblest object of the creation, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... in the proof of this assertion; if we look at a hot fire, we experience no pain of the optic nerve, though the heat along with the light must be concentrated upon it. Nor does warm water or warm oil poured into the ear give pain to the organ of hearing; and hence as these organs of sense do not perceive ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... most sacred character. It is evident that parental authority is a divine trust which must be exercised over childhood and youth. Only it should be exercised on principle, not from caprice; for the good of the ruled, not for the gratification of a despotic self-assertion in the ruler; with fond gentleness, not with harshness or cruelty. And the authority of the parent should be vindicated as far as possible by force of wisdom, weight of character, power of persuasion; avoiding, as far as can properly be done, every occasion of conflict, every need of a violent issue. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... an old one at this sort of game," returned one of the detectives. "He is a wonder at opening safes. Somebody told me once that he made the assertion he could open any ordinary office safe inside of fifteen minutes. He's got it all in his finger ends. They are so sensitive that when he turns the safe knob, he can feel every movement of ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... spent his youth and early manhood, on his father's farm. Recently when asked for a sketch of his life Mr. Ewing replied: "I didn't have any life. I just growed like Topsy. I didn't have any educating. I just picked it up; and as for poetry, I never wrote any, only rhyme." Notwithstanding this assertion, Mr. Ewing being unable to resist the prompting of the "divinity which stirred within him," when quite young, began to write poetry. There seems to be a subtle influence pervading the romantic Octoraro hills, which if not ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... form, her colour and fire—the choked, smouldering fire of opals. He saw the curve of her wrist, the confident swing of her walk, the easy poise of her head, her bearing, at once girlish and womanly, the little air, half of wistful appeal, and half of self-reliant assertion. Yet he failed not to regard these indulgences as utter folly. It had been folly enough while he believed that she stood ready to accept him and his wealth. It was more flagrant, now that her quest for a husband with millions had ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... authority do you make this assertion?" continued Judge Le Grande, evidently aroused by the ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... that he had detected a plot on the part of Leicester to have him assassinated; and the assertion seemed so important, that Villiers came to Councillor Clerk to confer with him on the subject. The worthy Bartholomew, who had again, most reluctantly, left his quiet chambers in the Temple to come again among the guns and drums, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... expect to provoke a reply from the man who, after the first triumphant assertion of his claim, had held himself as removed from her and as unresponsive to her anguish as had he whom she directly addressed? If so, she must have found her disappointment bitter, for he did not respond with so much as a look. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... vanity, have been my seducers. I said, that I owed my errors to circumstances, not to nature. You will say, that in confessing love and vanity to be my seducers, I contradict this assertion—you are mistaken. I mean, that though vanity and sentiment were in me, yet the scenes in which I have been placed, and the events which I have witnessed, gave to those latent currents of action a wrong and a dangerous direction. I was formed to love; for one whom I did love I could ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tiarella, meaning a little tiara, and mitella, a little miter, refer, of course, to the odd forms of their seed-cases; but all of us are not gifted with the imaginative eyes of Linnaeus, who named the plants. Xenophon's assertion that the royal tiara or turban of the Persians was encircled with a crown helps us no more to see what Linnaeus saw in the one case than the fact that the papal miter is encircled by three crowns helps in the other. And as for the lofty, two-peaked cap worn by bishops in the Roman Church, a dozen ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... of the midnight tragedy. Further questioning elicited the assertion that he was utterly unable to account for Maillot's presence in the house; that he had never seen him before, and that he was sure the young man's call had been unexpected by Mr. Page, as the latter had, the last thing the previous evening at his office, instructed Burke ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Religion, are the most devout of any in Spain, though in common Life you find them amorous, gallant, and gay, like other People; yet on solemn Occasions there shines out-right such a Spirit as proves them the very Bigots of Bigotry: As a Proof of which Assertion, I will now give some Account of such Observations, as I had time to make upon them, during two Lent Seasons, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... sympathises with the Government, and the sister service with the rioters, you can suggest "that knaves would, of course, be supported by the Navy!" This may lead up to a really magnificent burst of waggery in the assertion that the dissentients must of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... Isis, who were in Rome just what the Gypsies are in modern Europe. It has been argued that they were Grecian heretics; that they were persecuted Jews; that they were Tartars; that they were Moors; and that they were Hindoos, Grellman accepted (as it suited his theory) the assertion that they entered Germany from Turkey, though he rejected, without examination, the assertion, made on equally good authority, that they entered it from Spain, from Italy, from Denmark, and from Sweden. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... urgent need to escape undesirable conditions. In fact, one of the American Negroes' greatest shortcomings is that they are not sufficiently pioneering. Statistics show that the whites have more inclination to move from State to State than the Negro. To prove this assertion,[51] Professor William O. Scroggs has shown that, in 1910, 16.6 per cent of the Negroes had moved to some other State than that in which they were born, while during the same period 22.4 per cent of the whites had done ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... the door. At the sight of this determination on the part of his strange guest, a cold, uneasy, vague presentiment seized Mr. Beaufort. There, not flashed, but rather froze, across him the recollection of his brother's emphatic but disbelieved assurances—of Catherine's obstinate assertion of her son's alleged rights—rights which her lawsuit, undertaken on her own behalf, had not compromised;—a fresh lawsuit might be instituted by the son, and the evidence which had been wanting in the former suit might be found at last. With this remembrance ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Marysville, and W. C. Graves, of Calistoga, demands mention of the fact that their accounts differ in important respects from the one given above. This is not surprising in view of the thirty-three years which have elapsed since the occurrence. The history of criminal jurisprudence justifies the assertion that eye-witnesses of any fatal difficulty differ materially in regard to important particulars, even when their testimony is taken immediately after the difficulty. It is not strange, therefore, that after the lapse of an ordinary life-time a dozen different versions should have been contributed ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... Donald MacDonald's startling assertion that Mortimer FitzHugh had been in the camp, and that Joanne's dream was not a dream, but reality, brought a gasp of astonishment and disbelief from Aldous. Before he had recovered sufficiently from his amazement ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood |
