"Self-assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right. Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness—and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a certain grade. It is of children like this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... believe that this could be proved in the case of every woman who has attained to fame. And there is another point. The women who have succeeded in bursting these bonds have, in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy and fighting, that their work is rendered crude and often valueless. Self-assertion can never be the best preparation for achievement. All this narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results gained superficial and unenduring. We have here the explanation of much that has been, and still is, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... had quietly and unconsciously taken a seat by his side, and the recognition appeared equally unexpected and awkward. The new-comer was the older and more decorous-looking, with an added formality of manner and self-assertion that did not, however, conceal a certain habitual shrewdness of eye and lip. He wore a full beard, but the absence of a moustache left the upper half of his handsome and rather satirical mouth uncovered. His dress was less pronounced than his ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... with me now, sure!" retorted Ethelinda, stung to a blunt self-assertion. "He keered mo' about a good-lookin' road than a good-lookin' gal then. Whenst the squad kem back an' reported the passage full safe for man an' beastis the leader tuk a purse o' money out'n his pocket ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun of Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, "The angels in heaven were lately learning his last pieces." He says, "The fishes shed their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... every one at the table: "How brilliant! what an original mind! what a sensation he would make abroad!" And it was quite true, apart from the mere momentary effect of dinner-table talk, that there was a certain bigness about the man; a keen practical sagacity; a bold freedom of self-assertion; a broad way of dealing with what ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... disposition, Lister was a man of peace; and though he left the Society of 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 since the beginning of ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... respectfully, although he did not fawn over the dignitary or lose his own quiet self-assertion. He was an American. He told of finding the tortured prospector and of the plight of the approaching ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... prosecuted, nailed to an oak-tree, legible a hundred years ago, perhaps, when its nails were not rust, and really held it tight—instead of, as now, merely countenancing its wish to remain from old habit? It may have been so frightened in its timid youth; but if so, surely the robust self-assertion of its straight start for Gattrell's had in it something of contempt for the poor old board, coupled with its well-known intention of turning to the left and going slap through the wood the minute you (or it) got there. It may even have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... kindly at her. There was no foolish hope in little Annie Eustace's heart; there would be no spire of aspiration added to her dreams because of the meeting, but she tasted the sweet of approbation, and it was a tonic which she sorely needed, and which inspired her to self-assertion in a childishly naughty and mischievous way. It was after supper that evening, that Annie strolled a little way down the street, taking advantage of Miss Bessy Dicky's dropping in for a call, to slink unobserved out of her shadowy corner, for the Eustaces were fond of sitting ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... who regards each new abiding-place as a scene of coming pleasures and conquests, and who feels sure every glance toward her is one of admiration. There were eyes, however, that noted disapprovingly her jaunty self-assurance and self-assertion, and when she met those eyes her complacency seemed disturbed at once, for she flushed and promptly turned her back upon them. In fact, from the time she had first seen Van Berg's frowning face it had been a disagreeable memory, and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... had a combative though not unamiable disposition, took down the rifle as an act of self-assertion, and walked out into the twilight with it on his shoulder. It was simply a contradictious action, as there was no warranty for it in vert and venison. But he had to garnish his action with an appearance of plausibility, and nothing suggested itself. The only course open to him was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... is not worth while to write. The girl did have the grace to keep reasonably quiet, though occasionally she would feel that this silence was not doing herself justice, and would break into the cheerful conversation of the others with a boldness and self-assertion ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... overwhelmed with awe and shame at his unexpected appearance, was haughty and even defiant. One of the strongest impulses of this man was to crush out of those in his employ a spirit of independence and individual self-assertion. The idea of a part of his business machinery making such a jarring tumult in his own house! He proposed to instantly cast away the cause of friction, and insert a more stolid human cog-wheel in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... once! Along with the yearning that came from some deep part of her, that was selfless and exalted, Thea had a hard kind of cockiness, a determination to get ahead. Well, there are passages in life when that fierce, stubborn self-assertion will stand its ground after the nobler feeling is ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... element of human life, is susceptible of progress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspirations are enlarged, although its duties can never be abrogated and its obligations can never be cancelled. It is impossible to bring about the higher development by any self-assertion or breaking away of the individual will. The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. The family in its entirety must be carried ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... other member of the party of whom we will make mention just now, because she appears again somewhat prominently in our tale. This was a little elderly female who seemed utterly destitute of the very common human attribute of self-assertion, and in whose amiable, almost comical, countenance, one expression seemed to overbear and obliterate all others, namely that of gushing good-will to man and beast! Those who did not know Reni-Mamba thought her an amiable imbecile. Those who knew her well loved her ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... places of the government of the city of New York; and the aggressively dressed and too abundantly jewelled female companions of these men, heavily built, heavy browed, with faces marked in hard lines, and with aggressive eyes schooled to look out upon the world with a necessarily emphatic self-assertion, were of a type that, without special knowledge of American ways, was entirely recognizable. Albeit Miss Lee, having spent much time in the mixed society of various European watering-places, was not by any means an unsophisticated young person, and was not ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... Lopez. Every word and every act, every look and every touch, had been loving. Had she known the world better she might have felt, perhaps, that something was expected where so much was given. Perhaps a rougher manner, with some little touch of marital self-assertion, might be a safer commencement of married life,—safer to the wife as coming from her husband. Arthur Fletcher by this time would have asked her to bring him his slippers, taking infinite pride in having his little behests obeyed by so sweet a servitor. That also would have been ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... are placed such instinctive tendencies as bashfulness, sympathy, the gregarious instinct, or love of companionship, anger, self-assertion, combativeness, etc. ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... strange gentleness. He told me, in that manner of his, that he would take only a minute of my time, and while I sat perfectly tongue-tied before him, as if I were a schoolgirl, this is what he said, without any passionate declaration, or any self-assertion. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... not, because you're older," said Moppet, disgusted at this superfluous self-assertion on her sister's part. "I am always good at parties—ain't I, Uncle Tom?" turning an appealing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... would be the best answer to such confident self-assertion. The tongue of Fame will suffice of itself to convince you that I was a great prince, and my opponent a petty adventurer. But I would have you consider the distance between us. Called to the throne while I was yet a boy, I quelled the disorders of my kingdom, and avenged my father's ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... magnetic, earnest, impassioned. No photographs can do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced. At once one would perceive that she had the temperament to dominate, to lead, to control, not by any crude self-assertion, but a spiritual animus. Of course such a personality, with the wonderful tumult in the air that her large and enthusiastic following excited, fascinated the imagination. What had she originated? I mentally ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... children. It is fascinating to watch the individuality in them struggling for self-assertion. I could see that the other children's things had tremendous charm for the red-haired boy, especially a toy theatre, in which he was so anxious to take a part that he resolved to fawn upon the other children. He smiled and began to play with them. His one and only apple he ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... with which he spoke of his past faults and follies, necessarily faded away in proportion as he regained that kind of febrile strength which was his normal state of health, and with it the arrogant self-assertion which was ingrained in his character. But it was now more than ever that she became aware of the antagonism between all that constituted his inner life and her own. It was not that he volunteered in her presence the express utterance of those opinions, social or religious, which he ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in everything except his basal ideas, he was pliable to a degree. He could be talked into almost any concession of interest. He once told Herndon he thanked God that he had not been born a woman because he found it so hard to refuse any request made of him. His outer easiness, his lack of self-assertion,—as most people understand self-assertion,—persist in an amusing group of anecdotes of the circuit. Though he was a favorite with the company at every tavern, those little demagogues, the tavern-keepers, quickly found out that he could be safely put upon. In the minute but important ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... had planted, and which no rage of man could trample out—let us believe, I say, that that sight taught at last to the buccaneers of the old world that there was a purer manliness, a loftier heroism, than the ferocious self-assertion of the Berserker, even the heroism of humility, gentleness, self-restraint, self-sacrifice. That there was a strength which was made perfect in weakness; a glory, not of the sword but of the cross. We will believe that that ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... it takes rank upon an equal footing of reality with the consciousness of personal existence. We are as heartily persuaded of the identity of those we love as of our own identity. And so sympathy pairs with self-assertion, the two gerents of human life on earth; and Whitman's ideal man must not only be strong, free, and self-reliant in himself, but his freedom must be bounded and his strength perfected by the most intimate, eager, and long-suffering love for others. To some extent this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... advertisement that he owned every sheep in it, white or black, and to show that there could be no doubt on the matter, he added a general claim to right of property in all mankind and the universe. He did this in the name and on behalf of the church universal, but there was self-assertion in the quiet air with which he pointed out the nature of his title, and then, after sweeping all human thought and will into his strong-box, shut down the lid with a sharp click, and bade his ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... launched into a quarrel. The quarrel grows broader and deeper. Number one restates his case somewhat differently. Number two takes it up on its new ground. Argument is followed by vociferation and abuse; a momentary self-restraint by a fresh outbreak of self-assertion. All tempers come into play, all modes of attack are employed, from pounding with a crowbar to pricking with a pin. And where all this time is music? Where is the gold of truth? Spun over and blackened ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... what is known of his disposition it seems probable that the sarcasms aimed by public writers at his infirmity inclined him to justify their attacks rather than to disprove them by his subsequent demeanor, and that some of his most extravagant outbursts of self-assertion were designed in a spirit of bravado and reckless good-nature to increase the laughter which satirists had raised against him. However this may be, his conduct drew upon him blows that would have ruffled the composure ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... a remedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind this minute instance of life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny. Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit of asserting himself. I don't mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral or physical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readiness of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and lead the man to excellence in life, in ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... pitman by the way in which he drew him out of the pit; and Nelson swore at him grossly because of the alleged clumsiness of his brakeing. George defended himself, and appealed to the testimony of the other workmen. But Nelson had not been accustomed to George's style of self-assertion; and, after a great deal of abuse, he threatened to kick the brakesman, who defied him to do so. Nelson ended by challenging Stephenson to a pitched battle; and the latter accepted the challenge, when a day was fixed on which the fight was ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... wrote, 'there can be any life quite so demonstrative of character as that which we had on these expeditions. One sees a remarkable reassortment of values. Under ordinary conditions it is so easy to carry a point with a little bounce; self-assertion is a mask which covers many a weakness.... [Page 283] Here the outward show is nothing, it is the inward purpose that counts. So the "gods" dwindle and the humble supplant them. Pretence ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... consciousness also and is able to regard it as being the last of the "me" collections, then it will lose its sense of relativity and separation and the real individuality, the "I AM" consciousness, will have been realized. What do I mean? This "I AM" is not the petulant self-assertion of the relative ego. "I" but really means GOD CONSCIOUSNESS as perfect Existence, perfect Knowledge or perfect Bliss. It means the realization of an Infinite and Eternal Self or Individuality. "He that has lost the ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... his approach the sub-prior rose from his seat and stood motionless with clasped hands; there was a faint suggestion of antagonism in his attitude, which was quite devoid of servility. Christian, however, remained seated, raising his keen grey eyes to the Provincial's face with a quiet self-assertion ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... common ground between these two passionate aspiring spirits, who never attained to Goethe's serenity. Both were melancholy, and fled from their fellows; both strove for perfect liberty and unlimited self-assertion; both felt with the wild and uproarious side of Nature, and found idyllic scenes marred by ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... I beg your Worship's pardon. We do not always get punished for disobeying the laws of nature. Nature's strongest force is self-assertion, and excessive self-assertion is vanity, and ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... pleased, amuse himself to his heart's content in the house that had been the dwelling of his tyrant. What Louis, always dissimulative, feigned to be an act of gracious homage to dead generosity was in truth an act of defiant and safe self-assertion. Perhaps Lagardere guessed as much. Certainly he played agreeably upon the king's susceptibilities when he gave to Richelieu's bequest the name of Palais Royal, which was still quite unfamiliar, instead of the name of Palais Cardinal, which it had worn so long and by which name almost every one ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because Davout did not cooeperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and Eugene against Barclay, but the former had pushed on to seize Duenaburg, and was out of reach. This scheme, like the other, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... similarity of pursuits, with commercial jealousy, with an intense and ever growing rivalry for that supremacy on the ocean towards which the monarchy and the republic were so earnestly struggling, with a common passion for civil and religious freedom, and with that inveterate habit of self-assertion—the healthful but not engaging attribute of all vigorous nations—which strongly marked them both, was rapidly producing an antipathy between the two countries which time was likely rather to deepen than efface. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... change has taken place. It is a correlate of the transformed character of the gods, and of the parallel disciplining of men's valuations. In the words of Fosdick, prayer may be considered as dominant desire. But it is also a way of securing domination over desire. It is indeed self-assertion; sometimes it is the making of one's supreme claim, as when life reaches its most tragic crisis; yet it is, even in the same act, submission to an over-self. Here, then, is our greater problem as to the function of prayer. It ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... not here; You sit upon this fallen Cranmer's throne; And it would more become you, my Lord Legate, To join a voice, so potent with her Highness, To ours in plea for Cranmer than to stand On naked self-assertion. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... attained in athletic games has its reaction upon every mental condition. Many boys who are hampered by unreasonable diffidence, a lack of normal self-confidence and self-assertion, find unexpected ability and positiveness through this avenue alone and, on the other hand, the physical test and encounter of the game serves to bring a proper self-rating ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... laugh among the men at the boy's sturdy self-assertion, and then the man named Dikon said: "Come along, lad. I will take you to Dame Vernon at once. She is expecting you; and, my faith, it would not be safe to leave you standing here long, for I see you would shortly be engaged in splitting the weasands ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... supported his inner man rather than his family. Apparently his deep interest in spiritual physics, rather than metaphysics, gave a kind of hypnotic mellifluous effect to his voice when he sang his oracles; a manner something of a cross between an inside pompous self-assertion and an outside serious benevolence. But he was sincere and kindly intentioned in his eagerness to extend what he could of the better influence of the philosophic world as he saw it. In fact, there is a strong didactic streak in both father and daughter. Louisa May seldom misses a chance ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... make myself out a saint," she said, at last, in another voice and with a humility which was, in truth, hardly less proud than her self-assertion. "I—I was brought up in poverty, and my mother died when I was fifteen. I had to defend myself as the poor defend themselves—by silence. I learned not to talk about my own affairs. I couldn't afford to be frank, like ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not be supposed that the commoner sort of dreamers are never jealous of these figments of their fancy. They are often so, and rouse themselves to self-assertion as frequently as our Better Element flings off the yoke of Tammany. At a fair, open to any who would pay, for some forgotten good object, such as is always engaging the energies of society, I saw moving among the paying guests the tall form of a nobleman ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... hearth-money, an impost on each fireplace where food is cooked; the same tax which made trouble in old England, and was happily got rid of long ago. But the hungry plebs of Cotrone lacked vigour for any effective self-assertion; they merely exhausted themselves with shouting "Abbass' 'o sindaco!" and dispersed to the hearths which paid for an all but imaginary service. I wondered whether the Sindaco and his portly friend sat in their comfortable room whilst the roaring went on; whether ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the summit of delirium under her usurping Protector, Oliver Cromwell, there arose, among many other sects full of enthusiastic self-assertion, that of the Quakers, who were chiefly characterized by a profound religious, and oft fanatical, opposition to the Established Church, as well as to the Crown. Coming in contact with one of their most zealous preachers, young Penn was inflamed with their spirit and became a vigorous ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... the names of a few mutual acquaintances, of unexceptional 'blue blood,' and the fact that both ladies had visited Europe, establishing topics of conversation, they presently warmed into cordiality. I found them well informed and agreeable, less demonstrative in their self-assertion than their Northern sisterhood, but latently wilful, and assumptive of a superior elevation hardly justified by their general air of languid refinement. It reminded me, on the whole, of what I had heard complacently ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his whole-hearted devotion to his art which caused his rare acts of self-assertion, and it was this same devotion, no less than his natural kindliness, that made him ever helpful to younger artists who showed any promise of future worth. Even in his last days of unspeakable suffering he would ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... glittering ostentation, there is a fatal moral hollowness which infects both serious conduct and social diversion. The result is seen in imitative manners, affected culture, and a mixture of timorous self-consciousness within and noisy self-assertion without, which completes the most distasteful scene that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... also, is her intense egoism and her abundant self-assertion under all circumstances. It often seemed to us as if for her the world revolved, with passing show, around a pivot from which she regarded it as existing only for what it meant for her career. These qualities have led to her statements, and perhaps to the actual feelings, that she was ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... beware of the refined selfishness which shrinks from righteous self-assertion because it is painful. You must make sure of your real motive; you must consider whether your sacrifice is not going to do more harm than good. But why do you come to me with your trouble? Why don't you go to ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... was irritated yet vaguely amused too at the singular self-assertion of these common folk who presumed to take their moral measurement of an Archbishop! It is a strange fact, but these same common folk always DO take these sorts ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... has written: "It was a great day for fools when modesty was made a virtue." I heartily subscribe to that. Life means action; action means self-assertion; self-assertion rouses all the small, colorless people to the only sort of action of which they are capable—to sneering at the doer as egotistical, vain, conceited, bumptious and the like. So be it! I have an individuality, aggressive, restless ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... I am, and as I certainly ought to be, I started back with an involuntary exclamation, a mingling doubtless of incredulity and disgust. This man, who stood before me with all the ease and self-assertion of a gentleman, was—you will never ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... power in matters of finance, but was to leave the money power supreme and unquestioned. In the conditions of that situation I was reluctant to acquiesce, and I began to fight against it by financial self-assertion from the first, though it was only by the establishment of the Post Office Savings Banks and their great progressive development that the finance minister has been provided with an instrument sufficiently powerful to make him ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... pretensions as medicine men, without any success, only bring upon themselves an unnecessary amount of embarrassment and ridicule. Yet there is one quality always possessed by such persons, among a savage people as elsewhere—namely, great perseverance and tenacity in their self-assertion. So the blessing of ignorance kept Slow Dog always cheerful; and he seemed, if anything, to derive some pleasure from the endless insinuations and ridicule of ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Boehme, "supposes that hell is far from us. But it is near us. Every one carries it in himself."[66] Many of our vices, in fact, are simply savage qualities—and some are even savage virtues—in their old age. Thus in an organized society the acquisitiveness and self-assertion proper to a vigorous primitive dependent on his own powers survive as the sins of envy and covetousness, and are seen operating in the dishonesty of the burglar, the greed and egotism of the profiteer: ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... she felt the slighting regard in which low-bred people held her on account of her work and position. And so large a portion of the world is deficient in breeding, that to a young person at least the desire of self-assertion comes as a very natural and tolerably strong temptation. Esther had felt it, and trodden it under foot, and yet Mrs. Barker's words made her wince. How could anybody reasonably suppose that a gentleman would choose such a house and such a street ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... passed unheard, or translated itself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door. On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... old house!' he said, turning to her, and feeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentle matronly dignity of the one sister and the young self-assertion of the other. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drifted quite apart, and Sir Percy seemed to have laid aside his love for her, as he would an ill-fitting glove. She tried to rouse him by sharpening her ready wit against his dull intellect; endeavouring to excite his jealousy, if she could not rouse his love; tried to goad him to self-assertion, but all in vain. He remained the same, always passive, drawling, sleepy, always courteous, invariably a gentleman: she had all that the world and a wealthy husband can give to a pretty woman, yet on this ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... de Medrano, 1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701, in Shea's Early Voyages on the Mississippi. Barcia, Charlevoix, Kalm, and other early writers, put a low value on Hennepin's veracity.] Why had he not told it before? An excess of modesty, a lack of self-assertion, or a too sensitive reluctance to wound the susceptibilities of others, had never been found among his foibles. Yet some, perhaps, might have believed him, had he not, in the first edition of his ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... themselves first in land captured from King Umziligatze, secondly in Lydenburg and Dekaap, and thirdly in the Zulu country. The history of this Zululand expansion remains to be told. At present it is interesting to follow the geographical growth of the state which has become so troublesome, and whose self-assertion has increased ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... international relations, and finds patriotism still a pagan virtue. Mr. Lecky calls it "in relation to foreigners a spirit of constant and jealous self-assertion." When a tariff is under discussion, high, low or no duties are advocated as beneficial for the industries of one's own country, regardless of the welfare of those of other lands. The scramble for colonies ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... them since they were made. His face was almost the face of the caricature American: deep, slightly curved vertical lines enclosed his mouth in their parenthesis; a thin, dust-coloured beard fell from his cheeks and chin; his upper lip was shaven. But instead of the slight frown of challenge and self-assertion which marks this face in the type, his large blue eyes, set near together, gazed sadly from under a smooth forehead, extending itself well up toward the crown, where his dry ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... and the slight stigma which is still attached to the word reflects the bitterness of the struggle between reason and the forces arrayed against her. The term is limited to the field of theology, because it was in that field that the self-assertion of reason was most violently and pertinaciously opposed. In the same way free thought, the refusal of thought to be controlled by any authority but its own, has a ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... was abnormal, and the method was fundamentally artificial. A sentimentalism arose, which is in art what the metaphysical method is in philosophy. Yet a literature was born of it, whose freshness, force, elevation, and, above all, a self-assertion and peculiar aspiring freedom that have never been surpassed, still exert an irresistible attraction, even over minds that are furthest removed from the moral storm and disorder, and the confused intellectual convictions, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... American case the balance of effectual public opinion hitherto is to all appearance quite in doubt, but it is also quite unsettled. The first response has been a display of patriotic emotion and national self-assertion. The further, later and presumably more deliberate, expressions of opinion carry a more obvious note of apprehension and less of stubborn or unreflecting national pride. It may be too early to anticipate a material shift of base, to a more neutral, or less exclusively ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... England. The ecclesiastical and dynastic aims of the Stuart monarchy had been replaced by a national policy, in which the interests of the people of Great Britain sprang to the first place. The immediate consequence of this union of vigour and patriotism, in the government, was the self-assertion of England as a commercial, and therefore as a naval power. This awakened spirit of conscious strength meant war with the Dutch, who while England was pursuing ecclesiastical ends, had possessed themselves of the trade of the world. War accordingly broke out early in ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... a block of the spring woods from under the trees into a man-made edifice. It may have a deep indigo background or a dull red—like the shades of moss or like last year's fallen leaves—but over it all is abundantly sprinkled dainty bluebells, anemones, daisies, all the spring beauties in joyous self-assertion and happy mingling. With such flowery guides to mark the way the path to slumberland is followed. Once within the bedroom, the poppies of the hangings spread drowsy influence, and the happy sleeper passes into unconsciousness, passes through the flowered ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... moreover that he should not take command in person except when the whole body of the militia was called out; nor, even then, without consulting his rival.[694] His ire and vexation produced an access of jealous self-assertion, and drove him into something like revolt against the ministerial command. "If the English attack Quebec, I shall always hold myself free to go thither myself with most of the troops and all the militia and Indians I can assemble. On arriving ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... they be content with sour bread or a soiled table-cloth; never again will they mistake arrogant self-assertion for good-breeding, or a dull, half-furnished "living-room" for a cheerful parlor. They have all been taught the virtue which lies in mother earth, and the fragrance she gives to her flowers; they know the health and power given by the labor of their hands ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... elementary duty. He will not be a fat or emaciated person. Fat, panting men, and thin, enfeebled ones cannot possibly be considered good citizens any more than dirty or verminous people. He will be just as fine and seemly in his person as he can be, not from vanity and self-assertion but to be pleasing and agreeable to his fellows. The ugly dress and ugly bearing of the "good man" of to-day will be as incomprehensible to him as the filth of a palaeolithic savage is to us. He will not speak of his "frame," and hang clothes like sacks over ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... think that is the most probable guess of all. Perhaps he is only 'going to be' one of these things, for he can't be more than twenty-five or twenty-six. Still, he looks as if he were something already; that is, he has a kind of self-reliance in his mien—not self-assertion, nor self-esteem, but belief in self, as if he were able, and knew that he ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Wordsworth, "stern daughter of the voice of God," has two aspects, on each of which he dwells with a persistent iteration. The first is Surrender to something higher and wider than ourselves. That he has nowhere laid the line between this abnegation and the self-assertion which in his heroes he commends, partly means that correct theories of our complex life are impossible; but Matthew Arnold's criticism, that his Ethics "are made paradoxical by his attack on Happiness, which he should rather have referred to as the result of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... sense of nausea. It was all quite otherwise alarming than the romantic tales and scenes of German drama lead one to expect; here was suffocating actuality. The air diffused a sort of dizzy heaviness, the dim light rasped the nerves. When the Southerner, impelled by a species of self-assertion, gazed firmly at the toad, he felt a sort of emetic heat at the pit of his stomach, and was conscious of a terror like that a criminal might feel in presence of a gendarme. He endeavoured to brace himself by looking at Madame Fontaine; but there he encountered two ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... Little Russia, beloved of us all, whether in the Otriad or the army, a character possessing it seemed none of the Russian moods and sensibilities, of the kindest heart but no sentimentality, utterly free from self-praise, self-interest, self-assertion, humorous, loving passionately his country and, with all his Russian romance and even mysticism, packed with practical common sense; another Division doctor, a young man, carving for himself a practice out of Moscow merchants, crammed with all the latest ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... that, as insoluble, they are also negligible problems. To all such stupid moralizing it prefers the click of the castanets! The law, then, of this naturalism always and everywhere is the law of rebellion, of ruthless self-assertion, of whim and impulse, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... admitted that some of these ebullitions have bordered closely on what we may be forgiven for describing as indecorum. But the motive was undoubtedly a generous instinct of self-assertion. Ever since the days of CAIN, the first great self-expressionist, there have always been richly-organised natures to whom even fratricide is preferable to the dull routine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... requirements, from a sense of her utter unworthiness to accept any of its blessings. And this difference between the sisters continued always. Angelina knew that humility was the chief of the Christian virtues, and often she believed she had attained to it; but there was too much self-assertion, too much of the pride of power, in her composition, to permit her to go down into the depths, and prostrate herself in the dust as Sarah did. She could turn her full gaze to the sun, and bask in its genial beams, while Sarah felt unworthy ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Something of the colour and fever of autumn is in all he wrote. Another writer since Cladel, who has probably never heard of him, has made heroes of peasants and vagabonds. But Maxim Gorki makes heroes of them, consciously, with a mental self-assertion, giving them ideas which he has found in Nietzsche. Cladel put into all his people some of his own passionate way of seeing 'scarlet,' to use Barbey d'Aurevilly's epithet: un rural ecarlate. Vehement and voluminous, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... near to him, and I did not hear him say anything very bright or illuminating, but every one felt, I think, that he was a cheerful and dependable person. I always felt, when I observed him, that he understood the Russian character far better than any of us. He had none of the self-assertion of the average Englishman and, at the same time, he had his opinions and his preferences. He took every kind of chaff with good-humoured indifference, but I think it was above everything else his tolerance that pleased the Russians. Nothing shocked him, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... are considering is undoubtedly much stronger at present in the whites than in the Bantu, but there is reason to believe that the awakening desire for racial self-assertion which we call pride of race will grow and increase in the Bantu as it has done in the Negroes in the Southern States of America, and elsewhere. General education, so far from hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth; witness the ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... Estes Park. There is no trail, and horses have never been across. We started from camp at ten, and spent four hours in searching for the trail. Chalmers tried gulch after gulch again, his self-assertion giving way a little after each failure; sometimes going east when we should have gone west, always being brought up by a precipice or other impossibility. At last he went off by himself, and returned rejoicing, saying he had found the trail; ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is not to see fire in its verity. But the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... the young laird; for if he had no lands, neither had he any pride, they said, and was as happy sitting with any old woman, and sharing her tea, as at a lord's table. Nor was he less of a favourite at school, though, being incapable of self-assertion, his inborn consciousness of essential humanity rendering it next to impossible for him to claim anything, some of the bigger boys were less than friendly with him. One point in his conduct was in particular distasteful to them: he seemed to scorn even an honest advantage. For in truth he never ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... advice asked in everything relating to games, and all matters of dispute referred to him. Frank, on the other hand, although he at all times gave way to Johnstone in house matters, was constantly annoyed by his continual self-assertion and his irritation at trifles. They were the only two Sixth town boys at Richards', but there were three Upper 'Shells,' Harris, Travers, and James, and these ranked almost with the Sixth, for the great demarcation of the School was between the Upper and Under 'Shells,' the former having ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... It is also abhorrent to his better feelings. Their defeat in the struggle with ambition leaves him utterly wretched, and would have kept him so, however complete had been his outward success and security. On the other hand, his passion for power and his instinct of self-assertion are so vehement that no inward misery could persuade him to relinquish the fruits of crime, or to advance ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... imitates either himself or any one else; reminiscences of the Republic and the Laws are continually recurring in them; they are too like him and also too unlike him, to be genuine (see especially Karsten, Commentio Critica de Platonis quae feruntur Epistolis). They are full of egotism, self-assertion, affectation, faults which of all writers Plato was most careful to avoid, and into which he was least likely to fall. They abound in obscurities, irrelevancies, solecisms, pleonasms, inconsistencies, awkwardnesses ...
— Charmides • Plato
... two hostesses and their humbler though proud dependent. The social evolution of Mrs. Bradley and Louise Macy from some previous Minty was neither remote nor complete; the self-sufficient independence, ease, and quiet self-assertion were alike in each. The superior position was still too recent and accidental for either to resent or criticise qualities that were common to both. At least, this was what he thought when not abandoning himself to the gratification of a convalescent ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... showed her, at full length, a woman with a noble quality yet dwelling in her nature, who was too false to her better self, and too debased and lost, to save herself. She believed that all this was so plain, more or less, to all eyes, that she had no resource or power of self-assertion but in pride: and with this pride, which tortured her own heart night and day, she fought her fate out, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... what a man should be, and they respected themselves as exemplifiers of their ideals, but they were always ready to accord to others the same reverence they paid themselves. The change that had taken place is shown in the lack of pretence and self-assertion in judges, councillors, in college presidents and other dignitaries. Thomas Nelson Page, in speaking of the fully developed Virginia gentleman, says, "There was the foundation of a certain pride, based on self-respect ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Bishop Fisher and their committal to the Tower a few days later caused nothing less than consternation in England and of furious indignation on the Continent. It was evident that greatness would save no man; the best hope lay in obscurity, and men who had been loud in self-assertion now ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... may degenerate into a vice is shown by the invention of a name for the vice: chauvinism. It is a name for boastful and truculent group self-assertion. It overrules personal judgment and character, and puts the whole group at the mercy of the clique which is ruling at the moment. It produces the dominance of watchwords and phrases which take the place of reason and conscience in determining conduct. The patriotic bias is a recognized perversion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... served. And yet they make no complaints, but patiently suffer, buoyed up, poor people, by the conviction that by so doing they will prevent the Prussians from entering the town. If one of them ventures to hint at a capitulation, she is set on by her neighbours. Self-assertion, however, carries the day. Jules and Jaques will hereafter quaff many a petit verre to their own heroism; and many a story will they inflict upon their long-suffering friends redounding to their own special glory. Their wives ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... iron, and altogether, he bore himself with an air of such quiet strength and cool self-confidence that men never feared to follow where he led. Yet there was a reserve about him that set him a little apart from men, and a kind of shyness that saved him from any suspicion of self-assertion. In vain he tried to escape from the crowd that gathered about him, and more especially from the foot-ball men, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... oratory is rotund, and if it were convincing might be impressive; but it fails to some extent in consequence of a certain smack of self-assertion which is unphilosophical. Suppose, now, that we have this matter out in a calm, dispassionate manner, without 'tooth,' or egotism, or prejudice, which tend so powerfully to mar human disputation ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... indefatigable zeal of flies incessantly buzzing up and down and striking against a window pane, we two tenacious and autocratic persons tried to thrust upon one another our own peculiar individuality. My mother with a more aggressive love, I more on the defensive, but in my self-assertion, none the less militant. Possessed by the universal conceit of the reasonableness of our feelings and convictions, neither one of us noticed that this was simply a struggle between two natures whereof one was trying to subject ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... a politic thing in the Government to seek to brand the Indian, in perpetuity, as a minor in the eye of the law? Repressing in him anything like self-assertion, is not, to hold him such, fatal to his self-respect? Does it not make him doubt his manhood entirely? Does it really, save in the single respect of the restraining of his ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... would contrast her own precarious circumstances with the comfort of Bennet Frothingham's daughter. Moreover, Mrs. Carnaby was not in all respects her own self; she had lost something on her travels; was it a shade of personal delicacy, of mental refinement? She seemed more inclined to self-assertion, to aim somewhat at worldly success, to be less careful about the friends she made. Alma felt this difference, though not clear as to its nature, and insensibly it helped to draw ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... his aunt's thumb!" thought Patty, secretly disgusted at his lack of self-assertion, but ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... Strictly speaking, this was self-assertion. She had not the assurance to intrude, and she contented herself with keeping Cherry on thorns by threatening to go in, and declaring that the whole must be untrue, since Wilmet ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remembered and understood.... It was Pentecost then! And with memory a shred of reflection came back. Where then was the wind, and the flame, and the earthquake, and the secret voice? Yet the world was silent, rigid in its last effort at self-assertion: there was no tremor to show that God remembered; no actual point of light, yet, breaking the appalling vault of gloom that lay over sea and land to reveal that He burned there in eternity, transcendent and dominant; not even a voice; and at that he understood yet more. He ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... of a spirit of loving sympathy. The dominance in one's life of a critical spirit which saps the warmth out of everything it touches. Jealousy, and the whole brood which that single word suggests. Keeping money which God would have out in service for himself. Self-seeking. Self-assertion. A frivolous spirit, instead of a joyous winsomeness, or a sweet seriousness. Overworking one's bodily strength, which grows out of a wrong ambition, and is trusting one's own efforts more than God's power, and which always involves disobedience of His law ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... include all persons, by the human capacity of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of intelligent self-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives its morality; from the former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy of self-assertion. ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... were engaged; and they tell me (whether true or not, I have no means of knowing), that the captain of the ship we are in was first lieutenant of the "pirate" ship 'Florida.' I have not found amongst my companions as yet any of that self-assertion or pride of nationality said to distinguish the Yankee; nor have I heard a word from them of hostility to John Bull. Indeed, for the purpose of drawing them out, I began bragging a little about England, but they ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... of the conception II. It is impossible III. It is a sign of degradation IV. It is needless V. It is irrational VI. Its frequency VII. Definition VIII. Its rationality IX. Distinguished from culture X. Its self-assertion XI. Its incalculability XII. Its positive ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... he was offended or crossed. He was like a restive horse, whom the mere movement of a shadow, much more the touch of a rein or the faintest vibration of a whip, sets off in the wildest gallop of nervous self-will or self-assertion. The horse, it is to be supposed, desires his own way as much as the man does when he bolts or starts. Theo was in this respect wonderfully unlike the strain of the Warrenders, but he was not on that ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... laid their restraint on Buckley Simmons, her present companion. His immobile face, with its heavy, good features and slow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loud self-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his clean shaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatient opinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmons was a close second. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a trick of losing something of its trim when he proposes to assert himself, and I recognized the symptoms. But at the moment of that impasse the Armenians below us had decided that self-assertion was their cue, and there came great noises as they thundered with a short pole on the trap and made the stones jump that held ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... conception in the child mind? It develops as the result of the positive and negative reaction from the primary centers of consciousness. From the first great center of sympathy the child is drawn to a lovely oneing with the mother. From the first great center of will comes the independent self-assertion which locates the mother as something outside, something objective. And as a result of this twofold notion, a twofold increase in the child. First, the dynamic establishment of the individual consciousness in the infant: and then the first shadow of a mental conception of the mother, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... knows her. She resists the petty sins of college life. She banishes jealousy and self-assertion. Snobbishness she will not tolerate. She seeks no honors save those fairly won. Keen, alert, pure and true, capable of sacrifice and hard tasks, sympathetic with all need, a lover of true sport and real fun she represents the college ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... abortion, and the fomentation of conspiracies in private families. These facts speak much for the superior civilization of the Italian people considered as a whole. We discover a common fund of intelligence, vice, superstition, prejudice, enthusiasm, craft, devotion, self-assertion, possessed by the race at large. Only in districts remote from civil life did witchcraft assume those anti-social and repulsive features which are familiar to Northern nations. Elsewhere it penetrated, as a subtle poison, through society, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... affirmation of the will to live as the illusion that we have a real existence apart from Brahman, and the same may be said of Ahamkara in the Sankhya philosophy. It is the principle of egoism and individuality, but its essence is not so much self-assertion as the mistaken idea that this is mine, that I am ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Barrie's side and became her cicerone. Each talked with her awhile, and after a few brief minutes allowed a change of partners, the discarded one humbly retiring to Mrs. James's side. It was really funny; or at least so it seemed until enough self-assertion came back to admit of my entering the lists. Then I promptly lost my sense of humour, and had no wish to look for it. I wanted only to look at Barrie, who was unusually flushed and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... critic remarked that in the tentative period of political issues assumed by his party, Mr. Buchanan could always be found two paces to the rear, but in the hour of triumph he marched proudly in the front rank. He was not gifted with independence or self-assertion. His bearing towards Southern statesmen was derogatory to him as a man of spirit. His tone towards administrations of his own party was so deferential as almost to imply a lack of self-respect. He was not a leader among ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a desire to lessen the pain of the world. All her egotism, her self-assertion, her formless ambitions had got up, or down, to that,—to comfort the comfortless, to keep evil away from little children, to let those who were in any sort of a prison go free. Yet she knew very well that ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... not have left Darwan without replying to my messages, you know," said Charteris. Sher Singh's self-assertion collapsed. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... civilizations is always a grand sensation to me; it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... devoted to the expression of something which Aeschylus felt to be of tremendous import. It was not his discovery; but it was a truth of which he had an intense realization. It had become something which he must with all his strength bring to expression before he died, not in a spirit of self-assertion or of argument, like a discoverer, but as one devoted to something higher and greater than himself, in the spirit ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there is something more than intellect, and that is—purity and virtue. Let her never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and the diviner calling of self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life, which lives in others and for others, like her Redeemer ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley |
