"Self-defense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... several months in this section, it was the first time his deadly foes had attempted to molest him. Self-defense demanded that they should be shown it would not pay to repeat ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the part of Miss Muspratt had had the natural result of making him confess all in self-defense, and she had written to the professor ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... young people are innocent, but if I am correct, no harm will be done by a further investigation of their movements on Tuesday night. I think Mr. Hall ought to tell where he was that night, if only in self-defense. If he proves he was in New York, and did not come out here, it will not only clear him, but also Florence. For I think no one suspects her of anything more ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... heavily upon a hand that rested flat on the table, in the other he likewise held a revolver, which he had apparently drawn in self-defense, at the crisis of Mulready's frenzy. Its muzzle was deflected. He looked Kirkwood over with a cool gray eye, the color gradually returning to his fat, clean-shaven cheeks, replacing the pardonable pallor which had ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the attendant circumstances that were connected with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of self-defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden passion. It was not required by any political necessity as a means for accomplishing some great and desirable public end. It was a cool, deliberate, and well-considered ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... and entertainments; it was scornful of the Jewish abstention from these things, and was aroused to the bitterest hatred by the social aloofness of their neighbors. Violent riots between Jew and Gentile were constantly taking place, and whether they were the aggressors or merely fighting in self-defense, the Jews were the scapegoats for the breaking of the peace. Stung by constant outrage on the part of their neighbors, the Jews turned upon them at Caesarea, and drove them out of the town. Thereupon Florus called them ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... if I will, 'Nita!" McCauley backed against a shelf case in mock self-defense. "Every time you 've got anything you want to get rid of, you come in here and shove it off on me. I 'll be gosh gim-swiggled if I will. There 's only four in my family and four 's all I 'm going to take. Fork 'em over—I 've got a prescription to fill." He tossed four silver dollars on the showcase ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... paused a moment, in doubt which course to go. At that instant the little hawk launched into the air and came as straight as an arrow toward me. I looked in amazement, but in less than half a minute, he was within fifty feet of my face, coming full tilt as if he had sighted my nose. Almost in self-defense I let fly one barrel of my gun, and the mangled form of the audacious marauder fell literally between ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... not say this boastfully, but with a quiet confidence in his own powers in which he was justified. Though by no means quarrelsome, he had on several occasions been forced in self-defense into a contest with boys of his own size, and in some instances larger, and in every case he had acquitted himself manfully, ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sweetest, dearest, darlingest pet that ever gladdened the earth. He was a vision, that's what he was! Just a vision all cream satin and rose-leaf and gold. Elizabeth described him at such length that the boys in self-defense uttered their old, old threat. They would climb a fence and run away—and Elizabeth, whose long skirts now precluded the possibility of her old defiant counter-threat to follow them, desisted and bade them ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... keep them, so the Christians, not because they planned to, but because the synagogue was not large enough to hold them, had to leave the synagogue. They began building creeds; they had to. Every one of the first Christian creeds was written in sheer self-defense. If we had been Christians in those first centuries, when a powerful movement was under way called Gnosticism, which denied that God, the Father Almighty, had made both the heaven and the earth, which said that God had ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... partridges upon the mountains, or like the timid fox by the eager sportsman, were obliged in self-defense to meet cunning with cunning, and to borrow from the birds and animals their mode of eluding their pursuers by any device which in the exigency of the case might present itself to them. They had a creed of their ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... the spectators also kept anxious and uneasy silence while the lictors bound Zminis's hands, and, in spite of his attempts to raise his voice once more in self-defense, dragged him away and thrust him out across the threshold of the dining-hall. The door closed behind him, and no applause followed, though every one approved of the Egyptian's condemnation, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. He had St. James's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this with kindly violence. One of the most touching ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... said Mary, "that he killed one man in self-defense and then his destiny drove him, and bad luck forced him into one bad position after another? There have been histories as strange as that, ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... name of Cal Maggard he had fled from Virginia, where, with the juries packed against him, justice would have been a travesty. In self-defense his sister had killed her husband, and he had ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... receiving the orders from Richard, Ratcliffe led them out to an open place without the castle wall to be beheaded. The executioners brought a log and an axe, and the victims were slaughtered one after another, without any ceremony, and without being allowed to say a word in self-defense. ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... furtive preparations for self-defense. His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first offensive move. He had known of Bill of old; in the circle ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... not endure the ill-suppressed and heartless satisfaction with which the fellow was about to enter into the details, and accordingly, ere he had time to proceed further, John Purcel turning a hunting-whip, loaded for self-defense, left him sprawling on ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... court of Rome, resumed their sway. The pope formed the celebrated Holy League to arrest the progress of the new opinions; and this led all the princes of the empire, who had espoused the Lutheran doctrines, more openly and cordially to combine in self-defense. In every country in Europe the doctrines of the reformer spread rapidly, and the papal throne was shaken ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... impossible attitudes; Phosphurous winning the Derby; the Death of Grimaldi (the famous steeple-chase horse, not poor old Joe); an American Trotting Match, and Jem Belcher and Deaf Burke in attitudes of self-defense. Several tandem and riding whips, mounted in heavy silver, and a double-barrelled gun, and fishing rods, occupied one corner, and a polished copper cask, holding about five gallons of mild ale, stood in another. In short, there was plenty of everything except books—the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to prove that they were received by misadventure; upon the whole, matters promised favorably for this, and were in other respects as satisfactory as could reasonably be expected. The blood of Solomon Coe was upon his own head. Richard had no need even to reproach himself with having struck in self-defense the blow that killed his enemy; and he did not reflect that he was still to blame for having, in the first instance, placed him in the mine. He had at least done his best to extricate him, and his conscience was (perhaps naturally) not very tender respecting ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... of action. Parliament was petitioned, agitations were organized, sick-benefits were inaugurated, and when these methods failed, machinery was destroyed, factories were burned, and the strike became a common weapon of self-defense. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... take the lawyer whom West engaged long to decide on the line the defense must take. "We'll show that Miller and Doble were crooks and that they had wronged Sanders. That will count a lot with a jury," he told West. "We'll admit the killing and claim self-defense." ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... line came between Jock's eyes, "that's the puzzler. Now Drew's sister—" Jock spoke in this detached way of Constance Drew for self-defense—"Drew's sister stands for what she is; a good, honest, handsome girl. You own up to that and that's the end of it. This one sets you thinking. Is she, or ain't she pretty? you keep putting to yourself. Do you like her, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... night on the 1st August. They were to seize and destroy all railroad bridges, cut the telegraph wires, etc., and then retire into the swamps, concealing themselves until relieved by Federal troops. It is said they were to be ordered to shed no blood, except in self-defense, and they were not to destroy more private property than should be unavoidable. The writer said the corn would be in the roasting-ear, and the hogs would be running at large, so that the slaves could easily ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... held resisted his baby strength. He pulled and he grunted, he kicked Bud in the chest and grabbed again. Bud was patient, and let him fuss—though in self-defense he kept his head down and his eyes away from the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... known. All that was fine in her leaped to a comprehension that the more she developed, the more she should value that in their experience which at present was a sealed book to her. She always classed them together resolutely in her thought. It was a species of self-defense which she had begun to employ from the moment of mental panic which ensued upon Miss Derwent's mention ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... similar way the Prussian statesman bent on dynastic enterprise will conjure in the name of the dynasty and of culture and efficiency; or, if worse comes to worst, an outbreak will be decently covered with a plea of mortal peril and self-defense. Among English-speaking peoples much is to be gained by showing that the path of patriotic glory is at the same time the way of equal-handed justice under the rule of free institutions; at the same time, in a fully commercialised community, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... leaders of opposite schools, Locke and Burke, it is contended that when we enter into society the natural rights of self-defense is surrendered to the government. If any natural right, then, be limited or abridged by the laws of society, we may suppose the right of self-defense to be so; for this is the instance which is always selected to illustrate and confirm the reality of such a surrender of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and the Portuguese have since become empires. Civil war and oppression now lay waste those extensive regions. Population does not increase, and the thinly scattered inhabitants are too much absorbed in the cares of self-defense even to attempt any amelioration of their condition. Such, however, will not always be the case. Europe has succeeded by her own efforts in piercing the gloom of the Middle Ages; South America has the same Christian laws and Christian manners as we have; she contains all the germs of civilization ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the state to intervene to do for the individual or to help him to do what he was able to do for himself. We held that the collective organization should only be appealed to when the power of the individual was manifestly unequal to the task of self-defense." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... to leer at her with amorous eyes when he spoke, and he began to find frequent occasions for taking hold of her arm. He managed to make himself odious in the extreme, so that in sheer self-defense Marion made haste to bring his thoughts back ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... here on a peaceful mission, and should fight only in self-defense," was his reply. This did not exactly suit the spirit of the boys, but they deferred to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... what circumstances may human life be lawfully taken? A. Human life may be lawfully taken (1) In self-defense, when we are unjustly attacked and have no other means of saving our own lives; (2) in a just war, when the safety or rights of the nation require it; (3) by the lawful execution of a criminal, fairly tried ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense, and I recommend to them, that in all cases, when allowed, they ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... than you in gray hair and the calendar, and infinitely younger in worldly wisdom and intellect. He is an English army officer, who was foolish enough to imagine he loved me, foolish enough to propose every three days for the last three years and foolish enough to bore me until in self-defense I escaped from his clutches. As for myself, at least I am not the young woman who can stand staying in that gaudy theatrical hotel for another day longer. I have done so many bold, unmaidenly things that you may believe it easy ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the law," he admitted forthrightly, "but we were fighting in self-defense. All we ask now is the privilege of an impartial investigation, a chance to defend ourselves—such as any of you take for granted on Terra—before the courts of this planet—" But he was not to finish ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... inquired with my own first movement in self-defense, for it had suddenly occurred to me that any such explaining would be much more ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew—they were expressly notified—that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... endure the most terrible evils, but he did not think of doing brave things or achieving great acts. His courage was not aggressive. He could be killed, but did not think of killing. Not that he was averse to taking life in self-defense, but he had been so long the creature of another's will in the matter of locomotion that it did not occur to him to do otherwise than say: "Do with me as thou wilt. I am bound hand and foot. I cannot fight, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... mysterious. This is not a residence one would expect to find inhabited—and by two charming women!" I bowed. "Your presence here is even less satisfactorily explained than mine. If I denied the knowledge of French it was because I wasn't sure of my surroundings. It was done in self-defense rather than in the desire to play a trick. And in this language you speak of witnesses, of papers, of the coming of a man you do not trust. It looks very much like a conspiracy." I gathered up my gloves and riding-crop. I believed that I ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... implies the right of a government to enter freely into such relations with any other nation as may be mutually agreeable, the nations of Europe feel at liberty in self-defense to interfere with any arrangements that threaten the "balance of power." Thus France would feel justified in opposing a very close alliance ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... life and death are matters of hourly business—matters of bread and butter and bank-account—acquire in self-defense a certain imperviousness; they learn to shed their responsibilities with facility in favor of digestion and sleep. Dr. Gunstone ate in a leisurely way, relishing his chops and coffee, and participating in the conversation of the family, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... back of a stable. When folks got there the Ute was down, but still alive. He claimed he never made a move to draw. Houck's story was that he shot in self-defense. Looked fishy. The Injun's gun wasn't ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... so difficult to do anything," said Val sadly. "She does not understand the state of the case properly, though I've tried to make it plain to her. The fellow is an avowed Free Mason. He can not practise his religion, and in a kind of self-defense he rails against it—though not openly to Catholics, I believe. She is deluded enough to imagine that the influence of herself and the children will win him over to the right path again. But it's far more likely that he will win the children over to unbelief, if he is ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... at least, Father wrote these sketches of his boyhood and early farm life as a matter of self-defense: I had made a determined attempt to write them and when I did this I was treading on what was to him more or less sacred ground, for as he once said in a letter to me, "You will be homesick; I know just how I felt when I left home forty- ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... of the latter, he in a moment of fury had stabbed to the heart. Callisthenes, the intermedium between himself and Aristotle, he had caused to be hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some who knew the facts, had had him put upon the rack and then crucified. It may have been in self-defense that the conspirators resolved on his assassination. But surely it was a calumny to associate the name of Aristotle with this transaction. He would have rather borne the worst that Alexander could inflict, than have joined in the perpetration of so ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... skilled in the art of self-defense, but he was brave and cool and strong. He met the rush staunchly. To his own surprise his wild swings landed with amazing precision and the most gratifying effect. Two of his assailants reeled away under the savage impact of his blows. A stone, hurled by one of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Basom said in self-defense. "Just too lazy to walk four miles to loaf when I can do ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... race. Should you destroy the life of your assailant, you will pass into the custody of the criminal Law ... under an indictment for murder; but the verdict of the community, and the verdict of almost any jury will be, justifiable homicide in self-defense.... Or should a different verdict be found, and you be condemned to die as a murderer, your ignominious death shall be luminous with the halo of a martyr, and your sacrifice shall be for the ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... and as Wessner lunged in self-defense, ducked under his arm as a bantam and punched him in the pit of the stomach so that he doubled with a groan. Before Wessner could straighten himself, Freckles was on him, fighting like the wildest ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Austrian was not an exponent of the art of self-defense and Uncle John sent three hard blows to the man's face, before the latter stepped back and sought to bring his revolver to bear. But Uncle John had no mind to be shot down and he sprang forward and seized the other in a fierce embrace. This style ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... knowing who he was, Terry would try to bluff him out of the road, counting confidently upon his leaping to safety at the last moment; there was the other possibility that she mistook his motives and would run him down in a sort of panic of self-defense. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... that to a man in Larkin's former position the slightest divergence from the well-defined tenets of right and wrong was inexcusable. Crime, she knew, was a result of poverty, necessity, self-defense or lack of control, and she also knew that Bud Larkin had never been called upon to fall back on any of these. How much of truth, therefore, was there ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... tell me of the manner in which Forrester assaulted my nephew, and forced upon him what he did as matter of self-defense? Where is the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... we constitutionally can, to vary the practice obtaining under some of the state governments, it is this.... It is as much the interest of Georgia and South Carolina as of any in the Union. Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken and render them less capable of self-defense.... It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well internal as external. Everything, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet, if it involves national expense ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... is no doubt that in many cases the incendiaries were actuated by motives of personal revenge; perhaps, too, there were criminal records which the parties implicated had an object in destroying. It was no longer a question of self-defense with the Commune, of checking the advance of the victorious troops by fire; a delirium of destruction raged among its adherents: the Palace of Justice, the Hotel-Dieu and the cathedral of Notre-Dame escaped by ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... less than 5,400 cases of ammunition destined for the destruction of brave German soldiers who are fulfilling with self-sacrifice and devotion their duty in the service of the Fatherland. The German Government believes that it acts in just self-defense when it seeks to protect the lives of its soldiers by destroying ammunition destined for the enemy with the means of war at its command. The English steamship company must have been aware of the dangers to which passengers on board the Lusitania were exposed under the circumstances. In taking ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in these specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about the local industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom I could do no greater favor than sending him there, to repair my deficiency. In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school in the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that there are public night schools where those so minded may study the arts and letters, as our guide was ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... that such should be comfortably clothed and fed by his heirs. To his five nephews he left his swords, with the injunction that they were "not to unsheath them for the purpose of shedding blood, except it be in self-defense, or in defense of their country and its rights; and in the latter case to keep them unsheathed, and prefer falling with them in their hands to the ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... noxious weeds. False reports and mendacious insinuations were launched, spread, and credited, impairing such prestige as the Conference still enjoyed, while the fragmentary announcements ventured on now and again by the delegates, in sheer self-defense, were summarily dismissed as "eye-wash" ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... in self-defense, before she began the song, "sang anything so stupid. And that is saying much when one thinks of all the nonsensical words that people set to music! It's a marvel how any one can like this stuff. Do tell me what there is in it?" she added, ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... border the northern seas. It has many characteristics in common with its brothers which live in warmer countries. It is very sagacious and cunning, sometimes playful, but is not a very savage beast, and will rarely attack a hunter unless in self-defense, or when driven by hunger to fall upon everything which comes in its way. Dr. Kane, the great arctic traveller, says he has himself shot as many as a dozen bears near at hand, and never but once received a charge in return. The ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... lives will hardly atone for one I took once, though the deed was done in self-defense," said the outlaw gravely. "I am glad to have been of help in this case." He glanced around the room with a return of his former light careless manner and nodded approvingly as he noted the stores of provisions and water. "Good," ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... continued Anton; "in one wild hour I discovered how my heart clung to this country. Since then, I know why I am here. For the time being, all law and order is dissolved; I carry arms in self-defense, and so do hundreds like me in the midst of a foreign race. Whatever may have led me individually here, I stand here now as one of the conquerors who, in the behalf of free labor and civilization, have usurped the dominion ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... political transmigration I believe a man is more to be pitied for misplaced confidence than blamed for tardy understanding. No, father, not a statistic to-night, unless you compel me to bring them out in self-defense." ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... its length, give offence to the British, Mr. Lansing is forwarding the evidence in the Arabic case to Mr. Gerard for transmission to your Excellency; he is himself quite convinced that the submarine commander was not compelled in self-defense to torpedo the Arabic, and that his action in so doing was therefore unjustified. He hopes that your Excellency will after study of the evidence, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... smaller a man's brain the more enveloping his mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle's shell or the porcupine's quills or the mephitic weasel's extravasations." But she never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion of his endowments would have been to deprive herself of a ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... had to be treated as an emissary from his home world—wherever that may be. He has killed a man, yes. But that has to be allowed as justifiable homicide in self-defense, since the forester had drawn a gun and was ready to fire. Nobody can blame the late Wang Kulichenko for that, but nobody can blame the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... any inside information that I can use agin' him, why I'll use it and I'll be mighty grateful for it! You see everybody knows Pete Reeve. Everybody knows that, for all these years, he's been going around killing and maiming men, and nobody has been able to bring him up for anything worse'n self-defense. But now I think I got him to rights, and I want to hang him for it, stranger, partly because it'd be a feather in my cap, and partly because it'd be doing a favor for every good, law-abiding citizen in these parts. So do what you ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... this aperture Sishetakushin peered for a moment, then his hand shot down, and like a flash reappeared holding a beaver by the hind legs, and before the animal had recovered sufficiently from its surprise to bring its sharp teeth into action in self-defense, the Indian struck it a stinging blow over the head and killed it. Then in like manner another animal was captured and killed. It was dangerous work and called for agility and self-possession, for had ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defense. You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Wussen ever! He got bitterer ev'ry day. He laid his defeat when he wuz runnin' fur the Legislatur at our door. He hired bullies ter git inter a quarrel with David, at public getherin's, an' kill him in sech a way ez ter have a plea o' self-defense ter cla'r themselves on, but David tuck too good keer o' hisself ter git ketched that a-way, an' he hurt one o' the bullies so bad thet he niver quite got over hit. He an' Kunnel Pennington leveled ther weepons on each other at a barbecue near London last Fall, but the bystanders interfered, an' ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... or slander, the truth of the allegation might be pleaded in justification. [Footnote: D. 47, 10, 18.] In all cases it was necessary to show that an injury had been committed maliciously. But if damage arose in the exercise of a right, as killing a slave in self-defense, no claim for reparation could be maintained. If any one exercised a profession or trade for which he was not qualified, he was liable to all the damage his want of skill or knowledge might occasion. When any damage was done by a slave or an animal, the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... came when, as a matter of self-defense, man must manipulate and control spirits to save himself from destruction, and there were persons particularly adapted to this process, who formed the germs of the great system of priesthood. They stood between the masses ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... with ideas, a mass and jumble of thoughts, ideas, plans and emotions. "Write it out," said Madame—in partial self-defense, no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... had never cared for Jasper. Since the marriage she had disliked him. Now that he had struck down Nicholas in her presence, she positively hated him. She did not stop to consider that he was provoked to it, and only acted in self-defense. She thirsted for revenge—more, indeed, than Nicholas, who, bully as he was, having been fairly worsted, was disposed to accept his defeat philosophically. If he could annoy or thwart Jasper he would have been glad to do it, but he did not desire ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... paper pleased him most. The personality of Kid Brady bulked large in it. A photograph of the ambitious pugilist, looking moody and important in an attitude of self-defense, filled half a page, and under the photograph was the legend, "Jimmy Garvin must meet this boy." Jimmy was the present holder of the light-weight title. He had won it a year before, and since then had confined himself to smoking cigars ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... two largest insurgent groups active in Colombia - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC and National Liberation Army or ELN; largest anti-insurgent paramilitary group is United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... have been given you, you will see how my Government, and especially my Chancellor, strove up to the last moment to avert the worst. We grasp the sword in compulsory self-defense, with clean hands and a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... little imagination about Bippo was shown by his timid request to his masters to shoot the savage. To Bippo the elimination of a single enemy of such formidable mien was a consummation devoutly to be prayed for. But the Professor reminded the native that they only slew in self-defense. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... that worry you," Schrotter replied. "You were in such a position as to be forced to act in self-defense. It would have been inexcusable in you to have stayed any longer where you were. For a liaison of that kind is only conceivable when the man loves the woman very deeply. You, my friend, did not love the lady at all. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... her when the swing stops. Solem watches all this from the field where he is working, and begins to sing a ribald song. Certainly these two have so ill-used him that if he is going to sing improper songs in self-defense, this is the time to do it; no one will gainsay that. So he sang his song very loud, and then began ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... to appear till dinner-time; but one is obliged in self-defense to dine early in Holland, because what seems early to a foreigner seems late to a Dutchman. At seven o'clock I went to the L.C.P.'s sitting-room (it has become a regular thing for her to have a sitting-room), and behold, they were ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... my pad and pencil. I put on my coat and hat, pull on my gloves, and in self-defense plunge out into the cold November afternoon. I avoid the country, and try to keep my recreant thoughts on such practical subjects as trolley cars, motor-trucks and delivery wagons, rumbling noisily beside me along the street. A sudden "To Let" card appears in ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... political rights—no other outcomes are possible than slavery or violent, physical revolution. As I have made Gabriel Armstrong say: "The masters would have it so. Academic discussion becomes absurd, in the face of plutocratic savagery. And in a case of self-defense, no measures are unjustifiable." ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... every block made into a most fascinating market by the push-cart vendors with their varied wares, had, from the start, enthralled her. She was uncannily acute at bargaining. Soon more than one red-headed Jew had learned, in self-defense, to take out the stick which held up one end of his cart, and move along, at sight of her. Too often she had been the symbol of financial loss. Her "Hi sye!" and "My heye!" became the keen delight of German maidens back of counters over which ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Asahel, the supernaturally swift runner, (87) so swift that he ran through a field without snapping the ears of wheat (88) had been the attacking party. He had sough to take Abner's life, and Abner contended, that in killing Asahel he had but acted in self-defense. Before inflicting the fatal wound, Joab held a formal court of justice over Abner. He asked: "Why didst thou no render Asahel harmless by wounding him rather than kill him?" Abner replied that he could not have done it. "What," ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... he killed for revenge, or in self-defense, he did that also without hysteria, for it was a very businesslike proceeding which admitted of ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Talcott! No, suh; we don't hang gentlemen down our way. Jedge Kerfoot vehy properly charged the coroner's jury that it was a matter of self-defense, and Colonel Talcott was not detained ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... would see it that way; immediately, immediately, my dear," answered the Senator, as he rose to take his departure. A triumphant note boomed in his big gloating voice, but some influence that it is given a woman to exhale in a desperate self-defense kept him from bestowing anything more than an ordinary pressure on the cold hand laid in his. Then with a heavy jauntiness he crossed the Road, mounted his horse and, tipping his wide hat in a conquering-hero wave, rode on ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... acquitted on the plea of self-defense but he did not return at once to Lost Chief. The attitude of young Jeff did not make an early ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... be overpowered by such a rebuke as this, and perhaps silenced. The incipient and half-formed ideas in his mind in respect to the right of self-defense, the virtue of courage, the sanctity of life, the nature and the limits of the doctrine of non-resistance, would be all thrown together into a jumble of hopeless confusion in his mind, and the only result would be his muttering to himself, after a moment of bewilderment ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... and brother; and—and of me. I can't repeat a single sentence entire, but I know Mr. North was accusing you in some way, and apparently implicating me. Perhaps I listened in self-defense. Do you think ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the most active; she does not let herself be enslaved like the others, her soul is in her own keeping; her faith, her organization, her hierarchy and her code are all her own. Against the rights of the State based on human reason, she claims rights founded on divine revelation, and, in self-defense, she justly finds in the French clergy, as the State organized it in 1802, the best disciplined militia, the best classified, the most capable of operating together under one countersign and of marching in military ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... been a time since Cain slew Abel when men have not been compelled to devote a considerable part of their energies to self-defense. In the early ages, before large organizations existed or the mechanic arts had made much progress, defense was mostly defense of life itself. As time went on, and people amassed goods and chattels, and ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... already written the governor to assure him that in taking up arms he was acting only in self-defense and for the country's safety. But now he sent another letter reiterating that he had no evil intentions to him or the government. "I am now going out to seek a more agreeable destiny than you are pleased to design ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... been aimed at us—they are shooting over our heads purposely. If they deliberately attempt to pot us later, then go for them, but to do it now would only draw their fire upon us. I doubt if they wish to harm your highness, but they certainly would fire to hit in self-defense." ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... novel is still within the domain of poetry, although on the frontier. The vague discomfort aroused in one by these epigrammatic productions is due probably to a confusion of kinds. Ambiguity of style keeps one in a perpetual state of tension and self-defense; we ought not to be left in doubt whether the speaker is jesting or serious, mocking or tender. Moreover, banter is not humor, and never will be. I think, indeed, that the professional wit finds ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have instincts. They somehow get to know if a fellow does not relate facts as they took place. I like to put it that way, because, after all, the mode of putting things is only one of the forms of self-defense, and is less silly than the ordinary wriggling methods which boys employ, and which are generally useless. I was rather given to telling large stories just for the fun of it and, I think, told them well. But ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... and her impulsive thought was that Mildred had taken few chances, and that as a matter of self-defense her carefulness might have been well founded. This Mr. Arthur Russell was a much more responsive ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... girl, trained to self-defense. As he freed her, her strong, slender arm swung out and up—with really startling force. Her half-closed hand struck with a sharp, drawing motion across his lips, a blow that extinguished his laughter as the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... also must be taken that the story is not one with which persons generally are familiar. A gentleman was in the habit of telling a story which has already been quoted, the point of which lies in the phrase "I'm from Boston." Some of his more intimate companions, in self-defense, would exclaim when he proposed a story, "Is it ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... she was feeling quite useless; and she didn't like to appear incompetent when she knew herself to be, in her own line, a thoroughly able person. But it irked her to think that she had been forced into a position where in self-defense she must either acquire a kind of efficiency she didn't want or do without. At the same time it troubled her lest this reluctance become apparent. For they were all loves and she wouldn't hurt their feelings for worlds. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... join me?" Tresler asked. Then, noting the fixed stare in the man's eyes, he went on with some impatience, "What the dickens are you staring at?" And, in self-defense, he was forced into a survey ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... were shipping their paupers, diseased persons, and criminals to America as the easiest and most economical way to get rid of them. This it undoubtedly was for them; but the people of New York did not see where the ease and economy came in on their side of the ledger, and in self-defense, therefore, the state passed the first law, with intent to shut out undesirables.[21] This state legislation was the genesis of national enactment. The history of federal laws concerning aliens is covered compactly by Mr. Hall, and those interested in the details of this important ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... determination to fight his way by physical force to the front ranks. Bruised, disfigured, or killed, he is forced back even beyond the lines again. A religiously inclined youth asked his pastor, "Do you think it would be wrong for me to learn the noble art of self-defense?" "Certainly not," replied the pastor, "I learned it in youth myself, and I have found it of great value in my life." "Indeed, sir, did you learn the Old English system or the Sullivan system" "Neither; ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Robespierre, got their arguments directly from Rousseau, and no one I have ever heard made an appeal to Scripture as a defense for murdering thirty thousand men, women and children. Mirabeau quotes this from Rousseau in self-defense: "No true believer can be a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law inflicted death on an atheist, I should begin to put it into execution by burning the first man who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... the senses, as we have said above (Q. 78, A. 2); so also in the sensitive appetite there is a certain appetitive power which regards something as suitable, not because it pleases the senses, but because it is useful to the animal for self-defense: and this is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... radius of six miles, five subsidiary villages sprang up, each one laid out like a German dorf, with its cluster of shops and mills, and the cottages scattered informally on the main road. When the railway tapped the neighborhood, the community in self-defense purchased the town that contained the railway station. So when the good Christian Metz died in 1867, at the age of seventy-two, his pious followers, thanks to his sagacity, were possessed of some twenty-six thousand acres of rich Iowa ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... case arising out of the artificial refinement of society, and its proscription of any one who should put up with an affront without fighting a duel. "He then," concluded he, "who fights a duel does not fight from passion against his antagonist, but out of self-defense, to avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent himself from being driven out of society. I could wish there were not that superfluity of refinement; but while such notions prevail, no doubt a man may ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... guessing being the means on which the management depended for bargaining with and coercing the men; and deliberate soldiering for the purpose of misinforming the management being the weapon used by the men in self-defense. Under the old system the incentive was entirely lacking which is needed to induce men to cooperate heartily with the management in increasing the speed with which work is turned out. It is chiefly due, under the old systems, to this divided control of the speed with which the work ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... objection above stated. I have examined this report, with the documents presented by the commissioners, and am of opinion that the services rendered by that division were spontaneous, patriotic, and proper, necessary for self-defense, to repel in some instances actual invasion and in others to meet by adequate preparation invasions that were menaced. The commissioners of the State having intimated that other portions of service stood on similar ground, the accounting officer has been instructed, in auditing the whole, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... more than one of the words he was forced to spell aloud just out of sheer self-defense; and always against Eve Edgarton's little intermittent nod of encouragement was balanced that hateful sniffing sound of surprise and contempt from the orchid ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and the practical issue was, whether we should incorporate her in the Union or leave her to drift in uncertain currents—possibly to form European alliances which we should afterwards be compelled, in self-defense, to destroy. An astute statesman of that period summed up the whole case when he declared that it was wiser policy to annex Texas, and accept the issue of immediate war with Mexico, than to leave Texas in nominal independence to involve us probably in ultimate war with England. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... years ago receiving an indignity from a common ruffian, he was forced to strike him in self-defense; for which act, in accordance with the laws of slavery in that, as well as many other of the slave States, he was compelled to receive, on his naked person, nine and thirty lashes with a raw hide! This, at the age of seventy odd, after the distinguished services ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... that his unmerciful drivers seek Their profit, and not his. He hath not learned That pigs were made for man,...born to be brawn'd And baconized: that he must please to give Just what his gracious masters please to take; Perhaps his tusks, the weapons Nature gave For self-defense, the general privilege; Perhaps,...hark, Jacob! dost thou hear that horn? Woe to the young posterity of Pork! Their enemy is at hand. Again. Thou say'st The pig is ugly. Jacob, look at him! Those eyes have taught the lover flattery. His face, ...nay, Jacob! Jacob! were it fair To judge a lady ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the school-teacher was cross; the bucket fell into the well, and the cows got into the corn. I got called up at school and set with some hateful boys, one of whom amused himself by pricking me with a pin, and when, in self-defense, I gave him a good pinch, he actually yelled out: "She keeps a-pinchin' me!" On the whole, 'twas a dreadful day, and when at night I threw myself exhausted upon my little bed I cried myself to sleep, thinking of Cousin Emma and wishing she would ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes |
