"Assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they were engaged neither of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on, always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say about her broderie anglaise that good people patch holes, but that she ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... passed through the three states, and more particularly, as M. Comte is careful to point out, not through the first, (c) The positive state has more or less co-existed with the theological, from the dawn of human intelligence. And, by way of completing the series of contradictions, the assertion that the three states are "essentially different and even radically opposed," is met a little lower on the same page by the declaration that "the metaphysical state is, at bottom, nothing but a simple general modification of the first;" while, in the fortieth Lecon, as also in ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Butterfly when I came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful history, all of which was narrated in various ditties chanted by my nurse. I could not quite join in her vivid assertion that she would ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and rebuked him sharply for so idle a boast, and when your dear grandfather manfully stood his ground, saying that it was not an idle boast, his uncle called him a vain braggart, which so offended your grandfather that he told his uncle that he would prove the truth of his assertion. And so, upon the following morning, he rose early and was at Vine Ridge gun in hand, ready to make his first shot, as soon as the sun should appear. The squirrels were very numerous at first, and he made great havoc among them. Many a mile he ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... Strange that the assertion should need making! Stranger still that it should need defending! Yet are there not a few by whom such a proposition will be received with something approaching to derision. Men who would blush if caught ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... assertion that the falls had produced, and were now working back the chasm, our guide, the lounging man from the house, said the rocks had always been as they were: he had lived there ten years, and there had been no change in them. Perhaps, if the buried Indians could rise from their graves where they ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... innocent interchange of remarks, which wander aimlessly from one subject to another, because nobody wants to bother his head with thinking; or else it is a vehement discussion, in which dogmatic assertion does duty for argument and loudness for force. In either case it rests and stimulates the tired men, while the drink refreshes their throats, and it has no more necessary impropriety than the drawing-room talk of the well-to-do. In this intercourse men who do not read the papers ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the building,[54] others that Brayne paid nearly all,[55] and still others content themselves with saying that Brayne paid considerably more than half. The last statement may be accepted as true. The assertion of Gyles Alleyn in 1601, that the Theatre was "erected at the costs and charges of one Brayne and not of the said James Burbage, to the value of one thousand marks,"[56] is doubtless incorrect; more correct is the assertion of Robert Myles, executor of the Widow Brayne's ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... to contradict a contemporary, but the assertion that men are losing their chivalry cannot be lightly passed over. Only the other night in the tube a man was distinctly heard to say to a lady who was standing, "Pray accept my seat, Madam. I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... married—as I thought—Amy Krant, a widow, in September 1871, I really and truly wedded Amy Lancaster, a spinster. Therefore this lady'—and here the bishop clasped tenderly the hand of Mrs Pendle—'is my true, dear wife, and has been legally so these many years, notwithstanding Bosvile's infamous assertion to the contrary.' ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... 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 twitted that board with its apathy in respect of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... thinking, "Why shouldn't I have as many rights and privileges as these other people have?" The aristocrat who descends is always thinking, "Why shouldn't these other people have as many rights and privileges as I have?" The one type begets aggressive self-assertion, the other type begets a certain gentle spirit of self-effacement. You don't often find men of the aristocratic class with any ethical element in them—their hereditary antecedents, their breeding, their environment, are all hostile ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... obtain from him any clear solution of the doubts which harassed me. Quite early he told me that there was no question of her marriage with any one; but, accustomed though I was to his vague manner of expressing himself, I imagined he seemed embarrassed in making this assertion and had the air of a man who had sworn to keep a secret. Honour forbade me to insist to such an extent as to let him see my hopes, and so there always remained between us a painful point which I tried to avoid touching upon, but to which, in spite of myself, I was ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... better than Mr. Jefferson the unfairness of this assertion. None knew better than he how little Washington was prone to be swayed in his judgment by partiality either toward a man or a measure. He always weighed everything with the greatest care and most profound wisdom, and the opinions of friends and foes were always submitted to the alembic ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... other side, and from an early period she listened to the conversation between them. Hurriedly crossing over, "what are you up to again?" she said to Pao-yue, "why, there's nothing to put your monkey up! I'm perfectly right in my assertion that when I'm away for any length of time, something ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... am willing to take the responsibility of that assertion myself, and I shall report this disrespect and disobedience of the captain to Mr. Lowington. If he chooses to sustain the delinquent in such gross misconduct, I will leave the vessel at the ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... hastens the accomplishment of its end, as the hottest fire soonest consumes its fuel. A nation will endure oppression more patiently immediately after a spasmodic rebellion or a bloody revolution, than at any other time; and a community requires less law to govern it, after a violent and illegal assertion of the law's supremacy, than was necessary before the outbreak. After having thrown off the yoke of a knave—and perhaps hung the knave up by the neck, or chopped his head off with an axe—mankind not unfrequently fall under the control of a fool; frightened at their ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... arrogant face. He wore a short clipped moustache which by no means hid the strength of a well-modelled though slightly sneering mouth. His eyes were somewhat deeply set, and shone extraordinarily blue under straight black brows that met. The man's whole expression was one of dominant self-assertion. He ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the perfect unity of God and Man. If this, then, was the great Truth which he was thus earnestly solicitous to impress upon his disciples' minds when his bodily presence was so shortly to be removed from them—the Truth of Unity—may we not reasonably infer the opposing falsehood to be the assertion of separateness, the assertion that God and man are not one? The idea of separateness is precisely the principle on which the world has proceeded from that day to this—the assumption that God and ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... without any cases. On inquiry, I did not hear of hydrophobia in Van Diemen's Land, or in Australia; and Burchell says that during the five years he was at the Cape of Good Hope, he never heard of an instance of it. Webster asserts that at the Azores hydrophobia has never occurred; and the same assertion has been made with respect to Mauritius and St. Helena. (16/2. "Observa. sobre el clima de Lima" page 67.—Azara's "Travels" volume 1 page 381.—Ulloa's "Voyage" volume 2 page 28.—Burchell's "Travels" ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... leisure time to thrash out the question of accurately determining the longitude of an unknown place in relation to a known place. He was convinced that the world was round, globular in shape, although there were many learned men who disputed this assertion, and he also knew that the world revolved on its own axis once in twenty-four hours. Also he knew that when the sun, in the course of its apparent passage round the earth, attained its highest point in the heavens, it was noon at that place, and his astrolabe afforded him the means of determining ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... importance to his fond heart. Christophe, who understood him, was amused by it secretly, and loved him the more for it. And to console him he assured him that he had appetite enough for two breakfasts; and he proved his assertion. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of the manner in which every woman came to be possessed of just so many devils appeared to them of little importance. What they objected to was the fundamental doctrine of his sermon, which was based on his assertion that the Bible declared every woman had seven devils. They were not willing to believe that the Bible said any such thing. Some of them went so far as to state it was their opinion that Uncle Pete had got this fool notion from some of the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Servants were called and examined and threatened, but those who knew anything about it unanimously declared that it had been left in the door, while those who knew nothing supported their fellow-servants by the same unhesitating assertion, till Mendoza was convinced that he had done enough, and turned his back on them all and went out with a grey look ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... that is, permission to elect, but accompanied by a recommendation of some particular person; and this nominee of the crown was so constantly chosen, that the custom of sending a conge d'elire has become only a form, which, however, is an assertion of the rights ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... them. There lodging had been prepared by order of Cuambac. Within a week, Cuambac had the father summoned; as soon as the latter had entered the palace, the emperor bade him be seated, and received the messages that he bore. Then he made the above assertion to him with indications of great pleasure. After that he ordered a collation spread for the father, and asked him if he would like some tea to drink. The father replied that he kissed his Highness's hands. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... matters, and really wish to know the truth; while young ladies in general will still look on Henry as a monster in human form, because no one dares, or indeed ought, to undeceive them by anything beyond bare assertion without proof. ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... elder Mr. Fairford,' continued I, with the same boldness, which I began to find was my best game, 'that I was the son of Ralph Latimer of Langcote Hall? How do you reconcile this with your late assertion that my name is ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... against Nature first and then tried to rebel against religion for doing exactly the same thing that he had done. His songs of joy are not really immoral; but his songs of sorrow are. But when he merely hurls at the priest the assertion that flesh is grass and life is sorrow, he really lays himself open to the restrained answer, "So I have ventured, on various occasions, to remark." When he went forth, as it were, as the champion of pagan change and pleasure, he heard uplifted the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the English Government won't allow any hanky-panky." Sir Richard voiced the assertion so emphatically that a tiny seed of doubt sprang up in his hearer's heart. "I confess I should rather like to see Iris and Bruce settle down to civilized life again, but this is only a holiday, and they won't be there long. Unless——" He paused and Anstice guessed ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... as was his habit when exasperated. Kind and generous man that he was, it went hard with him to believe in the guilt of any of the young men he had trusted. But Jonathan had said there was a traitor among them, and Colonel Zane did not question this assertion. He knew the borderman. During years full of strife, and war, and blood had he lived beside this silent man who said little, but that little was the truth. Therefore Colonel ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... is, Dolly squeaked at that instant in the cellar; and Clarke appearing soon after in some confusion, declared she had been frightened by a flash of lightning. But this assertion was not confirmed by the young lady herself, who eyed him with a sullen regard, indicating displeasure, though not indifference; and when questioned by her mother, replied, "A doan't maind what a-says, so a doan't, vor all his ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... to present him to society; but he was as serenely terrible as a well-aimed rifle, and the old man looked upon his results with pride. He had cultivated him up to that pitch where he scorned to practice any vice, or any virtue, that did not include the principle of self-assertion. A few touches only were wanting here and there to achieve perfection, when suddenly the old man died. Yet it was his proud satisfaction, before he finally lay down, to see Ursin a favored companion and the peer, both in courtesy and pride, ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... there is—or used to be—a sense of responsibility forming, and an elemental inkling of true duty towards the earth. Even man (the least observant of the powers that walk the ground, going for the signs of weather to the cows, or crows, or pigs, swallows, spiders, gnats, and leeches, or the final assertion of his own corns) sometimes is moved a little, and enlarged by influence of life beyond his own, and tickled by a pen above his thoughts, and touched for one second by the hand that made him. Then he sees a brother man who owes him a shilling, and his soul is swallowed up in the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... chairs and all;—and with it, his "long togs," the half-pay, his beaver hat, white linen shirts, and everything else. His wife he never saw, or heard of, from that day to this, and never wished to. Then followed a sweeping assertion, not much to the credit of the sex, if true, though he has Pope to back him. "Come, Chips, cheer up like a man, and take some hot grub! Don't be made a fool of by anything in petticoats! As for your wife, you'll never see her again; she was 'up keeleg and off' ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... louder. Burroughs' quick temper suffered from McDevitt's repeated assertion that Americans were ruining the fur trade by paying the Indians more ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... two professors from Paris, otherwise the college would have fallen to nothing. These two new professors, MM. Durfort and Desponts, finished my education; and I regretted that they did not come sooner. The often-repeated assertion of Bonaparte having received a careful education at Brienne is therefore untrue. The monks were incapable of giving it him; and, for my own part, I must confess that the extended information of the present day is to me a painful contrast with the limited course of education I received ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... hawed,—he 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... has opposed this general assertion of the writers concerning the Mahometans; and says that they do not absolutely deny the existence of female souls, but only hold them to be of a nature inferior to those of men; and that they enter not ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Head gives a very practical confirmation of this assertion, and the Lady in the corner ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... character, endangering lives in his excitement,—it would have been a very different affair. But, with the exception of the crime for which he perished (he said it was his first, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of his assertion), he was a harmless, quiet, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... For what they ask (however they may disguise it) is simply this,—that their local law be made the law of the land, and coextensive with the limits of the General Government. The Constitution acknowledges no unqualified or interminable right of property in the labor of another; and the plausible assertion, that "that is property which the law makes property" (confounding a law existing anywhere with the law which is binding everywhere), can deceive only those who have either never read the Constitution, or are ignorant of the opinions and intentions ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... children in the will, and hence the assertion of Edmondson, who, in his genealogical table of the Statenham family, says that Thomas Gower, the governor of the castle of Mans in the times of the Fifth and Sixth Henrys, was the only son of the poet, and that of Glover, who, in his 'Visitation of Yorkshire,' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... that every scruple may be removed, we may now answer the inquiry, whether our former assertion that everyone who has not the practice of reason, may, in the state of nature, live by sovereign natural right, according to the laws of his desires, is not in direct opposition to the law and right ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... to, I must shelter myself under the authority of Addison, who has written a critique on Chevy-Chace, to which, I venture to affirm, this ballad is infinitely superior. That I may not appear too presumptuous in my assertion, let us proceed to the examination of this justly celebrated poem. I call it a poem—I had almost called it an epic, seeing it has a beginning, middle, and end: the action one, namely the death of the hero Taylor: it is replete with character, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... He, who is acquainted with history in its sources, knows that this assertion of Zwingli is by no means maliciously snatched from the air. It cannot indeed be charged against all convent-property; but, to illustrate the mode, in which a part at least of such acquisitions were obtained during the Middle Ages, I will insert here a document, which was preserved ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... into them, his tones subdued to their most sympathetic quality, and all those phrases on his lips which every day beguile women older and more discreet than this romantic, long-imprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise was an assertion of her womanhood and her right to dispose of herself as she chose. He had not lived to be twenty-five years old without knowing his power with women. He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his very confidence was a strong promise ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tepid waters of the James. But no reader can possibly understand what enjoyment it afforded, unless he has slept on the ground for fourteen days without undressing, and been compelled to walk, cook, and live on all fours, lest a perpendicular assertion of his manhood should ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... author states on the authority of the eminent Swiss geologist, Mons. E. Favre, who also explored the Caucasus in 1868, that moraines of great height and huge erratics of granite and other rocks "justify the assertion that the present glaciers of the Caucasus, like those of the Alps, are only the shadows of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... audacity of the Protestant enthusiast who penetrated even into the innermost recesses of the royal castle, and affixed the placards to the very chamber door of the king, was turned to good account by Cardinal Tournon and other courtiers of like sentiments, and was adduced as a proof of the assertion so often reiterated, that a change of religion necessarily involved also a revolution in the State. The free tone of the placards seemed to reveal a contemptuous disregard of dignities. The ridicule cast upon the doctrine of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... supreme community is as capable of making temporary as of registering irrevocable decisions. And though Locke admits that monarchy, from its likeness to the family, is the most primitive type of government, he denies Hobbes' assertion that it is the best. It seems, in his view, always to degenerate into the hands of lesser men who betray the contract they were appointed to observe. Nor is oligarchy much better off since it emphasizes the interest of a group against the superior interest of the ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the very basis of all true manliness. He designated truthfulness as "moral transparency," and he valued it more highly than any other quality. When lying was detected, he treated it as a great moral offence; but when a pupil made an assertion, he accepted it with confidence. "If you say so, that is quite enough; OF COURSE I believe your word." By thus trusting and believing them, he educated the young in truthfulness; the boys at length coming to say to one another: "It's a shame to ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... it would hold him. If, perhaps, he did not let it swallow him up. If he worked with an eye open for opportunities of self-assertion.... ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... her assertion that it had gone on and on, it commenced to cry afresh. Out of politeness to the Woman, though the sound hurt them, the tenderhearted animals uncovered their ears and listened intently. This is what they heard, repeated over ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... to be dissociated firmly from the views of my chauffeur Joe Petty, and to go to my last account with an emphatic assertion that my failure to become a perfect public gentleman is due to private idiosyncrasies rather than to any conviction that it is impossible, or to anything but admiration of the great men I have mentioned. If anybody should wish to paint me after I am dead, I desire that I may be represented with my ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... distance of nine feet, which was the solid thickness of the wall, there was a second door of oak, crossed, both breadth and lengthways, with clenched bars of iron, and studded full of broad-headed nails. Besides all these defences, they were by no means confident in the truth of the old dame's assertion, that she alone composed the garrison. The more knowing of the party had observed hoof-marks in the track by which they approached the tower, which seemed to indicate that several persons had very lately passed in ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... fair way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper undercurrent of implication, on this subject, without one which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure naturalism? But of one thing I am sure,—probation does not end with this life, and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... is any statement which describes the behavior of a class of objects or the character of a class of acts. For example, the classic illustration of the so-called "universal proposition" familiar to students of formal logic, "all men are mortal," is an assertion in regard to a class of objects we call men. This is, of course, simply a more formal way of saying that "men die." Such general statements and "laws" get meaning only when they are applied to particular cases, or, to speak again in the terms of formal logic, when they find ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... eager suggestions for her comfort, but the girl was firm in her assertion, that she was now quite well, so that, having no sisters and being ignorant that a healthy young woman does not, any more than a healthy young man, go white and stagger without reason, he yielded, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... ever occurred. I thought I had never heard of this till I saw it in Herndon's book. I have since been told that Lamon mentions the same thing. I read Lamon at the time he published, and felt very much disgusted, but did not remember this particular assertion. The first chapters of Lamon's book were purchased from Herndon; so Herndon ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... made this assertion with an air of perfect credence, did not, for a moment, believe that such was Madeleine's destination; but he thought to check persistent inquiries which might accidentally bring to light some fine thread that would lead to the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... not afraid of bombs, she is afraid of us," thought Judith, for the Sister's face grew white, her lips dry, and her assertion that she was glad to be back at dear old York Hill seemed to be all that she could remember of her speech. Three hundred pairs of hands had clapped her a warm welcome, but now she confronted three ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... von Thiele. "Visibly embarrassed," he writes, "he told me that the Prussian Government was absolutely ignorant of the matter and that it did not exist for them." This was the only answer to be got; in a despatch sent on the 11th to the Prussian agents in Germany, Bismarck repeated the assertion. "The matter has nothing to do with Prussia. The Prussian Government has always considered and treated this affair as one in which Spain and the selected candidate are alone concerned." This was literally true, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... admitted, though it may be that the geological record gives us no direct evidence of this. That the globe of to-day is peopled with innumerable forms of life whose term of existence has been, for the most part, but as it were of yesterday, is likewise an assertion beyond dispute. Can we in any way connect the present with the remote past, and can we indicate even imperfectly the conditions and laws under which the existing order was brought about? The long series of fossiliferous deposits, with their almost countless organic remains, is ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... the central power station, a load constant only in the sense that there are no periods of no load and which varies widely with different portions of the 24 hours. With such a load it is particularly difficult to make any assertion as to the point of maximum economy that will hold for any station, as this point is more than with any other class of load dependent upon the factors entering into the ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... pedagogy, a hindrance to clear thinking, a superfluity. We do not say so, to be sure, with respect to knowledge in general; but that is our attitude in regard to any particular subject that may be brought up. Yet to deny the value of special information is tantamount to an assertion of the desirability of general ignorance. It is only the politician who can afford to say: "Wide knowledge is a fatal handicap ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... by the run. Love is so startlingly real that 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 is taking away with the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the subject, and by degrees matters were greatly improved. It is not our purpose to pursue the inquiry as to roads, though the subject might be attractive, and we must be content with the general assertion as to ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... truth has kept the world in spiritual darkness—it has nurtured belief in sin—in a devil, in a God that permits evil. For when you tell me that my assertion is a mere quibble—that it matters not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely selfish—you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there is no longer any sin. 'Sin' is then seen to be but a mistaken notion of what brings happiness. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... to wrest my words,' replied Philip, in his own calm manner, though he actually felt hurt, which he had never done before. His complacency was less secure, so that there was more need for self-assertion. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the milkmaids had said to one another of the newcomer, "How pretty she is!" with something of real generosity and admiration, though with a half hope that the auditors would qualify the assertion—which, strictly speaking, they might have done, prettiness being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in Tess. When the milking was finished for the evening they straggled indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... will not omit to do so. As to your question about each particular person's loyalty and friendly feelings towards you, it is difficult to speak in regard to individuals. I can venture on this one assertion, which I often hinted to you before, and now write from close observation and knowledge—that certain persons, and those, above all others, who were most bound and most able to help you, have been exceedingly jealous of your claims: and that, though the point in question is different, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "It was my father," she repeated with a sigh, "who welcomed him to this place, and encouraged, or at least allowed, the intimacy between us. Should he not have remembered this, and requited it with at least some moderate degree of procrastination in the assertion of his own alleged rights? I would have forfeited for him double the value of these lands, which he pursues with an ardour that shows he has forgotten how much I am implicated in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... possibilities. One means of change lies in the sudden and spontaneous production of new forms from the old stock. The other method is the gradual accumulation of those always present and ever fluctuating variations which are indicated by the common assertion that no two individuals of a given race are exactly alike. The first changes are what we now call "mutations," the second are designated as "individual variations," or as this term is often used in another sense, as "fluctuations." Darwin recognized both lines of evolution; Wallace disregarded ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... accomplish their visit and escape unharmed. Surely no other city takes such benevolent pains to reassure its inhabitants and instruct and warn its stranger-guests: perhaps it is because deeds have not kept pace with words that assertion and argument have hitherto failed of the desired effect. The protracted, repeated cholera epidemic of 1873-74 may well challenge a close observation of the situation, surroundings and sanitary condition of Munich as a means of ascertaining ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... with which Jennings's bride stepped into Toy's shoes convinced Bruce that the Chinaman had been correct in his assertion, but he was helpless in the circumstances, and accepted the inevitable, being able for the first time to understand ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... back amongst the cushions, musing over the events of the evening with a complacent smile. The last few weeks seemed to have wrought some subtle change in the man. His face was at once stronger and weaker, more determined, and yet in a sense less trustworthy. His manner had gained in assertion, his bearing in confidence. There was an air of resolve about him, as though he knew exactly where he was going—how far, and in what direction. And with it all he had aged. There were lines under his eyes, and his face was worn—at ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more I heard, before my senses left me—a loud, proud, imperious voice, the voice that speaks to be obeyed, whose assertion brooks no contradiction. It rang in my ears where nothing else could reach them, and even then I knew whence it came. The voice was the voice of M. de Perrencourt, and it seemed that he spoke to the King ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... that, old weather bureau prophet," laughed Alec; for the scout who had just made that bold assertion had long been looked up to as an authority on the subject of changes of the weather, and could reel off a dozen reasons for the prediction he was making, all founded ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... malediction of all civilized people and the spirit of the Gospel, had levelled in the dust." Not only the nations of Europe, but also the whole civilized world and people, the most remote, who scarcely yet enjoyed the blessings of civilization, made haste to deny an assertion which was as false as it was audacious. All the nations of Christendom were deeply moved when they heard of the outrages which the Roman populace had heaped upon the common Father of the faithful. Compassion was universally expressed, together with professions of duty and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening on to the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasures. The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, but here there ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... up there, was banking more money than was reasonable, these hard times, for a miner, who ships no ore. Casey's disappearance had crystallized the suspicions into an immediate investigation. And Barney's assertion that Casey had been murdered took the ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... seems almost certain that the mother's errand was to try to get him away from his exhausting work; he was imperilling his health and his safety. Jesus refused to be interrupted. But it was really only an assertion that nothing must come between him and his duty. The Father's business always comes first. Human ties are second to the bond which binds us to God. No dishonor was done by Jesus to his mother in refusing to be drawn away by her loving interest from his work. The holiest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... them from us by direct communication: isolated in our situation, isolated by our manners, we found truth, but did not impart it." (9) It may surely be asked, whether France will subscribe to this assertion of superiority, in the whole range of science! If she does, her character has undergone an even greater change, than any she has yet experienced in the course of all ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Sprudell long to realize that Uncle Bill was correct in his assertion that he would have been lost alone in fifteen yards. He would have been lost in less than that, or as soon as the full force of the howling storm had struck him and the wind-driven snow shut out the tent. He had not gone far before he wished that he had done as Uncle Bill had told him and ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... different rendering from the one they adopted. But, believing as they did, that it was some of Adam's race, then called men, they stumbled on a translation that not one of them has been satisfied with since they made it. The propriety of this assertion in regard to antecedents controlling the proper rendering, will be readily admitted by all scholars. The rendering, therefore, of the exact idea of the sacred historian, would be this: "Then men began to profane the Lord by calling on his name." This is required by the ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... gone wrong, and having got into miry and foul ways? Of course there is; and equally of course a broad statement such as this of my text is not to be pressed into literal accuracy, but is a simple, general assertion of what we all know to be true, that we have a strange power of blinding ourselves as to what is wrong in ourselves and in our actions. Part of the cure for that lies in the thought in the second clause of the text—'But the Lord weigheth the spirits.' He weighs them in a balance, or as a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... candle boxe. It was about sixe a clocke in the euening, when those boot-halers entred: into my chamber they rusht, when I sate leaning on my elbow, and my left hand vnder my side, deuising what a kinde of death it might be to be let bloud till a man dye. I cald to minde the assertion of some Philosophers, who said the soule was nothing but bloud: then thought I, what a filthie thing were this, if I should let my soule fall and breake his necke into a bason. I had but a pimple rose with heate in that ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... families of New England with much interest, and finding therein no confirmation of this idea, I had held it but the outbreak of prejudice and ignorance. Yet since the present rebellion has caused so much inquiry into the antecedents of the Southerners, I find that the assertion is well founded, but that it concerns those who have hitherto been loudest in their claims to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for discussion, I am happy, in proceeding at once to the present, to be able to state, as a matter of fact, that "wrecking" is a crime unknown in the Cornwall of our day. So far from maltreating shipwrecked persons, the inhabitants of the sea-shore risk their lives to save them. I make this assertion, on the authority of a gentleman whose life has been passed in the West of Cornwall; whose avocations take him much among the poor of all ranks and characters; and who has himself seen wrecked sailors rescued ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Failing in this, he then said they were sunk in the lower part of the harbour; but even here they could not be discovered. He tampered with an Irishman, to make a few that he could produce in support of his assertion; but the man had, unfortunately for him, been transported for having been a dealer in pikes, and declared that he would not involve himself a second time for them. He at last found a man to fabricate ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... hardships, and were pitiable to look upon; but the men were of dark hue, straight in figure, always thin in flesh, and remarkably like our American Indians. Nudity is the rule among them, clothing the exception. It seems like a strange assertion, but it is a fact, two thirds of the human family go ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... suggestion of the esoteric significance of the originals. The Professor, with a tact that contrived to make each reader feel himself included among the exceptions, went on to say that Keniston's work would never appeal to any but exceptional natures; and he closed with the usual assertion that to apprehend the full meaning of the master's "message" it was necessary to see him in the surroundings of his own ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... sincerely desired peace. And yet the treaty had a double defect. First, the wayward, capricious, and ungoverned nature of the Indian parties to it, on both sides, made a speedy rupture more than likely. Secondly, in spite of their own assertion to the contrary, the Iroquois envoys represented, not the confederacy of the five nations, but only one of these nations, the Mohawks: for each of the members of this singular league could, and often did, make peace and war independently of ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... rash assertion, for many minutes had not passed before the boy was sleeping soundly the sleep of utter weariness and exhaustion; and the next time he unclosed his eyes as he lay there upon his back, not having moved since he lay down, it was ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... and justice is liable to fall short of humanity's hopes unless liberty and justice be themselves defined in a cooperative sense. The great liberties which man has gained, as step by step he has risen from savagery, have not been chiefly the assertion of already existing powers or the striking-off of fetters forged by his fellows. They have been additions to previous powers. Science, art, invention, associated life in all its forms, have opened the ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... whose system of conduct forbids it. At the same time, truth authorizes me to say, that he was received and treated with proper respect to his official character, and that he has had no cause to justify the assertion, that he could not expect any support for fulfilling ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... wrong—per fas et nefas.[1] A man may be objectively in the right, and nevertheless in the eyes of bystanders, and sometimes in his own, he may come off worst. For example, I may advance a proof of some assertion, and my adversary may refute the proof, and thus appear to have refuted the assertion, for which there may, nevertheless, be other proofs. In this case, of course, my adversary and I change places: he comes off best, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... a Hattiesburg church received a letter from one of his members with the extravagant assertion that the people whose funerals he had preached were in Chicago (meaning Heaven) because they were good Christians. To give assurance on the question of weather migrants in the North would mention the fact that they were writing with their coats off. A fact which ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... this singular character; but when we hear a performer of our day, whom the public has long and deservedly applauded, extolled as a perfect representative of lady Macbeth, and find this part held forth and distinguished as the pattern of her excellence, true criticism must reject the fallacy of the assertion, and the injustice it imposes upon that great actress herself, who in many other situations of the drama, sustains an eminence above all rivalship; physical defects may often be lessened or concealed; but they will sometimes be too stubborn for the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... results, was alert and quite on her guard against fraud. Experienced in fake mediums, she believed Willy Hanlon's assertion that this man was one of the few genuine mystics, but she ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by persons ill qualified for censors—among others, by my Lord Rochester—and was instantly ready with his defence—an "Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age." In it he repeats the senseless assertion, "that the language, wit, and conversation of our age are improved and refined above the last;" and he takes care to include among the writers of the last age, Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson. "In what," he asks "does the refinement of a language ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... him. On her return from the Albany she had found him apparently just as she had left him, except that he was much less talkative. Indeed, though unswervingly polite—even punctilious with her—he had grown quite taciturn and very obstinate and finicking in self-assertion. There was no detail as to which he did not formulate a definite wish. Yet not until by chance her eye fell on the whisky decanter did she perceive that in her absence he had been copiously drinking again. He was not, however, drunk. Remorseful at her defection, she ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... the Lord is mindful of His own"; for the bass, "God have mercy upon us," and for the tenor, "Be thou faithful unto death." These reveal pure and exalted melody of highest type. It uplifts but does not intoxicate. Spontaneity is sacrificed to perfection, and the lack of self-assertion allows us to keep our wits ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... am afraid . . . that if you really want to know what I do, you must forgive me for seeming egoistic. That is the tragedy of the literary person: his very existence is an assertion of his own mental vanity: he must pretend to be conceited even if he isn't. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... desirable to speak of these excellent books, and of their distinguished authors, with the utmost respect, and in a tone as far as possible removed from carping criticism; indeed, if they are specially cited in this place, it is merely in justification of the assertion that the following propositions, which may be found implicitly, or explicitly, in the works in question, are regarded by the mass of paleontologists and geologists, not only on the Continent but in this country, as expressing some ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... Christ." All the books of the Hebrew canon and of the New Testament are specified. After the list he says, "these are they which the fathers included in the canon, by which they wished to establish the assertion of our faith." He adds that there are other books not canonical, but ecclesiastical—the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and the books of the Maccabees. Besides the usual New Testament works, he speaks of the Shepherd of Hermas, ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson |
