"Assertive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is another class who are everywhere the aides and ministers of these oppressors. You can tell them at a glance—large, coarse, corpulent men; red-faced, brutal; decorated with vulgar taste; loud-voiced, selfish, self-assertive; cringing sycophants to all above them, slave-drivers of all below them. They are determined to live on the best the world can afford, and they care nothing if the miserable perish in clusters around their feet. The howls of starvation will not lessen one iota their appetite ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... with his mother, who, by the way, was also an exception to the ordinary class of squaws. She was rudely intellectual and violently self-assertive, though kind-hearted withal. ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... in New England there was a girl a few years back with an alert mind, an assertive personality, and a tremendous fund of energy. She was in the habit of giving constructive suggestions to the heads of the departments in which she worked, and because of her youth and manner, they resented it. "I took her into my office," the ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... moving slowly along beside her wooer shot a rapid sidelong glance at his white face, and for the first time in their acquaintance felt a thrill of respect akin to fear, sweep in his direction across her gay self-assertive nature. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Much, of course, depends upon whether the status can maintain itself. It is, like the status everywhere and always, very anomalous; but it is difficult to imagine either the monarchy or the papacy yielding at any point. Apparently the State is the more self-assertive of the two, but this is through the patriotism which is the political life of the people. It must always be remembered that when the Italians entered Rome and made it the capital of their kingdom they did not drive out ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... admit to himself, occasionally reckless. One evening a discussion took place in Mary O'Dwyer's room which startled and shocked him. Excitement ran high over the events of the war. The sympathies of the 'Independent Irelanders,' as they called themselves, fiercely assertive even in their name, were of course entirely with the Boers, and they received every report of an English reverse with ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... moved his friend, was almost overcome by this reception. He remembered that Hartmut had always been his superior, intellectually, and how many times he had been made to feel this. He had thought that the author of "Arivana" would have grown even more imperious and self-assertive, and now he was given this tender and ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... assertive as ever, but it had less expression in words; unaccountable periods of silence, almost ill-natured, overtook him, spaces of abstraction when it was plain that he had forgotten the presence of whoever might be by. Even direct questions sometimes failed to pierce immediately his consciousness. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... find no fault with the last statement. Obviously it was a fact. But the tone more than the words was self-assertive, even arrogant. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... to come to such a determination; yet Ruth's experiences since her parents had died were such as would naturally make her self-assertive. She knew what she wanted, and ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... himself, perforce he plays upon his own "I," which is not exactly that contained in the octave of the sentimentalist nor yet in that of the curious investigator. Undoubtedly at times it must be a most immodest "I," an "I" which discloses a name and a surname, an "I" which is positive and self-assertive, with the imperiousness of a Captain General's edict ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... of such a nature as to involve a real partnership—a partnership full of perplexity to the working member of it, the ordinary forensic creature of senses, passions, ambitions, and self-indulgences, the eating, sleeping, vainglorious, assertive male of common experience—and it is not to be denied that it has been fruitful, nor again that by some freak of fate or fortune the house has kept a decent front to the world at large. It is still solvent, still favourably regarded by the police. It is not, it never will be, a mere cage of demons; ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... meek, silent, docile; but their silence was deceiving, and, as shown in the witchcraft catastrophe, was but the silence of a smouldering volcano. In the eighteenth century, the womanhood of the land became more assertive, in religion as in other affairs, and there is no doubt that Mercy Warren, Eliza Pinckney, Abigail Adams, and others mentioned in these pages were thinkers whose opinions were respected by both clergy and laymen. The Puritan ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... bearing on another region in which the assertive self is only too apt to spoil all work. And that is, that if our activities are offerings to God, this means that His supreme Will is to be our law, and that we obey His commands and accept His appointments ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... but they would have been a much jollier and really more harmonious one. Mr. Copperhead himself somewhat despised his elder sons, who were like himself, only less rich, less vigorous, and less self-assertive. He saw, oddly enough, the coarseness of their manners, and even of their ways of thinking; but yet he was a great deal more comfortable, more at his ease among them, than he was when seated opposite his trembling, deprecating, frightened little wife, or ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... before us, we wish he had done,—he passed out of and away from it. And those phases which followed have been such as are the least fitted to stand the trial of public exhibition. His pictures do not command the eye by extraordinary combinations of assertive colors,—nor do they, through great pathos, deep tenderness, or any overcharged emotional quality, fascinate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... woman's calling—to teach man: and to teach him what? To teach him, after all, that his calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth: ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... one day there had been a quarrel. Maude thought a bit of William Henry's advice too assertive, too near to an injunction to obey, and had flared up. And William Henry had flared up likewise. And when the two came to count the cost, William Henry was moodily filling a job in a cousin's lumber-yard in Philadelphia, ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... sight that in Germany and Japan there would be danger of a lack of co-ordination between the civil and the naval authorities, and a tendency for the navy to become unduly self-assertive. Of course, one reason why there is no such danger is that the governments of those countries are controlled by men who, though civilians, have great knowledge of international affairs, and of military ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... building, at the same time, there emerged a short, stout personage, garbed in overalls. But the fine quality of his linen, and a diamond pin, which nestled in the silken folds of his capacious necktie, showed as clearly as did his self-assertive manner, that the newcomer was by no means ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... was more modest, had more humility, than Marsh; for in his heart, Henry was vain.... And while he was asking himself this question, suddenly he found the answer. It was because he was afraid to talk about himself, it was because he had not got the courage to be vain and self-assertive in crowds. His inability to talk among strangers, to make people cease their own conversation in order to listen to him, was part of that cowardice that had prevented him from diving into the sea when he went with his father to swim at Cushendall ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... we laid Jane gently to rest, but she comes back to me and dominates me whenever I mentally call my old friends together. Her voice is the loudest, her speech the most voluble, and her manner the most assertive of all my motley friends. They are all gathering around me as I write. My friend who teaches music by colour is here, my friend with his secret invention that will dispense with steam and electricity is here too; "Little Ebbs" the would-be policeman is here too; the prima donna whose ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Marian Thorne was not the girl he had thought her. He wanted a wife cut after the clinging-vine pattern. He wanted to be the dominating figure in his home. It had not taken Eileen long to teach him that Marian was self-assertive and would do a large share of dominating herself. He had thought that he was perfectly satisfied and very happy with Eileen; yet that day he repeatedly had felt piqued and annoyed with her. She had openly cajoled ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... two clerical tennis players departed. Marmaduke was for taking his leave too. All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly returned. His cousin stood for everything he detested—swagger, arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby rakishness of his attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak of a nose which he had inherited from his father, the Rector. He dreaded his aggressive masculinity. He had come back with the same insulting speech on his lips. His finger-nails were dreadful. Marmaduke desired as little ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman was Young London personified—blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. "Never say die" was his motto, and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long he was noisy, and ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... declaration of the girl's engagement to another. But now the tremendous task of storming a virgin heart lay ahead of him, as he imagined. Torments unfelt by those of less sensitive mould also awaited Martin Grimbal. The self-assertive sort of man, who rates himself as not valueless, and whose love will not prevent callous calculation on the weight of his own person and purse upon the argument, is doubtless wise in his generation, and his sanguine temperament enables him to escape oceans of unrest, hurricanes of torment; ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Christianity completely different from what we are accustomed to, that we find the explanation of his extraordinary interest in the "weak" as opposed to the "strong." The association between Christianity and a certain masterful, moral, self-assertive energy, such as we feel the presence of in England and America, might well tend to make it difficult for us to understand his meaning. It is precisely this sort of thing that makes it difficult for us to understand Russia and the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the primary relations of reality and appearance. A reality is a term of discourse based on a psychic complex of memories, associations, and expectations, but constituted in its ideal independence by the assertive energy of thought. An appearance is a passing sensation, recognised as belonging to that group of which the object itself is the ideal representative, and accordingly regarded as a ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... had often seen him sit for hours on end without a word, looking at nothing in particular, with his expressionless serenity. But on this particular evening the day's activities appeared to have made his social instincts vividly assertive, and to arouse him to unusual, and almost unnatural animation. As we sat at a small round table beside the dining room fireplace, he launched into a cheerful discourse, ignoring completely any displeasure ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... then was still not eighteen, a soft white slip of being, tall, slender, brown-haired and silent, with very still deep dark eyes. She and your three aunts formed a very gracious group of young women indeed; Alice then as now the most assertive, with a gay initiative and a fluent tongue; Molly already a sun-brown gipsy, and Norah still a pig-tailed thing of lank legs and wild embraces and the pinkest of swift pink blushes; your uncle Sidney, with his shy lank moodiness, acted the brotherly part of a foil. There were several stray ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... a perpetual fear of Negro uprising, and well were her fears grounded, for here the Negro was most assertive against his mistreatment. The population of Bahia in the first decade of the nineteenth century is estimated by Henderson as being in the neighborhood of 110,000, two thirds of which was slave. Once let the slave get a start and with such odds in his favor the masters ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... group of buildings they heard a hilarious and assertive song which sprang from the door and windows of the main saloon. It was in jig time, rollicking and boisterous, but the words had evidently been improvised for the occasion, as they clashed immediately with those which sprang to the minds of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... on to complain that the Society did not advertise itself, made the election of new members difficult, and maintained a Basis "ill-written and old-fashioned, harsh and bad in tone, assertive and unwise." The self-effacive habits and insidious methods of the Society were next criticised, and the writer exclaimed, "Make Socialists and you will achieve Socialism; there is no other plan." The ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... strides to reach the dressing-table; it was the work of hardly one minute to collect that ever-growing herd of assertive "has beens," and then ... I began to wonder where I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... Cape Colonies represents nearly one-half of the white population there. Their representatives in the administration were ever profuse and assertive in professions of loyalty to the Queen and to the English Government, and any aspersions to the contrary were always indignantly and stoutly repelled. The Afrikaner Bond was averred to include nothing to clash with loyal sentiments, no severance from England, but, on the ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... half-concealed tragedy, which, of course, had been patent to him in its uttermost nakedness. Even Vere had guessed something of it. Do we ever really hide anything from every one? And yet each one breathes mystery too. The assertive man is the last of fools. Of that at least Artois just ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... stumbling up the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... "things loosened up," and Mr. Watling was responsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner table appeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did, without being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter in re. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would formerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... poor fun having a quarrel all to herself, and it whetted her appetite to find a combatant who was capable of "hitting back." She sat up very straight in her seat, tossing her head backward in quick, assertive little jerks, and clasping her bare hands on her lap. Guest glanced at her curiously from his point of vantage in the rear. She was like no other girl whom he had met, but somewhere, in pictured form, he must surely have seen such a face, for ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... separate the three "Synoptics," taken together, from the fourth Gospel, connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with the name of the apostle John. In its philosophical proemium; in the conspicuous absence of exorcistic miracles; in the self-assertive theosophy of the long and diffuse monologues, which are so utterly unlike the brief and pregnant utterances of Jesus recorded in the Synoptics; in the assertion that the crucifixion took place before the Passover, which involves the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the close of the century the country was awakening from the materialism which had girt it round. The danger of invasion had passed away. The seeds of religious fervour were bearing fruit. A militant, assertive Puritanism was vigorously putting forward its feelers throughout the length and breadth of England, nor was education the last to be affected. Throughout history it has been the aim of the enthusiast to make education conform to a single standard. Sometimes it has been ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... describes as a "wise passiveness," or a "happy stillness of the mind." He believed this condition could be deliberately induced by a kind of relaxation of the will, and by a stilling of the busy intellect and striving desires. It is a purifying process, an emptying out of all that is worrying, self-assertive, and self-seeking. If we can habitually train ourselves and attune our minds to this condition, we may at any moment come across something which will arouse our emotions, and it is then, when our emotions—thus ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... worthy of our serious consideration. It is a bold, rocky headland, standing out into the tossing sea of the Unknown. Assertive? Yes. Stubborn? Most surely. Proud? By all means. Twice as many pilgrims visit the grave of Burns as that of Shakespeare. Buckle declares Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has had a greater influence on civilization than any other book ever writ—save ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... can there be anything so inclusive as being true to your manhood? Stand upright and do not be either cringing or vulgarly self-assertive. Be righteous. Let your words and deeds correspond. Lead no double life. Proclaim ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... expected as one of the first developments of the twentieth century in maritime traffic. Steam, which for oversea trade made its entrance cautiously in the shape of a mere auxiliary to sail power, had taken up a much more self-assertive position long before the close of the nineteenth century, and has driven its former ally almost out of the field in large departments of the shipping industry. Yet a curious and interesting counter movement is now ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... to a crisis one day when Maxwell was informed that some one was waiting to see him in the parlor. The visitor was dressed in very pronounced clothes, and carried himself with a self-assertive swagger. Maxwell had seen him in Bascom's office, and knew who was waiting for him long before he reached the parlor, by the odor of patchouli which ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... much—everything. If a man could not boast of these, then he must have money; and even money would not always fetch him everything. The Court musicians were classed lower than domestic servants, and generally paid less. Now and again a triumphant, assertive personality like Handel would break through all the rules of etiquette; but even Handel could have done little without his marvellous finger-skill—for he was reckoned finest amongst the European players of his time—and with his fingers Haydn—we have his own confession ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... such in our economic system of education; they have taken their chance: few inspectors ask to see whether children know how to "play the game," and yet they are so soon to play the independent game of life. But the individual output of reading and sums of a sneaking and cowardly, or assertive and selfish child, is as good probably as that of a child that has the makings of a hero in him. And then we wonder at the propensities of the "lower classes." It is because we have never made sure that ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... week of a rather faultfinding, self-assertive state, during which she demanded to be allowed to go home, saying indignantly that she was not a wicked woman, had done nothing to be kept a prisoner here; she wanted justice because another patient had ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... dead, the other powerless to be born. A profound disillusionment expressed itself in great ranges of later nineteenth century literature and confirmed the more sensitive and despairing in a positive pessimism, strangely contrasted to the self-assertive temper of the science and industry of the period. It would need a pretty careful analysis to follow all this to its roots. Something of it no doubt was due to the inability of poet and philosopher to reconcile their new understanding of life and the universe with the old religious ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... was really in power, and he resigned his place after the lapse of a few months. During the succeeding administration of the duke of Wellington (1828-1830), Stanley and those with whom he acted were in opposition. His robust and assertive Liberalism about this period seemed curious afterwards to a younger generation who knew him only as the very embodiment ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... which is itself one of the symbols of Her Son!" exclaimed Durtal, as he glanced at the opposite figures—such different women! one a nun rather than a queen, her head a little bowed; another, every inch a queen, holding hers aloft; the third saucy, though saintly, her neck neither bent nor assertive, holding herself in a natural attitude, and moderating the august mien of a sovereign by the humble, smiling ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the street to the First National, bounced in and presented himself at the teller's window, lighting a cigar, puffing like a tugboat. "To open a small account—two of 'em. Checks for collection," he announced. Tone and manner were breezily self-assertive; the president, from his desk, turned and looked. He indorsed, blotting with a swift dab, and a final fillip through the window. "Chicago, thirty-three hundred—credit to Britt & Stratton. Here's our signature. Denver, eight hundred, to private ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... she never recovered—five milestones behind on the road of Anglicization! It was enough to keep down a more assertive personality than poor Hannah's. The mere danger of slipping back unconsciously to the banned Yiddish put a curb upon her tongue. Her large, dark eyes had a dog-like look, and they were set pathetically in a sallow face that suggested ill-health, yet ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... bookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by a free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel, Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, but she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felt her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said: "Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the fact that such an emphatic expression of opinion had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... precept so commonly exemplified. Comely in all respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features, ready and winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous, expressive gestures—an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows, a modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, conveying so much—and a voice at that time of a singular penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... spent a most enjoyable evening, for he seemed in good spirits—or, rather, perhaps had a pretty good amount of spirits or beer in him—as he reeled somewhat in his gait, and, although it was Sunday, was trying in his cracked falsetto voice to chant a Bacchanalian ditty assertive of the fact that he wouldn't "go home ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ordinary reader. For example: "RULE XL Part 3. An intransitive or receptive asserter in the unlimited mode, depending on a word in the possessive case, may have, after it, a word in the subjective case, denoting the same thing: And, when it acts the part of an assertive name, depending on a relative, it may have after it a word in the subjective case. EXAMPLES:—John's being my friend, saved me from inconvenience. Seth Hamilton was unhappy in being a slave to party ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... what most struck Beerbohm Tree, during the time he was in close contact with Stevenson, while arranging the production of Beau Austin at the Haymarket Theatre, for he sees, or confesses to seeing, only one side, and that the most assertive, and in a sense, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... glanced gratitude. "That one again," she said once more, half indicating a cot at a little distance: "Number 74. She has much the same thin hair—sparse, weak, and colourless. She has much the same curved back, and much the same aggressive, self-assertive features. Looks capable, doesn't she? A born housewife!... Well, she, too, was knocked down and kicked half-dead the other night ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... years old. Long before this he had built his popularity upon a vigorous British "patriotism," assertive of England's honour and jealous for British advantage. Now, however, as head of a Government requiring the most delicate handling to maintain itself, he devoted his energies to details of political management in which he had great skill. His ambition was, primarily, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... less assertive under the constant control of a highly cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons whose distinguishing characteristic is ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... years older than the handsome Stanor, and his type of face was so essentially legal that his profession as barrister could be guessed even before it was known. His chin was the most pronounced feature of the face—it was really interesting to discover just how assertive a chin could be. It was a prominent, deeply indented specimen, which ascribed to itself so much power of expression that even the eyes themselves played a secondary part. The tilt of it, the droop of it, the aggressive tilt forward were each equally eloquent, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... them on the blackboard, she copied them diligently. And as the time went on, Emmy Lou went on copying digits. And her one endeavor being to avoid the notice of Miss Clara, it happened the needs of Emmy Lou were frequently lost sight of in the more assertive ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... member of the happy woodland family. His indulgent sisters tolerated his bouncing, familiar manners as if they were born to be his playthings—he was so serious and yet so droll, so stupidly self-assertive and yet so irresistibly affectionate! He seemed to take his pleasures sadly, wearing, if such be possible to a fox, an air of melancholy disdain; and yet his beady eyes were ever on the lookout for mischief, and for the chance of a helter-skelter romp with his sisters round and round the chamber, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... high?" said Foster in a peculiar tone of voice, at which all began to smile. He was a slender fellow with close-clipped, assertive red hair. "In this company we now have the majesty of the law, the power of the press, and the underpinning of the American civilization all represented. Hello! There are a couple of old roosters with their heads together. Gordon, my old ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... departure, and is of especial interest as showing a decided progress since the more vague provisions of the Assize of Clarendon. A possible source of danger to a successful ministry lay in the quarrelsome and self-assertive Archbishop of York, the king's brother Geoffrey; but soon after Richard's departure Hubert deprived him of power by a sharp stroke and a skilful use of the administrative weapons with which he was familiar. ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... awakens, and the mental, like the physical, changes are profound. There is great general instability, the child, at one time shy and reticent, is at another, boisterous and self-assertive. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... was good being done of a less assertive but equally commendable nature. The lines of section grew vague when the social Georgian sat side by side with the genial woman from Michigan. Mrs. Johnson of Minnesota and Mrs. Cabot of Massachusetts, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... his face, his head juts forward, and those queer little dark amber eyes of his watch furtively round him for his fame. His clothes fit perfectly and yet sit upon him as though he had bought them ready-made. He speaks in a mumble still, but he says, you perceive indistinctly, enormous self-assertive things, he backs into the rear of groups by instinct if Banghurst drops the line for a minute, and when he walks across Banghurst's lawn one perceives him a little out of breath and going jerky, and ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... instructor's contribution. The student's judgment is not called into play; he learns to take knowledge on the authority of the instructor. The sense of comfort and security experienced in a lecture hour is fatal even to aggressive and assertive minds. Sooner or later the students succumb to the inertia developed by ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Circle KT. The situation was not so disagreeable as he had expected. Already he was proud of his kinship to Carolyn June. She was a niece worth while. Ophelia also had proved herself a pleasant surprise. He had pictured her as a strong-minded, assertive, modernized creature who would probably discourse continuously and raspingly about the evils of smoking, profanity, poker, drinking and other natural masculine impulses. Instead, she had proved herself, so far, a perfect lady. Without doubt she was the most sensible ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... acrid odor of scorched fat and boiling coffee rose in the delicate evening. A small group was passing about a flasklike bottle; a figure lay in a stupor on the clay; a mutter of voices, at once cautious and assertive, joined argument to complaint. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that brought these visions, so to speak, within the range of practical politics. For fifteen or twenty years, Germany was, as Bismarck said, "sated"; but with the coming of the youthful, pushful, self-assertive Kaiser, her aggressive instincts re-awakened and she fell to brooding over the idea that her incomparable physical and spiritual energies were cabin'd, cribb'd, confined. The rapid growth of her population reinforced ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... office of the people to Aaron Burr; as it was he tied with Jefferson. The matter was thrown into the House of Representatives, and Jefferson was given the office, with Burr as Vice-President. Burr considered, and perhaps rightly, that were it not for Hamilton's assertive influence he would have been President of the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... may, perhaps, think that this declaration is somewhat autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel with the novelist for wanting to be an historian, and will call him to account for writing politics. I am simply fulfilling an obligation—that is my reply. The work I have undertaken will be as long as a history; I was compelled to explain ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... himself into that house. It was a solid and assertive thing of rude importance where it stood in the great plain, the river lying flat before it in its low banks like a gray thread through the summer green. There was a bold front to the house, and a turret with ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... who one sometimes wishes, with Lanier's owl, "had more to think and less to say," were not so self-assertive as they usually are; in fact, they were quite subdued. They came and went freely, but they never questioned my actions, as they are sure to do where they lead society. Now and then one perched on the fence and regarded me, with flick of wing and tail that meant a good deal, but ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... even that his father was 'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes, his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk. And without a word he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade. He heard the word, "Val!" behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted steps past the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their undoing. The habit of absolute control over slaves bred the habit of mastery whenever it could be successfully asserted. There grew up a caste, its members equal and cordial among themselves, but self-assertive and haughty to all besides. They brooked no opposition at home, and resented all criticism abroad. They misread history and present facts, misconceived their place in the order of things, and set themselves against both the finest and the strongest forces of the time. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... was apt to be noisy and blusterous. He had a loud voice, a rather demonstrative cough, he walked with a heavy tread, and, in fact, was generally assertive. Carrissima, not wishing to fail in her filial duty, went down-stairs to meet him in the hall, as the butler was helping him off with ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... the gang there was a woman, and there was a woman over, who was easily the central star of the flaunting galaxy. The shabby bravery of the men was matched by the shabby bravery of five out of the six women. Gaudy, painted, assertive strumpets with young, fair, shameless faces—worthy Jills of the ill-favoured Jacks who cuddled them—Jehanneton, the fair helm-maker; Denise, Blanche, Isabeau, and Guillemette, the landlord's daughter, who consorted gaily enough with these brightly-plumaged birds of a rogue's paradise. But ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education. They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation. I think ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... but dealt with according to their true position in regard to us. They are, in sense very real and divine, our kindred. If I call them our poor relations, it is to suggest that poor relations are often ill used. Relatives, poor or rich, may be such ill behaved, self-assertive, disagreeable persons, that we cannot treat them as we gladly would; but our endeavour should be to develop every true relation. He who is prejudiced against a relative because he is poor, is himself an ill-bred relative, and to be ill-bred is an excluding fault with the court of the ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... between his finger and thumb, he is courageous and kind to animals (or whatever it may be), and if he holds it between his first and second fingers he is impulsive but yet considerate to old ladies, and if he holds it upside down he is (besides being an ass) jealous and self-assertive, and if he sticks a knife into the stump so as to smoke it to the very end he is— yes, you have guessed this one—he is mean. You see what a useful thing a cigar ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... language gives the opening of this letter an interesting look. The first three paragraphs are strong. The fourth paragraph is merely assertive, and is weak. A fact or two from some advertiser's experience ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... you then; you talk so much!" And Penrod handed the weapon scornfully to Sam, who at once became less self-assertive. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... that the bird-like old lady she had met on the boat could be quite assertive if she ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... I'll train my voice to mouth out short, thick words, As Bosh! Trash! Fudge! Rot! And I'll cultivate An Abernethian, self-assertive style, That men may think there is a deal more in My solid head than e'er comes out. My hair I'll cut ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... he himself was personally interested. His vanity blinded him throughout to the quality of his own work, the amount of influence he could wield, and the extent of the public sympathy that he excited. He was essentially religious in temperament, though his religion was so assertive and egotistical in type that those who hold with Rosalba that where there is no modesty there can be no religion, [Footnote: Rosalba said of Sir Godfrey Kneller, 'This man can have no religion, for he has no modesty.'] might be inclined to deny its existence. From the very ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... peculiar form hardly ever used excepting in these formulas, where almost every paragraph contains one or more such verbs. It implies that the subject has just come and is now performing the action, and that he came for that purpose. In addition to this, many of these verbs may be either assertive or imperative (expressing entreaty), according to the accent. Thus hat[^u]['][n]gani[']ga means "you have just come and are listening and it is for that purpose you came." By slightly accenting the final syllable it becomes "come at once to listen." It will thus be seen that the great majority ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... human aspect, to mean the growth of a new and wider consciousness above the keen, self-assertive consciousness of the individual; a superseding of the personal by the humane; a change from egotism to a more universal understanding; so that each shall act, not in order to gain an advantage over others, but rather to ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... learn from the guide-book that Cassel has the most extensive view of any town in Europe: one felt at once that it differed in all sorts of marked and self-assertive ways from every other town, and would be almost sure to have the best things going in every line. And the line of an illimitable horizon is exactly the best to set off its ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... which the assertive clock took advantage of, Helen said, "I wish you would tell me something about your ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... toward him, a little interest in her home and her child, and George would have been won again. Had he but once come home to a contented wife and a clean house, George's wavering affection would have been regained. But Emeline was a loud-mouthed, assertive woman now, noisily set upon her own way, and filled with a sense of her own wrongs. She had discussed George too often with her friends to feel any possible interest in him except as a means of procuring sympathy. George bored her now; as a matter of fact, Emeline ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... carried weight even in the face of hysterical unreason. He raised his hand and spoke, and there was a hush. Madame Griggs and Minna Eddy remained quiet, like petrified furies, regarding the man's pale face of assertive will. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... knew where the Rampio—the madcap Rampio, all shallows and rapids—rests for a moment in a pool, wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you have made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his leisurely way home, to the presbytery and what passed ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... vigorous nature and penetrates to a surprising distance. "Follow me, follow me, follow me," many people hear him say; others write the syllables, "Wichity, wichity, wichity, wichity"; and still others write them, "I beseech you, I beseech you, I beseech you," though the tones of this self-assertive bird rather command than entreat. Mr. Frank Chapman says of the yellowthroats: "They sing throughout the summer, and in August add a flight-song to their repertoire. This is usually uttered toward evening, when the bird springs several feet into the air, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... to disclose the amount of their wealth, by agreeing that the whole town should pay to the Exchequer a sum to be raised by the Mayor and Corporation. The middle class achieved its aims politically by transformation from within. Instead of making a direct assertive attack, these master-traders usually so developed their own interests within the established institutions (such as the guilds) that they ultimately gained their object quietly and shrewdly. This class established itself ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... collected villagers murmur their approval; but I answer the mudir's beckoned invitation by a negative wave of the hand, signifying that I can't bother with him any further. The common herd around regard this self-assertive reply with open-mouthed astonishment, as though quite too incredible for belief; it seems to them an act of almost criminal discourtesy, and those immediately about me seem almost inclined to take me back to the threshing-floor like ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Christians, the Nestorians held peculiarly helpful and elevating ideas of the worth and proper condition of woman. Their precepts were full of mutual help, courtesy, and fraternal love. All these the Princess Woo learned under her preceptor's guidance. She grew to be even more assertive and self-reliant, and became, also, expert in many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... believe it in the least!" said Francis, in a more assertive voice than he had used yet. He laughed, too. She looked at the dark, vivid face so near hers, and so changed from what it had been ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... stereotyped ideas about that period. This literature makes it manifest that the ineradicable appetites and natural instincts of men and women were no less vigorous in fact, though less articulate and self-assertive, than they had been in the age of Greece and Rome, and than they afterwards displayed themselves in what is known ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... shadow of the hood. He kept it up for a long time with intense enjoyment. Obviously he had preserved intact the innocence of mind which is easily amused. But when his hilarity had exhausted itself, he made a professional remark in a self-assertive but quavering voice: ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... to be full of Baines—he was so large and fleshy and assertive. The furniture, even the chest of drawers, was dwarfed into toy-furniture, and Beechinor, slight and shrunken-up, seemed like a cadaverous manikin ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... oddly embarrassed. He did not know what to make of Miriam. It was not her strange costume merely, but she seemed to have put on—or put off—something with it that made a difference in her. She was assertive, imperious; as loving, certainly, as lover could wish, but not in the manner of the Miriam he knew. He might have liked the new Miriam better, had he not previously fallen in love with the former one. He could not make advances to her: he ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... from these to the less assertive figures. One seemed exceptionally pitiful to her. It was a woman of perhaps forty-five, with gold-stained hair and a painted face, down which abundant tears had trickled; she had a pinched nose, hungry eyes, lean hands and shoulders, and her dusty worn-out finery ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... but left the question of Thanksgiving open; her aunt felt the need of her for the anniversary. Jinny would be at home from Berkeley and Alfred and his wife Freda were expected for Thanksgiving Day. Mrs. Alfred was a noisy and assertive little person, whose complacent bullying of her husband caused his mother keen distress. Alfred was a bookkeeper now, in the bakery of his father-in-law, in the Mission, and was a changed man in these days; his attitude toward his wife ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... best form of government because we believe that this more completely than any other meets the legitimate desires of its people. I know a little boy who after tasting with gusto his morning's oatmeal would turn for sympathy to each other person at table with the assertive inquiry, "Good? Good? Good?" He knew no good but enjoyment, and this was so keen that he expected to find it repeated in each of his friends. It is true we often call actions good which are not immediately pleasing; for example, the cutting ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the lady had entered, he walked further along the platform. He was much less self-assertive in his progress. He threaded his way instead of elbowing it through the crowd. The most fragile peeress might have jostled him, and he would not have ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... his way savagely to the goal or furtively seeks to win by cunning and craft. He must win, regardless of the process. How many of these unsupervised games end in "I sha'n't play," in angry bursts of tears, or even in blows! How many fail upon close scrutiny to show some less assertive child, who never wins, who is never "chosen," who might better not be playing at all than never to "have ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... found, when the night superintendent finally entered the office and he had the chance of introducing himself. Newer to authority than the superintendent of the dayshift, he was also of a more active temperament and much more self-assertive. He was not impressed by the detective's years or even by his errand. It was a busy night, a very busy night—new hands in every department. To take him through the building at present was quite out of the question. Perhaps later it might be done; ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... be charged with that particular kind of affection, Chloe." There was an assertive note in Cheniston's voice when he spoke to his sister which was new to her. "You think a dog's proper place is the best armchair or the downiest bed in ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... functions: on the whole, he knows them as little as he knows the muscles which be uses when he talks or walks. Among his questions Parsons included such ones as: "Are your manners quiet, noisy, boisterous, deferential, or self-assertive? Are you thoughtful of the comfort of others? Do you smile naturally and easily, or is your face ordinarily expressionless? Are you frank, kindly, cordial, respectful, courteous in word and actions? Do you look people frankly in the eye? Are your inflections natural, courteous, modest, musical, ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... vehement, irascible, tender, self-assertive; intensely bent on the higher life; thwarted in that aspiration by unruly passion,—lust of the flesh and pride of the spirit; stumbling, stammering, conquering; a nature full of internal conflict, brought into harmony by one sublime ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... in that bird's-eye view from the Archway. There is no ample shadow of trees, no tangled corners where mother earth may weave flower garlands over her returning children. The monuments positively jostle and elbow each other for frontage upon the footways. And they are so rawly clean and assertive. Most of them are conspicuously new whitened, with freshly-blackened or newly-gilt inscriptions, bare of lichen, moss, or mystery, and altogether so restless that it seems to the meditative man that the struggle ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his enemy and could kill him. He was a man whose mental poise permitted the paradox of detached attachments. At first he had regarded Stanford Beale as a smart police officer, the sort of man whom Pinkerton and Burns turn out by the score. Shrewd, assertive, indefatigable, such men piece together the scattered mosaics of humdrum crimes, and by their mechanical patience produce for the satisfaction of courts sufficient of the piece to reveal the design. They figure in divorce suits, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... applied to Cephas's wounds, they began to heal. In the course of a month the most ordinary observer could have perceived a physical change in him. He cringed no more, but held his head higher; his back straightened; his voice developed a gruff, assertive note, like that of a stern Roman father; he let his moustache grow, and sometimes, in his most reckless moments, twiddled the end of it. Finally he swaggered; but that was only after Phoebe had accepted him and told him that if a girl traversed the entire length of the Saco River (which ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the part excellently. Ten days ago SPEAKER cheered House by announcement that there should be no more Supplementary Questions. Welcome resolution either forgotten or deliberately ignored. Supplementary Questions, almost exclusively argumentative, assertive, or personally offensive, buzzed about Treasury bench like bees at mouth of hive. HOME SECRETARY, alert, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... left business, and my first feelings were of disappointment. His clothes were not the exquisite raiment that he had worn as an exhibit in the window. The white spats, the sponge-bag trousers with the knife-edge crease, the gold-rimmed eye-glass, the well-cut morning coat, the too assertive waistcoat—all were the property of the Auto-extensor Co. and not to be worn out of business hours. He now wore a shabby tweed suit and a cap. But he was still a noticeable figure; a happy smile came into the faces of little boys as he ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... to him was a new experience. The first characteristic that struck me was that whereas the French writers were all assertive, he listened attentively to counter-arguments; it was only when his attitude in the woman question was broached that he would not brook contradiction and overwhelmed ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... looked down at his head, knew that there were a dozen absurd wishes in her heart, none of which could possibly ever become facts. He was so different from the self-assertive young men she knew, with their silly flirtations, their inane small-talk, their capacity for Scotch whisky and long hours. For days she had studied him as through microscopic lenses; his guilelessness was real. It just simply could not be; her ears had deceived her that memorable foggy night ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... In the foreground, the violins, violas, and 'cellos; in the middle distance, the wood-winds; in the background, the brass and the battery; the double-basses flanking the whole body. This distribution of forces is dictated by considerations of sonority, the most assertive instruments—the brass and drums—being placed farthest from the hearers, and the instruments of the viol tribe, which are the real backbone of the band and make their effect by a massing of voices in each part, having the place of honor and ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... four days. Kuwait spent more than $5 billion to repair oil infrastructure damaged during 1990-91. The AL-SABAH family has ruled since returning to power in 1991 and reestablished an elected legislature that in recent years has become increasingly assertive. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with two brown braids down my back, and a terrific shyness which I occasionally overcame with such a magnificent splurge that those who were not acquainted with my peculiarities probably thought me a shamefully assertive child. ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... a less easy task. She was a girl who had from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at first, had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an object of his patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him on his own exalted level. He had been known, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... she and the child— A blue-eyed, self-assertive mite— Were at the camp, She carrying it (the nurse was left behind) And the passports that allowed her to see him One hour, with a guard five yards away. Some of his polite impudence was gone, Yet he threw back his head and shoulders And shrugged as his wife and boy came in. "Always late," said ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... agreeable woman, shrewd, kindly, sympathetic, and very droll in her passing comments on men and events. She was in her early thirties, handsome, and a not quite natural blonde, her mouth sophisticated, her eyes set in circles of a leaden pallor. An assertive, masterful little woman, born and reared in decent poverty, still Thorny claimed descent from one of the first families of Maryland, and talked a good deal of her birth. Her leading characteristic was a determination never, even in the slightest particular, to allow herself to be imposed ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... United States, sitting in Washington, at the head of this vast affirmative and assertive continent, indicted the Cash Register Company, that is, by a slight pointed negative action, by pushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation and flooded a nation with light. We, the American people, suddenly, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to live this life. There was an entire absence of the self-spirit, that is the self-assertive, the self-confident spirit. There was a remarkable confidence in action, but it was confidence in His Father's unfailing response to His requests or needs. This sense of utter dependence was natural to Him; as indeed it is natural to man unhurt by sin. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... peculiarities, no less than of his gifts, Borrow was ridiculously proud. In certain respects he was as vainly, querulously, and childishly assertive as Goldsmith himself; while in the haughty self-isolation with which he eschewed the society of people with endowments as great or even greater than his own, he was quite the opposite of "poor Goldy." If the latter had regarded his interlocutors straight in the eyes with a look that told ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... for Holland the number of her emigrants was never great enough to enable her permanently to play a great part in the history of colonization. The Dutch are not an emigrating people. Yet those who did emigrate carried with them such an assertive character and so highly developed a group of institutions that they exercised a deep and permanent influence over communities like New York, in which they soon ceased to be the dominant element; while their institutions in Holland made such a strong impression upon English ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... than her brother. I must confess to you, Mr. Herrick, that I am rather prejudiced against Mr. Jacobi. I do not like either his face or his manners; his eyes are too close together, and this, in my opinion, gives him rather a crafty look; and in manner he is self-assertive ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had power to inspire, to transmit enthusiasm to others, and thus he was responsible for much of the improvement in decorative art, the re-establishment of that art upon an intellectual basis. Designs from his hands were full, splendid and self-assertive; harmony and proportion were there. A study of the Antony and Cleopatra series and of the plates given in this volume will establish and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... had been in the White House six months the country was divided substantially into Jackson men and anti-Jackson or administration men. The elements from which Jackson drew support were many and discordant. The backbone of his strength was the self-assertive, ambitious western Democracy, which recognized in him its truest and most eminent representative. The alliance with the Calhoun forces was kept up, although it was already jeopardized by the feeling of ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... person's immature feet, certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface, and when the weather was more than usually ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... his cigar on the carpet, where he let it remain. They stared at Stanley as though they were looking upon a ghost. Both men seemed somehow to have lost their confident bearing— seemed to have shrunken into smaller, less assertive, meaner beings. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to me is most extraordinary," she said to herself. "I had to mark my displeasure. For poor George's sake she ought not to be allowed to go too far. She has grown so very self-assertive. Last year her manner was much better. I suppose she and George have made it up again. People who are not really ladies, like Rhoda, are always so very much nicer when they are depressed. I wonder what has happened to make George ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... he fell, there lie unfinished plans By others misapplied, misunderstood; And doors are barred that wait the master-key— That wait his magic Open Sesame!— To that assertive power that ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... handed her into a hansom, and took his place beside her. She wore a very large hat, untidily put on; some of the paint seemed still to be upon her face; her voice, too, seemed to have become louder, and her manner more assertive. There were obvious indications that she no longer considered brandy and soda an unladylike beverage. Peter Ruff was not pleased with himself or ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... searching the lemon blooms. The breast of the gay, assertive little bird is far richer in tint than the brightest of the lemons. A minute ago one perched on a ripe fruit as if to shame it by contrast, and the fruit has since seemed a trifle dull of tint, and with light-hearted inconsequence the pair are now probing narrow throats of papaw flowers. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... had an early breakfast, for he had to be off with the mail. Mr. Jones had been up late, for him, and he was grouchy. In the matter of the warfare on Pharaoh his mood seemed to be less assertive than it had been the night before. Mr. Files detected that much after some conversation ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... development of individuality. There are few personal possessions, there is little scope for the exercise of peculiar talents, there is little power of reflection, to develop strongly individual ideas. The self-assertive instincts are to considerable extent still dormant for lack of stimulus to call them forth. The individual is content to take his place in the group life, and it seldom occurs to him to ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to pass without comment, Walden took the thick, creamy-white object she offered and found himself considering it with a curious disfavour. It was a strictly 'fashionable' make of envelope, and was addressed in a particularly bold and assertive hand-writing to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... was, in fact, in assertive evidence. The wind whipped chillingly about Missy's shortskirted legs, for they were strolling slowly—the correct way to walk when one has a "date." Missy's teeth were chattering and her legs seemed wooden, but she'd have died rather than suggest running a block to warm up. Anyway, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The religious tolerance of Casimir IV (1434-1502) and his immediate successors, and the new doctrines preached by Huss and Luther, which permeated the upper classes of society, rendered the Poles more liberal on the one hand, and on the other the Jews more assertive. We hear of a certain nobleman, George Morschtyn, who married a Jewess, Magdalen, and had his daughter raised in the religion of her mother. In fact, at a time when Jews in Spain assumed the mask of Christianity to escape persecution, Russian and Polish Christians by birth ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... point, which evokes a new manifestation of prejudice until custom has adjusted things to the new condition. When all Negroes were poor and ignorant they could be denied their rights with impunity. As they grow in knowledge and in wealth they become more self-assertive, and make it correspondingly troublesome for those who would ignore their claims. It is much easier, by a supreme effort, as recently attempted with temporary success in North Carolina, to knock the race down and rob it of its rights once for all, than to repeat the process ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... to hear his usually fearless and self-assertive parent adopt this tone. "I thought ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... desire Him.' We are but poor judges of true 'form or comeliness,' and what is lustrous with perfect beauty in God's eyes may be, and generally is, plain and dowdy in men's. Our tastes are debased. Flaunting vulgarities and self-assertive ugliness captivate vulgar eyes, to which the serene beauties of mere goodness seem insipid. Cockatoos charm savages to whom the iridescent neck of a dove has no charms. Surely this part of the description fits Jesus as it does no other. The entire absence of outward show, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... way to the train, thought of his hat. He had not been able to feel confidence in that hat. There was a trimness about it, an assertive glamour, an air of success, that should not stamp one of the oppressed. He had gone to the purchase of it with vague notions that a labouring man, at least while actually labouring, wears a square cap of paper which he has made himself. So he was crowned in all cartoons. But, of course, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson |
