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Self-help   Listen
noun
Self-help  n.  
1.
The act of aiding one's self, without depending on the aid of others.
2.
(Law) The right or fact of redressing or preventing wrongs by one's own action without recourse to legal proceedings, as in self-defense, distress, abatement of a nuisance, etc.
3.
Developing one's capabilities or solving one's own problems, especially psychological problems, without the assistance of a professional, by independent study or by association with other individuals having similar interests.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Self-help" Quotes from Famous Books



... your own production you will have to imagine yourself on the other side, so the methods will be the same for all purposes of self-help or weakening of an ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... condition of any sound legislation for the relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial qualities, or weaken these vast voluntary organisations of self-help which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy is compatible with ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... when Statesmen were Boys Culture and Striving Essence of Rural Improvement A Hundred Beautiful Stories The Art of Composition The Preparation of the Conscript A Medical Treatise A Translation of "Self-Help" Nature and Human Life The Glories of Native Places Anecdotes concerning Culture Lives of Distinguished Peasants Mulberry Planting Chinese Romances Glories of this Peaceful ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... found a new order which should be even more strict in its rules, and therefore, so she believed, more helpful. Thus was founded the Order of Barefooted Carmelites, a body of priests and nuns, who have in their peculiar way accomplished very much for charity, gentleness, and self-help in the world, and whose schools and convents have been instituted in all ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... them belonged to these PSAs merely for the sake of the loaves and fishes. Every now and then they were awarded prizes—Self-help by Smiles, and other books suitable for perusal by persons suffering from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties. Besides other benefits there was usually a Christmas Club attached to the 'PSA' or 'Mission' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... way it was settled that the Great Experiment might be tried, especially as so wise a woman as Collins and so old an ally as Runcie were not against it. Both, indeed, were of Uncle Christopher's opinion that the self-help and self-reliance which the caravan would lead to would be of the ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas

... friends of the black man, been reduced to practice. And finding that self-reliance was the best dependence, he and others had struck out a path for themselves. After speaking of the convention of colored people, which he and others called in 1854, to consider this subject of self-help, and of the general organization which began then, and in which Mr. Day succeeded him as president, he said he went to Africa to find a locality suitable for a select emigration of colored people; if possible, a large cotton-growing region, and ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... your eyes to see your dangers. Let your conscience tell you of your sickness. Do not try to deliver, or to heal yourselves. Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... Power the nature of the subject nationality becomes soft and dependent. Instead of working out its own salvation, it looks to the government for direction or assistance in every difficulty. Atrophy destroys its power of action. It loses the political sense and grows incapable of self-help or self-reliance. The stronger faculties, if not extinguished, become mutilated. In Ireland, even to-day, we see the result of domination in the continued belief that the British Government which has brought the country to ruin possesses the sole power ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... followed the emperor about and was therefore hard to get at. Moreover, even if a decision was obtained from it, there was no way for the aggrieved party to secure the execution of the judgment, for the emperor had no force sufficient to coerce the larger states. The natural result was a resort to self-help. Neighborhood war was permitted by law if only some courteous preliminaries were observed. For instance, a prince or town was required to give warning three days in advance before attacking another member of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... purpose which is of no pecuniary benefit to those concerned in it, effectually silences all slanders about "we won't or we can't do," and teaches its own instructive and greatly needed lessons of self-help,—the best help that any man can have, next ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... simply because they were reared among criminals, because their surroundings were such as to lead them away from habits of industry, while they must live. These people were not bolstered by society, or the church, into a life of self-respect and self-help. Under these circumstances they fell into evil ways. There is nothing defective in their mental or physical make-up, that need appear in their children. If these children are removed from contact with the criminal class they stand every chance of being as vigorous, ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... schools that should include classes for girls. Every State, and almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere multitudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women, without the ballot, have ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce—means, in short, the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction. State Socialism would cut off the very roots in personal character—self-help, forethought, and frugality—which nourish and sustain the trunk and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... race, and the torpidity of paternally governed ones, do not suffice him, he may read Mr. Laing's[47] successive volumes of European travel, and there study the contrast in detail. What, now, is the cause of this contrast? In the order of nature, a capacity for self-help must in every case have been brought into existence by the practise of self-help; and, other things equal, a lack of this capacity must in every case have arisen from the lack of demand for it. Do not these two antecedents ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... Essays Montaigne's Essays Hume's Essays Macaulay's Essays Addison's Essays Emerson's Essays Burke's Select Works Smiles' Self-Help ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... here still the unbroken warlike spirit of the times of Deborah and David," Ewald further remarks. But is there in the fourth (third) chapter any trace of self-help on the part of the people? Judgment upon the Gentiles is executed without any human instrumentality, by God,—not by His earthly, but by His heavenly "heroes," who are sent down [Pg 295] from heaven to earth, and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... as a slave, quite parted from her boy,—who also was sold, and again sold; but did at last fall in with a kinsman high in the Russian service; did from him find redemption and help, and so rose, in a distinguished manner, to manhood, victorious self-help, and recovery of his kingdom at last. He even met his mother again, he as king of Norway, she as one wonderfully lifted out of darkness into new life and happiness still ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... speaking, I took him heartily by the hand, told him of my early visit to the mountain and the bullet still in my possession. I talked with him about his teachers, his struggles for self-help, his aim to work for the progress of the church and his consecration to the duties of the Christian ministry. I conversed with him in reference to others of his acquaintance and believe that his experience ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various

... it concerns labor to look after if it would reach the equation of the good time coming. No reconstruction of society can avail for incompetent, indifferent, thriftless men who cannot work together. Self-help must precede all other help. Dreamers may picture utopias, where all our present laws are suspended, and demagogues may cover up the disagreeable facts of labor's own responsibility for its pitiful condition, but sensible workingmen will remember that, as Renan told his countrymen after the Franco-Prussian ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... career of Paul Jones, the winds did not always set in his favor. Many times was his life bark driven through the waters of bitter disappointment. But "all that he was, and all that he did, and all that he knew, was the result of self-help to a degree unexampled in the ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and ciphering, and Mr. Smiles's "Self-Help." ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... it is a good fable of self-help. Does it quite illustrate the case? I mean, the virtue of impatience. But I like the fable and the moral; and I think it would do good if it were made popular, though it would be hard to condense ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct. By Samuel Smiles, Author of "The Life of George Stephenson." Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... matter, nature really indicates that man is to exercise some kind of self-help gains weight when one recalls the course of human evolution. Our Freeland friends have very appositely and strikingly shown us how the men of the two former epochs of civilisation treated each other, first as beasts for slaughter and then as beasts of burden. And what was it but want that drove ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... rare in Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"—to use Mr. Walter Long's phrase[3]—derived from the British connection above the need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great Britain; who appeal to the lower nature ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. In one word, he ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Chesterton's political faith is an up-to-date variety of the tenets of the Self-Help School, which was own brother to the Manchester School. And here we come to a curious contradiction, the first of a series. For ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... But that is not true. The least unfavorable circumstance, over-exertion, indisposition, an unaccustomed situation, anything can blow out the "unconscious" one's light, or at least make it flicker badly. Of any self-help, when there is ignorance of all the fundamentals, there can be no question. Any help is grasped at. Then appears the so-called (but false) "individuality," under whose mask so much that is bad presents itself to art and ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann

... afforded by the after history of these pupils themselves. There was not one of those trained under his eye who did not rise to eminent usefulness and distinction as an engineer. He sent them forth into the world braced with the spirit of manly self-help—inspired by his own noble example; and they repeated in their after career the lessons of earnest effort and persistent industry which his daily life had ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... considered justified in murdering their personal enemies. Among all classes it has long been customary to deal individually with those who have committed certain crimes. The horrible legal conditions existing in both Spain and Italy have developed among these peoples the idea of "self-help." They have taken law into their own hands, and, according to their lights and passions, have meted out their rude justice. Assassination has been defended in these countries, as lynching has been defended recently, as some will remember, by a most eminent American ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... elimination of waste matter and poisons without in any way injuring the human body. Arouse the individual in the highest possible degree to the consciousness of personal accountability and the necessity of intelligent personal effort and self-help. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... head, and even an Arab is knocked out of time by that. But against a thrust in the side or the back no skill or coolness could defend him. And presently he was so jammed up by retreating soldiers that he could not use his arms, and then he was quite powerless for self-help. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... a continuation of the memoirs of men of invention and industry published some years ago in the 'Lives of Engineers,' 'Industrial Biography,' and 'Self-Help.' ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... thence arising were three: the paralysis of self-help, the arousing of fanaticism, and the strengthening of ecclesiastical and political tyranny. The first two of these evils—the paralysis of self-help and the arousing of fanaticism—are evident throughout all these ages. At the appearance of a comet we constantly see all Christendom, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... he is, and work on. And he does work. As his captivity becomes more and more hopeless, so comes out more and more the stateliness, self-help, and energy of the man. Till now he has played with his pen: now he will use it in earnest; and use it as few prisoners have done. Many a good book has been written in a dungeon—'Don Quixote,' the ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... the development of its Social Work on the lines of self-help, self-management and self-support. Whenever a new development came under consideration, the question arose—How is it to be financed? The work they had in hand at present took all their funds. One of ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... known the case over a long period, preferably through the charity organization society. Actual relief may be required temporarily and must be adequate to the occasion, but the problem of the visitor is to devise a method of self-help, and to furnish the courage necessary to undertake and carry it through. It is important to consider in this connection the character and ancestry of the family, its environment and the social ideals and expectations ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... "You'll only have to work out of hours as a carpenter, take odd jobs in your vacations, live plainly, and there you are." In England there are few schools where such a plan would be practicable; but in rough-and-ready America, where self-help is no disgrace, there are many, and they are all well attended. In the neighbouring town of Chester, a petty Baptist sect had started a young school which they named Geauga Seminary (there are no plain schools in America—they ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... system which abolishes private property, and places the control of the capital, labor, and combined industries of the country in the hands of the state. The essence of modern socialism is the appeal to state-help and the weakening of individual self-help. Collectivism is also a term now used by German and French writers to describe an organization of the industries of a country under a collective instead of an individual management. Collectivism is but the French expression for the system of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... down stairs, go to the store alone to make purchases, and who, if he fell, would jump up quickly, saying, "O, that didn't hurt." Which child had been better protected—the one who had been cared for by an overindulgent parent, or the one who, by judicious stimulation to self-help, had learned ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... fought for him on any issue, and downed any number of foes in the fighting. To Mrs. Brenton, she was as dear as any daughter, dear as the daughter that she meant one day to be. Besides, who was he, a self-help student temporarily excused from waiting upon table and attired in a misfit evening coat hired from a ghetto tailor: who was he to criticise the flowers and frills of Catie? If she had had the chances which had come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for instance, or Bryn ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... Farmers, by C.E. Winder. The Failures of Great Men, by James Parton. A Dietary for Nervous People, by Dr. W.A. Hammond. Hints for Country House-Builders, by Calvert Vaux. The Gift Of Memory, and Other Papers, giving Instances of Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles. A New Profession for Young Men. The Opportunities for Young Men as Electrical Engineers, by Thomas A. Edison. At the Age Of Twenty-One. A Series of Papers showing what Great Men had accomplished, and what ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... educators, and researchers. It is expected to develop an effective program to respond to an earthquake or a credible earthquake prediction in that part of the State. The emphasis is being placed on public safety, reduction of property damage, self-help on the part of individuals, socioeconomic impacts, improved response and long-range recovery planning, mitigation activities, and public participation for both the post-prediction and immediate post-earthquake periods. This ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various

... of recording the struggles and successes of men who have labored for the good of their kind; and his own name will always be honorably mentioned in connection with Stephenson, Watt, Flaxman, and others, of whom he has written so well. Of all his published books, next to "Self-Help," this volume, lately issued, is his most interesting one. James Watt, with his nervous sensibility, his headaches, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his gloomy temperament, has never till now been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... a more direct union of effort the Bureau in Washington and its agents in the field; and with the co-operation of its branches thus secured the Indian Bureau would, in measure fuller than ever before, lift up the savage toward that self-help and self-reliance ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... children had no chance of developing the talent that was in them. Let us give them a chance! Sometimes here and there one and another bursts his bonds, and, rejoicing in his freedom, does brilliant things. But in spite of Samuel Smiles and his self-help they are but few, though, if the centuries are searched, the catalogue will be ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... often tutored through college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... I do not intend to trouble my readers. After this lame and impotent conclusion neither the wife nor the stepsons had anything to say to the man who had presented the world with such a successful example of self-help based on character, determination, and industry; and my great-grandmother, her health completely broken down, died a couple of years later in Carlsbad. Legally secured by a decree in the possession of his plunder, X regained his wonted serenity, and ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... young Freshleigh, with whom you are already chums, and whose apartment has the morning sun; but the first room is a foundation stone in your house of memories. Your trunk is brought in by the Student Transfer man (first lesson in self-help) and put down near the dreary-looking beds with their mattresses doubled on the foot-rail. Then, sitting down by the bare, shining table where, later on, theses are to be written and punches brewed, you stake out claims ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field



Words linked to "Self-help" :   assistance, aid



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