"Self-reliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-reliance, but a fierce and warlike temper, was shown in the first youthful exploit of Rodrigo. His father Diego, when too old to bear arms, was grossly insulted by an enemy, the Count of Gormaz. Diego wept and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... craven indeed, but to stand firm with such shattered forces was a bold and hazardous resolve, for which Lord Raglan deserves the fullest credit, and the coming winter, with its terrible trials, was destined to put his self-reliance ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... emergency. That he possessed the confidence and support of Government to the fullest extent, is attested by the following letter from Mr. Pitt; and that he displayed the qualities of resolution and self-reliance demanded by the occasion, is sufficiently shown ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... fireman knows that. I've been running with a machine for years." The calm way with which Muggles said this, shaking the ashes from his cigar as he spoke, showed a certain self-reliance. "Out in our village I'm foreman of ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... at him in startled wonderment, for it had not occurred to her that she faced any real danger, despite the threatening attitude of Deveny, and her isolation. For the great, peaceful world, and the swimming sunlight were full of the promise of the triumph of right and virtue; and the sturdy self-reliance of youth ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... house on the bench, and something in her appearance suggested that with her mother's beauty and fine sensibility she had inherited the indomitable spirit which had made John Harris one of the must prosperous farmers in the district. She moved in an easy, unconscious grace of self-reliance—a reliance that must be just a little irritating to men of old-fashioned notions concerning woman's dependence on the sterner sex—drew the long wooden table, with its covering of white oilcloth, into the centre of the kitchen, and began placing ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Color-sergeant, as if in line of battle, stands upon a square granite pillar. He looks earnestly into the distance. The entire effect of the expression of the countenance and the attitude conveys the impression of intelligent self-reliance, a true type of our best volunteer soldiers. On opposite sides of the pillar, are represented in bronze relief the arms of the United States ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... he with her manner and her quiet words, "We are in need of money and I must help," as well as touched by her self-reliance at an age when girls are generally amusing themselves, that he gave her some copying which he had intended to have done in the office. With a grateful glance from her brilliant dark eyes, she thanked him, and, promising to bring ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on two important occasions—in the Luray Valley during the battle of Fisher's Hill, and on the recent Gordonsville expedition—and I mistrusted his ability to conduct any operations requiring much self-reliance. The column was composed of Custer's and Devin's divisions of cavalry, and two sections of artillery, comprising in all about 10,000 officers and men. On wheels we had, to accompany this column, eight ambulances, sixteen ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... not like the man: Luther's rollicking, coarse and blunt ways repelled this studious and ascetic youth. The one thing that Calvin admired in Luther was his self-reliance. Suddenly it came over Calvin that life should be religion and religion should be life, and that in the claims of the priesthood there was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... a strong fatherly hand to guide him, to teach him self-reliance and practical sense, it was this dreamy, tender-spirited child.[15] The love and sympathy which his mother bestowed upon him was not calculated to fit him for the rugged experiences of life, and while probably natural ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... virtue and vice, and le coeur humain and so on, it has some of the worst faults of eighteenth-century criticism. He thinks it would have been more "moral" if Mme. de Cleves had actually succumbed as a punishment for her self-reliance (certainly one of the most remarkable topsyturvifications of morality ever crotcheted); is, of course, infinitely shocked at being asked and induced to "interest himself in a prostitute and a card-sharper" by Manon Lescaut; and, equally of course, extols Richardson, though it is fair to say ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... infinite determination and self-reliance—the square chin, the steadfast eyes, telling their tale as plainly as print. In India he might have passed for an officer of native cavalry in mufti; but when he spoke he used the curious nasal drawl of the far-out bushman, the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... a certain standardisation of output is not difficult. The problem of woollen manufacture is much more complicated. The output cannot be similarly standardised, and there are many directions in which originality, self-reliance and ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... of the Test Act, and to declaiming against religious and political persecution. At the age of twelve he had written an indignant letter to the Shrewsbury Chronicle against the mob of incendiaries which had destroyed the house of Priestley, and as a student at Hackney he showed sufficient self-reliance to develop an original "Essay on Laws." The defence of the popular cause was with him not an academic exercise, but a religious principle. "Since a little child, I knelt and lifted up my hands in prayer for it."[20] The emotional warmth of his creed was heightened by the reading of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... old Tudor Cardinal—which had in it invincible self-reliance, and a sort of spiritual sneer—played over his face when he speculated on his father's reception of the coming news; and very soon he ceased to think of it at all, burying himself in the work he had brought with him for the journey. For he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... training consists of countless contradictions: we set up noble ideals to arouse courage and self-reliance—when that suits our immediate purpose; and we frighten with threats and warn of calamity when the child has the impulse to do what we do not wish to have him do. This at once suggests the effect of fear upon character and conduct. We ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... of his mental operations, united with great courage, made him careless of authority. He clung to a principle because he thought it true, not because others thought it so. There is no indication that he valued an opinion the more because great men of former ages had favored it. His self-reliance was shown in his unwillingness to employ servants. Even when very feeble, he refused to permit any one to assist him. He had extraordinary power of condensation, and, always seeing the gist of a matter, he often exposed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... he was possessed of common-sense and self-reliance. Though the youngest of the family he had been so thoroughly impressed with the necessity of considering "safety first" in regard to Win, that in an emergency of any kind he was usually level-headed. He stopped where he was, searching his pockets for ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... they were better there, knowing every nook and cranny, which enabled them to find exactly where to hide in case of danger. Even in the dark they were able to tell, after scouting, which way the enemy would be coming. This especially gave a commando the necessary self-reliance, which is of such great importance in battle. It has also been found during the latter part of the War to be easier for a burgher to get provisions in his own district than in others, notwithstanding the destruction ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... possible to produce a full note except from a full chest. In this connection it may be said that it has been observed that deep-chested, deep-breathing, slow-speaking people are frequently possessed of certain estimable points of character, such as prudence, firmness, self-reliance, calmness. If one is going to be angry, ten deep breaths might save a world of trouble. (See ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... blue sky smiled, and all the earth seemed to be vibrant with some high-keyed summoning note—how difficult then it was to be sad! How far away indeed seemed the once-familiar scenes! How hard it was not to hope, here in this land of self-reliance and belief! It was the horror of Mary Ellen's soul that when this sun shone she could not be sad. This land, this crude, forbidding, fascinating land—what was there about it that swept her along against ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... school legislation in those days. The merits of the system naturally evoked the sympathy and praise of the governor-general, who was deeply interested in the intellectual progress of the country. The development of "individual self-reliance and local exertion under the superintendence of a central authority exercising an influence almost exclusively moral is the ruling principle of ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... which his father was offering. His heart at once became filled with Shraddha. There is no one English word which can convey the meaning of this Sanskrit term. It is more than mere faith. It also implies self-reliance, an independent sense of right and wrong, and the courage of one's own conviction. As a boy of tender age, Nachiketas had no right to question his father's action; yet, impelled by the sudden awakening of his higher nature, he could not but reflect: "By merely giving these useless cows, my father ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... people. The wise father and mother or chaperon know when to trust young people, and when it is best to throw them quite upon their honor. It is only by having responsibility for their actions thrust thus upon them, that they ever attain to natural dignity and self-reliance. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... been the start and finish of this youngster's newspaper career, but quite the reverse was true. He took the lesson well to heart, thus starting himself on the road to self-reliance. If he had repeated the offense it is likely he would have lost his job and also his nerve—thereby spoiling his chances for a successful career. The fact that he did not, but went on and made of himself a famous newspaper man, proves that he lost no ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... heart. Her face was grave, its expression concentrated; she bent on me an unsmiling eye—an eye just returning from abstraction, just awaking from dreams: well-arranged was her simple attire, smooth her dark hair, orderly her tranquil room; but what—with her thoughtful look, her serious self-reliance, her bent to meditation and haply inspiration—what had she to do with love? "Nothing," was the answer of her own sad, though gentle countenance; it seemed to say, "I must cultivate fortitude and cling to poetry; one is to be my support and the other my solace through life. Human affections do not ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... doubts much whether she has any genius for composition, especially as regards ideas or invention; but her father (who, entre nous, is rather too infatuated about her) declares that she certainly has ideas, and that she is only diffident and has too little self-reliance. Well, we shall see. If she acquires no thoughts or ideas, (for hitherto she really has none whatever,) it is all in vain, for God knows I can't give her any! It is not the father's intention to make her a great composer. ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... could not venture to do this. There was something in the girl, a quiet air of pride and self-reliance, in spite of her too evident sadness, which forbade any overt expression of sympathy; so Mrs. Tadman could only show her friendly feelings in a very small way, by being especially active and brisk in assisting all the household labours ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Governor to veto their bills, or threaten the Burgesses, or intimidate the voters, or overawe the Council, or sway the courts of justice. And the experience was priceless. It schooled them in governmental affairs and taught them self-reliance, patience and stubbornness to oppose oppression. Having tasted the sweets of freedom, they were ill prepared ever again to tolerate injustice and misgovernment. If there had been no Commonwealth period in Virginia, possibly there had never been a ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... she looked as if she could slap his face. And Helen realized that however her intelligence had grasped the possibilities of leaving home for a wild country, and whatever her determination to be brave, the actual beginning of self-reliance had left her spirit weak. She would rise out of that. But just now this flashing-eyed little sister seemed a protector. Bo would readily adapt herself to the West, Helen thought, because she was so ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... instance, and we may leave this depressing study in critical perversity. Among the great writers of Johnson's day there was none who showed a truer originality than Fielding; no man who broke more markedly with the literary superstitions of the time; none who took his own road with more sturdiness and self-reliance. This was enough for Johnson, who persistently depreciated both the man and his work. Something of this should doubtless be set down to disapproval of the free speech and readiness to allow for human frailty, which could not but give offence to a moralist so unbending as Johnson. But ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Corps, on his right, is his only support. The Excelsior brigade is rapidly pushed into the woods, north of the plank road; the Fourth Excelsior and the First Massachusetts south. Carr's brigade is kept in second line, one hundred and fifty yards in the rear. The men, with the instinctive pride of self-reliance, move up with the steadiness of veterans on drill, regardless of the stream of fugitives ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... square panes in the windows, The wood-shed piled with maple and birch and hickory ready for winter, The gambrel-roof with its garret crowded with household relics,— All the tokens of prudent thrift and the spirit of self-reliance. ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... were 'Blackstone;' he indulged in reminiscences; he made digressions and told anecdotes; he spoke of the manoeuvres of the vessels, of the shifting of the wind, of the course of the fight, like one whose life had been passed on (p. 218) the quarter-deck. No greater evidence of self-reliance, of indifference to the opinion of the world, and to that of his countrymen in particular, of the rarest descriptive talent, of pertinacity, loyalty to personal conviction, and a manly, firm, yet not unkindly spirit, could be imagined than the position ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... bonds as bound with them." He tithed himself a tenth, then a third, then a half, and at length used up his fortune in noble service. He founded clubs for workingmen and taught them industry, honor and self-reliance. He bought spinning-wheels and raw flax, and made pauper women self-supporting. He founded the Sheffield Museum, and placed there his paintings and marbles, that workers in iron and steel might have the finest models ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Soviet-sponsored Communist domination. After failing in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed Republic of Korea (ROK) in the southern portion by force, North Korea (DPRK), under its founder President KIM Il-so'ng, adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence. The DPRK demonized the US as the ultimate threat to its social system through state-funded propaganda, and molded political, economic, and military policies around ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... ranged the dresses in it side by side on the bed. Her last proceeding was to push the empty boxes into the middle of the room, and to compare the space at her disposal with the articles of dress which she had to pack. She completed her preliminary calculations with the ready self-reliance of a woman who thoroughly understood her business, and began the packing forthwith. Just as she had placed the first article of linen in the smaller box, the door of the room opened, and the house-servant, eager ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... shall! We'll show her that her girls have some spirit and self-reliance at a crisis. It's only making a practical demonstration of our new agricultural course! What's the use of learning if you can't apply it at the right moment? Run and fetch our coats and hats and gloves, that's a cherub, while I go and tell Baron ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Emerson's ancestors were ministers of New England churches. He inherited qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. The form of his ideals was modified by the glow of transcendentalism which passed over parts of New England in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but the spirit in which Emerson conceived the laws ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... of fear.] Courage. — N. courage, bravery, valor; resoluteness, boldness &c. adj.; spirit, daring, gallantry, intrepidity; contempt of danger, defiance of danger; derring-do; audacity; rashness &c. 863; dash; defiance &c. 715; confidence, self-reliance. manliness, manhood; nerve, pluck, mettle, game; heart, heart of grace; spunk, guts, face, virtue, hardihood, fortitude, intestinal fortitude; firmness &c. (stability) 150; heart of oak; bottom, backbone, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... others under the subtle promise of "protection"—a word that simply means release from all responsibility, all use of one's own faculties—a word that has ever blinded people to its true significance. Under authority and this false promise of "protection," self-reliance, the first incentive to freedom, has not only been lost, but the aversion of mankind for responsibility has been fostered by the few, whose greater bodily strength, superior intellect, or the inherent law of self-development has impelled to active exertion. Obedience and self-sacrifice—the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ounce of superfluous flesh on Frank Merriwell. He was a mass of bone and sinew, splendidly formed and supple as a young panther. In every movement and pose there was indescribable grace, and, at the same time, a suggestion of wonderful strength and self-reliance. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... hers conveyed a curious sense of security, extending beyond just the mere safety of the moment. She had a feeling that there was something immutably strong and sure about this man—a calm, steadfast self-reliance to which one ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... labour at my novel; it seemed an impossible task—defeat glared at me from every corner of that frouzy room. My English was so bad, so thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the landlady's cheating, and to bind ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... be difficult to find a better example of the honourable independence and cheerful self-reliance which should distinguish a man of letters, and which characterised Hume throughout his career. By honourable effort, the boy's noble ideal of life, became the man's reality; and, at forty, Hume had the happiness of finding ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... strength and power of endurance, coupled at the same time with a scarcely less extraordinary suppleness. He had a face that was certainly handsome, though many handsomer faces were familiar in Paris at that day, but none more gallant, and, indeed, its chief charm was its almost audacious air of self-reliance, of unfailing courage, of changeless composure, and unconquerable humor. The eyes were bright and laughing. Even now, although the man was undoubtedly angry, his eyes still smiled in unison with his lips. His dark hair fell ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... disclose itself to be in the purely physical order. In both orders alike there is only too much of this kind of fatuousness, this readiness to believe that for once in our favour the stream shall flow up hill, that we may live in miasmatic air unpoisoned, that a government may depress the energy, the self-reliance, the public spirit of its citizens, and yet be able to count on these qualities whenever the government itself may have broken down, and left the country to make the best of such resources as are left after so ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... you, and his most absolute incapability, with all his aestheticism, of conceiving the slightest notion of what had to be conceived. The total confusion engendered in him by listening to my opera he transfers with bold self-reliance to my intentions and to the work itself. He, who apparently can see in opera nothing but kettledrums, trombones, and double-basses, naturally in my opera did not see the wood for the trees; but, being a clever and glib- penned litterateur, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... C. Knox, Professor John Brashear and many others, who have climbed the ladder of Fame, were boys among boys in this old swimming hole. It was here they were given their first lessons in courage and self-reliance. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... I cannot but entertain a devout hope that one day, with the companionship of some faithful helpmate, I may succeed in cultivating purely in my pupils that, and that only, which they will require when they pass out into the field of independent activity and self-reliance; that I may be able to say to myself, in this sense is their education completed. Another education there is indeed which will again speedily recommence, and work on well nigh through all the years of our life—the education which circumstances ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... representative, with full powers to treat with you. Parker, are you ready for two years more in the wilderness? It's a big project, and your financial encouragement will be correspondingly big. I haven't said yet how thoroughly I appreciate your energy and loyalty and self-reliance in the matter of this little plaything of the past winter. I do not need to say anything, do I, except to urge you to take this new responsibility, and to add that your acceptance will encourage me to go ahead ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... bethought him of what Honnor Cunyngham, with her firm independence of character, her proud self-reliance, would have said to all these timorous fancies. He knew perfectly well what she would say. She would say, "Well, but even if Miss Burgoyne were to appear at Strathaivron Lodge, how could that affect you? You are yourself; you are apart from ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... and hardships these boys have to undergo, the important services they often render by their clever movements; and how by his fidelity to duty, Messenger Boy No. 48 rose to a most important position of trust and honor. It teaches boys that self-reliance, pluck and the faithful performance of duties are the real secrets of success. ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... ever supported by military strength, except for a time, and then only when the soldiery were animated by noble sentiments. The imperial forces of Rome, while they preserved the throne of absolutisms, destroyed the self-reliance of the citizens, and supported wicked institutions. The difference in the aims of government under the Caesars, and under the consuls, was heaven-wide. The military genius which created an empire, was misdirected when that empire sought to perpetuate wrong. How different is the spirit which ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the blood of the brave." Most of the great men in Georgia have been reared in the country. There seems to be something in the pure air, the broad fields, and even the solitude, conducive to vigor and self-reliance. Attrition and culture have finished the work laid up by the farmer boy, and that fertile section of middle Georgia, so rich in products of the earth, has given greatness ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... fulness of her heart. Margaret began to love her again; to see in her the same sweet, faulty, impulsive, lovable creature she had known in the former Mary Barton, but with more of dignity, self-reliance, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... which have for months inundated the Atlantic cities and towns, the writer, addressing himself to American citizens, observes: 'In all other circumstances and questions save that of a literature, you have taken the high ground of freedom and self-reliance. You have neither asked, nor loaned, nor besought, but with your own hands have framed, what the occasion required. Whatever stature you have grown to as a nation, it is due to that sole virtue; and by its exercise may you only hope to hold your place. In almost any other ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... operation of its principles, in the development of their peculiar idiosyncrasy, which, unlike that of the unwarlike Singhalese, rejected sloth and effeminacy to aim at conquest and power. Looking to the self-reliance which Buddhism inculcates, the exaltation of intellect which it proclaims, and the perfection of virtue and wisdom to which it points as within the reach of every created being, it may readily be imagined, that it must have wielded a spell of unusual potency, and one well ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... think she could. In fact she developed a sudden dependence wholly out of keeping with her usual self-reliance. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... the other noble minds of the Young Ireland era that we needs must educate in order that we may be free. They sought to give form and effect to the splendid ideals of the Young Irelanders. A new spirit was abroad, and not in matters educational alone. The doctrine of self-help and self-reliance was being preached and, what was ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... connection with excursions into the neighbourhood. Consequently our school children presented a different appearance from that we had been accustomed to see in our old home, and especially in its great cities. Rosy faces and figures full of robust health, vigour, and the joy of living, self-reliance, and strong intelligence were betrayed by every mien and every movement. Thus were our children equipped for entering upon the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... in those days hung about the result of a collision between New England and New France, backed by the power of their respective sovereign states. From the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers might, indeed, be expected an amount of vigour, energy, and self-reliance, that must needs contribute greatly to success in such a contest; but these very qualities, so far from finding much favour with their rulers in the Old Country, were like enough to be met with jealousy and distrust, ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compass. These needful guides then prove their value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain at several halting-places that day, I met with a Norman doorway ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... individual self-reliance and local exertion, under the superintendence of a central authority exercising an influence almost exclusively moral, is the ruling principle of the system. Accordingly, it rests with the freeholders and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... appearance of new stars to take their place. But this was not the fault of Augustus, whose intellect expanded with his fortunes, and whose magnanimity grew with his intellect—a man who comprehended his awful mission, and who discharged his trusts with dignity and self-reliance. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... these men and their times that they may not drop quite out of mind. The men are worth remembering. They carried the marks of their blood in their fierce passions, their courage, their loyalty; and of the forest in their patience, their resourcefulness, their self-reliance. But deeper than all, the mark that reached down to their hearts' core was that of their faith, for in them dwelt the fear of God. Their religion may have been narrow, but no narrower than the moulds of their lives. It was the biggest ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... example, whom the more we would do for, the more we would have to do for, who, in other words, would become dependent, losing their sense of self-dependence. For such the highest service one can render is as judiciously and as indirectly as possible to lead them to the sense of self-reliance. Then there are others whose natures are such that, the more they are helped, the more they expect, the more they demand, even as their right, who, in other words, are parasites or vultures of the human kind. In this case, again, the greatest service ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... succeed in the colonies must take with him a quantity of self-reliance, energy, and perseverance; this is the best capital a man can have. Let none rely upon introductions—they are but useless things at the best—they may get you invited to a good dinner; but now that fresh arrivals in Melbourne are so much more numerous than ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... notice the physiognomy again, each small face, though modest as that of no girl which I could recall at the moment, had its own tale of hardihood to tell; there was a something that recalled the open sea, written in either countenance; courage and endurance; faith and self-reliance; the compass and the rudder; speaking plainly out under each little thatch of white hair. And indeed, as we found out afterwards, those young countenances told the truth; those fisher-boys were Red-Cap's only boat-crew. In all weathers, in all seasons, by night and by day, the three were together, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... typhoid but is able to prevent those terrible diseases that devastate armies and nations. And science is no longer confined to the physical but has invaded the social kingdom, is able to weave a juster fabric into the government of peoples. On all sides we are beginning to embrace the religion of self-reliance, a faith that God is on the side of intelligence—intelligence with a broader meaning than the Germans have given it, for it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to preserve our nationality intact which has sanctified our war, from the red heart of which has grown a patriotism which, glowing like a central sun, burns away all the dross of our earlier materialism, gives as self-reliance, and frees us at last from our long tutelage to the Old World. And never had patriotism a more solid ground than ours, since the power, growth, and safety of our nationality are the progress, happiness, and prosperity of humanity itself. Everything that breathes the breath of human life, however ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... A man of your capability can nowadays allow himself the luxury of independence and manly self-reliance, even if he is one of the nine children of a poor farmer; if one has few wants, one is ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... if I may judge from personal observation, it has done her good. The traditional old maid is dying out in Germany as assuredly as she is dying out in England, and who shall regret her? Her outlook was narrow, her temper often soured. She had neither self-reliance nor charm. She was that sad, silly spectacle, a clinging plant without support. Now that she is learning to grow on her own account, she finds that there is a good deal in life a sensible plant can enjoy without ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... doorway, and the girl in the bunk looked upon him with softened glance. She had no fear of him now; on the contrary, she mentally leaned upon him. Without him the night would be a terror, the dawn an uncertainty. The brave self-reliance of his spirit appeared in stronger light as she considered that for weeks he had been camping alone, and that but for this accident to her he would be facing this rayless wintry night ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... up in arms. The girl who had feared nothing so much as to find herself at variance with her fellows, and had believed the affection and the goodwill of those about her to be the first essentials to happiness, felt no weakness, no lack of self-reliance, now that she was in some measure pitted against the many. She resented the conduct of the passengers in making her the subject of their tittle-tattle with a bitterness she had never felt before. In overlooking ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... warnings had their effect, and soon awakened a slumbering conscience. But its upbraidings were not accepted unquestionably by Angelina, as they had been by Sarah. They only stung her into a desire for investigation. She must know the why; and her strong self-reliance helped her judgment, and buoyed her up amid waves of doubt and anxiety that would have submerged her ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... skin wrinkled from the scorch of sun on the white sands of the desert. And their eyes beneath the black brows were like falcon's, predatory like those of birds of prey. And the air of freedom, of self-reliance, of independence was in every look, in the firm swinging stride, and erect set of the shoulders. They were men to swear by or to fear; verily men. And somehow one sharp look of appraisement, and one and all would have sworn by Allah that the Sahib in the garb of an Afghan ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... a moment of weakness when it seemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentless efforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the prompt and audacious use of stimulants—by a rapid marshalling of resources, a display of self-reliance and authority, which Justine could not but admire as she mechanically seconded his efforts—the spark of life had been revived, and Bessy won ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... colorless as his complexion. It would seem that all the color of his frame had gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they were laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naivete and wonder of the child; and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained much of calm self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and experience ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... breakfast; and Mrs. Barclay studied again with fresh interest all the family group. No want of capacity and receptive readiness, she was sure; nor of active energy. Sense, and self-reliance, and independence, and quick intelligence, were to be read in the face and manner of each one; good ground to work upon. Still Mrs. Barclay privately shook her head ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Duncan Yordas were not merely of commonplace. For he was a man of great self-reliance, quick conclusion, and strong resolve. These had served him well in India, and insured his fortune; while early adversity and bitter losses had tempered the arrogance of his race. After the loss of his wife ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... drifted and Camille Corot, aged twenty-six, was a flat failure, just as he had been for ten years. He hadn't self-reliance enough to push out for himself, nor enough will to swing his parents into his way of thinking. He was as submissive as a child; and would not and could not do anything until he had gotten ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... save Ferriss? In such sickness as this it was the nurse and not the doctor who must be depended upon. And, once again, never so strong, never so fine, never so glorious, her splendid independence, her pride in her own strength, her indomitable self-reliance leaped in her breast, leaped and stood firm, hard as tempered steel, head to the Enemy, daring the assault, defiant, immovable, unshaken in its resolve, unconquerable in the steadfast tenacity of ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... of Warsaw before the Count was about. This good resolution led him first to the splendid avenue upon which the great hotel was built, and here he walked awhile, rejoicing in his freedom and wondering why he had ever parted with it. Let a man have self-reliance and courage enough and there is no city in all the world which may not become a home to him, no land among whose people he may not find friends, no government whose laws shall trouble him. Alban's old nomadic ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... tragedies. In 490 he fought in the great battle of Marathon and took part in the victory of Salamis in 480. This experience of the struggle for freedom against Persian despotism added a vigour and a self-reliance to his writing which is characteristic of a growing national spirit. He is said to have visited Sicily in 468 and again in 458, various motives being given for his leaving Athens. His death at Gela in 456 is said ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... only think of what takes place at such an age in the production of such work. It is the first individual creation; the still undeveloped powers tend for the first time to crystallise; the staggering sensation produced by the demand for self-reliance imparts a seductive charm to these early performances, which is not only quite new, but which never returns. All the daring of nature is hauled out of its depths; all vanities—no longer constrained by mighty barriers—are ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Confucius was different.[122-1] No speculative dreamer, but a practical man, bent on improving his fellows by teaching them self-reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the attainment of material comfort, he did not see in the religious systems and doctrines of his time any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like Socrates and many other men of ancient and modern times, without actually condemning ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... adapt herself to circumstances," said Mr. Goodlow. "I was conversing last summer with that Mrs. Bland who boarded at Mr. Parker's, and she told me that girls in Europe are brought up with no habits of self-reliance whatever, and that young ladies are never seen on the streets alone in France ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... central idea of his teaching is self-control; to Epictetus, then, the seat of the soul is not so much in the head as in the will. To Emerson, the great enemy of mankind is authority, and the central idea of his teaching, therefore, is self-reliance; to Emerson, then, the seat of the soul is not so much in man's will as in man's pride. To Carlyle, the great enemy of mankind is consciousness of self, and the central idea of his teaching is unconsciousness of self, the forgetting, the drowning ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... doubt, under a government partially popular, this freedom may be exercised even by those who are not partakers in the full privileges of citizenship; but it is a great additional stimulus to any one's self-help and self-reliance when he starts from even ground, and has not to feel that his success depends on the impression he can make upon the sentiments and dispositions of a body of whom he is not one. It is a great discouragement to an individual, and a still greater one to a class, to be left out of the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... nights into three portions, one of which he allotted to rest, one to the affairs of the state, and one to the study of literature; and we read that Alexander the Great had been accustomed to do the same, though he practised the rule with less self-reliance. For Alexander, having placed a brazen shell on the ground beneath him, used to hold a silver ball in his hand, which he kept stretched outside his bed, so that when sleep pervading his whole body had relaxed the rigour of his muscles, the rattling of the ball falling might ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... he had fifteen prisoners below, who would naturally lose no opportunity of retaking the ship. His greatest difficulties were only now beginning. What consciousness of his superlative seaman-like qualities, what perfect and just self-reliance he must have possessed, to have undertaken the task of navigating a ship completely across the Atlantic with such means at his disposal! Considerate and generous, as well as brave, as soon as he had shaped a course for ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... that their white enemies were indeed at hand. Lewis Dernor, now that the moment of action had arrived, was as shrewd and far-sighted as either Tom or any of the others. It was these very qualities, coolness and self-reliance in the crisis of danger, that made him nominally the leader of the Riflemen of the Miami. He saw the great advantage gained by O'Hara's artifice in attracting the attention of the Indians to the point opposite to that ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... arrangement, dear—this will not do"—brought me to my senses, and I insisted (without prevailing, however), upon conforming to his mother's wishes in all things. "I had been accustomed to do house-work (much to the credit of my sensible mother, who, although a Virginian, taught her daughters self-reliance and many useful lessons in house-wifery), but I only felt strange, and a little home-sick; I would soon get over that, however." A few crystal tears fell, not mixed with sorrow; for how could sorrow find a place for ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... developed the South African Party which remains the party of the Dutch loyal to British rule. To quote the program of principles, "Its political object is the development of a South African spirit of national unity and self-reliance through the attainment of the lasting union of the various sections of ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Lodging House. He figures here, however, under an assumed name, partly because the record in which his real name is preserved has been mislaid. The impression made upon the mind of the writer was, that Jim had unusual business ability and self-reliance, and might possibly develop into a successful ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... fought out in this drama, in tragic conflict, were to be described by catchwords, we might say: Reason stands against Dogma; Nature against Tradition; Self-Reliance against Submission. The great elementary forces are here at issue, which the Reformation had unchained, and with which we all ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... she replied, using the pet name the men in barracks frequently called the child. "It's just a wee story of one man fighting it out alone—just alone, single-handed—with no reinforcements but his own courage, his own self-reliance." ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... leaving her father and Evelyn, but the idea of self-support and independence, and taking a little of the burden from her father, intoxicated her. Maria had the true spirit of the women of her race. She liked the feel of her own muscles and nerves of individuality and self-reliance. She felt a head taller after she had read ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... common life, down to the private life of each individual; where, due to such extraordinary centralization, this body of parasites acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a quickened capacity for motion and rapidity that finds an analogue only in the helpless lack of self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness of the body social itself;—that in such a country the National Assembly lost, with the control of the ministerial posts, all real influence; unless it simultaneously simplified ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... patience, humility, and fortitude, be secured? How, except amidst a state of things less than certainty—whether under the form of that passive faith which mimics the possession of absolute certainty, or absolute certainty itself—could man's nature be trained to combined self-reliance and self-distrust, circumspection and resolution, and, above all, to confidence in God? Man cannot be nursed and dandled into the manhood of his nature, by that unthinking faith which leaves no doubts to be felt, and no objections to be ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... set so soon; and although he had fierce enemies, he still possessed zealous friends; the more zealous, perhaps, because they had accurately read the character of the Tuscan Princess, and were well aware that she had so long leant upon others that she had at last become incapable of perfect self-reliance. Through the medium of those friends, but undoubtedly still more from the daily and hourly ennui experienced by Marie herself while thus deprived of the society of her foster-sister, the pardon of Concini was finally obtained. He was declared to have erred through ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... minds were more capacious; their ingenuity was more inventive. I felt assured that in either Liverpool or Manchester—the centres of commercial and manipulative energy—I could settle down with my limited capital and tools, and in course of time contrive to get on, helped by energy, self-reliance, and determination. I also found that the demand for machine-making tools was considerable, and that their production would soon become an important department of business. It might be carried on with little expenditure ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... world is flooded with golden opportunities. What you want is not a fair chance, chances gleam in your future sky fairer than the endless myriads of stars that encrust with glittering splendor the evening heavens. What you do want is concentration, confidence, self-reliance, desire, ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of its women, and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executive ability, is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. It stands as one people against the present enemy, and in its effort does not fail to give thought to ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... running of itself, as it does every day. This is nothing wonderful, of course, though I know some white schools which could not be trusted to this degree to the control of monitors. But it is only a sign of the influences that here lead to self-reliance and self-control. Every year a new set of uncouth and undeveloped young people come shambling in, looking around with bewildered eyes. But they soon begin to straighten up and fall into step. Their vague ideas get settled, and their minds, slow at first, wake up. In a few years they will ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... over the opinions of great masses of men. He had remarkable power of analysis and logical skill. Originality, self-reliance, impatience, aggressiveness, persistence, sincerity, honesty, ardor,—these were some of the personal qualities which gave him ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... been founded entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space which had made their lives in the old country ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a physical cripple; and as you do not intend to have him on your hands all your life, and are generally rather impatient for the day when he will earn his own living and leave you to attend to yourself, you sooner or later begin to talk to him about the need for self-reliance, learning to think, and so forth, with the result that your victim, bewildered by your inconsistency, concludes that there is no use trying to please you, and falls into an attitude of sulky resentment. Which is an additional inducement to pack ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... much to be said for and against each system, and perhaps a blend of the two would give good results. Anyhow, we can trace in American customs that spirit of equality which pervades the whole of American society, and observe the germs of self-reliance and independence so characteristic of Americans, whether ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... made a free use of tobacco. The struggle with opium in which I was now so seriously engaged had repeatedly suggested the propriety of including the former also in the contest. While the severity of the struggle would, I supposed, be enhanced, the self-respect and self-reliance, the opposition and even obduracy of the will would, I hoped, be enough increased as not seriously to hazard the one great object of leaving off opium forevcr. Still I dreaded the experiment of adding a feather's weight to the sufferings I was then enduring. An accidental circumstance, however, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Parlamente, "that the first step a man takes in self-reliance, removes him so far ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... a tender spot. No boy of fourteen likes to be considered very young. By that time he generally begins to feel a degree of self-confidence and self-reliance, and fancies he is almost on the threshold of manhood. I know boys of fourteen who look in the glass daily for signs of a coming mustache, and fancy they can see plainly what is not yet visible. Harry had not got as far as that, but he no longer looked upon himself as a young boy. ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... half of my question, Mr. Howard; I want you to tell me what a woman can do to bring those high things into her life—to keep her soul humble and strong. I do not think that I have your courage and self-reliance." ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... an impression of awkwardness, confusion and heaviness, but the detail is so minute and the animation so great that the attention of the spectator is forcibly arrested; these uncouth beings impress us with the sense of their self-reliance and their confidence in their master, as we watch them brandishing their weapons or hurrying to the attack, and see the shock of battle and the death-blows given and received. The human-headed bulls, standing on guard at the gates, exhibit ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... war. He had shown in Ireland some of the characteristic points of his nature, which made him at once the glory and shame of English manhood. He had begun to take a prominent place in any business in which he engaged. He had shown his audacity, his self-reliance, his resource, and some signs of that boundless but prudent ambition which marked his career. He had shown that freedom of tongue, that restless and high-reaching inventiveness, and that tenacity of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... a great deal of thought to the young girl behind him, and thought had deepened her charm. Her frankness, her humor, her superb physical strength and her calm self-reliance appealed to him, and the more dangerously, because he was so well aware of his own weakness and loneliness, and as the stage drew up before the hotel, he fervently said: "I hope I shall see ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... conviction that he is peculiarly capable of impressing for good the present condition of our national character. By giving us fuller realizations of liberty and justice his writings will tend to increase our self-reliance in the great emergency of civilization to which we have been summoned. "Our Progressive Independence," so brilliantly illustrated by Dr. Holmes, emancipating us from foreign fine-writing, leaves us free to welcome the true manhood and mature wisdom of Europe. In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... that such an expression of self-reliance on the part of a great man should be accompanied with some proof that no conceit or impatience is mixed with his steadfast calm. If he believes the public to be really unable to appreciate himself, he must show no surprise when they admire his inferiors; he must remember that the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... true to his genius when the genius is at home in his career. He would not renounce for a brief celebrity distant and solid fame. He continued for a few years in patience and privation and confident self-reliance to drudge on, till the occupation for the intellect fed by restraint, and the learning accumulated by study, came and found the whole man developed and prepared. Then he rose rapidly from step to step; ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... objections to the Hebrews is their "forwardness"; socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history, seeing that the world ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... communities—have almost always been more or less at swords-points with the stubborn, cross-grained pioneers. The borderers are usually as suspicious as they are independent, and their self-sufficiency and self-reliance often degenerate into mere lawlessness ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a hard early life. She had neither friends nor money nor sight, but she unwhiningly took up the task of taking care of herself, and discharged it so nobly as to make for herself a wide circle of friends, and keep for herself that sense of self-reliance as toward man, and of faith as toward God, which are worth more than all the dirty dollars that ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... members of the family. The idea of the college course, for which he had partially fitted himself in the preparatory school at Clinton, was relinquished, and the battle of life commenced in earnest. He had already learned something of the lesson of self-reliance, having served for a year or more as a clerk in a grocery at Fayetteville, and he soon secured a situation as an assistant in the Institution for the Blind in the city of New York, where his brother William was then engaged as a teacher. Here he remained nearly ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... American Scholar, strike the keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be enumerated in twenty words—self-reliance, culture, intellectual and moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... this were the place to enlarge upon the general question of bringing children abroad to be educated, we might suggest, at the outset, that there were certain English qualities, such as manliness and self-reliance; and certain English sports, such as cricket, hunting and the like, which have less opportunity of fair development in boys educated abroad. And as to girls—who knows the impression left for life on young hearts, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... being unfishable, as we have said, owing to the state of the tide, Junkie conducted his companions high up the stream by a footpath. And a proud urchin he was, in his grey kilt and hose, with his glengarry cocked a little on one side of his curly head, as he strode before them with all the self-reliance ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Series of Essays published.—Contents: History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art.—Emerson's Account of his Mode of Life in a Letter to ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... superior, spiritually, intellectually, and physically, to his white neighbor, yet he cannot equal him because of this mysterious curse. This view, sad as it is (advocated by the white race), has settled down upon the minds of millions of colored people. It has crushed out of them all self-reliance and independence. It fastens tenaciously upon the quiet, sensitive spirit, destroying its hope and self-respect and enterprise. I need not tell you how near I have come to being shipwrecked by its influence. But it is founded upon a lie. It is a lie backed up by the assertion, practically, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... those whom we shall aid out of this fund. We believe that Mr. Hand would deplore it as the greatest calamity that could befall his gift, if it should in any way pauperize the colored people or take from them their sense of the need—the essential need of self-reliance and self-help—if it should tempt them to an idle life, to seeking after office or to become beggars for help from Government or from any other source. This gift, in the intention of the donor, and in that of the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... I bid defiance, 'Tis such my mental wreck have made; Of God alone, and self-reliance, I ask for ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... way to post the letter he passed Glass, still struggling with his own composition. That poor devil! A perfect type of incompetent. He was too slow and timid for the West—too old to learn the lessons of self-reliance and adaptability of a new land. However, that was his own affair. If he would work he could make a living, and that was all that he or those ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... remained, with scarcely an interval of relaxation, for nearly forty years. His efforts and sufferings in the prosecution of his mission are well known. He was a man of high and resolute courage, of remarkable self-reliance, of more than common mental ability and of devotion to the performance of his duty, almost without a parallel in modern times. He had all the elements of a hero in his composition, and whoever would look for a rare specimen of a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... combativeness to fight his way through difficulties. He had great self-reliance, and did not mind obstacles. If he had to take part in disturbances, he was ready, and had tact and tactics. He had a peculiar power of governing men, and a peculiar way of gaining confidence and esteem. He did not show off at all, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... in the room whose appearance contrasted strongly with that of the old man—a boy of sixteen, with brown hair, ruddy cheeks, hazel eyes, an attractive yet firm and resolute face, and an appearance of manliness and self-reliance. He was well dressed, and would have passed muster upon the streets of ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... privations helped the end. Self-reliance, the strongest trait of the pioneer was his by blood and birth and training, and was developed by the hardships of his lot to the mighty power needed to guide our country through the struggle ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... water upon any enterprise they might design. Indeed, he often boasted to his neighbours and friends how he had trained them up to be men, calling them his "boy-men," and his "jeunes chasseurs." And truly had he trained them to a complete self-reliance, as far as lay in his power. He had taught them to ride, to swim, to dive deep rivers, to fling the lasso, to climb tall trees, and scale steep cliffs, to bring down birds upon the wing, or beasts upon the run, with the arrow and the unerring rifle. He had trained ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder. Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... finally, they deny to the child the one power that can make his knowledge usable and insure his adaptation to his environment. Self- reliance, which parents and teachers strive for so much, becomes then impossible among children, for self-reliance is nothing more than independent direction of self, made possible by power to judge conditions. Certainly most persons are unwilling to take this position in regard to the nature of childhood. They will agree that a twelve- year-old boy, sitting for an hour in the ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... which go to make a loyal subject of a king,—not too despotic, but still a strong-handed, visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a constitution, to a flag; respect for law as law; sturdy independence and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's own,—all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all—the reverence for law—is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman detests law. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... at home wherever you are. You are liable to lose this self-command either through bashfulness or excitement. The former is one of the greatest obstacles with which a majority of young people have to contend. It can be overcome by resolute effort and the cultivation of self-respect and self-reliance. Do not allow it to keep you out of society. You will not conquer it by such a course. You might as reasonably expect to learn to swim without going ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... if she had been suddenly summoned from the bread-bowl. She was fresh and sweet, strong and healthy, with a certain grace of manner about her that pleased Babcock instantly. He saw now that she had her mother's eyes and color, but not her air of fearlessness and self-reliance—that kind of self-reliance which comes only of many nights of anxiety and many days of success. He noticed, too, that when she spoke to the old man her voice was tempered with a peculiar tenderness, as if his infirmities were more to be pitied than complained of. This pleased ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Spanish-American sisters because she won her way to republicanism by evolution rather than revolution. They plunged into the extremely difficult experiment of democratic, of popular, self-government, after enduring the atrophy of every quality of self-control, self-reliance, and initiative throughout three withering centuries of existence under the worst and most foolish form of colonial government, both from the civil and the religious standpoint, that has ever existed. The marvel is not that some of them failed, but that some of them have eventually ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... fighters—such men as Boon, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, McCulloch, Mansker[51]—grew to overmatch their Indian foes at their own game, and held themselves above the most renowned warriors. But these men carried the spirit of defiant self-reliance to such an extreme that their best work was always done when they were alone or in small parties of but four or five. They made long forays after scalps and horses, going a wonderful distance, enduring extreme hardship, risking the most terrible ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... ballot alike to women and men means bread, education, self-protection, self-reliance, and self-respect; to the wife it means the control of her own person, property, and earnings; to the mother it means the equal guardianship of her children; to the daughter it means diversified employment and a fair ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the world, is the man who by physical and mental training, the use of his muscles, the exercise of his faculties, the restraint of his appetites,—even those mental appetites which you call tastes,—has acquired vigor, endurance, self-reliance, self-control! Let a man be pure and honorable, do to others as he would have them do to him, and, in the words of the old Church of England Catechism, "learn and labor truly to get his own living in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... concentrated in the will and word of the chief and those nearest him, while submission to his command was the condition of survival. And no doubt, with the loss of that individual liberty and that self-reliance which characterize the lower animals, there also died away a certain joyousness and zest of spontaneous self-fulfilment, such as we observe in wild creatures so long as they are free from hunger and thirst and secure ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... second rank, and though her anti-theological opinions are to many so repugnant, yet behind books and opinions was a remarkable personality, a sure eye for social realities, a moral courage that never flinched; a strong judgment within its limits; a vigorous self-reliance both in opinion and act, which yet did not prevent a habit of the most neutral self-judgment; the commonplace virtues of industry and energy devoted to aims too elevated, and too large and generous, to be commonplace; ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... attraction for Wilbur. He liked her splendid ropes of hair, her heavy contralto voice, her fine animal strength of bone and muscle (admittedly greater than his own); he admired her indomitable courage and self-reliance, while her positive genius in the matters of seamanship and navigation filled him with speechless wonder. The girls he had been used to were clever only in their knowledge of the amenities of an afternoon call or the formalities ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris |
