"Self-will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning breathing, with a sense of defiance and enjoyment, his new atmosphere of self-will. He, of course, broke down utterly, more utterly than ever, in his morning lessons, and got a proportionately longer imposition. Going back to his place, he purposely flung down his books on the desk, one after another with a bang; and for each book ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... something in Mary's look withheld her. She went away, stepping high and feeling stately and proud; but when she had walked up and down her own room a few times, her better sense began to revive, and she saw that she had acted in anger and self-will quite as much as from a sense of propriety, and she threw herself on her bed and shed ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to her. It was a fit of self-will in managing myself,' said Guy, murmuring low, as if trying to find the real indictment; 'yet I thought it a positive duty; wrong ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot understand the beauty of humility, and the spirit of self-will cannot understand the beauty of obedience; and, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose the devil could not understand our Lord. If He be the Son of God, so might Satan argue, He has all the more reason to be proud; and, therefore, it is all the more easy ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... pierced to the core by the great mercy shown by his parents, and the brilliancy of his own original good heart was enticed back to him. The sunlight came forth, and what became of all the clouds of self-will and selfishness? The clouds were all dispelled, and from the bottom of his soul there sprang the desire to thank his parents for their goodness. We all know the story of the rush-cutter who saw the moon rising between the trees on a moorland hill so brightly, that he fancied ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... been! How I have wasted my time in laying down the law to these people: fancying myself infallible, as if God were not as near to them as He is to me—certainly nearer than to any book on my shelves—offending their little prejudices, little superstitions, in my own cruel self-conceit and self-will! And now, the first time that I forget my own rules; the first time that I forget almost that I am a priest, even a Christian at all! that moment they acknowledge me as a priest, as a Christian. The moment I meet them upon the commonest human ground, helping them ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Lord "to put into his bottle," and ask, "are they not in thy book," for I was not yet fully acquainted with the ways of God with His people, and had not yet a heart wholly resigned to all His dealings. Oftentimes self-will, unbelief, and repining at our hard lot, was mixed with our complaints and cries unto Him. Do not therefore think them so very pure, and deserving of pity as they may seem. Thus much, however, I can truly say, that amidst it all, our Saviour was the object of our hearts' desire; and ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... for her journey, her clear brown skin neither sallow nor lined, and the soft brown eyes as bright and sweet as ever; but the father must be learnt over again, and there was awe enough as well as enthusiastic love to make her quail at the thought of her record of self-will. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... public. The turn the poet[81] gives it is very happy; but the foundation is from a real accident which happened among my acquaintance.[82] A young gentleman of a great estate fell desperately in love with a great beauty of very high quality, but as ill-natured as long flattery and an habitual self-will could make her. However, my young spark ventures upon her, like a man of quality, without being acquainted with her, or having ever saluted her, till it was a crime to kiss any woman else. Beauty is a thing which palls with possession; and the charms of this lady soon wanted ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... very wealth forbids faithful friendships. For not only is Fortune blind herself; but she generally makes those blind also who enjoy her favours. They are carried, so to speak, beyond themselves with self-conceit and self-will; nor can anything be more perfectly intolerable than a successful fool. You may often see it. Men who before had pleasant manners enough undergo a complete change on attaining power of office. They despise their old friends: ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to speak freely, and then treat him harshly for his unintentional impertinence, assuming an importance that belongs to no one, and as if we were not worms creeping together towards the edge of that precipice from which we must fall into eternity. Whence springs my conduct but from pride, self-will, selfishness? I would arrogate a superiority over this poor negro. Poor negro! There spoke the pride of your heart, James Armstrong! But well is he called Felix in comparison with you. Happy in being born of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... she therefore wrote with every effort to make the whole appear her own voluntary act—though the very effort made her doubly conscious that the sole cause for her passive acquiescence was, that her past self-will in trifles had left her no power to contend for her own opinion in greater matters—the common retribution on an opinionative ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of your mellifluous union, scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do. They pay, but they grumble; you must ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... fighting evil with good—a kind of glorious self-will for goodness, for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making it work, the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is the last and most modern interpretation of the New Testament, the crowd's latest cry to its God. Crowds will ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... peremptory command. "I—I have forgiven you long ago, my son; only pride and self-will stood in the way. For her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Guinevere of some Lancelot, or the Fata Morgana of all men—in her own idea. She can't stop having an idea of herself. She can't get herself out of her own head. And there she is, functioning away from her own head and her own consciousness of herself and her own automatic self-will, till the whole man and woman game has become just a hell, and men with any backbone would rather kill themselves than go on with it—or kill ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... because in music there is no self-will. Music goes on certain rules and laws. Man did not make these laws of music; he has only found them out; and, if he be self-willed and break them, there is an end of his music instantly: all he brings out is discord and ugly sounds: The greatest musician in the world ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... fact, has a great sorrow risen. We perceive the first small cracks of incurable divisions in the royal household; the breaking out of fountains of bitterness, which by and by spread wide enough. A young sprightly, capricions and vivacious Boy, inclined to self-will, had it been permitted; developing himself into foreign tastes, into French airs and ways; very ill seen by the heavy-footed practical ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... face, he became abruptly silent; but his emotions were but ill-concealed, and Lucy saw the muscular frame before her heaved and convulsed by passions which were more intense and rending because it was only for a few moments that they conquered his self-will and struggled ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him more in this world: it is because I cannot discern the fulfilment of the promise in him. I discern not the new birth nor its fruits, but every symptom of captivity to Satan, the world, and self-will. This, O this is what distresses me: and in connection with this, his being shut out from ordinances, at a distance from Christians; and shut up with those who forget God, profane his ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... struggle of earthly feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned this, perhaps he will let me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... only Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not many months after, in the Prologue to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... sacrifices of no ordinary kind. My doing so exposed me to the wrath of King Henry, my kinsman and liege lord, who took from me my earldom and all my substance. This, however, he did judicially, not in his anger, or any violence of self-will; and I do not blame him. But I came hither with my countrymen, and we have fought as faithfully for God's cause as any man in your army. Nevertheless we have been exposed to insults and injuries which brave men cannot long tolerate. The chief offender ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... bottomless conceit Can comprehend in still imagination! Drunken Desire must vomit his receipt, Ere he can see his own abomination. While Lust is in his pride, no exclamation Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire, Till like a jade Self-will himself ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... said Faith at last, "and much better than you deserve to look, after leading me such a dance by your self-will. But one thing must be settled before we go back—are we to speak of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... he labored to sully with blame The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame! Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind On himself fell the stain for the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... showed your foolishness and self-will. The murder was the work of Fedka, and he carried it out alone for the sake of robbery. You heard the gossip and believed it. You were scared. Stavrogin is not such a fool, and the proof of that is he left the town at twelve o'clock after an interview with the vice-governor; ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... father died also, leaving him the lion's share of the money. During this time Bob had worked away at Ballawag and earned enough to set up as lawyer on his own account. But because a man cannot play fast and loose with the self-will that God gave him and afterwards expect to do much in the world, he was a moderately unsuccessful man still when the inheritance dropped in. It gave him a fair income for life. When the letter containing the news reached him, he left the office, walked back to his house, and ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... believe La Tremouille) little of body but great of heart; a child (if we are to believe Commines) only now making his first flight from the nest, destitute of both sense and money, feeble in person, full of self-will, and consorting rather with fools than with the wise; lastly, if we are to believe Guicciardini, who was an Italian, might well have brought a somewhat partial judgment to bear upon the subject, a young man of little wit concerning ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... them. Locked up within himself, a stranger to every generous and kindly emotion, his gloomy spirit has had no employment but to strengthen or increase its own elevation, no pleasure but to gratify its own self-will. Superstition, harmonising with these native tendencies, has added to their force, but scarcely to their hatefulness: it lends them a sort of sacredness in his own eyes, and even a sort of horrid dignity in ours. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... are immature and premature, and all carnal courses are mistaken and unspiritual. God is often moved to delay that we may be led to pray, and even the answers to prayer are deferred that the natural and carnal spirit may be kept in check and self-will may bow before the will ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... be otherwise described as the working of God the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and directs us to right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that self-will constantly crops up and complicates the case by representing that the line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in reality in accord with our interests. This opposition between the seeming interests suggested by self-will, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... has excellent abilities, and might do much for himself, but is too like the father, but with this difference, Edward was good-natured and careless to a fault; this boy is haughty and petulant, with the unmanageable obstinacy and self-will of old Geoffrey. He is not grateful for the many obligations he owes to me, and gives me frequent cause to regret that I ever adopted him ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... so!" thought he, "if my name can excite any to devotedness, or give to any the pleasure of being grateful. If my name live, the goodness of those who name it will be its life; for my true self-will not be in it. No one will the more know the real Toussaint. The weakness that was in me when I felt most strong, the reluctance when I appeared most ready, the acts of sin from which I was saved by accident alone, the divine ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poor struggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds and blind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of his self-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their wills to themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. They could never have known each other in the world; they had to withdraw themselves apart. He looked at her afresh, lying on ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... With all his self-will, Henry was never blind to the distinction between what he could and what he could not do. Strictly speaking, he was a constitutional king; he neither attempted to break up Parliament, nor to evade the law. He combined in his royal person the parts of despot and demagogue, and both ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... us; and secondly, because the next year will be the most important of his life with reference to managing his will; and in this I cannot but distrust you. I know, my darling mother, you could not wage war with his self-will so resolutely as to subdue it. And then my child would be ruined, for he must ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... sullen, surly, brutal looking ruffian, about fifty years old, and his wife was a fitting mate for such a man; she was dirty, squalid, and meagre; but there was a determined look of passion and self-will about her, which plainly declared that whoever Dan bullied, he did not, and could not, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... intellect refused to acknowledge the possibility of discomfiture; his soul raged mightily against the hint of bafflement. Humour would not come to his aid; the lighter elements of race were ousted; he was solid insolence, wooden-headed self-will. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... uncertainty as to the effect, what better can a king of England do, than to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most conformable to his own; who are least infected with pride and self-will; and who are least moved by such popular humors as are perpetually traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that, when he means no ill to his people, he will be supported in his appointments, whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bemoaned his father, "he is a red man through and through. He defies his whole nation in his fearlessness, his lawlessness. Even I bow to his bravery, his self-will, but that bravery is hurting me here, here!" and the ancient chief laid his hand above ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... every young man as he goes out in life. And to many, alas!—to many, the devil's words sound reasonable enough; they flatter our fallen nature, they flatter our pride and our self-will, and make us fancy we are going up hill, and becoming very fine and manly, and independent and knowing. "Knowing"! How many a young man have I seen run into sin just that he might be knowing; ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... seen how ministers and parties ruled in England (S534), resolved that her son should have the control. Her constant injunction to the young Prince was, "Be King, George, be King!" so that when he came to power George was determined to be King if self-will could make ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... too much of the fellow," said Peters, with assumed contempt. "Why, he is a mere obstinate boor, whose self-will and vanity led him to set up and persevere in a defence in which he knows there ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... and splendid expectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate Charles Moor in becoming robbers. On the other hand, the play was of too powerful a cast not in any case to have alarmed his serenity the Duke of Wurtemberg; for it argued a most revolutionary mind, and the utmost audacity of self-will. But besides this general ground of censure, there arose a special one, in a quarter so remote, that this one fact may serve to evidence the extent as well as intensity of the impression made. The territory of the Grisons had been called by Spiegelberg, one of the robbers, "the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the sacrifice of the garrison of Carlisle. He was possessed with an infatuation, believing that he should one day, and that day not distant, re-enter England; he was surrounded by favourites, who all encouraged his predilections, and fostered the hereditary self-will of his ill-starred race. The blood of Townley, and of his brave fellow-sufferers, rests not as a stain on the memory of Lord George Murray; and the Prince alone must bear the odium of that needless sacrifice to a visionary future. "We must draw a veil," says the Chevalier Johnstone, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... is a kind of self-will that seems to me, as its shadow comes across my path, like God himself walking on the earth. And I have seen it in the rich and I have seen it in the poor, and in people who were being wrong and in ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Hiram Abif, the architect of Solomon's Temple, it is beaten back on the side of reasoning, by the plummet of a logic based on false premises; on the side of feeling, by the level of conventional ideas; and on the side of will, by the hammer of a short-sighted self-will, which gives the finishing blow; and it is not until the true perception of the Principle of Life is resurrected within us, that the Temple can be completed according to ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... repeated the earnest solicitations of her father that she should school herself to regard the stranger as her future husband, her little fairy heart was quite broken with its ceaseless struggles. Her pride and self-will were entirely vanquished, and she felt herself truly the most miserable of fairy maidens. Suicide is of course a thing strictly prohibited among immortals; but had it been otherwise, I sadly fear that one of the lady Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would some ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... of the other! Look upon avarice at its worst, upon a Shylock, and then gaze upon a lily of the field! How alarming is the contrast! The one is self-made, guided by vicious impulses; the other is the handiwork of God. The one is rooted in self-will; the other is rooted in the power of the Divine grace. God has nothing to do with the one; He has everything to do with the other. So one becomes "big" and ugly; the other ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... conceiving, and such as may flatter the pride of men. Some famous theologians believe that God offers more grace, and in a more favourable way, to those whose resistance he foresees will be less, and that he abandons the rest to their self-will. We may readily suppose that this is often the case, and this expedient, among those which make man distinguishable by anything favourable in his nature, is the farthest removed from Pelagianism. But I would not venture, notwithstanding, to make of it a universal ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... folly, prayed for pardon, which Oberon granted him for very pity, knowing, he said, that Huon would have much to suffer, some things through the wicked ways of others, but more from his own pride and self-will. Then, bidding the young man farewell afresh, the fairy king rode back ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... are a faithful servant, and I envy you," said Baron von Stein, "for your services are gratefully accepted; you are not treated with contumely, and your zeal is not regarded as malice and self-will. You may assist your country with your head, your arm, and your heart. You are not doomed to step aside, and idly dream away your days instead of seeking relief in useful activity. Oh, I repeat again, I envy you!" While ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Self-will, love of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce any ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... said there seemed so much sincerity of repentance, that it painfully affected me. I could not but reflect that I, too, had shortened the life of a good, tender father by my bad conduct and obstinate self-will. I was, indeed, so surprised with what he had told me, that I thought, instead of my going about to teach and instruct him, the man was made a teacher and instructor to me in ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... abstinence, to an extravagant pitch. But it must be remembered, in fairness, that if they obeyed their supposed superiors, they had first chosen their superiors themselves; that as the becoming a monk at all was an assertion of self-will and independence, whether for good or evil, so their reverence for their abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they fancied had a right to rule them, because he was wiser and better than they; a feeling which some ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... eyes of parents, that they may have regard to the souls of their children, so that the poor children be not deceived by their false, fleshly love, as if they had rightly honored their parents when they are not angry with them, or are obedient in worldly matters, by which their self-will is strengthened; although the Commandment places the parents in honor for the very purpose that the self-will of the children may be broken, and that the children ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... indeed!" and Maryllia's eyes flashed with a sudden fire that made them look brighter and deeper than ever and revealed a depth of hidden character not lacking in self-will,—"Well, we shall see! At any rate, I have given my orders, and I expect them to be carried ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Mrs. Leigh. "Such self-conceit—and Heaven knows we have the root of it in ourselves also—is the very daughter of self-will, and of that loud crying out about I, and me, and mine, which is the very bird-call for all devils, and the broad road ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... willing loan; That's for thy self to breed another thee, Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; Ten times thy self were happier than thou art, If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee: Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart, Leaving thee living in posterity? Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair To be death's conquest and ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... excluded neither firmness in decision, nor courage and resolution in difficulty, nor promptitude and energy in action. Her nature was so placid and docile, that we never hear, even in her childhood, of the least of those ebullitions of anger or manifestations of self-will, usual in ordinary children. It was so enduring and forgiving, that while inoffensive herself, she was incapable of taking offence, and absolutely inaccessible to resentment. It was so kind and tender, that sympathy for the troubles of others, especially the poor, was among the very first ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... me so himself,' said Patience; and as she spoke her round dark eyes assumed a look of more than ordinary self-will. If Miss Le Smyrger had intended to carry the conversation any further she changed her mind as she looked at her companion. Then, as I said, the summer ran by, and towards the close of the warm days of July, Miss Le Smyrger, sitting in the same chair in the same ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the article begins, "whose memoirs are now before us, appears to have possessed good abilities, and originally a good disposition, but, with an overweening conceit of herself, much obstinacy and self-will, and a disposition to run counter to established practices and opinions. Her conduct in the early part of her life was blameless, if not exemplary; but the latter part of it was blemished with actions which must consign her name to posterity ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... around him, had wakened to the vigor of a previous century; but it was so different from Vesta's nature that, while it but made nobler her soul of tranquil piety and ease of ladyhood, Vesta was interested in Rhoda's self-will and business coquetry. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... contrast the submission and obedience with which we follow those who have secured our confidence and evoked our love, as contrasted with the rebellion, the reluctance, the self-will, which come in to break and mar our submission to God. Men that will not take Jesus Christ for their Master, and refuse to follow Him when He speaks, will bind themselves to some human teacher, and enrol themselves as disciples in some school of thought or science or philosophy, with a submission ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... more determined he grew. There he stood, his proud, dark eye fixed on a picture on the wall, his lip curled with a sort of disdain, and an expression in his whole motionless figure that, had his cause but been good, would have been resolution, whereas it now was only indomitable self-will and pride. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... massing of images together into general ideas; on the abstraction of new notions and images from these; till a new world is built up within, full of desires and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation, curiosity, self-will, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... and mentally, there lay a crooked, waspish, and petty nature. His form too faithfully reflected his character. He was never, from the beginning to the close of his life, a great, broad, genial being. There was an unhealthy taint which partly enfeebled and partly corrupted him. His self-will, his ambition, his Pariah position, as belonging to the Roman Catholic faith, the feebleness of his constitution, the uncertainty of his real creed, and one or two other circumstances we do not choose to name, combined to create a life-long ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... did not love to love; but hated him For making her to love, and so her whim From passion taught misprision to begin; And all this sin Was because love to cast out had no skill Self, which was regent still. Her own self-will made void ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... ten o'clock. I was present at the time, and did my best to soothe his last moments with such consolations as can be offered by a relative who is not a clergyman. I wished to wire the sad event to you, but Mary, in whom natural grief develops a self-will that perhaps is also natural, peremptorily refused to allow it, alleging that it was useless to alarm you and waste money on telegrams (how like a woman to think of money at such a moment) when it was quite impossible that you could arrive here in time ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... from nursery-government, the child finds joyous relief in sheer riot and self-will. The behavior of our boys in college shows well their previous uneducated and ill-educated condition. The persistence of "hazing" among twentieth century persons old enough to go to school, shows the weakness of nursery culture. This is a custom ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... caused by the levity and self-will of a beautiful woman! From the time of Helen of Troy up to the present moment, the world has known this well; but, alas! this was but the beginning of that tragedy which Sidonia played in Pomerania, as that other wanton ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa's could so ill bear comparison; or the perfect, the unrivalled hold it possessed over his own. There he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind; there he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there had begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... this heavy burden indicated the faults she had committed against obedience. Then Our Lord said: "Behold how those grateful souls endeavor to free her from the requirements of My justice, and show these ornaments; nevertheless, she must suffer for her faults of disobedience and self-will." ... ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue: the gratification of the passions and appetites her only dictate: each individual's self-will the sole organ through which nature utters ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... meanwhile paced incessantly, sometimes muttering to himself. Every time he came within the circle of lamplight his face was visible to Elizabeth, wrinkled and set, with angry eyes; and she saw him as a person possessed by a stubborn demon of self-will. Once, as he passed her, she heard him say to himself, 'Of course I can write another at once—half a ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which varied as he spoke, yet was beautiful in every change. The usual expression of his eyes was soft, though at times he could make them even glare with ferocity; his complexion was colourless; and every trait spoke predominate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often curled his lips—lips which to female eyes were the very throne of beauty and love. His voice, usually gentle, often startled you by a sharp discordant note, which shewed that his usual low tone was rather ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of self? I might mention many, but let us take the simplest words that we are continually using,—self-will, self-confidence, self-exaltation. Self-will, pleasing self, is the great sin of man, and it is at the root of all that compromising with the world which is the ruin of so many. Men can not understand ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... slightest softness in their natures. Their narrow minds, which found real pleasure in worrying the poor child, passed insensibly from outward kindness to extreme severity. This severity was necessitated, they believed, by what they called the self-will of the child, which had not been broken when young and was very obstinate. Her masters were ignorant how to give to their instructions a form suited to the intelligence of the pupil,—a thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public and private education. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... accustomed to have all her whims complied with by those around her, that she seemed to expect she should even be saved the trouble of forming them; and so totally unacquainted with contradiction, that she did not even use the tone of self-will, since to breathe a wish was to have it fulfilled. She made no ceremony of ridding herself of Duncan as soon as the evening approached; but complimented him out of the house under pretext of fatigue, with the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... solidity and equanimity which enter so largely into the virtues for the statesman. He had never learned how essential it is for any one who undertakes public business, and desires to deal with mankind, to avoid above all things that self-will, which, as Plato says, belongs to the family of solitude; and to pursue, above all things, that capacity so generally ridiculed, of submission to ill-treatment. Marcius, straightforward and direct, stand together, and come in to their assistance. The assembly met, and soon ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... age was bitter, like that of a great genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. What public man—what statesman projecting a coup—what king determined on an invasion of his neighbour—what satirist meditating an onslaught on society or an individual, can't give a pretext for his move? There ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... ancestors. The next year Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a pension of L300 a year. Removing to London, she placed George at school with Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education with her fondness and self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of ruling her. It was at this period that a boyish love for Margaret Parker, his cousin, who died shortly after, led Byron into the practice ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... their law, stand up now, stand up now, Their self-will is their law, stand up now; Since tyranny came in, they count it now no sin To make a goal a gin, to starve poor men therein. Stand up ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... over, and summer and hope were dead. Tears trembled in the mother's eyes. Poor little Virginia, so young, so inexperienced, and, in spite of her self-will and recklessness, so sweet and ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... his grandmother was not a good companion for him. In her continual glorification of the self-will of the Trelyons, and her stories of the wild deeds they had done, she was unconsciously driving him to some desperate thing against ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... inclined to give him up; was by no means disposed to let him have his own way. It was clear to my mind that I had rights as well as he had; and I possessed resolution enough to be ready to maintain them. His self-will and indifference to my wishes roused in me a bitter and contentious spirit; and, in an evil hour, I determined that I would make a struggle for the mastery. An opportunity was not long delayed. The Philharmonic Society had announced one of its splendid concerts. A lady friend, who had frequently ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... between the subjective and the objective world. And it was on the whole well for him and for mankind, that he should think that he saw them, and tremble before the spiritual and the invisible; confessing a higher law than that of his own ambition and self-will; a higher power than that of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... warfare do not darken it, its expression must surely be frank and joyous. Beautiful blond hair frames it; great blue eyes enliven it; the head, of a shape peculiarly Breton, seems to show, if we believe in Gall's system, an exaggerated development of the organs of self-will. And the man has two names. That by which he is known to his soldiers, his familiar name, is Round-head; and his real name, received from brave and worthy parents, Georges Cadudal, or rather Cadoudal, tradition having ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... that I had done absolutely nothing of any good whatever—that nothing had really cost me anything; and that the things I was proud of were simply self-will—my leaving Cambridge, and all the rest. They were theatrical, or romantic, or egotistical; there was no real sacrifice. I should have minded much more not doing them. I began ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... waver str. 1. (O woman's judgment!) Misled by seeming Success of crime? And ask, if sometimes The Gods, perhaps, allow'd you, O lawless daring of the strong, O self-will recklessly indulged? ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... armour. It was true he carried the cross upon his banner, and claimed the benediction of the successor of St. Peter; true also he spoke the speech of France, and claimed a French paternity; but the lust for dominion, the iron self-will, the wily devices of strategy, bespoke the Norman of the twelfth, the lineal descendant of the Dane of the tenth century. When, therefore, tidings reached Ireland of the battle of Hastings and the death of Harold, both the apprehensions and the sympathies of the country ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... something very sweet in the absolute surrender of self-will, and Trix, who was the most warm-hearted of mortals, promptly bounded up from her stool and flung her arms ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... nowhere else discussed, of man's thinking and willing to all appearance all by himself, and of the fact that volition and thought come to him from beyond him, receives a similar, cumulative answer. The tension between the divine will and human self-will is a subject that pervades the book; to that subject the profoundest insights into the hidden activity of providence and into human nature are brought. On the question, "Is providence only general or also ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... forget himself, should renounce his particular inclinations, should abandon himself and long to do not his own will but that of God. But before self can be consciously abandoned, the consciousness of self must be realised. Before self-will can be surrendered, its existence must be realised. And self-consciousness, the recognition of the existence of the will and the reality of the self, comes relatively late both in the history of the community and in the personal history of the individual. At ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... darkness which does not come form and accord with His light: all that to be disorder which does not implicitly accept and delight in His rule? "O LORD of Hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth to Thee!" Self-will is unmingled folly, and can only end in injury ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... preserved them to the close of another blessed day (as in the morning he would thank him for having spared them to see the light of another blessed day); he besought him to pardon anything which that day they had done amiss; to deliver them from disobedience and self-will, from pride and waywardness (he had inserted this clause ten years ago for Gwendolen's benefit) as well as from the sins that did most easily beset them, for the temptations to which they were especially prone. This ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... and weakness Keep me alike apart; From self-will and unmeekness, From pride of lip or heart. Without let tempests gather;— Let all be calm within, Unfretted and unshaken By human strife and sin. And when these limbs are weary, And throbs this sleepless brain, With breath from yon myrrh-mountain Revive my soul ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... physical and moral, contagious and infectious, public opinion, popular delusions, enthusiasms, and the other great electric phenomena and currents, moral and intellectual, prove the universal sympathy. The vote of a single and obscure man, the utterance of self-will, ignorance, conceit, or spite, deciding an election and placing Folly or Incapacity or Baseness in a Senate, involves the country in war, sweeps away our fortunes, slaughters our sons, renders the labors of a life ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... than love, of God and parents alike, predominated. Add to this our timidity in our intercourse with servants and teachers, our dread of the ever present devil, and the reader will see that, under such conditions, nothing but strong self-will and a good share of hope and mirthfulness could have saved an ordinary child ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... could have forcefully taken possession of the body and mind of any suitable subject, but the mere thought of such a violation was impossibly abhorrent. Respect for the right of the individual to self-will was so deeply ingrained as to make the deliberate unseating of another's reason virtually impossible. On the other hand, free-willed cooeperation and understanding were equally out of reach; to enter the conscious ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... the militant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show of magnanimity; but his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp: it wants principle. For though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents he might do great things, if he would go right forward to any useful object, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... at least expected to be more reverent than other men to those divine beings of whose nature he partook, whose society he might enjoy even here on earth. He might be unfaithful to his own high lineage; he might misuse his gifts by selfishness and self-will; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy and wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful madness and suicide. He might rebel against the very gods, and all laws of right and wrong, till he ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley |
