"Self-help" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was little to be wondered at that he urged Haggis to press on with greater speed, for now he was certain that his chum must be in a terrible fix, out from which there was no self-help. He would hardly waste cartridges so recklessly were he not ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. In one word, he was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... unconsciously, are enough. But that is not true. The least unfavorable circumstance, over-exertion, indisposition, an unaccustomed situation, anything can blow out the "unconscious" one's light, or at least make it flicker badly. Of any self-help, when there is ignorance of all the fundamentals, there can be no question. Any help is grasped at. Then appears the so-called (but false) "individuality," under whose mask so much that is bad presents itself to art and before ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct. By Samuel Smiles, Author of "The Life of George Stephenson." Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... recently present at a large gathering of teachers who had assembled to discuss the teaching of Drawing and other kindred topics. The district is one in which the gospel of self-help in Drawing has been preached with diligence and with much apparent success. One of the teachers, who was expected to support the Board in their crusade against the "flat copy," played the part of Balaam by ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... your time in turning for them to the volume and page. This, for two reasons—first, it leaves your own time free to help other readers, or to attend to the ever-waiting library work; and, secondly, it induces habits of research and self-help on the part of the reader. It is enough for the librarian to act as an intelligent guide-post, to point the way; to travel the road is the business of the reader himself. Therefore, let the visitor in quest of a quotation, look it out in the index of the volumes you put before him. If he fails ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... States in the Union, and gotten up for a purpose which is of no pecuniary benefit to those concerned in it, effectually silences all slanders about "we won't or we can't do," and teaches its own instructive and greatly needed lessons of self-help,—the best help that any man ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... I took him heartily by the hand, told him of my early visit to the mountain and the bullet still in my possession. I talked with him about his teachers, his struggles for self-help, his aim to work for the progress of the church and his consecration to the duties of the Christian ministry. I conversed with him in reference to others of his acquaintance and believe that his experience ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... open industrial schools that should include classes for girls. Every State, and almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere multitudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women, without the ballot, have largely ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... than the English. We were never intended to be a nation of shopkeepers, if a shopkeeper is doomed to be merely a shopkeeper, which of course he is not. Our brutal commercialism has been a temporary aberration; the quintessential Englishman is not the hero of Smiles' 'Self-help'; he is Raleigh, Drake, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, or Wordsworth, with a pleasant spice of Dickens. He is, in a word, an idealist who has not quite forgotten that he is descended from an independent race of sea-rovers, accustomed to think and act for themselves. Mr. Havelock Ellis, one ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Cromwell says little about the Protector's father, but dwells upon the character of his mother, whom he describes as a woman of rare vigour and decision of purpose: "A woman," he says, "possessed of the glorious faculty of self-help when other assistance failed her; ready for the demands of fortune in its extremest adverse turn; of spirit and energy equal to her mildness and patience; who, with the labour of her own hands, gave dowries to five daughters sufficient to marry them into families ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... many of its supporters withdrew their subscriptions under the impression that there was now no longer any need for its continued existence. But so far from the Society's usefulness having ceased, it has now become more important than ever that the doctrine of organised self-help, which must be the foundation of any sound Irish economic policy, should be insisted upon and put into practical operation as widely as possible. All those who are devoting their lives to the firm establishment of this ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... the subject nationality becomes soft and dependent. Instead of working out its own salvation, it looks to the government for direction or assistance in every difficulty. Atrophy destroys its power of action. It loses the political sense and grows incapable of self-help or self-reliance. The stronger faculties, if not extinguished, become mutilated. In Ireland, even to-day, we see the result of domination in the continued belief that the British Government which has brought the country to ruin possesses the sole power of restoring it to prosperity. In India ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... casual acquaintance, but he soon returned to enjoy close at hand this epoch-making evening. For now, he felt, there was nothing that could keep the Wilfred Balls back from those pinnacles of affluence which a combination of the more easily assimilated comic papers and articles on Self-Help had enabled him to envisage: Self-Help kind showing how a poor man might grow rich, and the comic papers how he might spend his money when ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... of wind. But a salute from the man who takes pride in the gesture because he feels privileged to wear the uniform of the United States, having found the service good, is the epitome of military virtue. Of those units which were most effective, and were capable of the greatest measure of self-help during World War II combat, it was invariably remarked that they observed the salute and the other rules of courtesy better than the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Of course, the nearer you can come to paying for the land at the beginning, and the more money you have for improvements, the more satisfactory your situation should be in every respect. There is a good chance for carpenter work in colony development, and considerable self-help could be secured in that way. You do not say whether you know anything about farming. Farming is a very complicated business and a basic knowledge derived from experience is a proper foundation to build upon in the light of the fuller ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... with friends who understood her type of case and who were willing to put up with her aberrancies for this time. Although we would not minimize the efforts of stalwart friends, we may say that there were more evidences of cure by self-help in this case than in any other we ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Northern philanthropy during a quarter of a century after the Civil War and is promoted also to-day by the good will of Southern Baptists who have put at the disposal of Negro Baptists in the South thousands of dollars. But the greatest glory of Negro Baptists is the spirit of self-help and heroic sacrifice in the endeavor to help others, and that spirit is ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... groups seem to be natural ones, and each has its own methods and activities. The Brownies are formed into packs, under the leadership of a "Brown Owl," and play games and learn self-help and how to "lend a hand" to their families. The Citizen Scouts are expected to be self-directing and to take actual part in the life of the community and, either as wage earners or service ...
— Educational Work of the Girl Scouts • Louise Stevens Bryant
... flower of his age. It was impossible for the young ladies to keep William II. in constant recollection of their father's loyalty. Besides, we decided not to petition or supplicate for favours, preferring to rely on our own energies and self-help. This principle was instilled into ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... sick mother and baby, with Caroline's sad confession of distress, and of her need of sympathy and help, wakened springs of love and pity in the young girl's heart. She forgot that she had anything to forgive. All her half-formed schemes for self-help and self-culture were at once discarded, and ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... sharp knife one moment high, The severed thumb was on the sod, There was no tear in Buttoo's eye, He left the matter with his God. "For this,"—said Dronacharjya,—"Fame Shall sound thy praise from sea to sea, And men shall ever link thy name With Self-help, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... on the peculiar combinations of letters that represent vowel-sounds, correct spelling, exercises well arranged for the pupil's preparation by himself (so that he shall learn the great lessons of self-help, self-dependence, the habit of application), exercises that develop a practical command of correct forms of expression, good literary taste, close critical power of thought, and ability to interpret the entire meaning of the language ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... tyranny for you. Supply the strength he lacks just so far as is required for freedom, not for power, so that he may receive your services with a sort of shame, and look forward to the time when he may dispense with them and may achieve the honour of self-help. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... 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 Association that is to administer it, is that it may be ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... without in any way injuring the human body. Arouse the individual in the highest possible degree to the consciousness of personal accountability and the necessity of intelligent personal effort and self-help. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... people would not live in them if they could. One could not "keep up" such houses without a large staff of servants. Their occupants would soon find themselves forced to seek less luxurious dwellings. The fine ladies would find that palaces were not well adapted to self-help in the kitchen. Gradually people would shake down. There would be no need to conduct Dives to a garret at the bayonet's point, or install Lazarus in Dives's palace by the help of an armed escort. People would shake down ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... lose the services of its Professor of Live Languages, Mr. O. Evans, who is about to assume the responsible and highly-remunerated position of Director of Research to the Billingsgate Fishporters' Self-Help Society. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... possibly believe more in self-help than I. The student who goes to a teacher and imagines that the teacher will cast some magic spell about him which will make him a musician without working, has an unpleasant surprise in store for him. When I was eighteen I went to Dachs at the Vienna Conservatory. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... explain has been the continued lynchings of Negroes not merely for crimes against women, but for all sorts of other crimes, large and small. Here the traces of primitive law are very much clearer. Lynching is after all nothing more nor less than the old self-help. The original notion was that the individual should execute the law himself when he could, and that he was entitled in case of crime to assistance from the community in the execution of the law upon the offender. Murder, arson, rape and the theft of cattle were the particular crimes for which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... indigenous to the soil. As the first great social writer of the German tongue, he is not content to make the rich answerable for existing conditions, but labors with all earnestness to educate the lower classes toward self-help. At first he appeared as an uncommonly energetic, conservative, polemic author in whose views the religious, basis of life and genuine moral worth coincided with the traditional character of the country yeomanry. A more thorough examination revealed to his readers ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... distinguished. Tradition has handed down to posterity no further details regarding his Eton days beyond the record of a fight with Sydney Smith's elder brother 'Bobus.' Alluding to him as a dull boy, Mr. Smiles states, in a footnote, in his book on 'Self-Help': 'A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, 1859) observes that "the Duke's talents seem never to have developed themselves until some active and practical field for their display was placed immediately before him. He was long described by his Spartan mother, who thought him a dunce, as only 'food ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Turning again to ordinary duty, I know no precept more wide or more valuable than this: cultivate self-help; do not seek nor like to be dependent upon others for what you can yourself supply; and keep down as much as you can the standard of your wants, for in this lies a great secret of manliness, true wealth, and happiness; as, on ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... in 1562 to found a new order which should be even more strict in its rules, and therefore, so she believed, more helpful. Thus was founded the Order of Barefooted Carmelites, a body of priests and nuns, who have in their peculiar way accomplished very much for charity, gentleness, and self-help in the world, and whose schools and convents have been instituted in all parts of ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the hour came; but a drizzling rain fell. Elizabeth-Jane having now changed her orbit from one of gay independence to laborious self-help, thought the weather good enough for such declined glory as hers, if her friend would only face it—a matter of doubt. She went to the boot-room where her pattens had hung ever since her apotheosis; took them ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... disputed estate, in full satisfaction of all claims, of two villages with the names of which I do not intend to trouble my readers. After this lame and impotent conclusion neither the wife nor the stepsons had anything to say to the man who had presented the world with such a successful example of self-help based on character, determination, and industry; and my great-grandmother, her health completely broken down, died a couple of years later in Carlsbad. Legally secured by a decree in the possession of his plunder, X regained his wonted serenity, and went on living in the neighbourhood ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... was the career of Paul Jones, the winds did not always set in his favor. Many times was his life bark driven through the waters of bitter disappointment. But "all that he was, and all that he did, and all that he knew, was the result of self-help to a degree unexampled in the histories of ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... Conservatives in attributing the great evils of the day to the industrial movement and the growth of competition. The middle-class Whigs and the Utilitarians were, on the contrary, in thorough sympathy with the industrial movement, and desired to limit the functions of government, and trust to self-help and free competition. The Socialistic movement appeared for the present to be confined to a few dreamers and demagogues. The Utilitarians might approve the spirit of the Owenites, but held their schemes to be chimerical. Beneath the political controversies ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... first, capabilities that might be turned to endless uses; in the conscript drawn from the populace of the provinces there was almost always a knowledge of self-help, and often of some trade, coupled with habits of diligence; in the soldier made from the street Arab of Paris there were always inconceivable intelligence, rapidity of wit, and plastic vivacity; in the adventurers come, like himself, from higher ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... faith is an up-to-date variety of the tenets of the Self-Help School, which was own brother to the Manchester School. And here we come to a curious contradiction, the first of a series. For Chesterton loathes the ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... however, the laissez faire tenet of self-help was supplanted by the belief that it is peculiarly the duty of government to help those who are unable to help themselves; and to sustain remedial legislation enacted in conformity with the latter philosophy, the Court had to revise extensively its previously ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... from the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... condition of any sound legislation for the relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial qualities, or weaken these vast voluntary organisations of self-help which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... is a fine thing. But even finer was the spirit of self-help. Secretary Garrison's telegram to President Wilson from the flooded districts that the people in the towns and cities affected had the situation well in hand and that very little emergency assistance was needed, was a splendid testimonial ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... is important and encouraging. But richer still is the promise for the future. A few years ago, the Blackfeet were all paupers, dependent on the bounty of the government and the caprice of the agent. Now, they feel themselves men, are learning self-help and self-reliance, and are looking forward to a time when they shall be self-supporting. If their improvement should be as rapid for the next five years as it has been for the five preceding 1892, a considerable portion of the tribe will be self-supporting at the date ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... gospel of dirt is bad enough, but the gospel of mere material comfort is much worse.' He contemptuously calls the Comtist championship of the working man, 'the championship of the trencher.' He would place 'the leanest liberty which brought with it the dignity and power of self-help' higher than 'any prospect of a full plate without it.' Such is the moral doctrine taught by this 'atheistic' leader; and no Christian, I apprehend, need ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... where he is, and work on. And he does work. As his captivity becomes more and more hopeless, so comes out more and more the stateliness, self-help, and energy of the man. Till now he has played with his pen: now he will use it in earnest; and use it as few prisoners have done. Many a good book has been written in a dungeon—'Don Quixote,' ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... to procure testimonials in its behalf, easily procurable as these usually are; and yet there were some of its lessons which might be conned with some little advantage, by one desirous of cultivating the noble sentiment of self-reliance, or the all-important habit of self-help. At the time, however, they appeared quite pointless enough; and the moral, as in the case of the continental apologue of Reynard the Fox, seemed ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... insisted lay back of the islands—was really there. Accordingly, Columbus took a crew of men and departed April 24, 1494, leaving his brother Diego in command of the colony. Never had Columbus done a more unwise thing than to leave Isabella at that moment. Not one single lesson of self-help and cooperation had his men yet learned; and of course they reproached him with their troubles. The root of it all was disappointment. They had come for wealth and ease, and had found poverty and hardship. They even threatened to ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... think it is a good fable of self-help. Does it quite illustrate the case? I mean, the virtue of impatience. But I like the fable and the moral; and I think it would do good if it were made popular, though it would be hard to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always been his own Savior. His instrument is science, his wisdom is self-help. His redemption begins when he turns his eyes from the delusive Heaven and plucks up his heart from the fear of Hell. Despair vanishes before the steady gaze of instructed courage. Hope springs as a flower in the path ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... of circumstance. Here is more thoroughly embodied the true Christian principle, that out of himself is to come every man's redemption; that the favor and help of God are only to be obtained through resolute self-help, and honest, earnest struggle. In Christendom we stand alone as having above us neither the objectivity of politics nor that of the church. The light of the past we have, without its darkness. We carry little weight from the exacting past. Hence, our unexampled freedom and ease of movement ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... which wronged and enfeebled both. It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than 5,000,000 people, and has opened to each one of them a career of freedom and usefulness. It has given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both races by making labor more honorable to the one and more necessary to the other. The influence of this force will grow greater and bear richer fruit with ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... however bravely fought, unless the strikers are able to keep a live organization together, the members cooeperating patiently and steadily, so as to handle the fresh shop difficulties which every week brings, in the spirit of mutual help as well as self-help. ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... growth to suit the newer day. It was so unlike the first volume as to seem no continuation of her own life. It began one summer morning about two years after the close of the war—an interval which she had spent in various efforts at self-help, at self-training. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... folk, poor, savage, living mostly, as in Caesar's time, in huts raised above the sea on piles or mounds of earth; often without cattle or seedfield, half savage, half heathen, but free. Free, with the divine instinct of freedom, and all the self-help and energy ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... relationship and a more direct union of effort the Bureau in Washington and its agents in the field; and with the co-operation of its branches thus secured the Indian Bureau would, in measure fuller than ever before, lift up the savage toward that self-help and self-reliance ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... short. Catie was Catie, and his guest. She would have fought for him on any issue, and downed any number of foes in the fighting. To Mrs. Brenton, she was as dear as any daughter, dear as the daughter that she meant one day to be. Besides, who was he, a self-help student temporarily excused from waiting upon table and attired in a misfit evening coat hired from a ghetto tailor: who was he to criticise the flowers and frills of Catie? If she had had the chances which had come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... slave, quite parted from her boy,—who also was sold, and again sold; but did at last fall in with a kinsman high in the Russian service; did from him find redemption and help, and so rose, in a distinguished manner, to manhood, victorious self-help, and recovery of his kingdom at last. He even met his mother again, he as king of Norway, she as one wonderfully lifted out of darkness into new life and ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... great majority of cases the borrower effects an insurance with the savings bank so that his repayments terminate at his death. On the 31st of December 1903 nearly 25,000 advances were in course of repayment. In Germany, building societies are recognized as a form of societies for self-help, but are not many in number, being overshadowed by the great organization of credit societies founded by Schulze-Delitzsch. In other countries there has been no special legislation for building societies similar ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various |
