"Self-reliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mean discipline, the training of the powers and capacities. The early pioneers who planted civilization on the Watauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, the Cumberland, had not much broad learning—they would not have been worse if they had had more but they had courage, they were trained in self-reliance, virile common sense, and good judgment, they had inherited the instinct and capacity of self-government, they were religious, with all their coarseness they had the fundamental elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... edged.' For Malvolio living we should have had living sympathies: so much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of refinement; so unarmed a credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the Weaver our pity might be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the privilege of literature to make selection ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... still it must be confessed that their steady and unwavering adherence to a line of conduct which has made England feared and her power respected by every country in the world has a certain element of dignity and manly self-reliance which compels our admiration. And while they have been of late so frequently outwitted by the flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry will not in the end ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in the absence of a compelling force of public opinion. One of them is found in the strong self-reliance of men and women who have made and enforced their own moral standards. With very many men, life in California brings a decided strengthening of the moral fibre. They must reconsider, justify, and fight for their standards of ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... she saw very clearly and she clung to it. If she went away Paul and Grace need not leave Skeaton; soon they would forget her and be happy once more as they had been before she came. But where should she go? All her life she had depended upon her own self-reliance, but now that had left her. She felt as though she could not move unless there was some one somewhere who cared for her. But there was no one. Katherine Mark. No, she certainly could never go there again. Behind all this was the constant preoccupation that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... hope, the girl saw the defeat of her natural champion with sympathetic anguish. Though he had not spied the student, she had regarded him with no faint opinion of his manliness for—repelling the kind of proud self-reliance of her race to have no recourse to strangers during persecution—she lifted her voice with a confidence which ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Whatever merits he might have—and in her eyes he had many—at any rate he had not those which a mother would desire to see in the future husband of her daughter. He was profligate, extravagant, careless, and idle; his prospects in life were in every respect bad; he had no self-respect, no self-reliance, no moral strength. Was it not absolutely necessary that she should put a stop to any love that might have sprung up between such a man as this and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... 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 caused by ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... white officers prolonged the malady. The basic misconception was that southern white officers understood Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect—necessary attributes of leadership—were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "I was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who preceded us to place their own lives in a hazardous position in order to have tractable Negroes ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Self-reliance was the corner-stone of this young mariner's character. He could take care of himself on whatever shore he was thrown. He landed on the beach of Carthagena and told the story of his adventures to the group of sailors who crowded about him on the sands. There is a strong ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... struggle 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. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had been little effort made to instill into the minds of their children the principles of holy living, and it was felt that there was but little necessity to give them habits of self-denial or self-reliance. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... to 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 heretofore, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Government was conscious of its great potential superiority over Canada, in men and in available resources. So evident, indeed, was the disparity, that the prevalent feeling was not one of reasonable self-reliance, but of vainglorious self-confidence; of dependence upon mere bulk and weight to crush an opponent, quite irrespective of preparation or skill, and disregardful of the factor of military efficiency. Jefferson's words have already been quoted. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... 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 ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... judgment of the secretary it may well be doubted whether the national credit abroad has not been strengthened and sustained by the fact that foreign investments in our securities have not been sought by us, and whether we have not found a pecuniary advantage in self-reliance." Reciting the steps which he had taken for placing loans, he declared; "These negotiations have afforded satisfactory evidence not only of the ability of the people to furnish at a short notice such sums as may be required ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... country, and the necessities of the isolated condition of a pioneer population, which necessities are mainly supplied by ingenuity and perseverance on the part of each, creates an independence and self-reliance which enter largely into the formation of the general character. The institution of African slavery existing in the South, which came with the very first, pioneer, and which was continually on the increase, added to this independence the habit of command; and this, too, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ecclesiastical building, from the first century to the fifteenth; but the moral habits to which England in this age owes the kind of greatness that she has,—the habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic seclusion and independence, of stern self-reliance, and sincere upright searching into religious truth,—were only traceable in the features which were the distinctive creation of the Gothic schools, in the veined foliage, and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the same time will incite women to more and better endeavors along new lines. It will enable her to acquire more scientific ways and a better preparation for the business world. It will teach her a saving of energy and greater self-reliance. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... 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 the system. Accordingly, it rests with the freeholders and householders of each school section to decide whether they will support their ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... memory, and find out how much you did, work or pleasure, in good faith and soberness, and for how much you had to cheat yourself with some invention? I remember, as though it were yesterday, the expansion of spirit, the dignity and self-reliance, that came with a pair of mustachios in burnt cork, even when there was none to see. Children are even content to forego what we call the realities, and prefer the shadow to the substance. When they might be ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with her likes and dislikes of the strongest possible, with a great deal of animal nature, cheerful and talkative, yet lacking in force, by nature kind and benevolent to a fault, and her development of individuality and self-reliance small, she was one who could be easily persuaded but never driven. Jackson was not slow to learn this, and with honeyed words and protestations of love, he won Pearl Bryan's heart. This won, the accomplishment of his devilish designs, her ruin, was easy. She fell a victim to his lustful ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... which he has been inspired by 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, he produces a witty and many-coloured set of variorum ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was occasionally relieved with splendid passages of impassioned and stirring eloquence. Intrepid self-reliance, unwearied activity, far-reaching sagacity, clearness, and fulness, were the prominent characteristics of Mr. Tazewell's mind. Comprehending with intuitive glance the whole field of argument, he "launched into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind." One of our ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... able, in some way or other, to slip through their fingers, and avoid the fearful punishment which he knew was in store for him, if he remained many hours longer in their hands. To effect this, he looked for no aid from others; for experience had taught him the value of self-reliance. The whole life of this singular being, indeed, had been one which was peculiarly calculated to throw him on his own resources, sharpen his wits, and render him fertile in expedients. He had been a foundling, and knew ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain pastures, and, while watching them night and day, have seen them frightened by bears and storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff, will, in some measure, be able to appreciate the self-reliance and strength and noble ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by saying that faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was to cure me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had not been opened for a long time. What should drop out of it, one day, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... manhood, dwelling at length on the traits of character that have made them so rich and successful, believing that a careful study will convince all that the proverbial "luck" had little to do with it. On the contrary, one is taught those lessons of self-helpfulness and self-reliance which are so essential to success in life's struggles. It is fearful to think how many of our young people are drifting without an aim in life, and do not comprehend that they owe mankind their best efforts. We are all familiar with the parable of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... aflame at the omnipresence of injustice in the world, her work covers a wide range of thought and feeling. Her heart is swollen with pity for the sufferings of women; but she is no sentimentalist. There is an intellectual independence, a clear-headed womanly self-reliance about her way of thinking and writing that is both refreshing and stimulating. In hope and in despair she speaks for the many thousands of women, who first found their voice in Ibsen's Doll's House; her poem, The Modern ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... little pride, or sensitiveness, or fear of man, and goes with his pious wife and child to the house of God, and offers the child, for her, to be baptized, is more of a man than before, gains reputation for some desirable qualities, excites respect for self-reliance, the quiet performance of a duty from which certain feelings might lead him to shrink, and in the increased love and esteem of others, to say no more, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the furthest; but there are more courageous or more detachable spirits who venture into more distant regions. These contribute somewhat toward peopling Bar Harbour in the summer, but they scarcely characterise it in any degree; while at Campobello they settle in little daring colonies, whose self-reliance will enlist the admiration of the sympathetic observer. They do not refuse the knowledge of other colonies of other stirps and origins, and they even combine in temporary alliance with them. But, after all, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... existence in a foreign land whose language he was beginning to pick up made him think only of himself. The turbulent and adventurous life of these new nations compelled him to most absurd expedients and varied occupations. Yet he felt himself strong with an audacity and self-reliance which he never had in the old world. "I am equal to everything," he said, "if they only give me time to prove it!" Although he had fled from his country in order not to take up arms, he even led a soldier's life for a brief period in his adopted land, receiving ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... leave-taking in August, 1803, was essentially his farewell; and his general observations on the country he had served, and which does not forget the service, are, though brief, full of interest. He had seen the little town grow from a condition of dependence to one of self-reliance, few as were the years of his knowledge of it. Part of his early employment had been to bring provisions to Sydney from abroad. In 1803, he saw large herds spreading over the country. He saw forests giving way before the axe, and spreading fields ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... organization the purpose of which is character-building for boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is an effort to get boys to appreciate the things about them and to train them in self-reliance, manhood, and good citizenship. It is "peace-scouting" these boys engage in, living as much as possible out of doors; camping, hiking and learning the secrets of the woods and fields. The movement is not essentially military, but the military virtues of discipline, obedience, neatness and ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... degrading. He did not feel above useful employment, on the farm, or in the workshop and factory. And this quality was a great help to him. For it is cousin to that hopefulness which he possessed, and brother to his self-reliance and independence. No man ever accomplished much who was afraid of doing work beneath his dignity. Dr. Franklin was nothing but a soap-boiler when he commenced; Roger Sherman was only a cobbler, and kept a book by his side on the bench; Ben Jonson was a mason and ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... 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
... book, and again of its more private value, as his mother's constant companion and solace. It was touching to see this pitiless intellect, which had bruised and broken the idols of so many faiths, to which Luther himself was recommended only by his bravery and self-reliance and the grandeur of his aims,—it was touching, we say, and suggestive also of many things, to behold the strong, stern man paying homage to language whose spirit was dead to him, out of pure love for his dear mother, and veneration also for the great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... increased demand upon the teacher." Again, "it must not be thought, however, that the work of the school is limited to lesson hours. We aim not only at giving a definite intellectual equipment but at producing independence and self-reliance together with that public spirit which enables a girl quite simply and without self-consciousness to take her part in the life ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... from the absence of eloquence and acuteness is a law-suit lost or a congregation lulled to sleep,) than that he should be active, energetic, skilful, in one of the "leviathans afloat on the brine." Science, zeal, courage, and self-reliance, are very pretty qualities to find in the fool of the family—and without these, no man can ever be a sailor. But what opportunity is there in the navy for the display of the wonderful abilities of the fool of the family's antipode, the genius? Nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... self-importance and delight. The glorious blush of modest diffidence, the tear of gentle sympathy, are so rare on the cheek, or in the eye of the young, that their appearance creates a feeling of surprise. Such perfect self-reliance in beings so new to the world is painful to a thinking mind. It betrays a great want of sensibility and mental culture, and a melancholy knowledge ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... in man are a direct consequence of his gregarious nature, which itself is a result of the conditions both of his primeval barbarism and of the forms of his subsequent civilisation. My argument will be, that gregarious brute animals possess a want of self-reliance in a marked degree; that the conditions of the lives of these animals have made a want of self-reliance a necessity to them, and that by the law of natural selection the gregarious instincts and their accompanying slavish aptitudes have gradually become evolved. Then I shall ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... lights of the age, without the 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
... I never pray, and never feel the need of prayer. And though I admit, as above, that it may have some present advantage, yet I am inclined to think that it is bought too dearly at the price of a decrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to be always asking for help, for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me that such a habit ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... was nine years old. If so, he must have died soon after, for Leonardo Aretino, who wrote with original documents before him, tells us that Dante lost his father while yet a child. This circumstance may have been not without influence in muscularizing his nature to that character of self-reliance which shows itself so constantly and sharply during his after-life. His tutor was Brunetto Latini, a very superior man (for that age), says Aretino parenthetically. Like Alexander Gill, he is now remembered only as the schoolmaster of a great poet, and that ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 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 her; her visit will be Lady Adela's doing, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... spotted destroyers!) he sees, pale with awe, On the menacing edge of a fiery sky, Grim Doorga, blue-limb'd and red-handed, go by, And the first thing he worships is Terror. Anon, Still impell'd by necessity hungrily on, He conquers the realms of his own self-reliance, And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance. From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul; Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll! On toward Heaven the son of Alcmena strides high on The heads of the Hydra, the spoils of the lion: And man, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... parson," said a tall, elegant-looking man, whose broad, intellectual brow was touched by dark hair slightly frosted, and whose lip had the curve that betokens self-reliance and strong decision,—"very fair. All the better for not flying too high. Narrow, of course. He seems to think the Almighty has nothing grander to do than to finger every little cog of the tremendous machinery of the universe,—that ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... term of description not of the material of life but of a particular result of that material fused into a particular furnace. In general the shape of life which pride describes may be otherwise characterized as arrogant self-reliance or self-sufficiency. We may reach more minute definitions of it before we are done, but this seems to make the meaning plain when it is said that the pride of life is not of the Father, but of the world. Life comes from God. It is the world's influence that shapes ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... Many noted border scouts and Indian 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 of deaths, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... appropriating what has been produced and saved. Much also depended on the better political institutions of this country, which, by the scope they have allowed to individual freedom of action, have encouraged personal activity and self-reliance, while, by the liberty they confer of association and combination, they facilitate industrial enterprise on a large scale. The same institutions, in another of their aspects, give a most direct and potent stimulus to the desire of acquiring wealth. The earlier decline of feudalism [in England] ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... embrace and snuggled my head against his broad shoulder, listening to all that was said. Three months later the little boy had become a little man, and my cuddling days had given place to the self-reliance of the fearless youngster ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... soul for someone on whom to lean was satisfied at last. Hitherto the only instincts that had been fostered in her were those that had been useful to her father and George; they had needed her courage and her self-reliance. It was very comfortable to depend entirely upon Alec's love. Here she could be weak, here she could find a greater strength which made her own seem puny. Lucy's thoughts were absorbed in the man whom really she knew ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... on every side with the agility of young goats. He reflected that they had forgotten their weariness and seemed to be diverting themselves with an exercise to which each contributed his own effort, his individual tactics and his qualities of self-reliance and initiative. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... heathenism by modern missionaries, it becomes an interesting question whether their faith possesses the elements of permanence, or is only an exotic too tender for self-propagation when the fostering care of the foreign cultivators is withdrawn. If neither habits of self-reliance are cultivated, nor opportunities given for the exercise of that virtue, the most promising converts are apt to become like spoiled children. In Madagascar, a few Christians were left with nothing but the Bible in their hands; ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... beautiful, had become uncertain; his bow was as timid as his fingers, and he no longer dared to indulge fearlessly the suggestions of his imagination; in short it was too apparent that, in spite of his delusion, Rode's former confidence in himself was gone; and we know the importance of that feeling of self-reliance which men of talent derive from the innate consciousness of their own superiority: once destroyed, everything else vanishes with it. He was applauded; respect for the last efforts of what had once been first-rate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... a Fourth of July oration. He was at first disposed, out of modesty, to decline; but, on consultation with Ferguson, decided to accept and do his best. He was ambitious to produce a good impression, and his experience in the Debating Society gave him a moderate degree of confidence and self-reliance. When the time came he fully satisfied public expectation. I do not say that his oration was a model of eloquence, for that could not have been expected of one whose advantages had been limited, and one for whom I have ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and apparently conscious just then of nothing but three dark specks on the wharf, as she still waved her little white flag, and looked shoreward with eyes too dim for seeing. A sweet, modest face it was, with intelligent eyes, a firm mouth, and the look of one who had early learned self-reliance and self-control. ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... troubles. Symptoms are not lacking of a healthy reaction from this undemocratic attitude of mind. In so far as our charitable work affects it, let us see to it that we do our part in restoring a tone of sturdy self-reliance ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... our work without seeking to know what His will is, that is recalling our deposit. Then you will get it back again, because God does not keep anybody's securities against his will—you will get it back again, and much good it will do you when you have got it! Self-will, self-reliance, self-determination—these are the opposites of committing the keeping of our souls to God. And, as I say, if you withdraw the deposit, you take all the burden and trouble of it on your own shoulders again. Do not fancy that you are 'living lives of faith in the Son of God,' if you are not looking ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... companions of his own age. He was peculiarly a mother's boy, content to grow up dreamy and impractical at her quiet hearthstone. Consequently he was awkward and reserved, easily imposed upon, and lacking in self-reliance. These qualities remained with him as long as he lived, and caused him many painful failures. On the other hand, the pious example of his mother and the tranquil life he led with her made the boy reflective and imaginative, while his soul became filled with great ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... with the East was by pack-horses, while communication with the South was cut off by hostile Indian tribes who held the banks of the Ohio. This isolation from the older, denser, and more civilized settlements bred in the people a spirit of self-reliance and independence. They were in great part Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, a religious and warlike race to whom the hatred of an exciseman was a tradition of their forefathers. Having no market for their grain, they were compelled to ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... a strong, honest man who simply desired to express his better self. The elements of caution and expediency were singularly lacking in his character. These qualities of independence and self-reliance brought him into speedy collision with those who stood in the front rank of the artistic world of his day, and he became a marked man. His offense was that he expressed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... which they could ill afford, leave the college with nothing learned save vice. On the other hand, those whose manliness and good sense keep them straight have gone through a training which lasts them for life. They have been tried, and have not been found wanting. They have learned self-reliance, confidence, and, in a word, have become men of the world while their confreres in England are still ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... necessities of life. The letters written by the women in that period reveal an intelligent grasp of affairs and a strength of spirit altogether admirable. Here was indeed a charming mingling of feminine grace, tenderness, sympathy, self-reliance, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in travelling through the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure, and a bad friend to those who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of self-reliance and contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays a want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... resolved, when I had finished the course of training, I would go into the Far South, into the Black Belt of the South, and give my life to providing the same kind of opportunity for self-reliance, self-awakening, that I had found provided for ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... men, it was all they could do to get her over. Moreover, the task was rendered doubly difficult and perilous by their exhaustion and inability to swim when the keel to which they were holding went under water. But their agility and self-reliance, evolved from a life next to Nature, stood them in good stead, and soon all three were actually standing inside the water-logged boat. The oars, lashed under the seats, were still in her, and, though almost up to their waists in water, they began sculling and rowing as hard as their ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... constitutional admission of the people would not have been so astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the course of public events for the half century after Clisthenes had not been such as to stimulate most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future chapter these historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical impulse communicated by Clisthenes: at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the steamer and passed at once into another atmosphere, another world. The change was a spiritual shock to him, making him gasp as if he had fallen into a tumultuous sea. There was the same chill, there was a like difficulty in getting his balance. But this was not for long. His innate self-reliance steadied him rapidly. His long-established habit of superiority helped him to avoid betraying his first sense of ignorance and unfitness. His receptiveness led him to assimilate swiftly the innumerable and novel facts of life with which he came all at once in contact; and he soon realized ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... dignified pleas of such a kind in history. Orange had no difficulty in showing the sincerity of his motives and his devotion to the common weal. The reader of this eloquent document will, however, realize that its author lacked the energy and self-reliance necessary to deal with the desperate situation in which the country was placed. In his eagerness to save the Belgian towns and to safeguard unity, in spite of the unwillingness of Holland and Zeeland to depart from their expectant attitude, he concluded with the Duke of Anjou, on September ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... Sir 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 and child, and the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to man, for all that we may have gained, apart from occult training, in the matter of judgment, feeling and character, is insufficient to support us when confronted by our own being in its true form; its apparition would rob us of all feeling of selfhood, self-reliance and self-consciousness. And that this may not happen, provision must be made for cultivating sound judgment, good feeling and character, along with the exercises given for the attainment of ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... friends, of the Church of England, that stanch defender of the British monarchy. Each colony in time developed its own legislature elected by the voters; it grew accustomed to making laws and laying taxes for itself. Here was a people learning self-reliance and self-government. The attempts to strengthen the Church of England in America and the transformation of colonies into royal provinces only fanned the spirit of independence which they were ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... by urging upon his consideration the manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance, which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude surroundings,—at the same time granting the necessity of sleepless vigilance and severe restraints. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... which seemed to be inherited by all the family, since even the present master of the estate, whom he had known as a mild-tempered and almost effeminate youth, acquired more and more as the years went by the same disposition. He therefore recommended me strongly to behave with as much resolute self-reliance and as little embarrassment as possible, if I desired to possess any consideration in the Freiherr's eyes; and at length he began to describe the apartments in the castle which he had selected to be his own once for all, since they were warm and comfortable, and so conveniently retired that we ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... great cenatorial system. He knows all liquors also by name, with their places and times of appearing. And he is as great in action as in knowledge. When he takes the command of a burra khana he is a Wellington. He plans with foresight, and executes with fortitude and self-reliance. See him marshal his own troops and his auxiliary butlers while he carves and dispenses the joint! Then he puts himself at their head and invades the dining-room. He meets with reverses;—the claret-jug collides with ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... your choice and leave the rest. Every gain in life means a corresponding loss; development in one part means a shrinkage in some other. Wild wheat is small and hard, quite capable of looking after itself, but its heads contain only a few small kernels. Cultivated wheat has lost its hardiness and its self-reliance, but its heads are filled with large kernels which feed the nation. There has been a great gain in usefulness, by cultivation, with a corresponding loss in hardiness. When riches are increased, so also are anxieties and cares. Life is full ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... far more immature than her characteristic self-reliance leads us to suppose. By her side, the girl who has left school at eighteen, and has lived four years in the world, is weighted with experience. The extension of youth is surely as great a boon to women as to men. There is ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... are 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 have ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the countenance of the Pathfinder was that of simplicity, integrity, and sincerity, blended in an air of self-reliance which usually gave great confidence to those who found themselves under his care; but now a look of concern cast a shade over his honest face, that struck ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... a strong will, perfect self-reliance, and the most restless activity. All these qualities give him great influence. He led the centre gauche into most of its errors. H—— used to say, "If you want to know what I shall ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... "however, it's not too late: I shall give him a Roland for his Oliver before we part. It will be no harm to give the the respectable old nobleman a hint of what's going on, at any rate. This discovery, however, won't signify, for I know Dunroe. The poor fool has no self-reliance; but if left to himself would die. He possesses no manly spirit of independent will, no firmness, no fixed principle—he is, in fact, a noun adjective, and cannot stand alone. Depraved in his appetites and habits of life, he cannot live without some hanger-on ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Greeks were religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people, however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great solicitude to secure aid from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... time. Do you live all by yourself then?" he added, wondering to himself as he looked at her, for her beauty was quite striking, and she was certainly not over twenty, yet there was something in the strong, noble outlines of her figure, in the tranquil calm of her manner, the self-reliance of her whole bearing, and the business-like way those pistols were thrust in her belt, that ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... presumably had in some degree inherited the genius of the most famous and most civilized country of prehistoric ages, and who had by long trafficking in dangerous waters and by the hardships of long migration acquired that self-reliance and love of mastery which has been bequeathed almost unchanged to their Brahmanised descendants. The Chitpavans were indeed the children of the storm, and something of the spirit of the storm lives in them still. Some trace is ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... against mother earth? And the man who fights here successfully a winning fight, not stopping to ask at what odds, must be endowed with a great strength, a rugged physical and moral constitution, self-reliance, a true, deep insight into the natures of other men. Those things my father has. So has Bat Truxton, so has Brayley, so, for that ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... ill-effects from her terrible ordeal, braced him up. He remained with her for a time, then he sought Sir Nathaniel in order to talk over the matter with him. He knew that the calm common sense and self-reliance of the old man, as well as his experience, would be helpful to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... child is the true spirit of the learner. Scriptural difficulties can never be mastered by the same methods that are employed in grappling with philosophical problems. We should not engage in the study of the Bible with that self-reliance with which so many enter the domains of science, but with a prayerful dependence upon God, and a sincere desire to learn His will. We must come with a humble and teachable spirit to obtain knowledge from the great ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... driven on with a jeering laugh only that Pepper, angry at what obedience, neatness and order are Scout virtues. Endurance, self-reliance, self-control and an effort to help some one ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... don't perpetually talk of me as some unsophisticated school girl. I am twenty-one, nearly as old as you, my child,—old enough, certainly, to form my own judgment of people and things. Don't let's quarrel, Frank; you know I have been taught self-reliance, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... enough 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... of safety valve, a life preserver—to mix similes—the real driver who would be on hand to take charge if necessary. Under such circumstances his own responsibility ceased to be a responsibility and his self-reliance nil. No, sink or swim, survive or perish, he ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human nature; self-control, self-reliance, endurance, and altruism or the devotion of Self to the good of the community; and not the least of its merits is that it corrects and restrains the dreary materialism of the Labour ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... taken not to destroy the balance between the intellect and the affections, so that, whilst the growth of the mental powers was encouraged, domestic and social duties should not suffer, and habits of self-reliance should be formed. From earliest childhood the great principles of Christianity were instilled into the opening minds of the children; and when the reflective powers had come into operation, their reasonings were watched and guided into safe paths. In this object, as in all ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that voice, to stuff your ears so full of clay, and worldliness, and sin, and self-reliance as that it shall not echo in your hearts. 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall live,' and obtain to-day 'a better resurrection' than the resurrection of the body. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... abilities is open for him in the world, he probably will judge quite readily what line of study he should at first pursue, and following out this clue, at first by the aid of judicious external guidance, he will, with ever-increasing self-reliance and discrimination, proceed to fulfil the requirements of education and the inclination of his own mental disposition. This method of development is the natural order by which intellectual growth, by means of books, or any other means, proceeds. To make a choice of certain ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... to do our duty, and God gave us the victory," said Paul. He stood before them taller and stouter than when he went away. He was sunburnt; but his countenance was noble and manly, and marked with self-reliance. He never had made a speech. He did not know what to say. To stand there facing the audience, with his mother, Azalia, Daphne, and all his old friends before him, was very embarrassing. It was worse than meeting the ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... laid on a soft bed of moss in the warmest corner of the hut, and the women took their turn in nursing him, night and day—the coxswain's wife, however, being the chief nurse; for, besides being sympathetic and tender by nature, she had been trained in a rough school where self-reliance and capacity were constantly called into action in circumstances of difficulty, so that she was better fitted for the post than either of her companions. But their efforts were of no avail. After a week, Black Ned died, with a smile of gratitude on his dark ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... persecution, witting and unwitting, had made a wild beast of him during his confinement in the circus; but, by reason of the close confinement which had accompanied these persecutions, increasing self-dependence and self-reliance had not come with the access of fierceness and wildness. Finn inherited fighting instincts and savage ferocity under persecution from a long and noble line of hunting and fighting ancestors. But he inherited few instincts ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... my object to deal generally with the actor's calling, a calling, difficult and hazardous in character, demanding much patience, self-reliance, determination, and good temper. This last is not one of its least important demands on your character. Remember that the actor is not in one sense of the word an independent artist; it is his misfortune that the practice of his art is absolutely dependent ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... 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, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... depends much upon the length of time the secret must be kept. Among the officers whose length of service and professional reputation indicated them as suitable for the position, there was little to guide the department to the man who would on emergency show the audacity and self-reliance demanded by the intended operations. The action proposed, though it falls within the limits of the methods which history has justified, and has, therefore, a legitimate place in the so-called science of war, was, nevertheless, as the opinions ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... resolving their suspicions into a certainty 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 from which the ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... mother, old and withered, was made strong by her power as mother-in-law and her faith in her country and her gods. The daughter was weak and negative by reason of no particular faith and no definite gods. The system by which she had been trained did not include self-reliance nor foster individuality. Under it many of the country's daughters grow to beautiful womanhood because of their gift of living their own inner lives entirely apart, while submitting to the external one ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... it definitely right or definitely wrong. They give honesty; for, when you express yourself by making things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. They beget a habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher's ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... 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 ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tended only to exaggerate the defective and disagreeable side of a national character lacking geniality and bristling with prickly individuality. This disposition of mind, whose favourable and laudable presentations are love of liberty and self-reliance, began with the beginnings of American history. The "Fathers," Pilgrim and Puritan, who left their country for their country's good and their own, fled from lay tyranny and clerkly oppression only to oppress and tyrannise over others in new and distant homes. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction. We have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the titled European does his social fictions. As a people, we do not feel and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... my mind the picture of a noble farm-house in a park-like valley, just as the line, "Well have our rifles ready, boys," expressed the boldness and self-reliance of an ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... substituted self-reliance, buoyancy, a sense of responsibility, we should scarcely go too far; for, indeed, it would be difficult to say from what sources the consistent determinist is to derive these qualities. He regards himself ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... oppressed with the 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, and purpose. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... discipline than culture! Of how much greater worth, to himself and to 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," and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... 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 Association that is to administer it, is that it may ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... think that you quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength—I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly the poet of democracy; but not wholly, because he tries so openly to be, and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... has been so marked a feature of Irish life in the course of the last decade to turn the attention of the people towards efforts at self-improvement and the development of self-reliance without regard to English aid, English neglect, or English opinion, excellent though it has been in every other respect, has had this one drawback—that there has grown up a generation of Englishmen, well-intentioned towards our country, to whom the problems of Irish Government are ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... encouraged to breed unhindered, while all the powerful forces of tradition, of custom, or prejudice, have bolstered up the desperate effort to block the inevitable influence of true civilization in spreading the principles of independence, self-reliance, discrimination and foresight upon which the great practice of intelligent ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... was Lykurgus's main object, that his country should dominate over as many other states as possible; but seeing that, in states as in individuals, happiness is derived from virtue and single-mindedness, he directed all his efforts to implant in his countrymen feelings of honour, self-reliance, and self-control. These were also taken as the basis of their constitution by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and all who have written with any success upon this subject. But they have left mere dissertations; Lykurgus produced an inimitable constitution, confuted ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch |
