"Self-assertive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be the basis of sympathy. We stoop to conquer in that we are not self-assertive and self-assured, for if we "know" that we are right we can not know how others think or feel. We ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... herself now occupied a poor little lodging not very far away—Eve beheld sundry improvements. By the fireside stood a great leather chair, deep, high-backed, wondrously self-assertive over against the creaky cane seat which before had dominated the room. Against the wall was a high bookcase, where Hilliard's volumes, previously piled on the floor, stood in loose array; and above the mantelpiece hung a framed engraving ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... sometimes wishes, with Lanier's owl, "had more to think and less to say," were not so self-assertive as they usually are; in fact, they were quite subdued. They came and went freely, but they never questioned my actions, as they are sure to do where they lead society. Now and then one perched on the fence and regarded me, with flick of wing and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... he found, when the night superintendent finally entered the office and he had the chance of introducing himself. Newer to authority than the superintendent of the dayshift, he was also of a more active temperament and much more self-assertive. He was not impressed by the detective's years or even by his errand. It was a busy night, a very busy night—new hands in every department. To take him through the building at present was quite out of the question. Perhaps later it might be done; ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... reasonableness in his doctrines; or if they want to treat them indulgently, they condescend, from the height of their superiority, to correct them, on the supposition that Christ meant to express precisely their own ideas, but did not succeed in doing so. They behave to his teaching much as self-assertive people talk to those whom they consider beneath them, often supplying their companions' words: "Yes, you mean to say this and that." This correction is always with the aim of reducing the teaching of the higher, divine conception of life to the level of the lower, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... child. This weakness of the moral scheme, this rude strength of human nature, this sense of a larger solution, are most felt when Hawthorne approaches the love element, and throughout in the character of Hester, in whom alone human nature retains a self-assertive power. The same thing is felt vaguely, but certainly, in the lack of sympathy between Hawthorne and the Puritan environment he depicts. He presents the community itself, its common people, its magistrates and clergy, its customs, temper, and ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... less peaceable household; but they would have been a much jollier and really more harmonious one. Mr. Copperhead himself somewhat despised his elder sons, who were like himself, only less rich, less vigorous, and less self-assertive. He saw, oddly enough, the coarseness of their manners, and even of their ways of thinking; but yet he was a great deal more comfortable, more at his ease among them, than he was when seated opposite his trembling, deprecating, frightened little wife, or that huge youth who cost him so much ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... you then; you talk so much!" And Penrod handed the weapon scornfully to Sam, who at once became less self-assertive. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... the White House six months the country was divided substantially into Jackson men and anti-Jackson or administration men. The elements from which Jackson drew support were many and discordant. The backbone of his strength was the self-assertive, ambitious western Democracy, which recognized in him its truest and most eminent representative. The alliance with the Calhoun forces was kept up, although it was already jeopardized by the feeling of the South Carolinian's friends that they, and not Jackson's friends, should lead in ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... that ever lived; but one of the first illustrations of his character was in slaying an Egyptian who insulted his people. The meek man of the Bible is simply what we call the gentle-man—the man without swagger or arrogance, not self-assertive or forthputting, but honorable and considerate. This is the sense in which it has been said of Jesus that he was the first of gentlemen. Now these people, the gracious and generous,—not the self-important and ostentatious,—are, according to Jesus, in the end to rule. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... help enjoying the thought of how surprised his sister would be. Marie-Anne had doubtless pictured Mrs. Bailey as belonging to the rather hard, self-assertive type of young Englishwoman of whom Paris sees a great deal. But Sylvia looked girlishly ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... she is perhaps kindly enough—yet she is punished only because she and her lad made a blundering choice before their judgments were formed. But, if the woman is spirited and aggressive, then the lookers-on see part of a hideous game which might well frighten the bravest into celibacy. She is self-assertive, she desires—very rightly—to be first, and at the first symptom of a slight from her husband she begins the process of nagging. The man is refined, and the coarseness which he did not perceive before marriage strikes him like a venomed ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the quieter tints of the day that brought him satisfaction and enabled him to melt into insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These English clashed about him like a brass band, making him feel vaguely that he ought to be more self-assertive and obstreperous, and that he did not claim insistently enough all kinds of things that he didn't want and that were really valueless, such as corner seats, windows up or ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the day, being mercilessly snubbed, when he indulged in paradoxes, by the old wine-merchant, or being told to hold his tongue by the grim old mother, and obeying cheerfully and sweetly, would have preferred him to have been loud, contradictory, and self-assertive? The mischief of our present system of publicity is that we cannot enjoy our own ideas, unless we can impress people with them, or, at all events, impress people with a sense of our enjoyment of them. There is a noble piece of character-drawing ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at once soft and desolate stole upon her, and made her cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reflected. This was marked in fact by modesty and melancholy of color-scheme. But that did not interfere with beauty, he maintained. He had been thrilled by the discovery in the Siena gallery of an old master with the same predilections as he, an antipathy apparently to the vivid, crying, self-assertive colors, which he accordingly with admirable simplicity left out, and interpreted the world all in blues and greens, grays and violets, whites of many degrees and tones ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... self-assertive child cut in, "and you know there is really no use in taking me if I do not want to go. You know how much trouble it will make for ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... way out through the dark night into day. It's such a good candlestick, so highly polished. And sometimes the human candlestick itself gets things a bit mixed. It thinks, then it feels, then it knows, with a peculiar quality of self-assertive certainty, that after all it is the light that lighteth every one that is so blessed as to come within the radius of its shining. And brass does take a high polish, and makes an attractive appearance. It does send out a sparkle and radiance if only it is somewhere within range ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... carriage which the lady had entered, he walked further along the platform. He was much less self-assertive in his progress. He threaded his way instead of elbowing it through the crowd. The most fragile peeress might have jostled him, and he would ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... a week of a rather faultfinding, self-assertive state, during which she demanded to be allowed to go home, saying indignantly that she was not a wicked woman, had done nothing to be kept a prisoner here; she wanted justice because another patient had called her crazy. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... world's history is to be found a more beautiful or valuable incident than this? A group of men, self-centred, self-assertive, have found a poor woman who, in her blindness and weakness, has committed an error, the same one that they, in all probability, have committed not once, but many times; for the rule is that they are first to condemn who are-most at fault themselves. They bring her to the ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... mathematical, have been developed in individual women, we meet the different types which have made themselves prominent in history. The queens of France, in general, have been submissive and pious, dutiful and virtuous wives, while the mistresses have been bold and frivolous, licentious and self-assertive. The women outside of these spheres either looked on with indifference or regret at the all-powerfulness of this latter class, unable to change conditions, or themselves enjoyed the privilege of ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... heels of the sonnet came, as was natural, according to the law of reaction, a fresh and more appalling, because more self-assertive and verisimilous invasion of the commonplace. What a foolish, unreal thing he had written! He caught up his hat and stick and hurried out, thinking to combat the demon better in ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... while the corrodies, the daily hospitality, the employment of labour, and such things, lay either out of sight, or affected only certain individuals. Characters too that were chiefly stirred by such arguments, were those of the noisy and self-assertive faction; while those who saw a little deeper into things, and understood the enormous charities of the Religious Houses and the manner in which extreme poverty was kept in check by them,—even more, those who valued the spiritual benefits that flowed from the fact of their existence, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... just beginning to be a salesman in a bond house. Johnny became violently communicative about the attractions of Dellwood Park and seemed to want to figure demonstratively in the eyes of Gertrude and Adele as an up-and-coming paladin of the business world. To most of us he seemed too self-assertive, too self-assured. He knew too clearly what he wanted, and showed it too clearly. Indeed it became apparent to me that while a boy of twelve may be accepted easily (at least in an early, simple society), a ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... continue, 'feel tired and sleepy. They are fast closing' repeating in a soothing tone the words 'sleepy, sleepy, sleep.' Then in a self-assertive tone, I emphasize the suggestion by saying in an unhesitating and positive ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... which he spoke so readily, and the evident mastery which he would some day show in the management of a business which extended over the five parts of the world. In his childhood, among his brothers and sisters, Ambroise had always been the boldest, most captivating and self-assertive. The others might be better than he, but he reigned over them like a handsome, ambitious, greedy boy, a future man of gayety and conquest. And this indeed he proved to be; by the charm of his victorious intellect he conquered old Du Hordel in ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... seeing that there was a mighty scramble for commissions, nine out of every ten patriots, however raw, clamouring to be officers; and it shows that sometimes (though 'tis not often) modest merit will win as well as self-assertive incompetence. Philip had obtained his acquaintance with military forms from books; he was, in his ability to assimilate the matter of a book, an exception among men; and a still greater exception in his ability to apply that matter practically. Indeed, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... there was no trace of this fancied rusticity—how could there be, indeed, in one trained in society almost from the cradle?—and his voice was soft and musical. I have seen it stated that he was pompous, self-assertive, and dictatorial. That his manners, formed by his mother and his aunt on eighteenth-century models, and perfected in Paris among the traditions of the ancien regime, had about them nothing of the 'hail fellow, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... heavily against Jock. And Jock is well known to all of us. Nobody likes him, and nobody knows why they don't like him. In many respects he is a paragon of goodness. He loves his church, or he would not have stuck to it year in and year out as he has done. He is not self-assertive; he is quite willing to efface his own personality and be invisible. He is generous to a fault. Nobody is more eager to do anything for the general good. And yet nobody likes him. The only thing against him is that he has never disciplined himself to get on with ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the character of the people, their grasp of nature, and their own conception of themselves and their relation to the world, can be seen.[49-*] Some languages have the strong impress of impersonality, without any loss of virility; others are strongly egotistic and self-assertive, with perhaps the braggart's lack of genuine strength. Each spoken language that we know has its own color and tone, to which our thought must respond, if we would know and use it well. To speak good Swedish, for instance, requires clear ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... heaven, if they were but dealt with according to their true position in regard to us. They are, in sense very real and divine, our kindred. If I call them our poor relations, it is to suggest that poor relations are often ill used. Relatives, poor or rich, may be such ill behaved, self-assertive, disagreeable persons, that we cannot treat them as we gladly would; but our endeavour should be to develop every true relation. He who is prejudiced against a relative because he is poor, is himself an ill-bred relative, and to be ill-bred is an excluding fault with ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... can I stop it when my lady will not have the maidens kept ever at their distaffs and needles in seemly fashion," cried a small but stout and self-assertive dame, known as "Mother of the Maidens," then starting, "Oh! my lady, I crave your pardon, I knew not you were in this coil! And if the men-at-arms be let to have their perilous goods strewn all over the place, no wonder ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... together—the trainer and the trained—moved by the same magnetic impulse of a noble devotion. It is purely gratuitous to assume, because women generally have discredited the dogma of Woman Suffrage, that they have therefore no just conception of rights. Women are as ambitious, as self-assertive, as are men. They deal more naturally with abstractions, and are more tenacious of purpose. They are impatient of hindrance, and it is inconsistent with facts to infer that they have been "stifling generous impulses for their own larger freedom," at the dictation of their own ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... The Mayor, storekeeper and postmaster, arrogant, ignorant and powerful in a self-assertive way, large, fat ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... perhaps, think that this declaration is somewhat autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel with the novelist for wanting to be an historian, and will call him to account for writing politics. I am simply fulfilling an obligation—that is my reply. The work I have undertaken ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... departed. Marmaduke was for taking his leave too. All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly returned. His cousin stood for everything he detested—swagger, arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby rakishness of his attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak of a nose which he had inherited from his father, the Rector. He dreaded his aggressive masculinity. He had come back with the same insulting speech on his lips. His finger-nails were dreadful. Marmaduke desired as little as possible of his odious company. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Seated, he was more self-assertive. He flung back the wings of his cape with a gesture which, had not those wings been waterproof, might have seemed to hurl defiance at things in general. And he ordered an absinthe. "Je me tiens toujours fidele," he told Rothenstein, "a ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... seen. He was considerably over six feet, with a small head, and delicate, if not fine features, a gentle look in his blue eyes, and a slow clear voice, which sounded as if it were thinking about every word it uttered. The hot sun of India seemed to have burned out everything self-assertive, leaving him quietly and rather ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... simply—less epigrammatically. He spoke of this once to me, saying: "I am at my best when alone; even one companion deflects me. I find myself wishing to please him, pinching off roughnesses, perfuming truth, diplomatising. This ought not to be, of course; and if one was not thorny, self-assertive, stupid, it would not be so; and every companion added makes me worse, because the strain of accommodation grows—I become vulgar and rough and boisterous in a large circle. I often feel: 'How these young men must be hating this gibbering and giggling ape, which after all is not really me!'" ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... steamers have always had their duplicates on many other oceans, lakes, and rivers. There is the ubiquitous tug; stubby, noisy, self-assertive, small; but, in its several varieties, the handiest {152} all-round little craft afloat. It is worth noting that in the special class of sea tugs the Dutch, and not the British, are easily first: a curious exception ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... domestic story, in which we see the failure of an essentially self-seeking and self-assertive nature to secure happiness to itself or bestow it upon others, and the triumph of gentleness, love, and unselfish service, in the person of ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... petticoats, and seeking to make him more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and destroyed her own influence. During his early growth the boy had yielded to her without revolt, because he was more modest than self-assertive—had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother's hold. Had she let ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... my hair in its course in a fashion that was anything but reassuring. I have often thought since of how I expected the thing to go off at any second, and how I was—for it's a fact—more curious than frightened about it. But the sense of self-preservation was on me, self-assertive enough, and I obliged him, stumbling in at the door under the pressure of his strong arm and of the revolver, and beginning to boggle at the first steps—old and much worn ones, which were deeply hollowed in the middle. He shoved ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... is not much opportunity for the development of individuality. There are few personal possessions, there is little scope for the exercise of peculiar talents, there is little power of reflection, to develop strongly individual ideas. The self-assertive instincts are to considerable extent still dormant for lack of stimulus to call them forth. The individual is content to take his place in the group life, and it seldom occurs to him to question ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... beside her wooer shot a rapid sidelong glance at his white face, and for the first time in their acquaintance felt a thrill of respect akin to fear, sweep in his direction across her gay self-assertive nature. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the only male member of the happy woodland family. His indulgent sisters tolerated his bouncing, familiar manners as if they were born to be his playthings—he was so serious and yet so droll, so stupidly self-assertive and yet so irresistibly affectionate! He seemed to take his pleasures sadly, wearing, if such be possible to a fox, an air of melancholy disdain; and yet his beady eyes were ever on the lookout for mischief, and for the chance of a helter-skelter romp with ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... a little wanting in animation," said Lady Torrington, "but that is a fault which one can forgive nowadays when so many girls run into the opposite extreme and become self-assertive." ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... work had power to inspire, to transmit enthusiasm to others, and thus he was responsible for much of the improvement in decorative art, the re-establishment of that art upon an intellectual basis. Designs from his hands were full, splendid and self-assertive; harmony and proportion were there. A study of the Antony and Cleopatra series and of the plates given in this volume will establish ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... she looked down at his head, knew that there were a dozen absurd wishes in her heart, none of which could possibly ever become facts. He was so different from the self-assertive young men she knew, with their silly flirtations, their inane small-talk, their capacity for Scotch whisky and long hours. For days she had studied him as through microscopic lenses; his guilelessness was real. It just simply could ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... I did not heed them. For instance, Mrs. Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exercised tremendous social power in the university town, and from them emanated the sentiment that I was a too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous penchant for officiousness and interference in other persons' affairs. This I thought no more than natural, considering the part I had played in investigating the case of Jackson's arm. But the effect of such a sentiment, enunciated ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... He believed this condition could be deliberately induced by a kind of relaxation of the will, and by a stilling of the busy intellect and striving desires. It is a purifying process, an emptying out of all that is worrying, self-assertive, and self-seeking. If we can habitually train ourselves and attune our minds to this condition, we may at any moment come across something which will arouse our emotions, and it is then, when our emotions—thus purified—are excited to the point of passion, ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... a very mean station, and Mitchell thought he had better go himself and beard the overseer for tucker. His mates were for waiting till the overseer went out on the run, and then trying their luck with the cook; but the self-assertive and diplomatic ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... experience I have not met a quarter dozen who have not cheerfully put aside their selfishness for the common good of their associates and their work. Indeed, I have found my Northern brethren more willing and helpful in this regard, perhaps, than Southern Negroes, who are more self-assertive and persistent in their make-up, a spirit imbibed from the general character of independence and domineering found in the South. But the Southern Negro, reared in harmony with Southern institutions, having assimilated prejudices ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman was Young London personified—blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. "Never say die" was his motto, and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long he was noisy, and all night ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Allan's widely flying, largely read verses, which every gamin of the streets knew by heart, in his childhood. And though they might not be in general of a very ennobling quality, there are glimpses of a higher poetry to come in some of these productions, and a great deal of cheerful self-assertive content and local patriotism, as well as of rough fun and jest. If it were not for the very unnecessary introduction of Apollo as the god to whom "the bard" addresses his wishes, there would be something not unworthy of Burns in the following lines. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... carpet. It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his father was 'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes, his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk. And without a word he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade. He heard the word, "Val!" behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted steps past the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dark-brown eyes were fixed incessantly on Rosemary McClean's back. Whenever she turned a corner in the crowded maze of streets, he would spur on in a hurry until she was in sight again, and then his handsome, swarthy face would light with pleasure—wicked pleasure—self-assertive, certain, cruel. He would rein in again to let ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... specimen of the same type, clad in the skin of what was once a magnificent goat. She carried only a single small knife in her belt. As seen reflected in pools of water, her complexion was slightly paler and her whole expression a little less self-assertive and distinctively philosophical. To those who admire serious, thoughtful women of regular feature and different manner, Rolla would have seemed ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... curiosity that seemed to throw him a challenge. Never in his life had Claude received such a look. It was perhaps the characteristic look of the girl of the twentieth century. It was neither bold nor rude nor self-assertive, but it was unconscious, inquiring, and unabashed. For Claude it was a new experience, calling out in him ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... field; and even in landscape, in genre, in animal painting, he was a very superior man. In fact Velasquez is one of the few great painters in European history for whom there is nothing but praise. He was the full-rounded complete painter, intensely individual and self-assertive, and yet in his art recording in a broad way the Spanish type and life. He was the climax of Spanish painting, and after him there was a rather swift decline, as had been the case ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... by your most zealous energy. On an ungenerous soil it is vain to look for rich crops. Your average mortal will be your average mortal still: and if he grow conscious of power, if he becomes vocal and self-assertive, if he get into his hands all the material resources of the country, why, you have a state of things such as at present looms menacingly before every Englishman blessed—or cursed—with ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... One of the most self-assertive of birds of the island is also one of the least—the sun-bird (CINNYRIS FRENATA). Garbed in rich olive green, royal blue, and bright yellow, and of a quick and lively disposition, small as he is, he is always before his public, never forgetful ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of the sailing ship is popularly expected as one of the first developments of the twentieth century in maritime traffic. Steam, which for oversea trade made its entrance cautiously in the shape of a mere auxiliary to sail power, had taken up a much more self-assertive position long before the close of the nineteenth century, and has driven its former ally almost out of the field in large departments of the shipping industry. Yet a curious and interesting counter ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... its human aspect, to mean the growth of a new and wider consciousness above the keen, self-assertive consciousness of the individual; a superseding of the personal by the humane; a change from egotism to a more universal understanding; so that each shall act, not in order to gain an advantage over others, but rather ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... this Christianity of his, a Christianity completely different from what we are accustomed to, that we find the explanation of his extraordinary interest in the "weak" as opposed to the "strong." The association between Christianity and a certain masterful, moral, self-assertive energy, such as we feel the presence of in England and America, might well tend to make it difficult for us to understand his meaning. It is precisely this sort of thing that makes it difficult for us to understand Russia ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... wanted, and, while Tishy M'Crum stitched up a rent in the bag, Mrs. M'Gurk noticed where little Katty, who had been "took bad wid a could these three days," rustled uncomfortably among wisps of rushes and rags in an obscure corner. Fever made her bold and self-assertive, for she was wishing nothing less than that her daddy would get her an orange—"An or'nge wid yeller peel round it"—Katty laid stress upon this point—"like the one her mammy got her a long time ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... train my voice to mouth out short, thick words, As Bosh! Trash! Fudge! Rot! And I'll cultivate An Abernethian, self-assertive style, That men may think there is a deal more in My solid head than e'er comes out. My hair I'll cut ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... a reminiscence of contemporary Warwickshire life as literal as the name of the hamlet where the drunkard dwelt. There was a genuine Stephen Sly who was in the dramatist's day a self-assertive citizen of Stratford; and 'Greece,' whence 'old John Naps' derived his cognomen, is an obvious misreading of Greet, a hamlet by Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, not far removed ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of American independence, the fact that the ethnic stock was overwhelmingly British stands out most prominently. We shall never know the exact ratios between the Scotch and the English, the Welsh and the Irish blended in this hardy, self-assertive, and fecund strain. But we do know that the language, the political institutions, and the common law as practiced and established in London had a predominating influence on the destinies of the United States. While the colonists drifted far from the religious establishments of the ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth |
