"Assert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... masters. Under thin and dubious claims by right of discovery, through the immense energy and daring of her explorers, the heroic zeal of her missionaries, and not so much by the prowess of her soldiers as by her craft in diplomacy with savage tribes, France was to assert and make good her title to the basin of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, and the basin of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, through ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... very well worth considering whether the United States should not reestablish the 31st of December in Manila, and assert that we hold title to the Philippines not only by the victories of the fleet and armies of the United States, but by the favor of Alexander VI, whose bull the Spaniards disregarded after it had grown venerable with three centuries of usage. We quote a Spanish historian who colors his chapters ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... encouraging. I lay down, then, as one of the canons for testing a poet's greatness, this, "Is he sane?" and purpose applying the canon to Robert Browning, giving results of such application rather than the modus operandi of such results. I assert that he bears the test. No saner man than Browning ever walked this world's streets. He was entirely human in his love of life for its own sake, in his love of nature and friends and wife and child. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... you that what is called [1] "the intricate variety in husbandry" [2] presents no difficulty. I use a phrase of those who, whatever the nicety with which they treat the art in theory, [3] have but the faintest practical experience of tillage. What they assert is, that "he who would rightly till the soil must first be made acquainted with the nature of ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... Psychological Materialism, if carried out fully and fairly to its conclusions, thus inevitably results in theological Atheism; as it has been well expressed by Dr. Henry More, Nullus in microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus. I do not, of course, mean to assert that all materialists deny or actually disbelieve a God. For, in very many cases, this would be at once an unmerited compliment to their reasoning, and an unmerited reproach to their faith."—Lectures, vol. i, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... the occupation of the United States. To Adams he wrote that the doctrine assumed by the State Department with respect to the non-ratified treaty with Spain was not generally admitted in Europe, and that "he thought it equally dangerous and inconsistent with our general principles to assert that we had a right to seize a vessel for any cause short of piracy in a place where we did not previously claim jurisdiction." Mr. Gallatin succeeded in satisfying M. Pasquier that the seizure was not in violation of the law of ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the congress on the 26th of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... and girls during the long vacation. They stretch, these camps, in rapidly extending area from Canada through Maine and northern New England, into the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies, and then across toward the Northwest and the Rockies. It is quite safe to assert that there is not a private school of importance that does not take under its protection and support at least one such institution, while large numbers of teachers either own camps or assist in their ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... more direct attempts to conceive and assert a future life. Their failure drives us to a consideration of indirect attempts to establish an unobservable but real immortality through revelation and dogma. Such an immortality would follow on transmigration or resurrection, and would be assigned to a supernatural sphere, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... with promises you meant only to break. Even your pretended engagement to Marjie you kept from her, and when she found it out, you declared it was false. And more, when with her own ears she heard you assert it as a fact, you sought to pacify her with promises of pleasures bought with sin. You are a property thief, a receiver of stolen goods, a defamer of character. Your hand was on the torch to burn this town. You juggled with the official records in the courthouse. You would ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... such a Church unspiritual men are made to mediate spiritual gifts, but happily we may distinguish character and office. Nor must we be deterred from asserting our convictions by the indignant protests which we are sure to hear, that we are 'unchurching' the non-episcopal bodies,[29] We do not assert that God is tied to His covenant, but only ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... life; as a zealot, a bigot, a would-be persecutor; an interesting survival of the Middle Age; a monk who had strayed into politics. To-day we salute him as the one Member of Parliament who has had the courage to affirm the supremacy of the moral law, and to assert the imperious claim which Christianity makes on the whole of ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... play a little, sew, and take care of their houses and children. When I say they read, I mean they know how to read; when I say they write, I do not mean that they can always spell; and when I say they play, I do not assert that they have generally a knowledge of music. If we compare their education with that of girls in England, or in the United States, it is not a comparison, but a contrast. Compare it with that of Spanish women, and we shall be less severe ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard cold-blooded declaimers assert, that these shades of science are become the retreats of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation, I consider them as the great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the belles lettres. By the belles lettres, I mean history, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the business of fiction is to exhibit human life, can deny that scenes of misery and crime must of necessity, while human nature remains what it is, form part of that exhibition. Nobody can assert that such scenes are unproductive of useful results, when they are turned to a plainly and purely moral purpose. If I am asked why I have written certain scenes in this book, my answer is to be found in the universally-accepted truth which the preceding words ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the amount of great little heroisms, which are being, as I assert, enacted around us every day, no one has a right to say, what we are all tempted to say at times—"How can I be heroic? This is no heroic age, setting me heroic examples. We are growing more and more comfortable, frivolous, pleasure-seeking, money-making; more and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... often to amuse him, and he always felt more at home with her than with the other two. She had only been a gawky and thin fifteen or sixteen when she began to assert herself in his kitchen, dictate to Kow, and waste good butter and eggs on experiments. He had secretly rather admired her quick tongue and her daring, he liked her to ride his horses, and was amazed at the speed with which she grasped the controlling principles of the motor-car. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... will, madame," he said, striving to assert himself, but cutting a poor figure, "I fancied that I saw Madame ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... school-superintendents, professional men, and others, strongly affirm that Lake Itasca is not the source of the Mississippi, but that the lake to the south of it, definitely located by Captain Glazier, is the primal reservoir or true source of the Father of Waters. These witnesses, moreover, unequivocally assert that the credit of the discovery should be awarded to the man who made it, notwithstanding the groundless opposition of a few cavillers who have never themselves visited within many hundred miles a region they affect to be so marvelously ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Athanasius, the Homoousian party chose Peter as his successor in the bishopric, overlooking Lucius, the Arian bishop, whose election had been approved by the emperors Julian, Jovian, and Valens. But as the Egyptian church had lost its great champion, the emperor ventured to re-assert his authority. He sent Peter to prison, and ordered all the churches to be given up to the Arians, threatening with banishment from Egypt whoever disobeyed his edict. The persecution which the Homoousian party throughout Upper Egypt then ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... to prove a negative, that, if a man should assert that the moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable substance of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I might be puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar cheese, I call on him to prove ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... accepted standards divests, in his mind, the act itself of turpitude. That seems to be the way he looked upon his former Eastern encrouchments. That's the way he justified his subterranean deals with the KAISER; and he even goes so far as to assert that 'if the Vyborg-Bjoerkesund treaty had not been denounced the present war would not have happened.' He speaks of this a little passionately, scorning the very memory of Count Witte for 'questioning the morality of that arrangement.' That great Minister my prisoner ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... them, and thenceforward, the curse having exhausted itself for the time being, he had prospered—at any rate to a moderate extent. But if once more he began to interfere with Lysbeth van Goorl and her relatives, might it not re-assert its power? That was one question. Was it worth while to take his risk on the chance of securing Brant's fortune? That was another. Brant, it was true, was only a cousin of Lysbeth's husband, but when once you meddled with a member of the family, it was impossible to know how soon other members ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... substantial economic liberty and material equality; religion does not affect us at all, and certainly does not help to solve the practical problems of human life." Differing from both, the Anti-Revolutionists assert, "Whosoever leaves the firm ground of God's Word, the Holy Scriptures, as the only true basis for public and private action, can have neither sound politics nor sound economics." The Roman Catholics also put religion on the first plane, but they are in the most difficult position ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... Physician. Strangers of intelligence often remark that, with unbounded means of happiness, affluence for every reasonable want, security against every danger, and the high prerogatives of conscious and elevated freedom, we are still the most unhappy of the sons of Adam. They assert that we grow old before our time; are restless, excitable, and ever worrying for an attainment, in reference to some ruling passion beyond our reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... added or subjoined. Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should not hold myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna maketh no bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite. Though this much of Triboulet's words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the prejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet the rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... deeply engaged at the office this day about the ending of his accounts, wherein he is most unhappy to have to do with a company of fools who after they have signed his accounts and made bills upon them yet dare not boldly assert to the Treasurer that they are satisfied with his accounts. Hereupon all dinner, and walking in the garden the afternoon, he and I talking of the ill management of our office, which God knows is very ill for ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Restoration tragi-comedy. There is no record of its performance, and it never kept the boards. But although we have no direct evidence of its success, on the other hand it would be rash to suggest it was in any sense a failure. Indeed, since two editions were published we may safely assert its popularity. The actors' names are not preserved, but Mrs. Mary Lee doubtless created Cleomena; Mrs. Barry, Urania; Betterton, Thersander; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... quote the Indian sage only to mock him. Such assert that the beauties of the Himalayas have been greatly exaggerated—that, as regards grandeur, their scenery compares unfavourably with that of the Andes, while their beauty is surpassed by that of the Alps. Not having seen the Andes, I am unable to criticise the assertion regarding the grandeur ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... is of the meningeal type, symptoms of general purulent lepto-meningitis assert themselves, and soon come to dominate the clinical picture. Evidence of the presence of meningitis may be obtained by lumbar puncture. The mind at first is clear, but the patient is irritable; ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... be unchristian, but it is natural—nature is of God and will assert herself. No mawkish pretension, no hypocritical cant, can repress the natural feelings of the heart: its loves and resentments are its strongest passions, and the love that we bore for our children and kindred kindles to greater vigor in the hatred ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... creature in the world, like the greatest, has his duty. And—(though he is not sufficiently conscious of it)—he has also a power. Why should you think that your revolt will carry so little weight? A sturdy upright conscience which dares assert itself is a mighty thing. More than once during the last few years you have seen the State and public opinion forced to reckon with the views of an honest man, who had no other weapons but his own moral force, which, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... at loggerheads, at the end of the last debate. I doubted Demogorgon's conclusion, while admiring his eloquence. To-night, I will put before you the view exactly contrary to his. I do not assert that I hold this contrary view, but I state it as well as I am able, because I think that it has not been ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... rankling wound, not only by awakening the religious scruples of her daughter, but also by reminding her that she had been subjected to insult from a petty follower of a petty court; and, finally, she urged her to assert her dignity by an ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... were taxed to their uttermost for more than two hours before any sign of returning animation manifested itself; while it was not until the afternoon was well advanced that the medico was able to assert with assurance that the lad would recover. Even so, there was the probability that, with all the care and skilful treatment he could possibly receive, it would be at least three or four days before Julius could ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Jack started. "Fear of his wife, did you say, Miss Gladden? Pardon me, but I think that brute fears neither God, man nor devil, and how you can assert that he is in fear of his wife, whom he has always abused ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... think you will have your hands full,' he answered grimly. At the same time he stopped by a gesture those who would have cried out upon me, and looked at me himself with an altered countenance. 'Do I understand that you assert that the lady went of her own accord?' ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... engage in fights with German sailors; but for a civilized American, a graduate of a university, such things are impossible. And for a Queen! Can a queen brawl without hopeless loss of dignity? Her immediate impulse was to appeal to the captain of the steamer, to assert her right to enter the cave, to demand the immediate punishment of the ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Stoics, who maintain that all fools are mad, make the same inferences? for, take away perturbations, especially a hastiness of temper, and they will appear to talk very absurdly. But what they assert is this: they say that all fools are mad, as all dunghills stink; not that they always do so, but stir them, and you will perceive it. And in like manner, a warm-tempered man is not always in a passion; ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... did not know anything about it; but the Stork looked musing, nodded his head, and said: "Yes; I think I know; I met many ships as I was flying hither from Egypt; on the ships were magnificent masts, and I venture to assert that it was they that smelled so of fir. I may congratulate you, for they lifted themselves on ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... docile animals have been supposed capable of comprehending the meaning of a few individual words, but no one worthy of belief, has affirmed that they could understand a sentence or distinct proposition: still less, has any person, however confiding in the marvellous, ever ventured to assert that they were able to read. The important feature, and obvious utility of language, consists in the commutation of our perceptions for a significant sound or word, which by convention may be communicated to others, bearing a common and identical meaning. ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... the circumstances of 1850, and the first and most obvious fact is, that he was not fighting merely to gain time and obtain control of the general government. The crisis was grave and serious in the extreme, but neither war nor secession were imminent or immediate, nor did Mr. Webster ever assert that they were. He thought war and secession might come, and it was against this possibility and probability that he sought to provide. He wished to solve the great problem, to remove the source of danger, to set the ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... little avail to assert that there is an inherent right to own property unless there is an open opportunity that this right may be enjoyed in a fair degree by all. That which is referred to in such critical terms as capitalism cannot prevail unless it is ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... to-night!" We just mutually decided there was nothing else to do about it, so it was, "Let's work overtime to-night again." It was time-and-a-half pay for overtime, to be sure, but it would be safe to assert it was not alone for the time and a half we worked. We felt we had to catch up on orders. A few times only, some one by about four o'clock would call: "Oh, gee! I'm dead; I've been workin' like a horse all day. I jus' can't work overtime to-night." The chances were if one girl had ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... of affairs is more than sad, it is iniquitous. And therefore the Church must assert herself. The individual minister must assert himself, and claim a higher scale of remuneration. Help yourself, show push and principle, cultivate practical aims—that is what I preach to young men reading for Holy Orders. We have no place in these days for visionaries and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... assert that the Classis thus formed at Amoy is not a Classis de facto? or that the native pastors ordained and installed by that body are not scripturally set apart to their offices, and that its other acts are null ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... no less than by his impudent self-possession. He even asked himself why he should be tied to his mother's apron string, as Thomas expressed the subjection of the child to the parent. He was only a year younger than his companion, and he began to question whether it was not about time for him to assert his own independence, and cut the apron string when it pulled too hard ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... something of the history of the Gunpowder Treason: but it is also true, that very few are acquainted with those principles which gave it birth. We see, in this treason, to what lengths the principles of the Church of Rome have led their votaries: and who can assert that she is, in any respect, changed? The Romanist denies that the principles of his Church are changed: nay, he must do so, or renounce the doctrine of infallibility, which is incompatible with change: why, then, should Protestants volunteer assertions, respecting the altered character of Popery, ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... altogether unknown to the ancients. The reciprocal duties of master and apprentice make a considerable article in every modern code. The Roman law is perfectly silent with regard to them. I know no Greek or Latin word (I might venture, I believe, to assert that there is none) which expresses the idea we now annex to the word apprentice, a servant bound to work at a particular trade for the benefit of a master, during a term of years, upon condition that the master shall teach ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... where we arrived rather late in the evening, we first found decided marks of a revolutionary state of things. No orders were sent by either party. The king and his government were too imminently in personal danger to assert their rights, or retain their authority for directing the provinces; Bonaparte and his followers and supporters were too much engrossed by taking possession of the capital, and too uncertain of their success, to try a power which had as yet no basis, or risk a disobedience which they ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... showed themselves cruel in the killing of the Chinese. It is quite probable, considering the rancor and hate with which they were regarded. But their commanders contributed to it also by their example. It is said that more than 23,000 Chinese were killed. "Some assert that the number of Sangleys killed was greater, but in order that the illegality committed in allowing so many to enter the country contrary to the royal prohibitions might not be known, the officials covered up or diminished the number of those who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... keeping things long beyond the date assigned by nature; and one of her master-strokes was, in the middle of summer, to surprise a whole company with gooseberry tarts made of gooseberries of the preceding year; and her triumph was complete when any of them were so polite as to assert that they might have passed upon them for the fruits of the present season. Another art in which she flattered herself she was unrivalled was that of making things pass for what they were not; thus, she gave pork for lamb—common fowls ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... street and left them there, so evidently regarding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind acquiesce in the great mother's estimate of her offspring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what superior claim can I assert for mine? And how difficult to believe that anything so precious as a germ of immortal growth can have been buried under this dirt-heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice! As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me with surprise and loathsome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... did not care to assert an authority which might not be heeded, and answered, "Let him enjoy himself with the rest. Young ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... good uncle was a man of deep learning - a fact I am most anxious to assert and reassert. Sometimes he might irretrievably injure a specimen by his too great ardour in handling it; but still he united the genius of a true geologist with the keen eye of the mineralogist. Armed with his hammer, his steel pointer, his magnetic needles, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... was the second king of the Stuart dynasty, whose despotic tendencies made the seventeenth century a memorable period in history. He ascended the throne at the age of twenty-five, and began at once to assert his belief in the divine right of kings. Indignant at the restraints which Parliament set upon his power, he dissolved ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... replied; "sharp going while it lasts, and a little knack wanted to stick them scientifically. Some say it's more exciting than fox-hunting, but that's childish; I never heard a man assert it whose liver was not on the wane. It's more dangerous, certainly. A header into the Smite or the Whissendine is nothing to a fall backward into a nullah, with a beaten horse on the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... celibacy of the priest, all meant as much to the Gallican as to the Ultramontane. Nor did the Pope's headship prove a stumbling-block in so far as it was limited to things spiritual. The Gallican did, indeed, assert the subjection of the Pope to a General Council, quoting in his support the decrees of Constance and Basel. But in the seventeenth century this was a theoretical contention. What Louis XIV and Bossuet strove for was the limitation of papal power in matters affecting property and political rights. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... showed somehow, from afar, as so lost, so indistinct and illusory, in the great alkali desert of cheap Divorce. She had him even in bondage, poor man, had him in contempt, had him in remembrance so imperfect as barely to assert itself, but she had him, none the less, in existence unimpeached: the Miss Lutches had seen him in the flesh—as they had appeared eager to mention; though when they were separately questioned their descriptions ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Let us now examine the evidence given in these men's names. The earliest witness is Paul. Paul does not corroborate the Gospel writers' statements as to the life or the teachings of Christ; but he does vehemently assert that Christ rose from ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... and screw up your eyes, and cleave your way through it, and on it went, quite unconcerned with your moods and tenses! If Stephen Burns were only more like that, she thought to herself! But, alas! poor Stephen, with all his strong claims to affection and esteem, could not assert the remotest kinship with the whistling winds and blinding snow which ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... reason that it is not mine. Perhaps that is the best division of all. Thine eye is necessarily, fatally, irrevocably evil, because mine is essentially, predestinately, and unchangeably good. If I secretly adopt your idea, I openly assert that it was never yours at all, but mine from the beginning, by the prerogatives of greater age, wider experience, and immeasurably superior wisdom. If you have an idea upon any subject, I will utterly annihilate it to my own most profound satisfaction; if you have none ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... son. I trust you will return from Australia in a position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the Colonies, nothing that I would call society; so when you have made your fortune you must come back and assert yourself in London." ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all National Governments. It is safe to assert that no Government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever.... I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... previous years of the wild life of a soldier of fortune. His host's young daughter had eyes like Aldonza, and the almost forgotten possibility of returning to his love a brave and distinguished man awoke once more. His burgher thrift began to assert itself again, and he deposited a nest-egg from the ransoms of his prisoners in the hands of his host, who gave him bonds by which he could recover the sum from Lombard ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... The drinking at the White Horse, where the literary circle met of which Lomax had been so long an ornament, had been of late going from bad to worse. The households of the wits concerned were up in arms; neighbourhood and police began to assert themselves. One night the trembling Dora waited hour after hour for her father. About midnight he staggered in, maddened with drink and fresh from a skirmish with the police. Finding her there waiting for him, pale and silent, he ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... angry with us just now, and the Madrid papers publish statements which assert that there is no possibility of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 49, October 14, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... lady of rank; and there were other moments when she felt and spoke as might have become the cook in the kitchen. Beneath these superficial inconsistencies, the great heart, the essentially true and generous nature of the woman, only waited the sufficient occasion to assert themselves. In the trivial intercourse of society she was open to ridicule on every side of her. But when a serious emergency tried the metal of which she was really made, the people who were loudest in laughing at her stood aghast, and wondered what had become of the familiar ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... had heard with great uneasiness that Havelok had become King of Denmark, and intended to invade England with a mighty army to assert his wife's right to the throne. He recognised that his own device to shame Goldborough had turned against him, and that he must now fight for his life and the usurped dominion he held over England. Godrich summoned his army to Lincoln for the defence of the realm ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... four years ago, in 1856, by a translation of "Faust," he set himself at the head of living authors in this department of literature. It is little to say of his work, that it is the best of the numerous English renderings of Goethe's tragedy. It is not extravagant to assert that a better translation is scarcely possible. It is a work which combines extraordinary fidelity to the form of the original with true appreciation of its spirit. It is at once literal and free, and displays in its execution the qualities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... back into its holster, and faced the prisoner, who had recovered from his first shock of surprise, and whose pugnacious temper was beginning to assert itself. Brennan read this in the man's sulky, defiant glance, and ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say that he begged the lady's pardon, but that he could not do as she requested; that though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was impossible by comparison with the slight difficulty to her party to back their light carriages. As fate would have it, the incident with Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself, his confidence ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... clearly in the New Testament and voiced so powerfully by Lactantius and St. Augustine—held back this current of thought for many centuries. Still, the better tendency in humanity continued to assert itself. There was, indeed, an influence coming from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves which wrought powerfully to this end; for, in spite of all that Lactantius or St. Augustine might say as to the futility of any study of Nature, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... puny freedoms, that shew my love and my folly at the same time. But, begone! said he, taking my hand, and tossing it from him, and learn another conduct and more wit; and I will lay aside my foolish regard for you, and assert myself. Begone! said he, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... in the interests of French prestige to pay a few francs for the cleansing of such a place in a land where, as conquerors, they live on a pedestal and are to assert their superiority in every way. It will be long ere Arabs can appreciate French art and science, but they understand visible trifles of this kind, and, conversing with them, I have found that, like many simple-minded people, they are disposed to contrast unfavourably their own burial-grounds ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 464-462 B.C.) he went to Athens, which was rapidly becoming the headquarters of Greek culture. There he is said to have remained for thirty years. Pericles learned to love and admire him and the poet Euripides derived from him an enthusiasm for science and humanity. Some authorities assert that even Socrates was among his disciples. His influence was due partly to his astronomical and mathematical eminence, but still more to the ascetic dignity of his nature and his superiority to ordinary weaknesses—traits which legend has embalmed. It was he who brought philosophy and the spirit ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Unfortunately, however, for their agreement, the division was soon seen to be no equal one. Whatever might be the ultimate recuperative power of Social Democracy, for the time being, in the paralysis of Liberalism, the Imperial reaction had things all to itself. The governing classes of England were to assert themselves. They were to consolidate the Empire, incidentally passing the steam roller over two obstructive republics. They were to "teach the law" to the "sullen new-caught peoples" abroad. They were to re-establish the Church at home by the endowment of doctrinal education. At the same time they ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... Jacqueline Had a nose aquiline; And would assert rude Things of Miss Gertrude; While Mr. Marmion Led a great army on, Making Kehama look Like a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... YOU ever hear of one, Van? Did you, my poor Mitchy? But you see for yourselves," she wound up with a sigh and before either could answer, "how inferior we've become when we have even in our defence to assert ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... economy of mechanical power was not yet operative to any appreciable extent in concentrating labour, certain other notable economics of large-scale production were beginning to assert themselves in all the leading manufactures. Indeed so powerful are some of the economies of division of labour and co-operation even in a primitive condition of the industrial arts, that Professor Ashley considers it not improbable that the great ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... all to the good there, that must be our goal," Bluff hastened to assert; for indeed since there was no other similar projection of the shore in sight, it seemed reasonable to believe Cabin Point was ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... to the only possible answer, which consists in distinguishing between the substance and the form. When we assert that all creeds, widely held and long retained, have truth, we mean substantial truth. We do not mean that they are true in their formal statement, which may be an erroneous statement, but that they are true as to their contents. The substance of the belief is the fact inwardly beheld ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... medical certificates to enable us to assert that whenever the lawyer ate fish he promptly had to go to bed. He was forced to say that if they chased him from the house with boiling water he could not venture to put his ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... even these; for they acknowledge it an evil, though they contend it exists by divine ordination, just as they assert Original Sin to be the offspring of Eternal Decrees; but they no more convince the Slaveholder, that he loves his bondman as himself, than they convict him of the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... which he understood to be offered is to him so tempting a sum, that he would need very little encouragement to undertake the management of the experiment; and from what I know of him I will venture to assert that he will succeed, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the sun, has also a great luminous ring, which supplies that earth with much, although reflected, light. How is it possible for any one who is acquainted with these facts, and thinks from reason, to assert that ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... just enough of its faint and fluctuating light, to render objects visible, dimly revealing their forms and proportions. The trapper, by exercising that species of influence, over his companions, which experience and decision usually assert, in cases of emergency, had effectually succeeded in concealing them in the grass, and by the aid of the feeble rays of the luminary, he was enabled to scan the disorderly party which was riding, like so ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a look for him who leaned in gloomy admiration against the wall and never took his eyes off her. He became jealous, moody, ugly-tempered and finally had the good luck to get his conge as the result of an attempt to assert himself and limit her dances. She was blithe and radiant and fancy free when Frank Garrison reached the post, a wee bit hipped, it was whispered, because of the failure of a somewhat half-hearted suit of his in the far East, and the Fairy bounded ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... contact; every atom has a sphere of repulsion;—Things are, and are not, at the same time;—and the like. All the universe over, there is but one thing, this old Two-Face, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any proposition may be affirmed or denied. Very fitly therefore I assert that every man is a partialist, that nature secures him as an instrument by self-conceit, preventing the tendencies to religion and science; and now further assert, that, each man's genius being nearly and affectionately explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his nature is found to ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... violence, but I am thoroughly determined to stand no nonsense, and shall not hesitate to suppress by every means in the power of the majority—including, if need be, Prussian measures—any whisper from those misguided and unpatriotic persons whose so-called principles induce them to assert their right to have opinions of their own. This has ever been a free country, and they shall not imperil its freedom by their volubility and self-conceit." Here Mr. Lavender paused for breath, and in the darkness a faint ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reason this term of years in which he may be said to own his property is divided into two terms, so that at the end of the first he is compelled to re-assert his ownership by renewing his copyright, or he must lose all ownership at the end of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by a letter addressed to the said Warren Hastings, require him to surrender the keys of Fort William, and of the Company's treasuries; but the said Warren Hastings did positively refuse to comply with the said requisition, "denying that his office was vacated, and declaring his resolution to assert and maintain his authority by every ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Thiers, Lafitte, Platen, Anckarsvaerd, nay, one may even assert that all the orators in the world never made speeches which were considered more beautiful by their hearers, nor which were received with warmer or more universal enthusiasm than this little oration of Aunt Evelina. Henrik threw himself on his ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... a sharp check at the end of such brief promenade, as if an invisible world had put a limit to the space he moved in; that was the jail-bird's gait, and the prison limits were about him again to his unconscious memory. Then, at other times he would assert himself with an effort only too visible. He would lift his head, throw out his chest, and march the full length of the deck with an assurance of freedom and manhood. But the slouching gait was always back in a minute, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... to ease men from the oppressive burden of a multitude of ceremonies, "whereof St. Augustine, in his time, complained," they assert the right of each Church to make its own ritual-rules (in conformity with the rules of the whole Church), provided that it imposes them on no one else. "And in these our doings we condemn no other nations, nor prescribe anything but to our own people only; for we think it {50} convenient that ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... there and stop your ears and close your eyes and assert that this was a sunny, serene day. Your reception or rejection of the Biblical record by no means affects its authenticity. My faith teaches that the evil you so bitterly deprecate is not eternal; shall finally be crushed, and the harmony you crave pervade all realms. Why an ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Act And deprive the said Compl't[3] together with said Norton and Crew of their Right and due as Abovesaid, Contrary to the mind of One Jeremiah Harman who was on purpose left in said Briganteen to Proceed therein and Assert their Right that Surprized and Retook her, Yet the said Thomas instead of Proceeding to Newport as intended Came in said Vessell and with the Aforesaid Cargo to this Port of Boston, Where they Arrived in Safety in said Briganteen and with the Aforesaid Cargo on or about the 23d day of October ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... far rather have gone to bed, but after a few minutes the excitement of the proceeding began to assert itself, and I ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... its important provisions are any one of them constitutional. And that huge statute with sections numbered 1, 2, 5, 16, 16a, etc., with amendments added and substituted, amended and unamended, is contained in twenty-seven closely printed pages. I venture to assert boldly that any competent lawyer who is also a good parliamentary draftsman could put those twenty-seven pages of obscurity into four pages, at most, of lucidity, with two days' honest work. By how little wisdom the world is governed! And how little the representatives of the people care for the ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... mightily favours the powerful Principle of Self-love. It is certain, that married Persons, who are possest with a mutual Esteem, not only catch the Air and way of Talk from one another, but fall into the same Traces of thinking and liking. Nay, some have carried the Remark so far as to assert, that the Features of Man and Wife grow, in time, to resemble one another. Let my fair Correspondent therefore consider, that the Gentleman recommended will have a good deal of her own Face in two ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... brand-new confidence. Progress ruled his farm as well as his politics; he bought the newest implements and subscribed trustfully to four agricultural papers; but being a born lover of the ground, a vein of saving doubt did assert itself sometimes in his work; and, on the whole, as a farmer he was successful. But his success never ventured outside his farm gates. At buying or selling, at a bargain in any form, the fourteen-year-old Tim was better ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... this without doubt was the sacred headland which the title refers to. The mother-parish was St. Madron, about 2 1/2 miles to the north-west; and it is by no means clear who Madron was. Some think he was an Irish Medhran, some a Welsh Madrun; some even assert that he was none other than the great Padarn of Wales. But in 1835 St. Mary's was built at Penzance, on the site of an old chapel to Our Lady, of which some relics are preserved. The town was granted a market ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... everything is commercial and—and ethical; yes, ethical. We wish to do and dare, but we haven't time to adorn as we construct. That is, most of us haven't. But if a few determined spirits—women though they be—cry 'halt,' art may get a chance here and there to assert herself. Look at this," she said, gliding across the room and holding up a small vase of exquisite shape and coloring, "I picked it up on the other side and it stands almost for a lost art. The hands and taste which wrought it represent the transmitted patience and skill of hundreds ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... page 84.) The belief that the flowers of many plants are fertilised in the bud, that is, are perpetually self-fertilised, is a most effectual bar to understanding their real structure. I am, however, far from wishing to assert that some flowers, during certain seasons, are not fertilised in the bud; for I have reason to believe that this is the case. A good observer, resting his belief on the usual kind of evidence, states that in Linum Austriacum ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... fratracidal conflict until both parties lay bloody and broken at the feet of English despotism, these able and smooth-tongued gentry had the accursed assurance to stand up in most of the principal cities of the Democracy, and assert broadly, that England was the true and tried friend of republican institutions and of the people who sustained them on the free continent of America. Under the liberal laws which accord freedom of speech to every man who ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... he ever, as an officer, a most useful and inestimable man to the state. His respect for his sovereign, and his zeal in her service, were unbounded; whenever her glory was at stake, he devoted himself her victim. This I assert to be truth: I knew him well. Of little consequence is it to me, whether the historians of Maria Theresa have, or have not, misrepresented his talents ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... part, I can easily see how such proceedings may make converts to abolitionism, for already my sympathies are strongly enlisted for Mr. Birney, and I hope that he will stand his ground and assert his rights. The office is fire-proof, and inclosed by high walls. I wish he would man it with armed men and see what can be done. If I were a man I would go, for one, and take good care of at least one window. Henry sits opposite me writing a most valiant editorial, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the other hand, steam must more and more decidedly assert its supremacy. Yet the mail-packet of the twentieth century will be very different from packets which have "made the running" towards the close of the nineteenth. She will carry little or no cargo excepting specie, and goods of exceptionally high value in proportion to their weight and bulk. ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland |
