"Self-appointed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off on his self-appointed task, and the white men felt, as they saw him disappear, how impossible it was for them to cope with the mystery of the forest. They were even more helpless than castaways at sea without a compass; for at sea in the day there is the clear sweep to the horizon miles ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... all of those skilled readers and interpreters that the breach within the party was widening, and that this breach could become a chasm before the election. The Monitor and other papers, the chosen or self-appointed champions of vested interests, were almost openly in revolt; in Harley's mind their course amounted to the same thing; they printed in their news columns many things derogatory to Grayson, and likely ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the intrusion of an inhuman being called an expert or official into the most intimate, inexplicable, and changing affairs of our lives and souls, and the arrogant social legislation of a secret and self-appointed Cabal or Cabinet, which refuses even to consult the wishes of that half of the population which social restrictions touch most nearly. If general military service would tend to increase respect and obedience to external authority of this kind, it might be too big a price ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... hear some of my fair readers exclaim, "Is this the early rising this new correspondent of the MIRROR means to enforce? Drag us from our beds at peep of day! The visionary barbarian! Why, ferocious as our Innovator is, he would just as soon drag a tigress from her's! We will not obey this self-appointed Dictator!" Stay, gentle ladies; in the first place I am not going to enforce this or any other hour; in the second place, I am not going to enforce early rising at all.—Convinced you feel, with me, the importance of time, and your responsibility for its right improvement, I leave it to your consciences ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... shot from the forts, which were very judiciously placed so as to command the last reach approaching the town, as I knew that before Mr. Brooke's return they had been put in a state of defence, and a regular watch kept, by self-appointed officers, sleeping on their arms. I, however, got up without accident, in time to receive a hearty ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... we could believe that before we died there would not be a corner of the world in which any book of interest or value whatever would not be easily attainable by any intelligent person who wanted to read it. And already we were taking up the more difficult and ambitious phase of our self-appointed task, and considering the problem of using these channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for the stimulation and wide ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... service, and when the wounded arrived from Viterbo, notwithstanding the rumors of incendiarism and massacre, they came forth from their homes, and proceeded in companies, with no male attendants but armed men, to the discharge of their self-appointed public duties. There: were many foreigners in the papal ranks, and the sympathies and services of the female visitors to Rome were engaged for their countrymen. Princesses of France and Flanders might be seen by the tressel-beds of many a suffering soldier of Dauphin and Brabant; but there ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... for the stage, past or present, who depends for his moral power more continuously at all points on the art of dramatic construction than Ibsen does. He, himself, would be the first to smile at those who praise him as if he were a writer of moral dialogs or the self-appointed lecturer for one of those psychological panoramas which are unrolled in acts, at a theater, or in monthly parts ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... interference on the part of the police or attention on the part of lawgivers. With the progress of the war this situation changed; police and lawgivers began to interfere, and government officials and self-appointed guardians of the public weal began to denounce the "reds" and those suspected of "radical tendencies". The report of the Lusk Committee in the state of New York is perhaps the most imposing monument to ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... walled city rickishas are the usual means of travel, but inside the walls most of the streets are too narrow for rickishas to pass one another, and paving of large flagstones is too rough for wheels, so that the sedan chair is the only means of locomotion except one's own legs. My self-appointed guide said he would get chairs for seven dollars per day ($3.00 in American money) but I told him I expected to walk and that if he wanted to go with me he would have to do likewise; he immediately professed to think that walking was the only ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... spread rapidly abroad and came at last to the ears of the thieves. They were so deeply impressed by the story that they returned the stolen oxen at once and promised never again to pursue their evil ways. So the stags were released from their self-appointed labour, but ever after, they say, each bore a white ring like a yoke about its neck, and each enjoyed a charmed life, for no arrow or spear of ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... grim double meaning in that speech which Sandersen alone could understand. The others of the self-appointed posse had apparently made up their minds that Sandersen was right, and that this was ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of the great laws of nature. They should be carefully and diligently studied and taught in all the schools, until the rising generation understand that all the affairs of mankind are governed by the uniform laws established by the great Creator and Ruler of the universe; and that self-appointed "leaders of the people" who would entice them to follow their own inventions cannot save them from the penalties which naturally follow the violation of any of the laws of the universe. In short, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... sayin' anything against Londoners," said Cloke, self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer, head of the immigration bureau, and superintendent of woods and forests; "but your own people won't go about to make more than a fair ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... forces were well equipped and in good condition, but as they left the sea-shore and advanced, without molestation, to be sure, through the populous country, some idea of the magnitude of their self-appointed task permeated the minds of the common soldiery, and evidences of hesitation, reluctance and dissension speedily appeared. The unwillingness of the men grew until Pizarro was forced to take notice of it. Halting on the fifth day in a pleasant ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... father's peril. But he had done his best. The Weekly Courier would not mention Mexican matters in its Thursday's issue. Meanwhile Nelson, with Uncle Jason and Mr. Middler, the pastor of the Polktown Union Church, as a self-appointed committee, endeavored to get the truth from the Border regarding the uprising in the Companos District and particularly the facts of the situation at the ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... Massachusetts. This affair was so adroitly managed by the organizers of the Workers that within a few weeks every newspaper of importance in America was publishing long descriptions of the new anarchism. Magazine writers, self-appointed reformers, delegations representing various organizations, three committees of the state legislature, the Governor's personal emissary, the United States Attorney, the United States Commissioner of Labor, and a congressional committee devoted ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... other hand, the genuine inquirer will find before long a number of self-appointed apostles who are eager to answer his question in many strange and inconsistent ways, calculated to increase rather than resolve the obscurity of his mind. He will learn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... called me a "Seechy doe squaw" meaning "mean squaw" and tried to push me back. I raised the bayonet saying, "Go back or I'll ram this through you." She went back growling and swearing in Sioux. Probably in half an hour I was relieved of my self-appointed task. Martin Tanner taking my place, I said to him, "Don't let that squaw get away." I sat down on a board over some chairs and made the squaw sit beside me. There we sat all that long night with my right hand hold of my knife and the other holding her blue petticoat. Didn't she talk to me and ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... is the policeman of the plains. He is the self-appointed guardian of all the other animals, and for some strange, unselfish reason, he always does sentinel duty for the others. His eyes are so keen that he sees your hat when you appear over the horizon two miles away, and from ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... spirits. No matter who is sick, or dejected, or unsatisfied, or what the weather is, or what the price of corn, the crow is well and finds life sweet. He is the dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom and prudence. Then he is one of Nature's self-appointed constables and greatly magnifies his office. He would fain arrest every hawk or owl or grimalkin that ventures abroad. I have known a posse of them to beset the fox and cry "Thief!" till Reynard hid himself for shame. Do I say the fox flattered the ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... looking. Oh, it's you!" she murmured vaguely. Her fellow-assistant had a headache, and forty-five written papers to correct. She had just heard, too, a cutting criticism of her work made by the self-appointed faculty critic; the criticism was cleverly worded, and had just enough truth to fly quickly and hurt her with the head of her department. So she was not in the best ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... World-War, Aix was not placid. It went spy-mad, just as all Europe went spy-mad—a mania from which this Continent has not entirely recovered by any means. There was a great rounding up of suspected aliens. Every loyal citizen resolved himself or herself into a self-appointed policeman, to watch the movements of those suspected of being disloyal. Also, they tell me, when the magic mobilization began and troops poured through without ceasing for four days and four nights, and fighting broke out just the other side of the Belgian customhouse, on the main high road ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... South Harniss she was active in church and sewing circles. Her enthusiasm was always great, but her tact was sometimes lacking. South Harniss people, some of them, were inclined to consider her as a self-appointed boss interfering ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... by a member of the convention, as Mrs. Bradwell pertinently says, "the people of the State were told that one woman had proved herself competent and well qualified to enlighten the constitutional convention upon the evils of woman suffrage."[361] Such was the effect of this self-appointed obtruder from another State that the members of the convention, without giving a woman of their own State opportunity for reply, not only struck out the clause submitting the question to the people in a separate article, but actually incorporated in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... David's development produce more effect than upon Mr. Ancrum. The lame, solitary minister, who only got through his week's self-appointed tasks at a constant expense of bodily torment, was dazzled and bewildered by the spectacle of so much vitality spent ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she took up her satchel and went up the path as one might walk, with bared feet, up a ladder of swords. Each step that took her nearer the house hurt her the more, but she was not of those who cry out when hurt. She set her lips more firmly together and continued upon her self-appointed way. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... illness and not a disinclination to pursue my self-appointed task of preserving this repository of my thoughts and deeds which for the past two days has kept me from you, friend diary. As a consequence of venturing abroad upon the seventh instant without my heavy undergarments and likewise without galoshes, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... disintegrated by the slow process of erosion. Joseph Parker's work in London tended to make all English clergymen who desired freedom, free. For over twenty years he preached every Thursday noon, and often twice on Sunday. No topic of vital human interest escaped him. He was a self-appointed censor and critic— sharp, vigilant, alert, yet commending as well as protesting. The two Parkers, one in America and one in England, made epochs. In point of time Theodore Parker comes first, and his discourses ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... ventured into the moonlight the expression on his face was exultant but sinister. He was watching and listening and waiting for the horse. At the first sound of the animal's prancing hoofs on the stones by the porter's lodge, the old man was prepared to steal to the self-appointed place somewhat down the road. What befell there would be wholly in the hands of God. Seven years! It was a long time. He had not hunted for this man; he was breaking no promise; their paths had recrossed; it was ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... self-appointed procurer and owner of an unprinted manuscript—a recognised role for novices to fill in the book trade of the period—that Thorpe made his first distinguishable appearance on the stage of literary history. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... was also (unfortunately for him) induced to prepare a work on sea-shells for the use of schools—"The Conchologist's First Book," it was called. This was unmistakably a mere "pot-boiler" and confessedly a compilation, but it set the little authors whose namby-pamby works the self-appointed Defender of the Purity of Style in American Letters had consigned to an early grave, like a nest of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... till her proximity to things inflammable would have awakened justifiable fears of a conflagration. Joel gave his attention to his self-appointed nurse. "Steady now! Better take a little less to start with. That's right. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... if any account of the inner lights of the soul. Thus it imposes upon credulity and ignorance; makes fakers of some and fanatics of others; in politics where not an engine of oppression, a corrupt influence; in religion where not a zealot, a promoter of cant. In short the self-appointed apostle of uplift, who disregarding individual character would make virtue a matter of statute law and ordain uniformity of conduct by act of conventicle or assembly, is likelier to produce moral chaos than to reach the sublime state he claims ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... in the shelter of home and so engrossed in the care of husband and children that they were entire strangers to any such disturbing fancies, or ambitions as you call them? And, again, did not this large class of happy and busy wives and mothers resent the action of those self-appointed liberators who were fighting for an image of straw and crying themselves hoarse over ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Monarch! who at various times, Posing as Europe's self-appointed saviour, Afforded copy for our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... American visitors" spoken of above must have been some of those self-appointed or hired agents called "interviewers," who do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who invade every public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who tamper ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... state. Oligarchy, narrowed down to one man, became monarchy. If you wished to be polite to an oligarchy you called it an aristocracy; if you wished to point out that a monarch was rather by way of being self-appointed, you called him a Tyrant. An oligarchy with a property qualification was ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... Smoky's ankle with liniment, listened to various and sundry self-appointed advisers and, without seeming to think how the sums would total, took several other small bets on the race. They were small—Pop began to teeter back and forth and lift his shoulders and pull his beard—sure ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... compassion that remembers that we are but dust has no place in the heart as yet. Suffering will call out sympathy, but not failure to reach the mark. A life must ring true to God, true to its fellow men and true to the ideals conceived as belonging to it by these self-appointed judges, if it is to be of any help to them. It is therefore not a question whether the professing Christian, be he parent, teacher or church member, can indulge in doubtful amusements or uncertain practices ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... whose skins do not happen to be black. We, of this nation, are slow to learn the lessons taught by history; the passions which feed on prejudice and tyranny can neither be mollified nor checked by subjection, surrender, or compromise. Self-appointed representatives of the Negro, his enemies and his would-be friends, are pointing to many diverse paths, each claiming that the one they have marked for his feet is the proper one in which he should walk. There is but one direction ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... who likes to elect himself general, and will adopt the formula 'Shoot him! shoot him!' will be competent to cut down whomsoever he pleases untried, be it general or private soldier, if only he have sufficient followers, as was the case just now. But just consider what these self-appointed generals have achieved for you. Zelarchus, the clerk of the market, may possibly have done you a wrong; if so, he has sailed off and is gone without paying you any penalty; or he may be guiltless, in which case we have driven him ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... windows, the rush of feet as people poured from the houses, cries, shouts, and yells—and high over all the shrill call of the police-patrol whistle—and the CRACK, CRACK, CRACK of the Skeeter's revolver shots—the Skeeter and his hellhounds for once self-appointed allies of ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... A self-appointed committee of three, with Thibault at the head, waited upon Nataline without delay, told her their plan, and asked for the key. She thought it over silently for a few minutes, and ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... and the sea became smooth. By the time the stormy weather had passed, the tourists, accustomed to ship motion and ship life, spent most of their time upon the decks. Then, to increase sociability and make the time pass pleasantly, self-appointed committees met and laid plans for card ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... Laidlaw, had a woman's intuition of Marcia's antagonism. Jerry joined and chatted in Una's group for a moment, but I could see that he had lost something of his buoyancy. I watched Marcia keenly. Though absorbed apparently in the pouring of the tea, a self-appointed prerogative which she had assumed with something of an air—(meant, I am sure, for Una)—her narrowly veiled eyes lost no detail of any happening in Una's group, and her ears, I am sure, no detail of its conversation. Subtle glances, stolen ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... well deserved, notwithstanding all the prejudices he had to overcome, for I remember well the disparaging statements made concerning him before his debut at the court theater. According to these self-appointed connoisseurs, he was a bawler without taste, without method, a maker of absurd trills, an unimpassioned actor of little intelligence, and many other ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... a glittering prize which in the end vanished before the aspirant like fairy gold. At stations within reach of their personal influence, local politicians flew to the side of the brilliant statesman with the beautiful fidelity of steel to magnet: hence he was environed by a self-appointed escort of obsequious men, constantly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... evil doings of Marco. What deep gratification it afforded Pan! They might thrive for a time, but their heyday had passed. Matthews would be the laughing stock of the town. He could never retrieve. He had been proclaimed only another in the long list of self-appointed officers of the law. ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... of human prospects! When the House, fairly full, beheld the sunny presence at the table, watched it produce the vaporous folds of manuscript, noted the shrug of satisfaction with which it set about its self-appointed task, it folded its tent like the Arab, and, though not as silently, stole away. Trundled and bundled out, with ostentatious indifference to great orator, the fund of information he had garnered, the counsel with which he was charged. CHAPLIN had brought statesmanship ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... thou art, Take not the self-appointed leader's part. Follow no man, and by no man be led, And no man lead. AWAKE, and go ahead. Thy path, though leading straight unto the goal Might prove confusing to another soul. The goal is central; but from ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the Connecticut woods and began his search for possible mosquito-breeding spots. He was the "Mosquito Man," the self-appointed guardian of the Connecticut coast from Stamford ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... should come to overrate the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judge an exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes impatient of any rulings not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark." When the critic reaches ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... stone coping over the little stream offered an attractive resting place for the self-appointed delegates, and the twilight hour a most opportune time for ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... Paracletes as these? we do not wish to be "worked for,"—to be carried heavenward on some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? If life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect the spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into acknowledging ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... cried. "My arms are both coming off. But I say, Brownie, you are the finest foreloper I ever had in my life, and I never expected to see you again. Here, Mr Mark, sir," he cried, as he turned his back suddenly upon the gaunt self-appointed messenger who had saved all their lives, "just take me away somewhere, or I shall break down and blubber like a great girl. Quick, sir, before the soldiers see." Then quickly, and his big voice raised the echoes again from all around—"Have ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... body of the question, but to have confined himself chiefly to a consideration of the effects which the treaty would have upon the interests of Ireland;— a point which he urged with so much earnestness, as to draw down upon him from one of the speakers the taunting designation of "Self-appointed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... she. "Tell the king and write to Caesar about it. So you will prove your faithfulness and devotion. Loving Caesar, you have been a spy self-appointed. Antipater shall be put to death, and we—we shall have honor and glory and, maybe, a ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... in earnest conversation—those two, who usually took the roads and the fields at a flying gallop, daring each other on to further recklessness. Also, she recalled the last miles of that journey from Frankfort, when the girl sat between them, playing with hands, lips, and crooning voice her self-appointed role of comforter. It would be a stony-hearted celibate indeed who resisted little Jacqueline ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... raising an accusatory finger from the kinograph tracing and pointing it like the finger of Fate itself, "but the self-appointed avenger forgot that the leaden water pipe was common to the two houses. Old Mr. Pearcy, the wronged, died first. Isabel has guessed the family skeleton—has tried hard to shield you, but, Warner Pearcy, you are ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the Lusitania crisis, a new terror now loomed on the horizon. Page's correspondence reveals that Bryan had more reasons than one for his resignation; he was now planning to undertake a self-appointed mission to Europe for the purpose of opening peace negotiations ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... ones will confine their speech to yea, yea, and nay, nay. When men utter loud prayers on street corners, some one will suggest that the better way to pray is to retire to your closet and shut the door. When self-appointed rulers wear purple and scarlet and make broad their phylacteries, some one will suggest that honest men had better adopt a simplicity of attire. When a whole nation grows mad in its hot endeavor to become rich, and the Temple of the Most High is cumbered by the seats of money-changers, already ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... interview, proposing various plans for Natzie's disposition for the night. And other ladies hovering about had been sympathetically suggestive, but the Indian girl had turned deaf ear to everything that would even temporarily take her from her self-appointed station. At ten o'clock Mother Shaughnessy, after hanging uneasily about the porch a moment or two, gave muttered voice to a suggestion that other women ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... forgotten; lonely mothers sometimes looked out with wet eyes as the little ambulance went by, recalling thoughts of absent sons who might be journeying painfully to some far-off hospital, where brave women waited to tend them with hands as willing, hearts as tender, as those the gentle child gave to her self-appointed task. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... say," I asked sceptically, "that the new self-appointed generation will be happier than the old? What guarantee is there that the choice of parents will be made with taste ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... ever come to you that there has been a time when the world has been better than it is to-day, and better than it ever will be again? Will you, as a student of life, concede that the savage can teach you a lesson? Will any of your kind? No, for you are self-appointed civilizers, working according to a ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals. Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its floor, gave the keynote of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... through the newspaper reporter. It was a smaller New York, a more limited Fifth Avenue in those days, and Mrs. Astor ruled its society without any one to question her sovereignty. She was about to give a great ball, and Ward McAllister, as the self-appointed and generally accepted secretary of society, was in charge of the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... everything in it was one series of ever-recurring disaster. She was a doleful body, taking pleasure only in funerals and the laying out of the dead. With her peculiar taste for sorrow and distress, she had come to be self-appointed nurse to the whole neighbourhood. She was always due at the house of affliction and, with her kindly heart and a certain skill in nursing, she proved a sort of melancholy blessing. Her predilection for disaster caused her to be regarded as a bird of ill-omen, for where Mrs. Fraser was, ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... her ancestors had edified themselves with burning witches. She would pass out of his life but never out of his memory. His heart would go with her, but though it killed him he would never modify the rigors of his self-appointed exile from her presence until an advance ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Peter, self-appointed sub-editor to the Gem, was revising a dissertation of Vyvian's on lace. It was a difficult business, this. Vyvian, in Peter's opinion, needed so much expurgation; and yet one couldn't be unkind. Peter wished ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... princes, counts, estates of the empire, and Protestant bishops were present, either personally or by deputy, at this assembly, which the chaplain to the Saxon Court, Dr. Hoe von Hohenegg, opened with a vehement discourse from the pulpit. The Emperor had, in vain, endeavoured to prevent this self-appointed convention, whose object was evidently to provide for its own defence, and which the presence of the Swedes in the empire, rendered more than usually alarming. Emboldened by the progress of Gustavus Adolphus, the assembled princes asserted ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... morning Honey Tone groaned himself awake, realizing when his eyes were open that less than thirty-six hours lay between his fragile form and blood-tinted trouble. It seemed to him that his self-appointed guardians clung closer with the passage of the hours, as if they suspected their soopreem treasury of perfecting a plot which might include his exit. The obligations of the moment were four thousand ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... English Church cared for by its self-appointed shepherd. What it should be called under Henry it would be hard to say. It was not Protestant; and it was just ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... put our Russian friend back here in the corner, where the shelf suppresses him," said Georgia, who seemed to have accepted the self-appointed position of head cataloguer. "Some of the students might happen ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... gradually finding his way to his self-appointed end, which is the glorification of England in narrative verse. Reynard the Fox marks we believe, the end of a stage in his progress to this goal. He has reached a point at which his mannerisms have been so subdued that they no longer sensibly impede the movement of his verse, a point ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Smart Set and so-called polite society, are relegating a great many of our old Anglo-Saxon words into the shade, faithful friends who served their ancestors well. These self-appointed arbiters of diction regard some of the Anglo-Saxon words as too coarse, too plebeian for their aesthetic tastes and refined ears, so they are eliminating them from their vocabulary and replacing them with mongrels of foreign birth and ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, assured himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... dyed-in-the-wool creeds and joined himself to the new and advanced thinkers, than whom, in his opinion, there were no lower on the face of God's earth. And yet in spite of it all he loved the minister, and was his strong admirer and loyal adherent, self-appointed mentor though he ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... delay. At this point there reappeared upon the scene a man whose previous experience and high position entitled him to some consideration. Less than a week after his first interview with the imperial representatives, Lord Elgin received a letter from Keying, who, it was soon found, had come on a self-appointed mission to induce the English by artifice and plausible representation to withdraw their fleet from the river. His zeal was increased by the knowledge that the penalty of failure would be death, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... white forehead in the world, and the whole outline of her face was distracting. Here was a lamplight effect which rivalled the one in the living-room, though it was thrown from a common kitchen lamp, unshaded, and fell upon a figure in a red-and-white checked apron. Georgiana glanced at her self-appointed assistant and encountered the flash of an eye which told her that, however Stuart objected to her words, he liked the look of what ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... excitements have been political. The whole offers the psychologists a fascinating field and awaits its historian.[70] Yet the result is always the same. The critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous following. Movements having this genesis and history are in themselves ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of this self-appointed task, let me say to the reader, in the words of Montaigne, "I bring you a nosegay of culled flowers, and I have brought little of my own but the string ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... into its Indian Empire. Burma was administered as a province of India until 1937 when it became a separate, self-governing colony; independence from the Commonwealth was attained in 1948. Gen. NE WIN dominated the government from 1962 to 1988, first as military ruler, then as self-appointed president, and later as political kingpin. Despite multiparty legislative elections in 1990 that resulted in the main opposition party - the National League for Democracy (NLD) - winning a landslide victory, the ruling junta refused to hand ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... before the war. That war has now lasted almost three years. During this long and terrible period there has been scarcely a woman in France, as in Britain, Russia, Italy, Germany, who has not done her share behind the lines, working, at her self-appointed tasks or at those imposed by the Government, for months on end without a day of rest. They have had contacts that never would have approached them otherwise, they have been obliged to think for ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... miles above the city of Richmond. Mr. Hussey had, for a number of years, been building two sizes of machines, and at the first day's trial was obliged to use a small one because his only large machine within reach was elsewhere occupied. The majority of the self-appointed committee of bystanders reported in favor of McCormick's machine, but Mr. Roane, one of them, who signed very reluctantly, later bought a Hussey machine. A few days after, at Tree Hill, Mr. Hussey was ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... readers of radical Abolitionist papers must often have seen the singular name of Sojourner Truth, announced as a frequent speaker at Anti-Slavery meetings, and as travelling on a sort of self-appointed agency through the country. I had myself often remarked the name, but never met the individual. On one occasion, when our house was filled with company, several eminent clergymen being our guests, notice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various |
