"Self-assertive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 to attain the greatest good for himself and others equally; ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... beams with importance at thus being, as it were, encored, and the collected villagers murmur their approval; but I answer the mudir's beckoned invitation by a negative wave of the hand, signifying that I can't bother with him any further. The common herd around regard this self-assertive reply with open-mouthed astonishment, as though quite too incredible for belief; it seems to them an act of almost criminal discourtesy, and those immediately about me seem almost inclined to take me back ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... intervals objecting to the crying of a baby, which a nurse in the adjoining cottage was endeavoring to put to sleep. She was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with almost every one, owing to a temper which was self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of others. Robert prevailed upon her without any ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... the first was past its prime. When the third was full, the first was good merely in parts. On the completion of the fourth "beg" one passed the neighbourhood of the first on the other side with a precautionary sniff. It contained self-assertive relics. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the child— A blue-eyed, self-assertive mite— Were at the camp, She carrying it (the nurse was left behind) And the passports that allowed her to see him One hour, with a guard five yards away. Some of his polite impudence was gone, Yet he threw back his head and shoulders And shrugged as his wife and boy came in. "Always late," said ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... along 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
... 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 ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... sight that in Germany and Japan there would be danger of a lack of co-ordination between the civil and the naval authorities, and a tendency for the navy to become unduly self-assertive. Of course, one reason why there is no such danger is that the governments of those countries are controlled by men who, though civilians, have great knowledge of international affairs, and of military and naval subjects; another reason is that the navy ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... 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 ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... invasion from abroad, with the increasing weight of exactions of an unwise and unpopular personal government, with the growing interest of the seventeenth century in matters of politics, and, above all, with the development of Puritanism, individualistic and self-assertive in its very essence, Parliament was sure to reassert all the powers which it had ever possessed, and likely to seek to extend them. The king was now the conservative element, while Parliament, if recent conditions be taken as the standard, was the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 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 ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... house of cards! Down it came. For there had only been four left of that blue tea-service, and he had broken one. The urn was hissing and making its lid jump in the middle of a Crown Derby tea-set, so polychromatic, so self-assertive in its red and blue and gold, that no ghost of a chance was left of catching at the skirts of colour-blindness to find a golden bridge of escape from the blunder. The most colour-blind eyes in the world ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... little of his own mental functions: on the whole, he knows them as little as he knows the muscles which be uses when he talks or walks. Among his questions Parsons included such ones as: "Are your manners quiet, noisy, boisterous, deferential, or self-assertive? Are you thoughtful of the comfort of others? Do you smile naturally and easily, or is your face ordinarily expressionless? Are you frank, kindly, cordial, respectful, courteous in word and actions? Do you look people frankly in the eye? Are your inflections natural, courteous, modest, ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... the seductive Mrs. Monte Irvin, not because she designedly encouraged admiration, but because she was one of those fortunately rare characters who inspire it without conscious effort. Her appeal to men was sweetly feminine and quite lacking in that self-assertive and masculine "take me or leave me" attitude which characterizes some of the beauties of today. There was nothing abstract about her delicate loveliness, yet her charm was not wholly ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... that the infant is an egoist. If his egoism is allowed full scope he will enter upon the next stage of life, the self-assertive stage, with a huge capacity for being altruistic. This stage comes on about the age of six or seven. But if the child has had parents who believe in moulding character he will have had many severe ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... 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 movement is now taking place on the ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... came next to Betty, though a long way after, and who had just missed being in the war, was a very different type of young Englishman from what George had been. He was clever, self-assertive, and already known as a brilliant debater and as a sound speaker at the Oxford Union. There need be no trouble as to Jack Tosswill's future—he was going to the Bar, and there was little doubt that he would succeed there. One of his idiosyncrasies was his almost contemptuous indifference ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... in spectacles." He habitually slept in them. He was very simple in his tastes, timid and never really at ease but in the society of his intimates and people of his own station. His attitude toward the aristocracy was entirely different from the domineering, self-assertive pose of Beethoven, but he was very amiable, and ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... chose to live this life. There was an entire absence of the self-spirit, that is the self-assertive, the self-confident spirit. There was a remarkable confidence in action, but it was confidence in His Father's unfailing response to His requests or needs. This sense of utter dependence was natural to Him; ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... 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 ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... manifestation of prejudice until custom has adjusted things to the new condition. When all Negroes were poor and ignorant they could be denied their rights with impunity. As they grow in knowledge and in wealth they become more self-assertive, and make it correspondingly troublesome for those who would ignore their claims. It is much easier, by a supreme effort, as recently attempted with temporary success in North Carolina, to knock the race down and rob it of its rights once for all, than to repeat the process from ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... its leaders, and acquit them of conscious motives of personal ambition. Slavery was their undoing. The habit of absolute control over slaves bred the habit of mastery whenever it could be successfully asserted. There grew up a caste, its members equal and cordial among themselves, but self-assertive and haughty to all besides. They brooked no opposition at home, and resented all criticism abroad. They misread history and present facts, misconceived their place in the order of things, and set themselves against both the finest and the strongest forces of the time. When the political party which ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... in those times were prepared for anything on the part of an Englishman, who was a far more self-assertive and self-confident creature ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... 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 ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... decided by individual action. The spirit which underlay it can be traced with growing distinctness since 1690; it was a spirit of independence, puritan in religion and republican in politics, impatient of control, self-assertive, and disposed to opposition. It was irritated by restraints on industry and commerce, and found opportunities for expression in a system which gave the colonies representative assemblies while it withheld rights of self-government. Great Britain has since then ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Bull," she says, "have the same father, but not the same mother. John Bull is corpulent, with high-coloured cheeks, is self-assertive, and speaks in a loud voice; Brother Jonathan, who is much younger, is lank, tall, weak about the knees, not boastful, but vigorous and decided. John Bull is at least forty, while Jonathan is ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... showily dressed. Min seemed to be less self-assertive than her companion. Landis evidently had confidence enough for two. She frequently turned to look around, gazing into the faces of her fellow passengers with a self-assurance that in one of her age amounted almost ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... visiting 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 to the general rule of British supremacy ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... producing a paradise on earth whence lust and crime were banished. Whatever the actual facts of his life may have been, this is certainly the representation of his character now held up for honor and imitation. There are also indications that the ideal military hero is not, for all the people, the self-assertive type that I have described above, though this is doubtless the prevalent one. Not long since I heard the following couplet as to the nature ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... Fifth Symphony. It seems to me to represent the strenuous efforts of a man who is struggling virtuously with adversity. It is morality rather than art (I would not say the same of the Seventh Symphony, or of the Ninth), and the morality of a proud, self-assertive, rather ill-bred person. I always think of Beethoven as the man who, walking with Goethe at Weimar and meeting the Ducal Court party, turned up his coat collar and elbowed his way through the courtiers, who were all attention to him, while Goethe, scarcely noticed, stood ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... head juts forward, and those queer little dark amber eyes of his watch furtively round him for his fame. His clothes fit perfectly and yet sit upon him as though he had bought them ready-made. He speaks in a mumble still, but he says, you perceive indistinctly, enormous self-assertive things, he backs into the rear of groups by instinct if Banghurst drops the line for a minute, and when he walks across Banghurst's lawn one perceives him a little out of breath and going jerky, and that his weak white hands are clenched. His is a state of tension—horrible ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... it hardest to turn away would be those of the Blessed Mother. Her mission about our Lord during all these past years had been a very characteristically womanly mission, a mission of silence and help and sympathy. She was with the women who ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never self-assertive; but always ready when need was. It was the silent service of a great love. That is the perfection of service. There are types of service which claim reward or recognition. We are not unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with people who have to be cajoled and petted and made much of because ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... encroachment on Spanish independence, France intended to threaten us with war, I waited for some days expecting that the Spanish declaration of war against France would follow that of the French against us. I was not prepared to see a self-assertive nation like Spain stand quiet behind the Pyrenees with ordered arms, while the Germans were engaged in a deadly struggle against France on behalf of Spain's independence and freedom to choose her king. The Spanish sense of honor which proved ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke |
