"Self-reliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the need for Home Rule stronger and more urgent. They will realise that Ireland requires not a material, but a moral cure to give her the full value of the new reforms. Her need is to be removed once and for all from the class of dependent communities. She wants the great tonic cure of self-reliance and self-responsibility. ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... fear.] Courage — N. courage, bravery, valor; resoluteness, boldness &c adj.; spirit, daring, gallantry, intrepidity; contempt of danger, defiance of danger; derring-do; audacity; rashness &c 863; dash; defiance &c 715; confidence, self-reliance. manliness, manhood; nerve, pluck, mettle, game; heart, heart of grace; spunk, guts, face, virtue, hardihood, fortitude, intestinal fortitude; firmness &c (stability) 150; heart of oak; bottom, backbone, spine ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he looked at her, for her beauty was quite striking, and she was certainly not over twenty, yet there was something in the strong, noble outlines of her figure, in the tranquil calm of her manner, the self-reliance of her whole bearing, and the business-like way those pistols were thrust in her belt, that modified the ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... who say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of man,—to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin—our need of pardon. But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... earthly feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned this, perhaps He ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... containing the name of the prince. There is an older "Lamiyat al-Arab" a pre-Islamitic L-poem by the "brigand-poet" Shanfara, of whom Mr. W. G. Palgrave has given a most appreciative account in his "Essays on Eastern Questions," noting the indomitable self-reliance and the absolute individualism of a mind defying its age and all around it. Al-Hariri quotes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... continued to labour at my novel; it seemed an impossible task—defeat glared at me from every corner of that frouzy room. My English was so bad, so thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the landlady's cheating, and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... according to character and attainment rather than according to wealth or social position cultivates the naturally democratic spirit of the child, and makes him a true American. Sharing in the responsibility of the home begets self-reliance ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... only Ishmael and Judy and Georgie, when she could spare the time, but the children too, considered a visit to the Parson in the light of a pleasure. Boase knew it and was glad—even his sturdy aloofness and self-reliance would have felt a pang at being ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... genuine persons I have ever known. There is not one particle of deceit about her. For girls who accomplish something, she has great respect; for idlers, none. She has no sentimentality, but much wit and common sense. No one can be long under her teaching without learning dignity of manner and self-reliance." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... that fight of April 12 he had left only powder and shot enough for one other battle of equal severity. Three months later he was able to report as above, that he could keep the sea on his station for six months without further supplies. This result was due wholly to himself,—to his self-reliance, and what may without exaggeration be called his greatness of soul. It was not expected at Paris; on the contrary, it was expected there that the squadron would return to the Isle of France to refit. It was not thought possible ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... had been little effort made to instill into the minds of their children the principles of holy living, and it was felt that there was but little necessity to give them habits of self-denial or self-reliance. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Graeme at first supposed possible, they fell back into their old ways again. Rose's dignity and self-reliance were for her brothers and her friends generally. With Graeme she was, in a day or two, just what she had been before she went away—a dear child and sister, to be checked and chided, now and then; to be caressed ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... strengthened his muscles and gave vigor and tone to his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves, and the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up gave him early habits of vigor and self-reliance." ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... He excelled in all exercises of strength and activity, could load his rifle while running with almost the swiftness of a deer, and was so habituated to constant action, that an imprisonment of three days, as ordered by General Harmar, was nearly fatal to him. He had the most thorough self-reliance as his long, solitary and perilous expeditions into the Indian ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... generation to generation they have lived in constant fear of the secret agents of the Inquisition, and of the evil spirits that are ever plotting against the peace of good Christians. The permanency of the laws of Nature, the very foundation of all self-reliance and courage, is believed to be at the caprice of every one of a legion of saints, each of whom has been canonized on proof of working a miracle. Truth, and honesty, and chastity are subordinate virtues, and only a slavish devotion to his conscience-keeper can sustain ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... tumbling head over heels in love with a young fellow who had mortified her before the world when their engagement was less than a few months old, making her name and affections a byword, and she could not and would not repeat the blunder. This had shattered her customary self-reliance, leaving her wellnigh helpless. Perhaps after all—an unheard-of thing in her experience—she had better seek advice of some older and wiser pilot. Two heads, or even three—(here her canny Scotch ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... myself; and soon we found Peggy and Smiler in company, well embarked on the homeward road, and victualling where the grass was good. Right glad they were to see us again—not for the pleasure of carrying, but because a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder. Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper breath ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... to be a part of the wild, wholesome life of the woods. Moreover, I was growing; my mother said that I was growing fast. No puma would have dared to touch me now, and my unusual experiences about the town had bred in me a spirit of independence and self-reliance, so that other cubs of my own age whom we met, and who, of course, had lived always with their parents, always seemed to me younger than I; and certainly I was bigger and stronger than any first-year bear that I saw. On the whole, I would have been fairly ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... by urging upon his consideration the manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance, which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude surroundings,—at the same time granting the necessity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... forward, Francesca was on her guard against every species of pride and self-reliance, however disguised and refined. She related her faults and temptations, the graces she received and the favours she obtained, with the same childlike openness and simplicity. It was at the age of sixteen that she was thus advanced in the ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... a full note except from a full chest. In this connection it may be said that it has been observed that deep-chested, deep-breathing, slow-speaking people are frequently possessed of certain estimable points of character, such as prudence, firmness, self-reliance, calmness. If one is going to be angry, ten deep breaths might save a world of trouble. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... who was but three months older than Candace. Georgie, too, had a good deal of the housekeeper's instinct, but she was rather dreamy and puzzle-headed, and with the best intentions in the world was often led into scrapes and difficulties from her lack of self-reliance, and the easy temper which enabled any one who was much with her to gain ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... The poorest working man in London who does an honest week's work is a hero compared with such men as these. It would be impossible to nurture sentiment in any tent in Lamb-lane. There was no face with a glimmer of honest self-reliance about it, no face bearing any trace of the strange beauty we had noticed in other encampments, and no form possessed of any distinguishing grace. The whole of the yards were redolent of dirt; and the people, each and all, inexcusably foul in person. In several yards little boys or girls sat ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... hand, there is a superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal subject of a king,—not too despotic, but still a strong-handed, visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a constitution, to a flag; respect for law as law; sturdy independence and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's own,—all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all—the reverence for law—is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman detests law. He loves, indeed, mercy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... I resolved, when I had finished the course of training, I would go into the Far South, into the Black Belt of the South, and give my life to providing the same kind of opportunity for self-reliance, self-awakening, that I had found provided for ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... from the conviction that he is peculiarly capable of impressing for good the present condition of our national character. By giving us fuller realizations of liberty and justice his writings will tend to increase our self-reliance in the great emergency of civilization to which we have been summoned. "Our Progressive Independence," so brilliantly illustrated by Dr. Holmes, emancipating us from foreign fine-writing, leaves us free to welcome the true manhood and mature wisdom of Europe. In the time of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Colwell is Chairman, are societies of large-hearted men and women, banded together, as they express it, to 'teach the freedmen of the colored race civilization and Christianity; to imbue them with notions of order, industry, economy and self-reliance, and to elevate them in the scale of humanity, by ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that in either Liverpool or Manchester—the centres of commercial and manipulative energy—I could settle down with my limited capital and tools, and in course of time contrive to get on, helped by energy, self-reliance, and determination. I also found that the demand for machine-making tools was considerable, and that their production would soon become an important department of business. It might be carried on ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... for, the more we would have to do for, who, in other words, would become dependent, losing their sense of self-dependence. For such the highest service one can render is as judiciously and as indirectly as possible to lead them to the sense of self-reliance. Then there are others whose natures are such that, the more they are helped, the more they expect, the more they demand, even as their right, who, in other words, are parasites or vultures of the human kind. In this case, again, the greatest service that can be rendered may be a ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... which troubled Mr Harding. They, as a rule, are as satisfied with the wisdom and propriety of their own conduct as can be any Mr Slope, or any Dr Proudie, with his own. But unfortunately for himself, Mr Harding had little of this self-reliance. When he heard himself designated as rubbish by the Slopes of the world, he had no other recourse than to make inquiry within his own bosom as to the truth of the designation. Alas, alas! the evidence seemed generally to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of the capital to one of the most bloody revolts Moscow had ever witnessed. It was her intention to gain the throne for the imbecile Ivan, as she doubted not that she could, in that event, govern the empire at her pleasure. Peter, child as he was, had already developed a character of self-reliance which taught Sophia that he would speedily wrest the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... delighted themselves, the teacher, and the school; while Susan, who lisped, had been provided with a humorous poem in which she impersonated a lisping child. Emma Jane and Rebecca had a dialogue, and the sense of companionship buoyed up Emma Jane and gave her self-reliance. In fact, Miss Dearborn announced on this particular Friday morning that the exercises promised to be so interesting that she had invited the doctor's wife, the minister's wife, two members of the school committee, and a few mothers. Living Perkins was ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would have been confident, that, living to count her hundreds, she would only have bloomed with more immortal freshness; but such a thought would not have occurred to you at all, if you had not already felt that she was no longer young,—she possessed so perfectly that certain self-reliance, self-understanding, aplomb, into which little folk crystallize at an early age, but which is not to be found with those whose identities are cast in a larger mould, until they have passed through periods ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... knew she could use effectively, she had used. If she needed me I could not leave her, but her complete self-reliance made it difficult to feel that any one was necessary to her. I was indignant at the way she had treated me. I was not a child to be disposed of, and yet of my future she was disposing as though it were a thing that could be tied to a string, and untied at will. Were she ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... better class of masters. He has exchanged a human nexus for a "cash nexus." The nominal freedom of this cash relationship is in the case of the upper strata of workmen probably a real freedom; the irresponsibility of their employers has educated them to more self-reliance, and strengthened a healthy personality in them. It is the lower class of workers who suffer. More and more they need the humanity of the responsible employer to protect them against the rigours of the labour-market. The worst miseries ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... "Self-reliance," he says, "is a grand element of character: it has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's memory. Let the master passion of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... looking after him long after his form had disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker had faded. It was wide-eyed with an almost awe-stricken ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and gain relief, even though the ear that heard the confession were unworthy. The Catholic church, for obvious utilitarian reasons, has substituted auricular confession to one priest for the more radical act of public confession. We English-speaking Protestants, in the general self-reliance and unsociability of our nature, seem to find it enough if we take God alone into ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... it. With any people the essential quality to show is, not haste in grasping after a power which it is only too easy to misuse, but a slow, steady, resolute development of those substantial qualities, such as the love of justice, the love of fair play, the spirit of self-reliance, of moderation, which alone enable a people to govern themselves. In this long and even tedious but absolutely essential process, I believe your University will take an important part. When I was recently in the Sudan I heard a vernacular proverb, based on ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... the ruts of the Renaissance. Undue weight was given to literary training, while science and technical skill were despised. Our colleges and schools do not attempt to build character on a foundation of useful habits and tastes that sweeten life; to ennoble ideals, or inspire self-knowledge, self-reliance, and self-control. Technical education is still in its infancy; and the aesthetic instinct which lies dormant in every Aryan's brain is unawakened. A race which invented the loom now invents nothing but grievances. In 1901 Bengal possessed 69,000 schools ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... With newly-animated self-reliance, she examined flour, pulse and dried fish, making it a point of honor to bargain carefully; Barbara should see that she knew how to buy. The crowd was very great everywhere, for the city magistrates had issued ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... compromising herself by sending that midnight warning to Lee, nor did she grudge the three weeks' sickness it cost her, seeing it had succeeded. Nor was the idea of meeting him any less terrifying now. The result of her experiences in the last few months had been that all her old self-reliance was gone. When she recalled what she had done and felt, and imagined what she might have gone on to do, she owned in all humility that she could no longer take care of herself or answer for herself. Desire Edwards was after all capable of being as big a fool ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... prized privileges and immunities. The provinces would from the earliest moment of their subjection have welcomed such a change. The time was more than ripe for it when the Roman world lay at the feet of Sulla. Sulla had all the ability, self-reliance, prestige, and opportunity that were needed. But his moral nature was below the task. He had neither the insight, nor the sympathy, nor the noble ambition of Caesar, and he preferred to re-establish ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... her eyes had been plucked all look of self-reliance. She leaned with a dependent air toward her companion. She was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure. She seemed to beseech tenderness ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... spontaneous popular sentiment. But such constitutional admission of the people would not have been so astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the course of public events for the half century after Clisthenes had not been such as to stimulate most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future chapter these historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical impulse communicated by Clisthenes: at present ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... with the northern half coming under Soviet-sponsored Communist domination. After failing in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed republic in the southern portion by force, North Korea under its founder President KIM Il Sung adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence and molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's control. KIM's son, the current ruler KIM Jong Il, was officially designated ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... merits he might have—and in her eyes he had many—at any rate he had not those which a mother would desire to see in the future husband of her daughter. He was profligate, extravagant, careless, and idle; his prospects in life were in every respect bad; he had no self-respect, no self-reliance, no moral strength. Was it not absolutely necessary that she should put a stop to any love that might have sprung up between such a man as this and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... principles that are fought out in this drama, in tragic conflict, were to be described by catchwords, we might say: Reason stands against Dogma; Nature against Tradition; Self-Reliance against Submission. The great elementary forces are here at issue, which the Reformation had unchained, and with which we all have ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Ipswich, and he showed his usual skill in the choice of men by finding such an agent in Cromwell. The task was an unpopular one, and it was carried out with a rough indifference to the feelings it aroused which involved Cromwell in the hate that was gathering round his master. But his wonderful self-reliance and sense of power only broke upon the world at Wolsey's fall. Of the hundreds of dependants who waited on the Cardinal's nod, Cromwell, hated and in danger as he must have known himself to be, was the only one who clung to his master at the last. In the lonely hours of his disgrace ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... even the present master of the estate, whom he had known as a mild-tempered and almost effeminate youth, acquired more and more as the years went by the same disposition. He therefore recommended me strongly to behave with as much resolute self-reliance and as little embarrassment as possible, if I desired to possess any consideration in the Freiherr's eyes; and at length he began to describe the apartments in the castle which he had selected to be his own once for all, since they were warm and comfortable, and so conveniently ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... self-reliance, but a fierce and warlike temper, was shown in the first youthful exploit of Rodrigo. His father Diego, when too old to bear arms, was grossly insulted by an enemy, the Count of Gormaz. Diego wept and raged at the insult put upon him ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... that of 5 administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, also have brought the care and anxiety 10 inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... ancestors, who have played a conspicuous part in history. The electric temperament is dark and swarthy in complexion, angular in configuration, tenacious and strong in texture, and possesses a well-rounded back head, giving large organs of social fraternity, courage, caution and self-reliance. In General Harrison, these traits are somewhat softened by a superabundant vitality, but the traits are all there. John A. Logan was a magnificent type of this temperament. Abraham Lincoln personified it in all its ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... home some day of the most Spartan simplicity, all our needs cut down to the lowest and plainest of possessions, and yet a spirit of hospitality, of contentment, of gaiety, of self-reliance and mutual helpfulness. Books ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... up in arms. The girl who had feared nothing so much as to find herself at variance with her fellows, and had believed the affection and the goodwill of those about her to be the first essentials to happiness, felt no weakness, no lack of self-reliance, now that she was in some measure pitted against the many. She resented the conduct of the passengers in making her the subject of their tittle-tattle with a bitterness she had never felt before. In overlooking her actions and assuming a right to ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... using the pet name the men in barracks frequently called the child. "It's just a wee story of one man fighting it out alone—just alone, single-handed—with no reinforcements but his own courage, his own self-reliance." ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... inundated the Atlantic cities and towns, the writer, addressing himself to American citizens, observes: 'In all other circumstances and questions save that of a literature, you have taken the high ground of freedom and self-reliance. You have neither asked, nor loaned, nor besought, but with your own hands have framed, what the occasion required. Whatever stature you have grown to as a nation, it is due to that sole virtue; and by its exercise may you only hope to hold your place. In almost any other shape than that of silent ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... it. Really, I'm not being funny, Miss Wetherford, when I say you've done something heroic. It's no easy thing to come into a place like that and make it habitable. It shows immense courage and self-reliance on your part. It's precisely the kind of ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... a real difference between self-reliance and self-respect, though each partakes of the nature of the other. Self-respect is the root of which self-reliance is the growth in various acts or plans. It is the general tone and spirit running through our view of life, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... members of their churches than before. New Thought is designed to make people better and more efficient in whatever relation of life they may find themselves. In other words: 'New Thought teaches men and women only the old common-sense doctrine of self-reliance and belief in the integrity of the universe and of one's own soul. It dignifies and ennobles manhood and womanhood.' The main idea on which Christianity is founded is that of communion with God, that of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. This is the very corner-stone ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... would naturally contribute to increase that "confidence in himself among rocks and sands," which was afterwards to be so "great a comfort" to him. In his later career he had frequent and pressing need of that particular form of professional judgment and self-reliance for which these early experiences stood him in good stead. As he afterwards wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty, when pleading the cause of a daring and skilful officer who had run his ship ashore: "If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... their ambition by producing and saving, rather than by appropriating what has been produced and saved. Much also depended on the better political institutions of this country, which, by the scope they have allowed to individual freedom of action, have encouraged personal activity and self-reliance, while, by the liberty they confer of association and combination, they facilitate industrial enterprise on a large scale. The same institutions, in another of their aspects, give a most direct and potent stimulus ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... specialists, individuals whose main reactions are built around one great trait. Thus there are those whose egoism takes the form of pride in family, or in personal beauty, or some intellectual capacity, or in being independent of others, who worship self-reliance or self-importance. There are the individuals whose social instincts express themselves in loquacity, in a talkativeness that is the main joy of their lives, though not at all the joy of other lives. A fascinating series of personalities in this respect come to my mind—L. B., who talks ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Travers. An only daughter and losing her mother in childhood, she had been raised to the mistress-ship of a household at an age in which most girls are still putting their dolls to bed; and thus had early acquired that sense of responsibility, accompanied with the habits of self-reliance, which seldom fails to give a certain nobility to character; though almost as often, in the case of women, it steals away the tender gentleness which constitutes the charm ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... younger members of the family. The idea of the college course, for which he had partially fitted himself in the preparatory school at Clinton, was relinquished, and the battle of life commenced in earnest. He had already learned something of the lesson of self-reliance, having served for a year or more as a clerk in a grocery at Fayetteville, and he soon secured a situation as an assistant in the Institution for the Blind in the city of New York, where his brother William was then engaged ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... breakfast; and Mrs. Barclay studied again with fresh interest all the family group. No want of capacity and receptive readiness, she was sure; nor of active energy. Sense, and self-reliance, and independence, and quick intelligence, were to be read in the face and manner of each one; good ground to work upon. Still Mrs. Barclay privately shook her head at ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... superfluous flesh on Frank Merriwell. He was a mass of bone and sinew, splendidly formed and supple as a young panther. In every movement and pose there was indescribable grace, and, at the same time, a suggestion of wonderful strength and self-reliance. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... were continually mixing with the nobles and the gentry in the wild adventures of that troubled century. They, like their betters, were undergoing a tardy metamorphosis from mediaeval to modern conditions, retaining vices of ferocity and grossness, virtues of loyalty and self-reliance, which belonged to earlier periods. They, too, were now infected by the sensuous romance of pietism, the superstitious respect for sacraments and ceremonial observances which had been wrought by the Catholic Revival into ecstatic frenzy. They shared ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... of attraction for Wilbur. He liked her splendid ropes of hair, her heavy contralto voice, her fine animal strength of bone and muscle (admittedly greater than his own); he admired her indomitable courage and self-reliance, while her positive genius in the matters of seamanship and navigation filled him with speechless wonder. The girls he had been used to were clever only in their knowledge of the amenities of an afternoon call or the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... trust young people, and when it is best to throw them quite upon their honor. It is only by having responsibility for their actions thrust thus upon them, that they ever attain to natural dignity and self-reliance. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... that nothing lacked Of culture or appliance, The warmth of genial courtesy, The calm of self-reliance. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ecclesiastical building, from the first century to the fifteenth; but the moral habits to which England in this age owes the kind of greatness that she has,—the habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic seclusion and independence, of stern self-reliance, and sincere upright searching into religious truth,—were only traceable in the features which were the distinctive creation of the Gothic schools, in the veined foliage, and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... limitations of his environment helped the end. Self-reliance, that most vital characteristic of the pioneer, was his by blood and birth and training; and developed through the privations of his lot and the genius that was in him to the mighty strength needed to guide our great country through the titanic struggle ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... shaking slightly: "You have answered only half of my question, Mr. Howard; I want you to tell me what a woman can do to bring those high things into her life—to keep her soul humble and strong. I do not think that I have your courage and self-reliance." ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... open doorway, and the girl in the bunk looked upon him with softened glance. She had no fear of him now; on the contrary, she mentally leaned upon him. Without him the night would be a terror, the dawn an uncertainty. The brave self-reliance of his spirit appeared in stronger light as she considered that for weeks he had been camping alone, and that but for this accident to her he would be facing this ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... than asses; took his own observations, and cared not a straw for those of his mates; was never more bent on following his own views than when all hands grumbled and opposed him; was daring by nature, decided from use and long self-reliance, and was every way a man fitted to steer his bark through the trackless ways of life, as well as those of the ocean. It was fortunate for one in his particular position, that nature had made the possessor of so much self-will and temporary authority, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... school projects that are in vogue. These projects, when wisely selected with reference to the child's powers and inclination, give scope for the exercise of ingenuity, resourcefulness, perseverance, and unhampered thinking and acting. Besides, some of the by-products are of value, notably self-reliance and self-respect. A child yearns to play a thinking part in the drama of life and not the part of a marionette or jumping-jack that moves only when someone pulls the string. He yearns to be an entity and not a mere echo. Paternalism, in our school work, does not make for self-reliance, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... for companions of his own age. He was peculiarly a mother's boy, content to grow up dreamy and impractical at her quiet hearthstone. Consequently he was awkward and reserved, easily imposed upon, and lacking in self-reliance. These qualities remained with him as long as he lived, and caused him many painful failures. On the other hand, the pious example of his mother and the tranquil life he led with her made the boy reflective and imaginative, while his soul became filled with ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... but instructive as well and shows the sterling type of character which these days of self-reliance and trial produced."—American ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... back and gazed at the cool youngster before him. A smile of satisfaction, partly at the self-reliance of his guest and partly at the novelty of his situation, spread over his face. He reached for a pack of Mexican cards and laughed. "Man! You're a cool one—I'll do ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... tendency to mischief of American children. After a few weeks there was little trouble about discipline or order, and they learned to control themselves better and to pay better attention. It took months to break the habit of studying aloud, and will take years to instil habits of perseverance and self-reliance. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human nature; self-control, self-reliance, endurance, and altruism or the devotion of Self to the good of the community; and not the least of its merits is that it corrects and restrains the dreary materialism of the Labour ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... it is open to you. I am arranging to open another in Central America. It is nearer than Liberia—within seven days by steamer. You are intelligent and know that success does not so much depend on external help as on self-reliance. Much depends on yourself. If you will engage in the enterprise, I will spend some of the money intrusted to me. This is the practical part of my wish to see you. I ask you then to consider it seriously, not for yourselves merely, nor for your race and ours for the present ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... idea, however, that his wife was suffering ill-effects from her terrible ordeal, braced him up. He remained with her for a time, then he sought Sir Nathaniel in order to talk over the matter with him. He knew that the calm common sense and self-reliance of the old man, as well as his experience, would be helpful ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... blew; disgraced and sorrowful, because they could not please others. Truly 'the tears live in an onion, that should water such a sorrow.' Had they been men, they would have made these disappointments their best friends, and learned from them the needful lesson of self-reliance." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the length of time the secret must be kept. Among the officers whose length of service and professional reputation indicated them as suitable for the position, there was little to guide the department to the man who would on emergency show the audacity and self-reliance demanded by the intended operations. The action proposed, though it falls within the limits of the methods which history has justified, and has, therefore, a legitimate place in the so-called science of war, was, nevertheless, as the opinions of Barnard and Porter show, contrary ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... in the room whose appearance contrasted strongly with that of the old man—a boy of sixteen, with brown hair, ruddy cheeks, hazel eyes, an attractive yet firm and resolute face, and an appearance of manliness and self-reliance. He was well dressed, and would have passed muster upon ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... might call unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines such sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the 'possum. To these fellow-beings ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... escape by slipping between two planks. She had intended to shut up her guards in the tower and take to the fields, but the porter saw and stopped her. She concluded that it was not God's will that she should escape this time.[2039] Notwithstanding she had far too much self-reliance to despair. Her Voices, like her enamoured of marvellous encounters and knightly adventures, told her that she must see the King of England.[2040] Thus did her dreams encourage and console her in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... that voice, to stuff your ears so full of clay, and worldliness, and sin, and self-reliance as that it shall not echo in your hearts. 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall live,' and obtain to-day 'a better resurrection' than the resurrection ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Miss Kiametia shot a triumphant look at Mrs. Whitney. "There are always more lines in the right palm than in the left; and see, here is a wider space between the lines of the head and life—contact with the world, Captain Miller, has taught you self-reliance, promptness of action, and readiness of thought. Hello, what is that on your ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the years had treated her so indulgently. If her face had changed at all, it was in a slight hardening of the mouth—still eager enough to be very disconcerting at times, he felt—and in an added air of self-possession and self-reliance. She carried her head, too, ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... girl was ordinarily termed by those who knew her, from a circumstance in her situation that will appear as we advance in the tale, or Ghita Caraccioli, as was her real name, had been an orphan from infancy. She had imbibed a strength of character and a self-reliance from her condition, that might otherwise have been wanting in one so young, and of a native disposition so truly gentle. An aunt had impressed on her mind the lessons of female decorum; and her uncle, who had abandoned the world on account of a strong ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cracks of the floor, to die counting the motes by millions. The youth "remembered men in bonds as bound with them." He tithed himself a tenth, then a third, then a half, and at length used up his fortune in noble service. He founded clubs for workingmen and taught them industry, honor and self-reliance. He bought spinning-wheels and raw flax, and made pauper women self-supporting. He founded the Sheffield Museum, and placed there his paintings and marbles, that workers in iron and steel might have the finest models ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... her over. Moreover, the task was rendered doubly difficult and perilous by their exhaustion and inability to swim when the keel to which they were holding went under water. But their agility and self-reliance, evolved from a life next to Nature, stood them in good stead, and soon all three were actually standing inside the water-logged boat. The oars, lashed under the seats, were still in her, and, though almost up to their waists in water, they began ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... deference, and permitted my counsels to take the lead. The exercise of partisan warfare—especially that practised on the Mexican and Indian frontiers—is a school scarcely equalled for training the mind to coolness and self-reliance. An experience thus obtained, had given mine such a cast; and taught me, by many a well-remembered lesson, the truthfulness of that wise saw; "The more haste the less speed." Instead, therefore of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... away from the little ones. From five years of age the boys are expected to manage for themselves—to fight their own battles, literally—and to look out for themselves in general. Naturally they possess a self-reliance greater than other children of their age. We come into contact with this in the library in the child's more or less independent choice of books and his free criticism—often remarkably keen— of the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was occasionally relieved with splendid passages of impassioned and stirring eloquence. Intrepid self-reliance, unwearied activity, far-reaching sagacity, clearness, and fulness, were the prominent characteristics of Mr. Tazewell's mind. Comprehending with intuitive glance the whole field of argument, he "launched into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind." One of our leading statesmen ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... erstwhile comrade, writing of him, says: "Landsborough's enterprise was entirely founded on self-reliance. He had neither Government aid nor capitalists at his back when he achieved his first success as an explorer. He was the very model of a pioneer — courageous, hardy, good-humoured, and kindly. He was an excellent horseman, a most entertaining and, at times, eccentric companion, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... hand to his breast. He might have done so if he had met her chambermaid, or any straggling damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be looked upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked like one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to self-reliance, and command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without being struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon her, in that conflict of attraction ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been the development of climate but of opportunity. It is not so easy in Christian lands to stock immoral houses with slaves, for the reason that the slaves are not present with which to do it. Women have freedom and cannot be openly bought and sold even in marriage; women have self-reliance and self-respect in a Christian country; they have a clean, decent religion; women who worship the true God have His protecting arm to defend themselves, and through them other women who do not personally worship God share ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... further questioning; offended, possibly, his sense of that confidence which is due comrade to comrade, but she became immediately so propitiative and sweetly dependent—the antithesis to that self-reliance her response implied—he thought no more of it, but remained content with her reticence. Half-shyly, she looked at him beneath her dark lashes, as if to read how deeply he was annoyed, and, seeing his face clear, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... communications with its colonies, and weakened its hold on them. The defeat, in 1806 and 1807, of two British expeditions to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, resulting in the capitulation of the English force, gave a great impulse to the self-reliance of the colonists, to whom the credit of the victory entirely belonged. When the intervention of Napoleon in Spain plunged the mother country into anarchy, the colonists began to act for themselves. They were still loyal, but they were no ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... least, peculiarities belonging to the early emigrant, as much before as after his removal. And there were others, quite as distinctly marked, called into activity, if not actually created by his life in the wilderness. Such, for example, was his self-reliance—his confidence in his own strength, sagacity, and courage. It was but little assistance that he ever required from his neighbors, though no man was ever more willing to render it to others, in the hour of need. He was the swift avenger of his own wrongs, and he never appealed to another to ascertain ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... unable longer to defend its borders and gave way before the scattered attacks of the German peoples, who never combined in any general alliance against it, is a very difficult question to answer satisfactorily. The inhabitants of the Empire appear gradually to have lost their energy and self-reliance and to have become less and less prosperous. This may be explained partially at least by the following considerations: (1) the terrible system of taxation, which discouraged and not infrequently ruined the members of the wealthier ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... greatness magnified by the imagination of our enemies, from the very fact that we were unknown to them—all these are removed; we have none behind us to fall back upon, as our countrymen in former battles have leaned upon us—and we are reduced to the necessity of self-defence and self-reliance. The sed seems to be antithetic to the whole as far back as priores pugnae; whereas nunc is opposed only to the clause which immediately precedes it, and constitutes an antithesis within ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Take courage, in its highest form—moral courage. If a child perpetually hears such phrases (and especially if they are applied to his own conduct), as, "What people will say," "How they will look at you," "What they will think," and the like, it tends to destroy all just self-reliance in that child's mind, and to set up instead an exaggerated notion of public opinion, the greatest tyrant of these times. People can see this in such an obvious thing as animal courage. They will avoid over-cautioning ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... dare to trifle with Irish demands, it will be at the risk of endangering those institutions she feels so proud of, but which Irishmen have no reason to respect. To Mr. Butt is due a debt of gratitude by the Irish people which they can never repay, for he has taught them self-reliance and knowledge of their power. If I have felt it my duty to put myself in antagonism with Mr. Butt I hope he will forgive me. If I have said or written harsh things I have never said more nor less than was due to the gravity of ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... years, to more fully appreciate the value in life of the habits you have acquired of self-reliance, long-sustained effort, obedience to discipline, and respect for lawful authority, a value greater even than that of the scientific knowledge you have gained, you will more and more highly prize the just reward which you are to-day found worthy ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... been blessed beyond the average of her Spanish-American sisters because she won her way to republicanism by evolution rather than revolution. They plunged into the extremely difficult experiment of democratic, of popular, self-government, after enduring the atrophy of every quality of self-control, self-reliance, and initiative throughout three withering centuries of existence under the worst and most foolish form of colonial government, both from the civil and the religious standpoint, that has ever existed. The marvel is not that some of them failed, but that some of them have eventually succeeded ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... good one in Mrs. Ried's opinion. Perhaps the giddy Sadie, at once her pride and her anxiety, might learn a little self-reliance by feeling a shadow of the weight of care ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... deposit. Then you will get it back again, because God does not keep anybody's securities against his will—you will get it back again, and much good it will do you when you have got it! Self-will, self-reliance, self-determination—these are the opposites of committing the keeping of our souls to God. And, as I say, if you withdraw the deposit, you take all the burden and trouble of it on your own shoulders again. Do not fancy that you are 'living ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... first was the payment of his father's debts. Having made up his mind on that point, he strode along without swerving, contracting some rather saturnine sternness, as a young man is likely to do who has a premature call upon him for self-reliance. Tom felt intensely that common cause with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on being irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass much silent criticism on the rashness and imprudence of his father's past conduct; their ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... authority. He clung to a principle because he thought it true, not because others thought it so. There is no indication that he valued an opinion the more because great men of former ages had favored it. His self-reliance was shown in his unwillingness to employ servants. Even when very feeble, he refused to permit any one to assist him. He had extraordinary power of condensation, and, always seeing the gist of a matter, he often exposed an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... towards me, with which he has been inspired by you, and his most absolute incapability, with all his aestheticism, of conceiving the slightest notion of what had to be conceived. The total confusion engendered in him by listening to my opera he transfers with bold self-reliance to my intentions and to the work itself. He, who apparently can see in opera nothing but kettledrums, trombones, and double-basses, naturally in my opera did not see the wood for the trees; but, being a clever and glib- penned litterateur, he produces a witty and many-coloured set of variorum notes ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the White Nile. The term was a pure invention of Abyssinian Bruce who was well aware of the unfact he was propagating, but his inordinate vanity and self-esteem, contrasting so curiously with many noble qualities, especially courage and self-reliance, tempted him to this and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... She was fresh and sweet, strong and healthy, with a certain grace of manner about her that pleased Babcock instantly. He saw now that she had her mother's eyes and color, but not her air of fearlessness and self-reliance—that kind of self-reliance which comes only of many nights of anxiety and many days of success. He noticed, too, that when she spoke to the old man her voice was tempered with a peculiar tenderness, as if his infirmities were ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... been standing unusually still, following the stranger's words—caught by his self-reliance and impressed by his personality. Now, as he ceased to speak, he moved quickly forward, impelled ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... surround them, such as malice, envy, conceit, avariciousness, and other evils, by being clad in the armor of self-respect; and then they will be able to encounter temptation and corruption, unstained and unpolluted. This feeling of self-respect is something stronger than self-reliance, higher than pride. It is an energy of the soul which masters the whole being for its good, watching with a never-ceasing vigilance. It is the sense of duty and the sense of honor combined. It is an armor, which, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... communal duties are not realised by the people. The one reason addressed by those who deny to us the capacity for self-rule is the insufficient appreciation by the people of communal duties and discipline. It is only by actually refraining for a time from dependence on Government that we can regain self-reliance, learn first-hand the value of communal duties and build up true national co-operation. Non-co-operation is a practical and positive training in Swadharma, and Swadharma alone can lead up ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... privations helped the end. Self-reliance, the strongest trait of the pioneer was his by blood and birth and training, and was developed by the hardships of his lot to the mighty power needed to guide our country through the ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... scarcely knowing whether to feel grateful for the churlish advice or to resume his wonted attitude of self-reliance and hold himself unprejudiced by Presby's condemnation of the Croix d'Or. He wondered if Bully Presby suspected him of having been friendly with the mob of drunken ruffians at the road house, but he had been given ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the cardinal from the ground, and extricating himself from the old man's grasp strode, with his customary air of majestic self-reliance, to the door. Just ere he reached it, three low, but regular knocks sounded on the panel: the door opened, and the space without was filled with the dark forms of ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... our duty, and God gave us the victory," said Paul. He stood before them taller and stouter than when he went away. He was sunburnt; but his countenance was noble and manly, and marked with self-reliance. He never had made a speech. He did not know what to say. To stand there facing the audience, with his mother, Azalia, Daphne, and all his old friends before him, was very embarrassing. It was worse than meeting the Rebels in ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... he knew the results to be good. On his own bridge he had faced the blind fog with the lives of passengers hanging upon his judgment; he had met the elements at their work, and out of the ordeal he had come with greater self-reliance, broader, kindlier, better. For the first time in his life he was looking beyond his dreams, although the work in hand was all-absorbing; there would be more for him to do. He felt it, he knew it, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... and punishment some sort of un-natural causation becomes necessary: and all other varieties of the denial of nature follow it. A god who demands—in place of a god who helps, who gives counsel, who is at bottom merely a name for every happy inspiration of courage and self-reliance.... Morality is no longer a reflection of the conditions which make for the sound life and development of the people; it is no longer the primary life-instinct; instead it has become abstract and in opposition to life—a fundamental ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... be taken lightly or tinged with the frivolity that too often accompanies an ardent love affair between two young people who have not learned, as had Bob and Donna, to view life seriously. Both were graduates of the hard school of practicalities, and early in life each had learned the value of self-reliance and the wisdom of thinking clearly and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "protection"—a word that simply means release from all responsibility, all use of one's own faculties—a word that has ever blinded people to its true significance. Under authority and this false promise of "protection," self-reliance, the first incentive to freedom, has not only been lost, but the aversion of mankind for responsibility has been fostered by the few, whose greater bodily strength, superior intellect, or the inherent law of self-development has ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... every nook and cranny, which enabled them to find exactly where to hide in case of danger. Even in the dark they were able to tell, after scouting, which way the enemy would be coming. This especially gave a commando the necessary self-reliance, which is of such great importance in battle. It has also been found during the latter part of the War to be easier for a burgher to get provisions in his own district than in others, notwithstanding the destruction caused by ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... infinite determination and self-reliance—the square chin, the steadfast eyes, telling their tale as plainly as print. In India he might have passed for an officer of native cavalry in mufti; but when he spoke he used the curious nasal drawl ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... composition, especially as regards ideas or invention; but her father (who, entre nous, is rather too infatuated about her) declares that she certainly has ideas, and that she is only diffident and has too little self-reliance. Well, we shall see. If she acquires no thoughts or ideas, (for hitherto she really has none whatever,) it is all in vain, for God knows I can't give her any! It is not the father's intention to make her a great composer. He says, "I don't wish her to write operas, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... have been right in every point of his creed, but in the main he was correct, his purpose being to implant in his children a sturdy self-reliance. They could not hope to get along at all times without leaning upon others, but that boy who never forgets that God has given him a mind, a body, certain faculties and infinite powers, with the intention that he should cultivate and use them to the highest point, is the one who is sure ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... their effect, and soon awakened a slumbering conscience. But its upbraidings were not accepted unquestionably by Angelina, as they had been by Sarah. They only stung her into a desire for investigation. She must know the why; and her strong self-reliance helped her judgment, and buoyed her up amid waves of doubt and anxiety that would have ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... bears, and wapitis. No books had so fascinated me, when a boy, as the 'Deer-slayer,' the 'Pathfinder,' and the beloved 'Last of the Mohicans.' Here then was a new field for adventure. I would go to California, and hunt my way across the continent. Ruxton's 'Life in the Far West' inspired a belief in self-reliance and independence only rivalled by Robinson Crusoe. If I could not find a companion, I would go alone. Little did I dream of the fortune which was in store for me, or how nearly I missed carrying out the scheme so wildly contemplated, or ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... we cannot hinder, which we ought rather to accelerate. It is the active cause at work which gives us hope of seeing the rise of a stronger race, a race which will possess in abundance those same qualities which are lacking to the degenerate vanishing species, strength of will, responsibility, self-reliance, the power of concentration...." ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... victory turned to ashes on the lips of the people, because there was no homogeneous and vital organization to conserve and administer the invaluable blessings won by the sword: against the suicidal jealousy of State rights as adequate for prosperous self-reliance without the bonds and blessings of a vital National Government, they earnestly directed the most patriotic and intelligent arguments: of these the 'Federalist' is the chief repertory; hence its value and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Parlamente, "that the first step a man takes in self-reliance, removes him so far ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... staring into the darkness, pondering what to do. I thought of good Mr. Lowndes and his wife, and I decided to go to Charlestown. Some of my boyish motives come back to me now: I should be near Nick; and even at that age,—having lived a life of self-reliance,—I thought of gaining an education and of rising to a place of trust. Yes, I would go to Mr. Lowndes, and ask him to let me work for him and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the whole story. The French colonists differed from the English colonists from the outset in standards of conduct. They had brought with them the principle of paternalism, and, in time of trouble, they looked to France for support. The English colonists brought with them the principle of self-reliance and, in time of trouble, they looked only to themselves. And so the old English ideals had a new birth and a broader field of application on American soil. There is nothing finer in our country's history than the attitude of the New England colonists during ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength—I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly the poet of democracy; but not ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... to succeed in the colonies must take with him a quantity of self-reliance, energy, and perseverance; this is the best capital a man can have. Let none rely upon introductions—they are but useless things at the best—they may get you invited to a good dinner; but now that fresh arrivals ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Not at all.—Only self-reliance, one of the most available qualities for getting on in the world; for, if a man does not believe in himself, how on earth can he expect other ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... reflected when, after his week of waiting, he had his interview with the benevolent philanthropist, who explained to him, at great length, how charity had the effect of weakening the springs of character, and destroying those qualities of self-reliance and independence which were the most precious things ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... along with preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. The basic misconception was that southern white officers understood Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect—necessary attributes of leadership—were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "I was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who preceded us to place their own ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... brow, and was gathered in a great shining coil behind; and a mouth clear-cut and firm, but now drawn and quivering with deep emotion. The comely head was finely poised upon the slender neck, and in the whole figure there was an air of self-reliance and power that accorded well with the position which she held. A simple gray dress, with a bright ribbon at the throat and a bunch of autumn flowers carelessly tucked into the belt which circled the trim waist, completed the picture framed in the doorway of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... beginning to pick up made him think only of himself. The turbulent and adventurous life of these new nations compelled him to most absurd expedients and varied occupations. Yet he felt himself strong with an audacity and self-reliance which he never had in the old world. "I am equal to everything," he said, "if they only give me time to prove it!" Although he had fled from his country in order not to take up arms, he even led a soldier's life for a brief period in his adopted land, receiving ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is my dynamometer. I try every questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by saying that faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was to cure me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... an organization the purpose of which is character-building for boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is an effort to get boys to appreciate the things about them and to train them in self-reliance, manhood, and good citizenship. It is "peace-scouting" these boys engage in, living as much as possible out of doors; camping, hiking and learning the secrets of the woods and fields. The movement is not essentially military, but ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... wrought a wonderful change in the man of books; his study was wherever he chanced to be; his white hands had become horny and browned, his pale face tanned. His retiring habits had given place to a broad sociality, his diffidence to a generous self-reliance, and it seemed to him that he could do and dare almost anything. From early morning till late at night he worked to get his log home ready, while his wife and little ones remained in the solitary cabin by the riverside. It was a long walk for him, however after ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... deliberation, the steadiness, the professional aptitude, the unremitting exertion that so well supplies the place of celerity,—never resting, if never hasting,—the calculated daring at fit moments, and above all the unfailing self-possession and self-reliance which at every instant up to the last secured to the British enterprise the full value of the other qualities possessed by the Commander-in-chief. A biographical notice of Howe cannot be complete without quoting the tribute of an accomplished officer belonging to one of the navies ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... rocks on every side with the agility of young goats. He reflected that they had forgotten their weariness and seemed to be diverting themselves with an exercise to which each contributed his own effort, his individual tactics and his qualities of self-reliance and initiative. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... been my object to deal generally with the actor's calling, a calling, difficult and hazardous in character, demanding much patience, self-reliance, determination, and good temper. This last is not one of its least important demands on your character. Remember that the actor is not in one sense of the word an independent artist; it is his misfortune that the practice of his art ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... was accustomed to my mother's anxious care, for as an only child there had fallen to me a double portion of maternal solicitude. In moments of stress and pain it came as a grateful balm; yet more often, as now, it was irritating to my growing sense of self-reliance. To show how little I heeded her admonition, how well able I was to take care of myself, as I smiled loftily from my dangerous perch, with my legs hardly straddling the horse's back, I disdained to secure myself by holding to the harness, but folded ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without you, Heaven only knows. It's curious—the effect imprisonment has on you. It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a baby. You want to be free—and yet you're almost afraid ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... into another atmosphere, another world. The change was a spiritual shock to him, making him gasp as if he had fallen into a tumultuous sea. There was the same chill, there was a like difficulty in getting his balance. But this was not for long. His innate self-reliance steadied him rapidly. His long-established habit of superiority helped him to avoid betraying his first sense of ignorance and unfitness. His receptiveness led him to assimilate swiftly the innumerable and novel facts of life with which he ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... I've been running with a machine for years." The calm way with which Muggles said this, shaking the ashes from his cigar as he spoke, showed a certain self-reliance. "Out in our village I'm foreman of ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... who by physical and mental training, the use of his muscles, the exercise of his faculties, the restraint of his appetites,—even those mental appetites which you call tastes,—has acquired vigor, endurance, self-reliance, self-control! Let a man be pure and honorable, do to others as he would have them do to him, and, in the words of the old Church of England Catechism, "learn and labor truly to get his own living in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... atom of the old self-reliance had gone from the girl's manner. She clung to him, timid, loving, a gentle, weak woman. Her whole soul was in her appeal and the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... produced in my mind the picture of a noble farm-house in a park-like valley, just as the line, "Well have our rifles ready, boys," expressed the boldness and self-reliance of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... crew, for the majority thought that an action was imminent, and perhaps a superior foe to be fought, yet there was no sign of that fear which is supposed to attack the novice in battle. It was a convincing proof of American bravery and self-reliance. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... menacing edge of a fiery sky, Grim Doorga, blue-limb'd and red-handed, go by, And the first thing he worships is Terror. Anon, Still impell'd by necessity hungrily on, He conquers the realms of his own self-reliance, And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance. From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul; Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll! On toward Heaven the son of Alcmena strides high on The heads of the Hydra, the spoils ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... to bed very happy and very confident. Ernestine, if less confident, had sufficient self-reliance not to worry about the future. Thanks to her eighteen years of successful self-support, she knew that she could meet life anywhere any time, and get ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick |
