"Self-sufficing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the self-sufficing, lawful order of Nature, and the adequacy of the natural powers of our mind to understand the mysteries (popularly so appraised) of heaven and earth, the singular expository style of the Ethics emphasizes in unmistakable fashion. Even for our understanding ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... which showed him calmly awaiting the worst in London, when men like Bolingbroke and Ormond had chosen to seek safety in flight. Yet even the course which he took in this instance seems to have been rather the result of indecision than of independent self-sufficing courage and resolve. He does not appear to have been able to decide upon anything until the time had passed when movement of any kind would have availed, and so he remained where he was. Many a man has gained credit for courage, and has seemed to surround himself with ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Church and State, and, in other words, to make laws for the nations to obey. The Canon Law did not come down from heaven, but was enacted from time to time in the past, and was to be enacted furthermore in the future. Venice, as a modern state, self-sufficing and concentrating power, legislated for its clergy as well as for its laity, resenting interference outside questions of pure doctrine. The two pretensions clashed under Paul V, a zealous and uncompromising pontiff, the founder of the House of Borghese. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... natures condemned to solitude, he tried to convince himself that he had no need of society, that he despised its attractions, and could be self-sufficing. So far was this from the truth that he often regarded with bitter envy those of his fellow-students who had the social air, who conversed freely among their equals, and showed that the pursuits of the College were only a part of their existence. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... great and incommunicable Name certified and sealed to the Jewish Church as their possession in their God. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is our Lord of the New. He whose being is eternal, underived, self-sufficing, self-determining, knowing no variation, no diminution, no age, He who is because He is and that He is, dwells in His fulness in our Saviour. To worship Him is not to divert worship from the one God, nor is it to have other gods besides ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... whole was happy in her own way. Personally, perhaps, she longed less for her mother's presence and sympathy than Frances did, for she was by nature more self-sufficing. And when one scarcely knows till one is fifteen or sixteen what it is to have a mother and a real home of one's own, small wonder if the inestimable blessings of such possessions are barely realised. Then, too, Jacinth's frequent visits to Lady Myrtle, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... take place by their side. They appear with the ealdormen in the judicial meetings of the counties: if the Gerefa neglects his duty, it is for them to step in; yet they have also their own spiritual jurisdiction. It is a spiritual and temporal organisation of small extent, yet of a certain self-sufficing completeness. Many of the present shires correspond to the old kingdoms, and bear their names to this day. The bishops' sees often coincide with the seats of royalty; for the kings wished each to have a bishop to himself in his little territory, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... is sometimes! What an unsophisticated, untaught thing! I see her now looking up into my face, and entreating me to prevent them from smothering her, and to be sure and give her a strong narcotic. I see her confessing that she was not so self-sufficing, so independent of sympathy, as people thought. I see the secret tear drop quietly from her eyelash. She said I thought her childish, and I did. She imagined I despised her. Despised her! It was unutterably sweet to feel myself at once near her and above her—to be conscious of a natural right ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... stages. It sought to give a more practical character to high-school training by promoting the "modern side," hitherto overshadowed by a mainly literary curriculum, and it endeavoured to make the school courses self-sufficing and self-contained instead of merely a stepping-stone to the University courses. To this end secondary schools were encouraged to give more importance to School Final Examinations as a general test of proficiency and not to regard their courses as almost exclusively preparatory to the University ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... still a bachelor. In the celestial matrimonial bureau a partner might have been selected for him, but he had never been able to discover her. It was his one failure as a detective. He was a self-sufficing person, who preferred a gas stove to a domestic; but in deference to Glover Street opinion he admitted a female factotum between ten A.M. and ten P.M., and, equally in deference to Glover Street opinion, excluded her between ten ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... come voluntarily into this strange fellowship; and it would have been hard to say which of the pair regarded the other with most suspicion. The bear, to be sure, at five months old, was more grown up, more self-sufficing and efficient than the baby at five years; but he had the disadvantage of feeling himself an interloper. He had come to the raft quite uninvited, and found the baby in possession! On that account, of course, he rather expected the baby to show her ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... call this high and self-sufficing Beauty characteristic, so far as herewith is connected the notion of limitation or conditionality in the manifestation, yet still the characteristic continues efficient, though indistinguishable, within; as in the crystal, although transparent, the texture ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... you that woman is independent, self-sufficing. Your instincts cry feebly for passion, that savage outlaw which still lies in wait for the modern woman, to carry her whither she would not. Hence your lapse from strict agnostic morality into matrimony, bondage, ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... much given to professions of friendship, nor was he one of the great men who keep a circle of intimates and sometimes of flatterers about them. He was extremely independent of the world and perfectly self-sufficing, but it is a mistake to suppose that because he unbosomed himself to scarcely any one, and had the loneliness of greatness and of high responsibilities, he was therefore without friends. He had as many friends as usually fall to the lot of any man; and although ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... himself in such manner as would have made lord Gartley quite grateful to him, had he not put it down to the imperial presence of his high-born aunt, cowering his inferior nature. But while indeed the major was naturally checked by a self-sufficing feminine presence, the cause that mainly operated to his suppression was of another kind and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... promised the other contemptuous oblivion.[287] Perpetuity of hate is as hard as perpetuity of love for our poor short-spanned characters, and at length the three who were once to have lived together in self-sufficing union, and then in their next mood to have forgotten one another instantly and for ever, held to neither of the extremes, but settled down into an easier middle path of indifferent good-will. The conduct of all three, said the most famous of them, may serve for an example of the way ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the chief features of this new life: Industrially, we have the decline of the old system of production in the countryside in which each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most part self-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almost entirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, and where such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the form of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the beginnings ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax |
