"Assert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ask those who assert that women are incapable of conducting the business of politics, to say whether any set of men, of either party, could have played their cards more skilfully? Even after the campaign was over we might have failed, had it not been for the suppers. We owed this idea, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... have been recently holding a convention for the somewhat novel purpose of procuring an amendment to the Constitution of the United States recognizing the Deity, do not fairly state the case when they assert that it is the right of a Christian people to govern themselves in a Christian manner. If we are not governing ourselves in a Christian manner, how shall the doings of our government be designated? The fact is, that the movement is one to bring about in this country that union ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... infinitely easier to deceive his uninformed readers by a bold assertion that I myself am an idealist at bottom. This assertion, swallowed without suspicion of its absolute untruth, would render it plausible and quite credible to assert, next, that I had actually "appropriated" my philosophy from a greater idealist ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... where the honour of his Lord and Master was concerned, the fear of man made no part of his character. He is by Spotswood styled the principal agent or apostle of the presbyterians in Scotland[45]. He did indeed assert the rights of presbytery to the utmost of his power against diocesan episcopacy; he possessed great presence of mind, and was superior to all the arts of flattery, that were sometimes tried with him; he was once blamed, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... experience, I venture to think that perhaps the doctrine that God is lifted up high above all human weaknesses and emotions does not mean that there can be no shadow cast on the divine blessedness by the dark substance of human sin. I do not venture to assert: I only suggest; and this I know, that He who said to us, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' had His eyes filled with tears, even in His hour of triumph, as He looked across the valley and saw ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... not be displeased to have a specimen of these strange conversations between human beings and the invisible beings, who assert that they are the disincarnated spirits of those who day by day quit this world of woe. It will not be difficult to give the reader a specimen of them. At least one half of the fourteen or fifteen hundred pages dedicated to the Piper case in the Proceedings of the ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... meaning isn't plain it isn't worth looking after. But it will not do to measure pride by its supposed materials. It does not depend on them but on the individual. You everywhere see people assert that most of which they feel least sure, and then it is easy for them to conclude that where there is so much more of the reality there must be proportionably more of the assertion. I wish some of our gentlemen, and ladies, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the fore-edge. A soft brush will be found useful if there is much dust. The whole exterior should also be rubbed with a soft cloth, and then the covers should be opened and the hinges of the binding examined; for mildew WILL assert itself both inside and outside certain books, and that most pertinaciously. It has unaccountable likes and dislikes. Some bindings seem positively to invite damp, and mildew will attack these when no other books on the same shelf show any signs of ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... of esteem and respect. This was cause enough to arouse arrogance in an ambitious soul, and cause enough for the old gentleman, who considered that Apollonius had such a soul, to believe in this arrogance. The old gentleman had to admit that his son was indispensable and dared assert neither right nor might against him. The emotion and mental exertion on the day before the death of his eldest son had undermined his strength; he collapsed entirely now and became each day queerer and more sensitive. He no longer demanded subserviency from Apollonius; he found a certain ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... should be granted more easily to those who had a good will when they were in a more imperfect state, in the state of struggle and of pilgrimage, in Ecclesia militante, in statu viatorum. The good angels themselves were not created incapable of sin. Nevertheless I would not dare to assert that there are no blessed creatures born, or such as are sinless and holy by their nature. There are perhaps people who give this privilege to the Blessed Virgin, since, moreover, the Roman Church to-day places her above the angels. But it suffices us ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... never treat her in the same cordial way that I treated Mrs. Blake and the Larkums, and several others of her class. These instinctively made me feel that, no matter how friendly I might be, there was no danger of their trying to assert an equality, which I suppose has existed among the members of the human family since shortly after the expulsion from Eden. With Esmerelda the ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... light.] The story of Romeo is involved in some uncertainty. The French writers assert the continuance of his ministerial office even after the decease of his soverign Raymond Berenger, count of Provence: and they rest this assertion chiefly on the fact of a certain Romieu de Villeneuve, who was the contemporary of that prince, having left large possessions ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... little inspection to show him that the Taft Administration was not carrying out his policies, and that the elements against which he had striven for eight years were creeping back. Indeed, they had crept back. It would be unjust to Mr. Taft to assert that he had not continued the war on Trusts. Under his able Attorney-General, Mr. George W. Wickersham, many prosecutions were going forward, and in some cases the legislation begun by Roosevelt was extended and made more ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... spiculae are unalterable. In like manner you may find alum-crystals, quartz-crystals, and all other crystals, distorted in shape. They are thus far at the mercy of the accidents of crystallization; but in one particular they assert their superiority over all such accidents—angular ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... summoned her to the city. Whatever their feeling toward the doctor, her grand-parents had never betrayed them to her or sought to undermine—or rather undeceive—her loyal devotion; but never had it occurred to them as a possibility that he would assert his paternal claim and bear away with him the idol of their hearts, the image of the cherished daughter he had won from them so many years before. Proud old judge and senator as he was, the grandfather had never been so sore stricken. ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... be selected until four Gospels were recognised. Here, again, Dr. Giles supports the argument we are building up. He says: "Justin Martyr never once mentions by name the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This circumstance is of great importance; for those who assert that our four canonical Gospels are contemporary records of our Saviour's ministry, ascribe them to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and to no other writers. In this they are, in a certain sense, consistent; for contemporary writings [? histories] are very rarely anonymous. If so, how could they ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... who has been working overtime in the attempt to obtain some religious sanction for her propaganda, is ready not only to throw the Atheists overboard, but also to assert that a flourishing movement for artificial birth control centred round the late Dr. Trall, who was a Christian. Her letter was answered by Dr. Binnie Dunlop ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... of affairs is more than sad, it is iniquitous. And therefore the Church must assert herself. The individual minister must assert himself, and claim a higher scale of remuneration. Help yourself, show push and principle, cultivate practical aims—that is what I preach to young men reading for Holy Orders. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... man; some assert that he fell overboard. However, be that as it may, when he came to the surface, he had his arm around Kathryn Blair, and she had his long coat draped around her slender figure.... And, as they lifted her to the deck, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... misunderstood herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground, that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its irrepressible longings, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... but a small proportion of this literature has been published, and a thorough understanding of it is impossible until systematic publications shall have been issued. Meanwhile it is safe to assert that, as in the case of incantations and prayers, the omens were generally combined into series by the Babylonian and ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... kind. My dear fellow, I will be open with you, and tell you at once that you do not know my aunt. She is the dearest woman in the world, but she has one weakness. Possessed of a great deal of common-sense and shrewdness, she likes to assert them; therefore any new scheme or proposition is met by her with a certain almost exaggerated suspicion. For that reason she invariably refuses at first to have anything to do with it. Chwastowski, her manager, might tell you something about that. In dealing with her it is always ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... big-voiced, always influential and often strongly unreasonable Times Newspaper was the express emblem of Edward Sterling; he, more than any other man or circumstance, was the Times Newspaper, and thundered through it to the shaking of the spheres. And let us assert withal that his and its influence, in those days, was not ill grounded but rather well; that the loud manifold unreason, often enough vituperated and groaned over, was of the surface mostly; that his conclusions, unreasonable, partial, hasty as they might ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... education of Crispus, the son of Constantine, and that the name Chrysopolis, by which Besancon was very generally known in early times, was only a corruption of Crispopolis. Earlier writers are in favour of the natural derivation of Chrysopolis, and assert that when the Senones lost their famous chief, the Brennus of Roman history, before Delphos, they built a town where Byzantium afterwards stood, and called it Bisantium and Chrysopolis, in memory of their city of those ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... recount' many tales touching on many points in our speculations, and no child and no Elizabethan would refrain from doing so, but the Spectator will not 'go out of the occurrences of common life, but assert it as a general observation.' [Footnote: Spectator 107] He is in perfect harmony with his age, too, in the intensely rational view which he takes of ghosts [Footnote: Spectator 110] and witches, [Footnote: Spectator 117] for it was a period in which men cared very little for things which ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... waters of the Nile retire, after the annual overflow, multitudes of rats and mice are seen to issue from the moistened soil. The Egyptians believe that these animals are generated from the earth; and some of the people assert, that they have seen the rats in a state of formation, while one half of the bodies was flesh and the other ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... the first of the series in the Vatican manuscript, which attributes it to no other poet than Anacreon. They who assert that the manuscript imputes it to Basilius, have been mislead. Whether it be the production of Anacreon or not, it has all the features of ancient simplicity, and is a beautiful imitation ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... inmost soul with my misery; made a right gallant effort not to sink down. It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing. A dray rolls slowly by, and I notice there are potatoes in it; but out of sheer fury and stubbornness, I take it into my head to assert that they are not potatoes, but cabbages, and I swore frightful oaths that they were cabbages. I heard quite well what I was saying, and I swore this lie wittingly; repeating time after time, just to have the vicious satisfaction of perjuring myself. I got intoxicated with the thought ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... last sound of the knocker had by degrees asserted its claim to reality; perhaps impatience began to assert its claim; perhaps that long elm-tree shadow which was creeping softly on, even to his very feet, broke in upon the muser's vision. Certainly he turned with a very quick motion towards the door, and a gesture of the hand which said that this time the knocker should ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... depicting him as a masterful constructionist, assert that it was he who first saw the waste and futility of competition, and that he organized the New York Central from the disjointed, disconnected lines of a number of previously separate little railroads. This is ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Creek, but whether she ever waved a Union flag as Stonewall Jackson's men were passing is a question concerning which opinions differ. Southern sympathizers deny it, while persons of Northern sentiments living in Frederick assert that the verses of the Quaker poet represent the truth. At any rate, a woman with such a name "lived and moved and had her being" in that city. She was interred in the burying ground of the German Reformed Church, and frequently pilgrimages are made to her grave, over which floats a Union ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... and moved away. She busied herself with some flowers, her back turned. The tension had been relieved, and she wanted to give him time to recover his poise. She knew him well enough to be sure that, sooner or later, the resiliency of his nature would assert itself. He could never ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better then than they are now. I dare assert too, in defiance of the favourers of the ancients, that Homer's hero Achilles was both a brute and a scoundrel, and consequently an improper character for the hero of an epic poem; he had so little regard for his country, that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Irving walks up and down the stage, one arm on his shoulder, and explains the whole conception of the part. He is not only a great actor, but a great teacher; and his influence pervades and dominates every being in the theatre. He does not merely assert, but gives full and sufficient reason for every action until every one on the stage grasps the exact meaning of the scene as well as he does himself. As an instance of this, let us follow the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... been the contempt felt for his character, that it seems almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was eminently to be despised. Nothing much more severe can be said of him than the remarks of Horace Walpole—upon his 'Diary;' in which he observes that Dodington records little but what is to his own ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... leisurely returned from Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful country he had enjoyed himself very much, and had married a lady as beautiful as itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge him to assert his claim to the English crown, and declare war against King Henry. This, after great loss of time in feasting and dancing with his beautiful Italian wife among his Norman friends, he ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... begged for a part of those indulgences of hers which were so carefully recorded and treasured. She could furnish names to the families interested and only asked for a few alms to succor the Pope in his needs. A little fellow, a herder, who dared to assert that he had seen nothing more than one light and two men in salakots had difficulty in escaping with mere slaps and scoldings. Vainly he swore to it; there were his carabaos with him and could verify his statement. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... retinue of German Princes and Electors at Strasburg, need only say the word to find hundreds of princely recruits for her knighthood in petto. Her mantle, as a Grand Mistress of the Order of CONFIDENCE, has been already embroidered at Lyons, and those who have seen it assert that it is truly superb. The diamonds of the star on the mantle are valued ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... stone, and thatched with atap (plaited palm leaves) possess many features in common with the screened and balconied dwellings of Japan. The people, in aspect and feature, also convey suggestions of the Japanese origin ascribed to them, for ancient traditions assert that the Minahasa was colonised by an Asiatic tribe, driven out of Formosa by native savages, in one of those wild raids upon the peaceful maritime population which drove them to face the perils of an unknown sea, rather than fall into the ruthless hands of the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... light now increasing momentarily, Luke FitzHenry looked down upon the wildly confused decks and saw discipline slowly assert itself. He saw the captain commanding by sheer force of individual power; he saw the quartermasters form in line across the deck and drive the passengers farther aft, leaving room ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... followers, however, who call themselves Neo-Darwinians, are ready to go one better. Led by the German biologist, Weismann, they would thrust the Lamarckians, with their hypothesis of use-inheritance, clean out of the field. Spontaneous variation, they assert, is all that is needed to prepare the way for the selection of the tall giraffe. It happened to be born that way. In other words, its parents had it in them to breed it so. This is not a theory that tells one anything positive. It is merely a caution to look away ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... form and diction, however remote they may be from modern fashions, assert themselves unmistakably to be of an aristocratic and not a popular tradition. The ballads have many things in common with the other poems, but they have lost the grand style, and the pride and solemnity of language. One ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... how I know it was the guano, and not the chemical manure. In answer to this inquiry, if made, I may observe, that I supplied two of my neighbours with the chemical manure, and they applied it without guano on very poor land, and they both assert they had never such good crops of wheat before; but everywhere in this neighbourhood, the only good samples of wheat that I saw or heard of were grown on exhausted soil. This appears to me to be a strong proof ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... for whom this his "holy herb" was named? Many suppose that he was St. Robert, a Benedictine monk, to whom the twenty-ninth of April—the day the plant comes into flower in Europe—is dedicated. Others assert that Robert Duke of Normandy, for whom the "Ortus Sanitatis," a standard medical guide for some hundred of years, was written, is the man honored; and since there is now no way of deciding the mooted question, we may ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... in time to be successful in this plan. That there had been some bungling was not open to question. Yet I am unable to assert to whom our failure was due—whether to the Commandants of the South African Republic, or to Commander-in-Chief Prinsloo, or to Vechtgeneraal De Villiers. For then I was merely a Vice-Commandant, who had not to give orders, but to obey them. But whoever was to blame, it is certainly ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... demanded and received a guarantee from the British officers; and the captives bound themselves to make good from their own resources their redemption money. The Afghan ex-Subadar proved himself honest; the captives were captives no longer, and they proceeded to assert themselves in the masterful British manner. They hoisted the national flag; Pottinger became once again the high-handed 'political,' and ordered the local chiefs to come to his durbar and receive dresses of honour. Their fort was put into a state of defence, and a store of provisions was gathered ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... it: he was led to believe that it could contain no very radical change from the old belief, since the clergy had in a sense already submitted to it; and, on the other hand, the word "the only supreme head in earth" seemed not only to assert the Crown's civil authority over the temporalities of the Church, but to exclude definitely all jurisdiction on ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... to assert, that sea and water fowls are neither in such numbers, nor in such variety, as with us in the northern parts of the Atlantic Ocean. There are some, however, here, that I do not remember to have seen any where else; particularly the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of secessionists, and the departments of the Government were plentifully supplied by sympathizers with treason, while the effort put forth at this session to dislodge them was not responded to by the Administration. What became known as the Border State policy was beginning to assert itself everywhere, and was strikingly illustrated in the capture of fugitive slaves and their return to their rebel masters by our commanding generals, and by reiterated and gratuitous disavowals of "abolitionism" ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... hesitation in saying that, in a very large number of patients in all public asylums, the disease may be attributed to that cause." He does, indeed, admit that it may be only a symptom sometimes, but goes on to assert that masturbation "has not hitherto been exhibited in the awful light in which it deserves to be shown," and that "in by far the greater number of cases" it is the true cause of dementia.[321] Esquirol lent ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... now began to question the wisdom of holding more meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at Port Byron. In Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... persons, at once. These persons are, normally, in conflict. Othello menaces, Desdemona shrinks; Nora asserts her right, Hilmar his claim; L'Aiglon vaunts his inherited personality, Metternich—holds the candle to the mirror! But what of the spectator? He cannot at once shrink and menace, assert and deny, as the conditions of sympathetic reproduction would seem to demand. Real emotion implies a definite set of reactions of the nature of movements; and two opposed movements cannot take place at the same time. Ideas, however, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... not laugh, and there was a pause again. The colours were fading from sky and water, and a yellow, soft moonlight began to assert her turn. It was a change of beauty for beauty; but neither of the two young men seemed to take ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... is policy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other "high financiers" is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which is short-sighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and them is that, white I merely assert and maintain my right to live, they deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticize them; but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at large in its complainings against them. The public, its stupidity and cupidity, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... livery to go to church, and assert his dignity on Sundays, but it was only for form's sake. He was gardener and out-door man, vice Upton, resigned. There was but little fire in Fairoaks kitchen, and John and the maids drank their evening beer there by the light, of a single ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... immaterial and yet be only one of many attributes of Spirit. In his second letter to More (15 April), Descartes answers firmly: "It is repugnant to my concept to attribute any limit to the world, and I have no other measure than my perception for what I have to assert or to deny. I say, therefore, that the world is indeterminate or indefinite, because I do not recognize in it any limits. But I dare not call it infinite as I perceive that God is greater than the world, not in respect to His extension, because, as I have already said, I do not ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... collective body is sovereign, they are assembled only occasionally; and though, on such occasions, they determine every question relative to their rights and their interests as a people, and can assert their freedom with irresistible force; yet they do not think themselves, nor are they in reality, safe, without a more constant and more uniform power operating ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... now almost unanimous in fixing the date of this Gospel between 63 and 70, A. D. There is no valid reason for questioning the usual view that it was written in Rome. Clement, Eusebius, Jerome and Epiphanius, all assert that this was so. That the book was mainly intended for Gentiles, and especially Romans, seems probable from internal evidence. Latin forms not occurring in other Gospels, together with explanations of Jewish terms and customs, and the omission of all reference ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... delighted all with their knowledge of events from the creation down, and the accuracy with which they could quote long portions of the sacred book. The writing also won a great many complimentary remarks from all, and it is safe to assert that very few schools among white people could have made a better showing. The recitations were good, considering that they were uttered in a foreign tongue. The singing was delightful. The children sang in the two languages, ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... celebration became the universal rule {116} in the Church, and even with this many seem now to be satisfied. But as the Church grew, as the study of the Prayer Book and of Church History became more general and the Church began to assert herself, to claim her heritage, we find a return to the ancient order and Scriptural rule. The Sunday and Holy Day Eucharist was more and more restored, so that to-day there are very few parishes where "Frequent Communion" is not the rule. On this subject the Bishop of Maryland, the ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... the tongue of Wendell Phillips to plead the cause of the enslaved African in words that burned into the hearts of his countrymen. It emboldened George William Curtis to assert the right to break the shackles of party politics and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... an Irishman yet, nor a sailor either, who could not spend money in the grand manner. Our Captain was no exception, be certain! He figures superbly in the social accounts of the day; it is safe to assert that he set the pace after a fashion, and fair Mistress Susanna was a real leader of real Colonial dames! He appears to have been a genuinely and deservedly popular fellow, our Peter Warren, throwing his prize money about with a handsome lavishness, and upholding the honour of the British ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the fact of the mating season is frankly acknowledged. It has never been recognized among humankind within the period of written history. Is it possible that when women are released from economic and social coercion, this periodic mating instinct in the woman of the species may assert, ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... to express absolute confidence in any fact, however seemingly obvious, such as that two and two are four, and that I prefer to say the blood-red color of this river MAY be caused by an earth-tremor or a land-slip, rather than positively assert that it MUST be so; though I confess that, as far as my knowledge guides me, I incline to the belief that 'MUST be' is in this instance the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... truer observation than is made by the Free-Traders, when they assert that goods will not be sent into a nation for nothing; and that, if our imports increase, something that goes out must have received a proportional augmentation. They forget only one circumstance, which, however, is of some little consequence, namely, that two things may go out, goods ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... enemies of the unfortunate Queen of Scotland have done all in their power to hinder my colleague from seeing the Queen, but to-day the Lord Treasurer is occupied at Westminster, and Monsieur le Secretaire is sick. She sent for us in one of those wilful moods in which she chooses to assert herself without their knowledge, and she remains, as it were, stunned by the surprise, and touched by her Royal Highness's pleading. But let these gentlemen discover what has passed, or let her recover and send for them, and bah! they will inquire, and messengers will ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain that the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much, and ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... liberty to go on with as they please, for I can promise no supplement. As to errors of opinion, though I am not yet convinced of any, yet I nowhere pretend to infallibility. However, I do not willingly assert anything which I have not good grounds for. If I am mistaken, let him that finds the error inform the world better, and never trouble himself to animadvert upon this, since I assure him I shall not enter into any ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... labor still more earnestly for the glory of God and the maintenance of regular observances. She was a member of the council of the new superior, but the honor of the position caused her much disquiet, as she never ceased to assert that it was on account of her sins the former austerities of the house had partly fallen into disuse. The change of superiors had not in the least diminished the esteem of the Sisters for her, who had ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... one of the MSS. makes Polo assert that till this event the Mongols and Chinese were totally ignorant of mangonels and trebuchets. This, however, is quite untrue; and it is not very easy to reconcile even the statement, implied in all versions of the story, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... historians assert that when the New Netherlands were thus overrun by the British, as Spain in ancient days by the Saracens, a resolute band refused to bend the neck to the invader. Led by one Garret Van Horne, a valorous and gigantic Dutchman, they crossed the bay and buried themselves among ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... that the American village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty, and clean sweet marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed in painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary of smart women, return to their native towns, assert that cities are vicious, marry their childhood sweethearts and, presumably, joyously abide in those ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... life, or in the scheme of nature; if we did not seek in these for something beyond the current explanation, something that should prolong it, and conduct us to the beauty and grandeur that repose in the unknown, I would almost venture to assert that we should pass our existence further away from the truth than those, even, who in this case wilfully shut their eyes to all save the poetic and wholly imaginary interpretation of these marvellous ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and preconceived ideas was a merely political affection. The President's offer proved to him that his own popularity, as well as his influence over parliament, had only increased since his recent entry on public life. He was then about to be in a position to assert his individuality still better. What a glorious time for Grenoble and what wry faces Granet ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... for a time thrust introspection, dreams and sentiment aside. The morning was already half spent, and in spite of sorrow, hunger had begun to assert itself; for since time was, no two such absolutely vigorous and healthy humans had ever set foot on earth as Beatrice ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... enters into the food-consumption of northern races. He becomes abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have become oddly exacting—finds that certain fruits and drinks are indeed, as the creoles assert, appropriate only to particular physical conditions corresponding with particular hours of the day. Corossole is only to be eaten in the morning, after black coffee;—vermouth is good to drink only between the hours ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Chip Rock, as they were known by the old Dutch settlers, present the same bold front to the river that the Giant's Causeway does to the ocean. Their height at Fort Lee, where the bold cliffs first assert themselves, is three hundred feet, and they extend about seventeen or eighteen miles to the hills of Rockland County. A stroll along the summit reveals the fact that they are almost as broken and fantastic in form as the great rocks along the Elbe ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... refining power the impulses, aesthetic and intellectual, that become powerful in late boyhood and early manhood. If, as so often is the case, it ignores their existence, or endeavours to starve them, they may well assert themselves with fatal power, to coarsen and degrade the ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the deliberate treachery of a Scotch parliament representing the nation. A wise prince might draw from it two lessons of equal utility to himself. On one side he might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a generous people who dare openly assert their rights, and who in a just cause are ready to meet their sovereign in the field. On the other side he would be taught to apprehend something far more formidable: a fawning treachery against which no prudence can guard, no courage can defend. The insidious smile upon the cheek would warn ...
— English Satires • Various
... which, like our vehicle, was unlike anything I had seen before. I have, in former letters, talked of Dutch cleanliness and neatness, but what is all I have said compared with Brock? Even the people have their jokes upon its superiority in this particular, and assert that the inhabitants actually wash and scrub their wood before they put it on the fire. Lady Penrhyn's cottages must yield the palm, they are only internally washed and painted, but in Brock, Tops and bottoms, Outside and in, bricks ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... presented (27 June) with an address(1480) from the citizens assembled in Common Hall thanking them for their faithful discharge of their office of trust and complimenting them more especially upon their successful efforts to maintain and assert the undoubted rights and privileges of the citizens and their "continual provision of faithful and able juries." The address concluded with thanks to them for their despatch in carrying out the recent "unnecessary" poll in connection with the election of new sheriffs, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... with the French, who import it largely from Bourbon. The Arabs use and export it more than any other nation. Their annual pilgrimship takes up an immense quantity of the leaf. They use it principally for stuffing mattrasses and pillows, and assert that it is very efficacious in preventing contagion and prolonging life. It requires no sort of preparation, being simply gathered and dried in the sun; too much drying, however, is hurtful, inasmuch as it renders the leaf liable to crumble to dust in packing and stowing on ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... admitted that he was right, and she was glad enough to have Will go. He had made no further attempt to assert himself against her motherly authority, and appeared to have fully regained his reason again. He had grown quieter of late and since his return from Fuerstenstein rushed with greater zest into all his agricultural pursuits; he had, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... dozen. He laughed to scorn all modern potations of wishy-washy French and Rhine wines—deeming them unfit for the palate of a true-born Englishman. Port, Sherry, and Madeira were his only tipple—the rest, he would assert, were only ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... and if I can't tell you how to make money, I venture to assert I can interest you in the place where ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material living agency is always required. On the continent you will find still magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for the moment that they assert truly, still the living material form of the magician is present; and he is the material agency by which, from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Clay was ludicrously deceived as to his strength with the masses of the people,—the dumb masses,—those who have no eloquent orators, no leading newspapers, no brilliant pamphleteers, to speak for them, but who assert themselves with decisive ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... always to act in the same way; so also in moral matters, we consider what happens in the majority of cases, not what happens invariably, for the reason that the will does not act of necessity. So when we say that covetousness is the root of all evils, we do not assert that no other evil can be its root, but that other evils more frequently arise therefrom, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... from such men that the cry goes forth about neglected genius and public caprice. In secret they despise many a distinguished writer, and privately, if not publicly, assert themselves as immeasurably superior. The success of a Dumas is to them a puzzle and an irritation. They do not understand that a man becomes distinguished in virtue of some special talent properly directed; and that ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... seven commanding positions, early in the day the white flag was raised, which the enemy failing to see, continued to fire for several minutes, during which time Colonel Miles was killed, some say by a Rebel shell, others assert by some of his own men. By this shameful surrender there fell into the hands of the enemy nearly twelve thousand men, half of them New Yorkers, who had just entered the service; also seventy-three guns good and bad; thirteen thousand small arms; two hundred wagons, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... any person who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons, other than the general assembly of this colony, have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people here, shall be deemed an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... more acutely painful than when one awakens to the fact that he is a person, an ego, unrelated to people or things, with no real claim to assert save that of habit or associations. The sense of isolation and loneliness is at first overpowering, and vainly does he try to attach himself to former objects and environment. The awakening may come in mature years, it may come in youth; but at what time it appears, the old ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... to this," Eustace said, speaking with stern insistence. "If you can't—or won't—assert your authority, I shall assert mine. It is all a ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... them to be no longer dwellers of the earth, cherished their memory with fondest love. Taking all these things into consideration, a meeting had been called in our settlement to ascertain if by subscription a sufficient sum could be raised to pay a weekly courier to assert our rights at the nearest post-office. This was entered into with spirit, all feeling sensible of the benefits which it would bring; they who could afford it giving freely of their abundance, and those ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... her confidence and the innate coquetry of her nature unconsciously began to assert itself. She talked gaily with him, her eyes by turns sparkled, invited and repelled, her mantilla almost covered her face one moment and the next was shaken gracefully down to her shoulders, leaving the coils ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... had raised him, and the nobility saw in him a new incarnation of that type of kingship long known to them by tradition only, namely, that of a Pharaoh convinced of his own divinity and determined to assert it. He inspected the valley from one end to another, principality by principality, nome by nome, "crushing crime, and arising like Tumu himself; restoring that which he found in ruins, settling the bounds of the towns, and establishing for each its frontiers." The civil wars had disorganized ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... important of all her possessions and the mother country. The time is not long past when the use of this very communication was not an unimportant part of the means by which that colony was restrained from an attempt to assert its independence. It is not, therefore, surprising that the feelings of British statesmen and of those who desired to win their favor have been more obvious in the several arguments which have appeared on ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... associated with A. M. Palmer in the management of the Union Square Theater at New York, and having passed some time in Australia in connection with the theatrical business, had a wide acquaintance there. When the subject was first broached, it is safe to assert that there was not a man connected with the enterprise that had any idea that the journey would be lengthened out to a trip around the world, but such ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... completely at the mercy of externals to determine the direction of their lives as the long weeds in a stream that yield to the flow of the current. It is of no use to preach high and brave maxims, telling men to assert their lordship over externals, unless we can tell them how to find the inward power that will enable them to do so. But we can preach such noble exhortations to some purpose when we can point to the great gift which Christ is ready to give, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... necessity," said he, "but I know all about them, and I assert to you upon my honor as a courier and the best guide in the Archipelago that Jupiter is the worst old roue a country ever had saddled upon it; Apollo's music would drive you mad and make you welcome a xylophone duet; and as for Mercury's business capacity, ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... carried on almost entirely by horses and mulepacks. There is some doubt as to the place of Baccio's birth, which occurred in 1475. Vasari gives it as Savignano near Prato; Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: Vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 427.] assert it was Suffignano, near Florence, where they say Paolo's brothers, Jacopo and Giusto, were ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... experience of them that I have. Among the many estimable qualities they possess, a systematic habit of lying is not the least prominent; and the 'colored citizens' aforesaid seem to partake of that quality in an eminent degree, because in their famous Resolutions they roundly assert that during the Rebellion 'I walked arm and arm with colored men'—that 'I owe my election to the votes of colored men'—and that I have 'accumulated much earthly gains,' as a lawyer, among 'colored clients.' ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... you will see; when we all settle down, and no one presumes to try for that chair, To-to will quietly drop out of it and allow the remainder of the performance to go undisturbed. He doesn't want to set up any claim to sit on the chair himself; all he wants is to assert and to protect the right of Helena to have that chair at any moment when she may choose to join us ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... crocodiles, lest the souls of their dead should chance to be lodged in the reptiles; and the members of the other family would be equally careful not to hurt the fabulous pigs if ever they fell in with them. However, the crocodile people, not to be behind their neighbours, assert that after death their spirits can also roam about the wood as ghosts and go to the spirit-land. In explanation they say that every human being has two souls; one of them is his reflection on the water, the other is his shadow on the land. No doubt it is the water-soul which goes to the island ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... a look for him who leaned in gloomy admiration against the wall and never took his eyes off her. He became jealous, moody, ugly-tempered and finally had the good luck to get his conge as the result of an attempt to assert himself and limit her dances. She was blithe and radiant and fancy free when Frank Garrison reached the post, a wee bit hipped, it was whispered, because of the failure of a somewhat half-hearted suit of his in the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... by the preparations for war, sent ambassadors to the Florentine Republic, to assert her innocence of the crime imputed to her by public opinion, and did not hesitate to send excuses even to the Hungarian court; but Andre's brother replied in a ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... proportions, they were scarcely muscular; still, every movement exhibited a freedom and ease which announced the grace of childhood, without the smallest evidence of that restraint which creeps into our air as the factitious feelings of later life begin to assert their influence. The smooth, rounded trunk of the mountain ash is not more upright and free from blemish, than was the figure of the boy, who moved into the curious circle that opened for his entrance and closed against his retreat, with the steadiness of one who came to bestow instead ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the full effect of his attack would be to assert too much. That he realised that the battle, though a tactical defeat, was strategically a victory is very evident. He knew something of Banks, he knew more of McClellan, and the bearing of the Valley ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... sorrow, that the child of this clandestine union fell sick and died. From that hour all interest in the name and fame of the Horseleighs forsook the younger of the twain who called themselves wives of Sir John, and, being careless about her own fame, she took no steps to assert her claims, her legal position having, indeed, grown hateful to her in her horror at the tragedy. And Sir William Byrt, the curate who had married her to her husband, being an old man and feeble, was not ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... had succeeded in alienating his neighbours, his subjects, his soldiers, his sailors, his children, and had left himself no refuge but the protection of France, he was taken with a fit of pride, and determined to assert his independence. That help which, when he did not want it, he had accepted with ignominious tears, he now, when it was indispensable to him, threw contemptuously away. Having been abject when he might, with propriety, have been punctilious ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... without ever dreaming that an ancient writer could pen three consecutive sentences with a connected meaning: chaos is felt to be natural to ancient literature: no search is made for sense, and the Latin or Greek book is looked upon as a more or less fortuitous concourse of words;' when Dr. Rouse can assert, 'The public schoolboy at nineteen is unable to read a simple Latin or Greek book with ease, or to express a simple series of thoughts without atrocious blunders: he has learnt from his classics neither accuracy nor love of beauty and truth'—it is obvious that, for ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... not go naked (even their idols are clothed), and they admit women into the order. The Digambaras do not admit women, go naked, and have for sacred texts later works of the fifth century A.D. The latter of course assert that the scriptures of the former sect ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... waste of time, since the said flesh showed the least possible inclination of revolt. The earlier diaries contain pathetic exaggerations of the slightest indiscretion. Innocent and virtuous persons have ever been prone to such little manias of self-accusation! Later, the flesh did assert itself, though in a hardly licentious manner. Oxford fogs and damp, along with plain living and high thinking, acting upon a constitution naturally far from robust, produced a commonplace but most disabling nemesis in the form of colds, coughs, and chronic asthma. Julius did not greatly ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... bishops, and the reverend feeders discharge their respective duties with singular effect. It is hoped besides, that it may, under divine guidance, be the glorious means of bringing Popery within the influence of truth, whilst its enemies—for it has enemies—as who has not—its enemies assert that whether it shall take in Popery, or Popery take in it, is a matter ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the outset of his work) "the Comic Spirit" as the patron of his endeavours and the inspirer of his art, Mr. Meredith of course did no more than assert his claim to place himself in the right race and lineage of Cervantes and Fielding. Nor, though the claim be a bold one, can there be much dispute among competent judges that he made it out. To the study, not in a frivolous or even merely satirical, but in a gravely ironic mode, of the nature ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... judge from reference to Sec. 4, it does not seem to have been intended to give the Foreign Minister the right, in whatever be which matter being dealt with by the Consular administration, to stop the function of the latter and to assert his own authority instead; for this would be equivalent to instituting a relation of subordination that no Governmental department can submit to. The intention, then, can only be supposed to have been the following:—to try, in a consular matter, that has assumed a diplomatic aspect or that ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... a difference only in degree. The stoutest defenders of the dogma that the States had not been out of the Union did not propose to permit the re-organization of their local governments except upon conditions prescribed by the National authority, and did not assert the rightfulness of their claims to representation in the Senate and House until the prescribed conditions were complied with. Those who protested against the dogma did not assert the right to keep the States out of the Union, but only ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... considers it to be denied. Schiller's universe is the smallest, being essentially a psychological one. He starts with but one sort of thing, truth-claims, but is led ultimately to the independent objective facts which they assert, inasmuch as the most successfully validated of all claims is that such facts are there. My universe is more essentially epistemological. I start with two things, the objective facts and the claims, and indicate which claims, the facts being there, will work successfully as the ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... fight." King Charlemagne, with all his peerage, stood amazed; for all believed that the Grecian prince himself had fought with Bradamante. Then stepped forth Marphisa, and said, "Since Rogero is not here to assert his rights, I, his sister, undertake his cause, and will maintain it against whoever shall dare dispute his claim." She said this with so much anger and disdain that the prince deemed it no longer wise to feign, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... too great a hurry. The worm is the real primitive animal. He is to be found in the oyster, as the oyster is to be found in us; and that poor little beast is, by comparison, an animal of high pretension, who would be shocked, I am sure, if he could understand what we are saying, and heard us assert that he is nothing ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace |
