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More "Self-defence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... negro fled, seeking refuge on the other side of his canoe; but the enraged officer continued the pursuit, and, in his double-sighted blundering, ran against an oar which the persecuted black suddenly lifted in self-defence. I know not whether it was rage or blindness, or both combined, that prevented the American from seeing the blade, but on he dashed, rushing impetuously against the implement, severing his lip with a frightful gash, and knocking four teeth from his ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of Lord Strafford, or rather, the manner in which it was carried on, is less justifiable. He was, doubtless, a great delinquent, and well deserved the severest punishment; but nothing short of a clearly proved case of self-defence can justify, or even excuse, a departure from the sacred rules of criminal justice. For it can rarely indeed happen that the mischief to be apprehended from suffering any criminal, however guilty, to escape, can be equal to that resulting from the violation of those rules to which the innocent ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... were often found false, treacherous, and regardless of promises and treaties, although in domestic intercourse they were not in general deceitful. In extenuation, it must be remembered that from their earliest years, they were not only initiated in stratagem by the necessity of self-defence, but taught to look on every exhibition of craft and cunning as a triumph of skill and a worthy subject of admiration. And again, it is but too true that the example of the more enlightened Europeans was ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... view it in that light," she responded. "He was perfectly civil. Whatever public opinion may be regarding the shooting, I know he killed the man in self-defence. So that's nothing against him. You would have done the same ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Baber came into the land. Whether the English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it is certain that they were forced upon the work against their own wishes and inclinations, and in self-defence. The very expedition which Clive made use of to effect the subjugation of Bengal had been undertaken on defensive grounds; and so fearful was even that great man of the consequences of a union of the forces of the Moghul with those at the command ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the Spanish Crown were, on the contrary, filled with injunctions to treat the Indians humanely, to provide for their conversion and instruction by pacific means, and on no account to employ force save for self-defence. ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... harm that I had done by my rash proceedings in Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still impending. If the wretches who had shadowed him were really Levy's mercenaries, and if they really had been taken in their own trap, their first measure of self-defence would be the denunciation of Raffles to the real police. Such at least was my idea, and Raffles himself made light enough of it; he thought they could not expose him without dragging in Levy, who had probably made it worth their while not to do that on any ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... character of the natives is well shown in this Journal. On nearly every occasion they either made, or attempted to make, an attack, even on the ships, and in self-defence firearms had constantly to be used. Nevertheless, Cook's judgment enabled him to inaugurate friendly relations in most places where he stopped long enough to enable the natives to become acquainted with ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... hope, George, you won't mind, but you know Grier has been an age with me, and knows all my secrets—I told her she must make friends with your mother's maid, and see what she could find out. I felt we must, in self-defence. And of course Grier got it all out of Justine. I knew she would! Justine is a little fool; and she doesn't mean to stay much longer with Lady Tressady, so she didn't mind speaking. It is exactly as I supposed! Lady Tressady didn't begin speculating for herself at all—but for—somebody—else! ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that there is an advantage on the side of the philosopher who maintains his proposition as a practically necessary supposition (melior est conditio possidentis). For he is at liberty to employ, in self-defence, the same weapons as his opponent makes use of in attacking him; that is, he has a right to use hypotheses not for the purpose of supporting the arguments in favour of his own propositions, but to show that his opponent knows no more than himself regarding the subject under ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... have greatly influenced all our theories of action, even to those of fencing and wrestling. Jiu-jitsu, the Japanese art of self-defence, owes its name to a passage in the Tao-teking. In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum, while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final struggle. In art the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... Hercules. On his expedition to capture the Arcadian boar, his third labor, Hercules became involved in a broil with the Centaurs, and in self-defence slew several of them with ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... intention—" said Malvina, in an attempt at self-defence; but she saw the look of her husband, and the voice broke in ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... occasionally unavoidable in international controversies, concur in thinking it a deplorable necessity, only to be resorted to when all peaceful modes of arrangement have been vainly tried; and when the law of self-defence justifies a State, like an individual, in using force to protect itself from imminent and serious injury. For a writer, therefore, of the present day to choose battles for his favourite topic, merely because they were battles, merely because so many myriads ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the help of the Allies. President Wilson had said that they should put aside all pride in the matter. He would point out that, for Italy and probably for France also, as M. Clemenceau had stated, it was in reality a question of self-defence. He thought that even a partial recognition of the Bolshevists would strengthen their position, and, speaking for himself, he thought that Bolshevism was already a serious ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... with a married sister for the cold weather. Quite like me, only I'm going to an unmarried brother. I think we are both getting slightly impertinent to our elders. They tease us so at meals in the saloon we have to answer back in self-defence, and it is very difficult to help trying to be smart; sometimes, at least with me, it degenerates into rudeness. I told you about all the people at our table, but I forgot one—a very aged man with a long white beard, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Basset?" returned the General, stepping back. "You own feelings, Missa Basset. But you can try it if you please," he added, letting fall his arms by his sides, which, at the threatening tone of the constable, he had raised instinctively in self-defence. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... an enemy to his faith. Throughout the Eastern world this idea prevails, and both Sir Moses Montefiore and M. Cremieux were utterly at fault and certainly knew it when they declared that Europe was teaching it to Asia. Every Israelite community is bound in self-defence, when the murder of a Christian child or adult is charged upon any of its members, to court the most searching enquiry and to abate the scandal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... flames, or appealing to passions. But here is a broad ground upon which, by the very confession of our enemies, we stand on a higher platform. We went to war because we would not break a treaty, nor forsake a friend too weak for self-defence; Germany commenced the war by a treacherous act. Therefore, strong in the belief that the God of righteousness will cause the right to triumph, we can calmly ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... Elliot again, and Jacob opened his mouth to speak, but he was saved from any further need of self-defence or explanation, for at this moment the door of the office was broken rudely open and there entered like a hurricane a veritable fury in female form—a whirlwind, a tornado, a ravening wolf into a fold of lambs. This formidable apparition, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... them, though the inference was painful to me, for in truth my championship was not purely disinterested; I suffered from continual contact with the sufferings of others, and came to the rescue in self-defence and in pity for myself not less ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... thus? No!" says the poet. "Dry your tears, little JACK, go to the well-stocked pantry, my boy, and get something to eat. The jury will not convict you of stealing, for their verdict will be that you did the deed in self-defence." And he did—go to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... yard, at this instant fired, and the fire had a fatal effect. No previous malice was proved against him; and his plea upon the trial was, that he had taken the life of his assailant in necessary self-defence. ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... neighbour, Bellechasse, contained two hundred and twenty-seven persons, living upon three hundred and twenty arpents of cultivable land. With an arsenal of sixty-two muskets it was better equipped for self-defence. The census everywhere took more careful count of muskets than of ploughs; and this is not surprising, for it was the design of the authorities to build up a 'powerful military colony' which would stand on its own feet without support ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... rebellion against the government of Elizabeth, would have felt little reluctance to carry into effect, and thus the regent's duplicity might in fact be prompted and excused to himself by a principle of self-defence. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... with clasped hands, her beautiful eyes filled with tears, her white throat quivering with sobs, until suddenly he turned upon her as though in self-defence. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... are master-works of personal originality. What is Roman in the Pitti Palace, is the robust simplicity of massive strength; but it is certain that no patrician of the republic or the empire inhabited a house at all resembling this. The domestic habits of the Middle Ages, armed for self-defence, and on guard against invasion from without, still find expression in the solid bulk of this forbidding dwelling-place, although its majesty and largeness show that the reign of milder and more courtly manners has begun. To speak of the cupola of the Duomo in connection with ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the probable effect of this incident on the relations between Mr. Brent and herself Honora was wholly in the dark. Although, from her point of view, what she had done had been amply justified by the plea of self-defence, it could not be expected that he would accept it in the same spirit. The apparent pleasure he had taken in the present situation, once his amazement had been overcome, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the country—"made us choose, rather to betake ourselves to the fields for self-defence, than to stay at home, burdened daily with the calamities of others, and tortured with the fears of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be sentenced by the Court, and, as a matter of fact, he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment and the riots lasted six days. The rioting assumed at times a very threatening character. The European police frequently had to use their revolvers, and the troops had several times to fire in self-defence. But rigorous orders had been issued by the authorities to avoid as far as possible the shedding of blood, and both the police and the military forces exercised such steady self-restraint that casualties were relatively few, and the violence of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... influence." "The power of women," quoth they, "is in her dependence.... When she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we put ourselves in self-defence against her, she yields the power which God has given her for protection, and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... me?" cried Wolfe. "Oh, come! You did, as near as I can see the matter, what you downright had to do in self-defence. Suppose I got into trouble, where would you be? This second little matter flows clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of Miss Galbraith. You can't begin and then stop. If you begin, you must keep on beginning; that's the truth. No ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever yet so void of sense, As to debate the right of self-defence, A principle so grafted in the mind, With nature born, and does like nature bind; Twisted with reason, and with nature too, As neither one ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the time of his conversion might take one wife only. This decree, liberal as it was, caused great dissatisfaction among both men and women. But it was as nothing compared to the feeling that was evoked by Owen's preaching against all war not undertaken in self-defence, and against the strict laws which he prevailed upon the king to pass, suppressing the practice of wizardry, and declaring the chief or doctor who caused a man to be "smelt out" and killed upon charges of witchcraft ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... neutral Switzerland the feeling that political independence rests less on international treaties than on the possibility of self-defence is so strong and widespread that the nation willingly supports heavy taxation for its military equipment. In Germany, also, it should be possible to arouse a universal appreciation of the great duties of the State, if only our politicians, without ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... asylum, he is always at liberty to take it or leave it, as he likes best, and of course to fight or to fly, whichever is most agreeable to him. To this we may add that no animal naturally makes war upon man, except in the case of self-defence or extreme hunger; nor ever expresses against him any of these violent antipathies, which seem to indicate that some particular species are intended by nature for the food ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... was recalled to himself did not help him in the estimation of the teacher, who took it as a sign of guilt; while Theodore, once freed from his assailant, stood by as the martyr and peaceable boy who would not strike a blow, even in self-defence. Rob, meanwhile, frightened by the consequences of his disclosures to Jim, slunk off without waiting to bear testimony to the provocation which Jim believed ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... wasn't unprovoked," says the guv'nor. "The other man began it by knocking off his hat. It was self-defence." ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... turned to Angus. The man, with an insolent, defiant face, stood leaning against the rock. He had taken out his pipe, and with an assumption of indifference was trying to light it. Every trick of self-defence was known to Allan. He could have flung Angus to the ground as easily as a Cumberland shepherd throws the untrained wrestler, but how little honor, and how much shame, there would be in such an encounter! He looked steadily at the cowardly bully for a ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and tells him he is welcome to silence her, but it will do us ne good now, as you know that the ship was wilfully burned, and with what object. It is the single blow she can strike in self-defence; but a shrewder one could scarcely be imagined. She had talked to you, at the very last; and by that time she did know the truth. What more natural than that she should confide it to you? She had had time to tell you enough to hang the ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... consolation that I was betwixt them and the snake. Indeed, my own heart, in spite of all I could do, beat quicker than usual. We went slowly on in silence, without moving our arms or heads, in order to prevent all alarm as much as possible, lest the snake should glide off, or attack us in self-defence. I carried the lance perpendicularly before me, with the point about a foot from the ground. The snake had not moved, and on getting up to him, I struck him with the lance on the near side, just behind the neck, and pinned him to the ground. That moment the negro next to me seized the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... what you have to say to the proper time. Make the best story you can for yourself—true, if truth, as I hope, will serve your purpose; but, if not, the most plausible and ingenious you can invent. That is what self-defence requires from every man, where, as it always happens to a man upon his trial, he has the whole world against him, and has his own battle to fight against the world. Farewell; and God send you a good deliverance! ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... his seat, a bit uncertainly. His hands were trembling uncontrollably; in self-defence he thrust them deep into ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... number was left to the captain's discretion or malice, as the case might be, it not infrequently ran into three figures. Thus John Watts, able seaman on board H.M.S. Harwich, Capt. Andrew Douglas commander, in 1704 received one hundred and seventy lashes for striking a shipmate in self-defence, his captain meanwhile standing by and exhorting the boatswain's mate to "Swinge the Dog, for hee has a Tough Hide"—and that, too, with a cat waxed to make it bite the harder. [Footnote: Admiralty Records ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... bad order, as they missed fire as often as they went off, or more lives of savages would have been sacrificed. There is no doubt, as has already been intimated, that Captain Cook had no delight in exercising cruelty towards the natives of the places he visited, and believed that he acted in self-defence when he, as he would have said, was unfortunately called upon to wound and perhaps to slay them. It may be added, also, that he frequently had great trouble in restraining the ardour of his officers, who were not troubled ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... you smoke, John?" This was a vague effort at the self-defence which she felt might be needed, the mood of the hour not being at all like the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... unlucky Sam trod on the tail of the cat, who was quietly asleep on the hearth. With the instinct of self-defence, she scratched his leg, which was undefended by the customary clothing, and our hero, who did not feel at all heroic in the dark, not knowing what had got hold of him, ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... and propping up the cause of General Jackson; and that, for himself and his friends, he defied the substantiation of the charge before any fair tribunal whatever." This compelled General Jackson, in self-defence, to come before the public; and in a letter to Carter Beverly, dated the 5th of June, 1827, he made specific charges against Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams. He stated that early in January, 1825, a member of Congress, of high respectability, informed him that ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... art of self-defence, Clyffurde—despite his wounded arm—was ready for the attack. With his left on guard he not only received the brunt of the onslaught, but parried it most effectually with a quick ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... but trying you, lovely one," he said, in a soft tone. "I am not the blood-stained monster I painted myself. My hand has never slain a fellow-man except in self-defence; and is not so unworthy as you would believe to be clasped in yours. Besides, Nina, you are, as far as your church makes you so, my wedded wife—for good or for evil, for wealth or for poverty, and must not, sweet one, play the tyrant over me. But a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... streets,—London, with a million twinkling lights gleaming sharp upon its native blackness, and looking, to a dreamer's eye, like some gigantic Fortress, built line upon line and tower upon tower,—with huge ramparts raised about it frowningly as though in self-defence against Heaven. Around and above it the deep sky swept in a ring of sable blue, wherein thousands of stars were visible, encamped after the fashion of a mighty army, with sentinel planets taking their turns of duty in the watching of a rebellious world. A sulphureous wave of heat ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... justice. If he has forfeited his fortune, his honours, or his life, let them by a legal process be taken from him; but let it always be considered, that he, like every other man, is to be allowed the common methods of self-defence; that he is to stand or fall by the laws of his country, and to retain the privileges of a Briton, till it shall appear that he has ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... dogs. You cannot think what a formidable weapon a wild boar's tusk is—the least touch of it cuts like a razor; and they are so swift in their jerks of the head when at bay that in a second they will rip up both dogs and horses: nor are they the least afraid of attacking a man on foot in self-defence; but they seldom or ever strike the first blow. As soon as he had disposed of both the dogs, who lay howling piteously and bleeding on the ground, the boar made at full speed for the spur of a hill close by. The pace was too good to last, especially up-hill; ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... an outcast on whom has been fulfilled that curse which God hurled at woman after the fall of our first parents. Ask me no more, for if I told you more, your contempt would goad me to a self-defence that would be still more contemptible.—Here comes somebody who perhaps will be generous enough to escort you, if you promise to let him have your honor and virtue and eternal peace for his trouble—for that is probably ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... of a Dey and the installation of his successor, could not be followed up by justice, and must remain unpunished. One can imagine, then, why the children of Moses should seek safety in the consular houses, the European inhabitants of which had the courage to arm themselves for self-defence as soon as the danger was apparent, and who, moreover, had a ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... to have brought over a force sufficient to crush all opposition, had been driven back by a succession of storms; and she herself was already stricken with the disease which was soon to carry her off. In these circumstances there was but one course open to her—to fall back on the policy of self-defence and patient waiting on events. After one somewhat wanton expedition against Glasgow and the Hamiltons, her troops finally (March 29th) retired within the fortifications of Leith, and she herself at her special request was received into the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... squadron, to anchor near the entrance of the harbour, to take care that the ships riding near Cadiz do not escape,' and he took up a position that commanded St. Lucar as well as Cadiz. He was 'not to fight, except in self-defence,' without express instructions. At the mouth of St. Lucar he found some great ships, but they lay so near shore that he could not approach them, and finally they escaped in a mist, Raleigh very nearly running his own vessel aground. Meanwhile Essex and Charles ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... professed to disbelieve the charge, yet as a measure of self-defence he threatened the exiled prince that, if any such attempt were encouraged, he should have recourse to retaliation, and, at the same time, intimated that it would be no difficult matter for ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... second place, the peasants, when acting as jurors, are very severe with regard to crimes against property. In this they are instigated by the simple instinct of self-defence. They are, in fact, continually at the mercy of thieves and malefactors. They live in wooden houses easily set on fire; their stables might be broken into by a child; at night the village is guarded merely by an old man, who cannot be in more ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... second. Dam was being well-broken-in, and quickly realized that he was no longer a free British citizen entitled to the rights of such so long as he behaved as a citizen should, but a mere horrible defender of those of his countrymen, who were averse from the toils and possible dangers of self-defence. It was brought home to him, then and there, with some clearness, that the noble Britons who (perhaps) "never never will be slaves," have a fine and high contempt for those whose life-work is to save them from that distressing position; that the noble Briton, while stoutly ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... those countries that in domestic policy are democratic. And every fairminded person will recognize that, leaving China out of the reckoning, Japan's proximity to China gives her aggressions the color of self-defence in a way that cannot be urged in ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... ability, his obvious independence of what was thought of him, and a sarcastic tongue, which no one was eager to encounter, he remained the ugly duckling who refused to paddle properly in the green ponds of Public School tradition. He played games so badly that in sheer self-defence his fellows permitted him to play without them. Of 'fives' they made an exception, for in this he attained much proficiency, owing to a certain windmill-like quality of limb. He was noted too for daring chemical experiments, of which he usually had one or two brewing, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... if you will," she answered, wiping her eyes. Then she laughed bitterly. "Don't be kind to me, for I'm not used to it and it weakens my armour of self-defence. Tell me I'm horrid ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... best time at which to make an attack on the two Republics. Your Excellency will thus see that it was not we who drew the sword, but that we only put it away from our throats. We have only acted in self-defence—one of the holiest rights of man—in order to assert our right to exist. And therefore I think, with all respect, that we have a right to ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... under a perfectly direct charge of causing his death in a dastardly manner. And you've said nothing in self-defence.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... to be from Leibnitz; whereby it would appear that your President's Discovery, sanctioned in your Acts as new, is not new, but Leibnitz's (so far as it is good for anything),—possibly stolen, therefore; and, at any rate, fifty-four years old. In self-defence, I have demanded to see the Original of said Excerpt; and the Honorable Member in question does not produce it. What say you?' 'Shame to him!' say they all [there seem to be but few Scientific Members, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... of their voyage was again very low, and they fell in with a large body of savages, with whom they were on the point of being forced, in self-defence, to have a deadly encounter, when suddenly the four natives who had accompanied them appeared running at full speed, and, through their assistance, though not without some difficulty, bloodshed was prevented. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... ready for publication on his arrival on the telegraph line, and had not been compiled after their return to Adelaide, as some people supposed from the delay in their publication. He made these statements partly in self-defence, as remarks had been made by members in the House to the effect that the Government had fitted out an expedition at an enormous expense which had done comparatively nothing, though his map showed 50,000 square miles ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... enjoin upon the people so declared to be Free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... record concerning those we encountered on our estancias. Nor were either my brothers or myself much afraid of them, for a snake—this is my firm belief—will never strike a human being except in self-defence; and, of all the thousands killed annually in India itself by ophidians, most of the victims have been tramping about with naked feet, or naked legs ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... self-defence made Paul assume rather more than his old stiffness as he shook hands. "I am very glad to see you, Dr. Grimstone," he said, "but your coming at this time forces me to ask if there is any unusual reason for, for my having the—a—pleasure of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... acknowledged fact that the growing scale of the business has intensified and not diminished competition. In the great machine industries trade fluctuations are most severely felt; the smaller businesses are unable to stand before the tide of depression and collapse, or are driven in self-defence to coalesce. The borrowing of capital, the formation of joint-stock enterprise and every form of co-operation in capital has proceeded most rapidly in the textile, metal, transport, shipping, and machine-making industries, and in those minor manufactures, such as ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... fawning spaniel, by a mien and tone of half-threatening superiority which never fail of reducing such high-talking sparks to abject meekness. 'Twas a trick of pretended bullying, which we long-suffering Americans were driven to adopt in self-defence against certain derisive, contemptuous praters that came to our shores from Europe. But 'tis more to my purpose, as the biographer of Philip Winwood, to continue upon the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... interviewed him respecting the affair of that mechanician Salvat, who was accused of having deposited the bomb at the entrance of the house. Was this simply an invention of the police, as some newspapers pretended? Or was it really correct? And if so, would Salvat soon be arrested? In self-defence Amadieu answered correctly enough that the affair did not as yet concern him, and would only come within his attributions, if Salvat should be arrested and the investigation placed in his hands. At the same ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... was to remain downstairs when these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... him. Already he had got rid of any small scraps of regret or remorse about the killing of his fellow-clerk. Why should he be sorry? The scoundrel had tried to murder him, thinking no doubt that he had the will on him. And he had not meant to kill him—what he had done, he had done in self-defence. No—everything was working most admirably—Parrawhite's previous bad record, Eldrick's carelessness and his desire to shut things up: it was all good. From that day forward, Parrawhite would be as if he had never been. Pratt was not even afraid ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... had no peace for weeks after that, because he had forgotten to say how long it took him. Every time he was alone he was wafted away to Egypt and set down at that Pyramid. But he could not find the inscription, and if he had found it he could not have translated it. So, in self-defence, he spent most of his waking-time with Ethel. But every night the Pyramid had its own way, and it was not till he had cut an inscription himself on the Pyramid with the broken blade of his pocket-knife, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... the Slav peril, and her militarist philosophy taught her that the best defence was to get her blow in first. Her diplomacy in July was directed towards combining this advantage with the appearance, needed to bemuse her people and the world at large, of acting in self-defence. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... more I reflected, the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease; and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver that I might be found in some posture of self-defence. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished favor. But Alvarado was not the dupe of this specious behaviour. He felt that he had forfeited the confidence of his commander. In revenge, he laid a plot to betray him; and Almagro, driven to the necessity of self-defence, imitated the example of his officer, by entering his house with a party of armed men, who, laying violent hands on the insurgent, slew him on the spot. *6 [Footnote 6: Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., Ms. - Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 4, cap. 10 - 14. - Gomara, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... wife," said Jim, in vague, resentful self-defence. "I'm naturally a domestic man. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... hearty co-operation in the struggle against French ambition. But whatever reluctance there might have been to follow him in an attack on France with the view of saving the liberties of Europe, the stoutest Tory had none in following him in such an attack when it meant simply self-defence against a French restoration of the Stuart king at the cost of English freedom. It was with universal approval that the English Government declared war against Lewis. It was soon followed in this step by Holland, and the two countries at once agreed to ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... labyrinth of abstract and reflective compositions, without attempting to supply him with a comprehensive argument or to dogmatise concerning the main drift of each poem, I trust that enough will have been said by way of self-defence against the charge ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... as an "odious custom," learned to smoke himself as a result of his acquaintance with Dr. Parr. Parr was such a continual smoker that anyone who came into his company, if he had never smoked before, had to learn the use of a pipe as a means of self-defence. Hall, who became a heavy smoker, is said to have smoked in his vestry at intervals in the service. He probably found some relief in tobacco from the severe internal pains with which for many years ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... protected party. It was a rare instance to find a master whose guardian protection did not extend with the same intensity and effect over his slave as over his child: this, not from any motive of pecuniary interest, but because he was estopped by law from self-defence; and, too, because of the attachment and the moral obligation on the master to protect his dependants. Besides, the community exacted it as a paramount duty. It is human to be attached to whatever it protects and controls; out of this feeling ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... not much accumulated.... During the week some horses in the field have not only eaten off the tops of the privet hedge, but have torn up some dozens of the plants by the roots, by putting their heads over the 4-foot wire fence. I am therefore obliged in self-defence to raise the post a foot higher and put barbed wire along the top of it. Some cows also got in our ground one day and ate off the tops of the newly planted laurels, which I am told they are very fond of, so I have got a chain and padlock ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of President Tyler. Calhoun entered office on March 6, and on April 12 the Texan treaty of annexation was signed. On April 18, Calhoun answered Lord Aberdeen's note, declaring that "the British avowal made it the imperious duty of the Federal Government to conclude in self-defence a treaty of annexation with Texas." As to this transaction, Von Holst, Calhoun's biographer, has said: "It may not be correct to apply, without modification, the code of private ethics to politics; ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the measures of the Tudors upon the system of land-holding can hardly be exaggerated. An impulse of self-defence led them to lessen the physical force of the oligarchy by relieving the land from the support of the army, and enabling them to convert to their own use the income previously applied to the defence of the realm. ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... Suchet) would have drawn upon them a fresh outpouring of oppression, had not the Russian general taken a truer estimate of their position. He allowed them to retain their arms on the condition that they used them only in self-defence. Napoleon's victory at Marengo, on the 14th June, 1800, consolidated the French rule over Piedmont. But the Vaudois experienced dreadful privations at this time, owing to the ravages of the soldiers of the two armies, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... What brought them there but their own determination, in the words of the Secret Report of 1913 printed in the French Yellow book, to "strengthen and extend Deutschtum (Germanism) throughout the entire world"? Every injury that poor France in self-defence, or the Allies at her side, are forced to inflict on the villages and towns which express and are interwoven with the history and genius of the French, is really a German crime. There is no forgiveness for ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Flattery was to be merely a matter of chance. If he married her at all, he knew it must be in self-defence. He felt that her father had him in his power, and that he was anything but a man to be depended on. He also thought that his being called with her, on the Sunday following, would neutralize his call with the housekeeper; just as ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Darwin again wrote cordially to Professor Max Muller on receipt of a pamphlet entitled "In Self-Defence" (413/5. Printed in "Chips from a German Workshop," Volume IV., 1875, page 473.), which is a reply to Professor Whitney's "Darwinism and Language" in the "North American Review," July 1874. This essay had been brought before the "general reader" in England by an article ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,—I have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I am charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Sikhs and Marathas the dislocation of the Moghul empire may be very largely attributed. We have here a notable example of the dynamic power upon politics of revolts that are generated by religious fermentation, and a proof of the strength that can be exerted by a pacific inorganic polytheism in self-defence, when ambitious rebels proclaim themselves defenders of a faith. The Marathas and the Sikhs founded the only rulerships whose armies could give the English serious trouble in the field ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... mesmerists I have known. I doubt whether I should have had the power to resist his will had I thought it wise to do so. But I was perfectly aware that, however successful in repelling the first tumultuous attack, prolonged self-defence was hopeless. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... benefited the state he was not ashamed to blazon it forth; if another in injuring the state had injured him, he did not altogether sacrifice personal invective to patriotic indignation. [28] The frequency of accusations made this "art of self-defence" a necessity—and there can be no doubt the Roman people listened with admiration to one who was at once bold and skilful enough to sound his own praises well. Cicero's excessive vanity led him to overdo his part, and to nauseate at times even well-disposed ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... reported of some folks that they are not musical, a calumny that has been whispered of myself: and, though against my own convictions, (who will confess he "has not music in his soul?") I partly acquiesce; that is to say—for, of such a charge, self-defence claims to explain a little—although I am charmed with all manner of music, still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and an English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have every reason to despise my taste: especially ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of Mohammed lay once more in the glass case at the Antiquarian Museum from which Earl Dexter had stolen it. Now, with apish yellow faces haunting my dreams, with ghostly menaces dogging me day and night, I was outcast from my own rooms and compelled, in self-defence, to live amid the bustle of the Astoria. So wholly nonplussed were the police authorities that they could afford me no protection. They knew that a group of scientific murderers lay hidden in or near to London; ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... her husband, and (what was worse) she had enough of the Wesley in her to perceive why and how: nevertheless, being a Wesley, she kept a steady face on her pain. Stung at times to echo Dick's sentiments and opinions, as it were in self-defence, she tried to soften them down and present them in a form at least tolerable to her family. It was heroic, but uncomfortable; and they set aside the ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... justice, and that, moreover, if he were punished for refusing to keep the promise of secrecy he had made, there was little chance in the future of desperate men sparing the lives of those who fell into their hands. They would assuredly murder them in self-defence if they knew that the law would force them to break any promise of silence they might have made. The Magistrate, after a consultation with the Chief Constable, finally came round to this view, and permitted Cyril to leave the Court, after praising him warmly for the vigilance he had shown in ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... little doubt that the Bank of the United States, under Nicholas Biddle, concentrated in itself an enormous power; and it spent in four years, by confession of its directors, $58,000 in what they called self-defence "against politicians." When on July 10, 1832, General Jackson, in a message supposed to have been inspired by Amos Kendall, vetoed the bill renewing the charter of the bank, he performed an act of courage, taking counsel with his instincts. But when in the year following he performed the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... into the self-feed of a threshing machine than any other man he knew; that kept him awake thinking at night until the discordant snores of the family sent him to bed, with the covers over his ears in self-defence. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Pacific Railroad Companies to make annual payments for a sinking fund to meet the bonds loaned to them by the Government;— Tennessee v. Davis (100 U. S. 257), as to the right of a United States officer to be tried in the Federal courts for killing a person in self-defence whilst in the discharge of his official duties;—The Civil Rights case of Strander v. W. Virginia and others (100 U. S. 303-422), in which were settled the rights of all classes of citizens, irrespective of color, to suffrage and to representation in the jury box, and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the investing Japanese, fell aboard the battleship Retvisan, lying at anchor in the harbour, and seriously damaged her, there had been a general outcry that the Russian fleet ought to go to sea and fight, rather than remain in harbour and be ignominiously destroyed without striking a blow in self-defence. ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... I, without heeding the interruption, "I shall show you no mercy. If you are going to take the cowardly advantage of having the the first shot, I have my advantage too. In self-defence, I shall be justified in killing you; and if you fire at me, I shall certainly do so. Be warned! ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... kills but one to get his pile, and then only because he must, in self-defence. A big gambling capitalist corners wheat, raises the price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children to death to make his. It's not stained with blood. Every dollar is soaked ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... her husband in every manner possible. Her honored father's prime minister was deposed and his estates confiscated, Don Gomez was given this high post and treated as an acknowledged favorite, and most shamelessly, and the whole country was shocked. But matters of self-defence were now of first importance to the Castilians, and so they were compelled to overlook her misconduct for the moment and prepare to withstand the irate Alfonso's threatened invasion. He invited Henry, Count of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... for they all know I am friendly to them. I tried to collect all my faculties, to determine what it was best to do. I reflected that, if I alarmed the servants, he might be driven to attack me in self-defence. I began talking aloud to myself, leisurely taking off my cuffs and collar as I did so, and laying my breastpin and watch upon the table. 'I wish Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald were not going to stay so long at Beaufort,' said I. 'It is lonesome here, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of learning to fish, when he could find time. Mr Feeder had amassed, with similar intentions, a beautiful little curly secondhand key-bugle, a chess-board and men, a Spanish Grammar, a set of sketching materials, and a pair of boxing-gloves. The art of self-defence Mr Feeder said he should undoubtedly make a point of learning, as he considered it the duty of every man to do; for it might lead to the protection of a female in distress. But Mr Feeder's great possession was a large green jar of snuff, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... through the guts, and with the sword's hilt thrust him to the ground. Then he turned upon the rest with such energy and daring, that his one arm was on the point of putting the whole band to flight, had it not been that, while wheeling round to strike an arquebusier, this man fired in self-defence, and hit the brave unfortunate young fellow above the knee of his right leg. While he lay stretched upon the ground, the constables scrambled off in disorder as fast as they were able, lest a pair to my brother ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the state had cause for supposing that opinions of the kind might spread in secret so long as no opportunity was offered for detecting their progress, to require the oath was a measure of reasonable self-defence, not permissible only, but in a high degree ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... to pick up anything, cheap or otherwise, Pa Sloane, because I'm going with you to see that you don't. I know I can't stop you from going. I might as well try to stop the wind from blowing. But I shall go, too, out of self-defence. This house is so full now of old clutter and truck that you've brought home from auctions that I feel as if I was made up out of ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... argument I used," said Swain. "I told her that, since he was clearly mad, she must, in self-defence, place herself beyond his reach. But she refused to leave him. Then, I argued, in kindness to him she must have him committed to some institution where he would be taken care of, and where he might, in time, regain his sanity. I told her that ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... military operation whatever in the interior of Japan; and they would indeed regret the adoption of any measures of hostility against the Japanese government or princes, even though limited to naval operations, unless absolutely required by self-defence." Had this order arrived in time, it is probable that the expedition would not have sailed.—Correspondence Respecting Affairs in Japan, 1875, No. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... is, a question without the right settlement of which neither commerce nor liberty is safe, the public is so little in earnest about it that politicians are allowed to play with it, and the serious needs of self-defence are sacrificed to the poor aim of keeping constituencies in good-humour. Nothing can or will be done by Governments of any party till the nation can be roused to some expression of public opinion; and that opinion has to be ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... exclaimed, "I hold you both to our bargain! I was to be the one he attacked and who struck the blow—in self-defence! Remember that—it was in self-defence! I've done it! I've done my share! I hope to God I'll forget it some day. Andrew, you know your task. Be a ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unarmed, while the Dacotahs were both armed and numerous. Still, the average Englishman does not like to be trussed up without showing some marked resistance. It makes him feel small to be trapped without dealing a blow in self-defence. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... it can confiscate the property of traitors. Every large slave-holder is to-day, at heart, a traitor. If this movement goes on, you will commit overt acts against the government, and in self-defence it will punish treason by taking from you the means of ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence, and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... meant it to go beyond the study. I was obliged to write it down in self-defence, that I might know what he ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... case," said Arthur, "I suppose I must 'go on,' in self-defence; and as I believe that twenty minutes will suffice for what ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... merely an informality. Then his losses suddenly leaped beyond his ability to make them good; then, for the first time, he began to practice that system in keeping the books which the furious president called juggling with them. Even this measure he considered a justifiable means of self-defence pending the difficulties which beset him, and until he could make his losses good by other operations. From time to time he was more fortunate; and whenever he dramatized himself in an explanation to the directors, as he often did, especially of late, he easily satisfied ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... out of ten, is the most important thing in it. By its means it can generally be demonstrated whether the shooting was accidental or intentional—and whether or not the killing was in self-defence. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... give it him, in self-defence," said John Massingbird. "The fellow had got it into his head, in some unaccountable manner, that I was the black sheep, and was prowling about with a gun, ready capped and loaded, to put a bullet into me. I don't set so much store by my life as some fidgets ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... explain anything at all. But it's possible that the thought of somebody else having possessed you may still be gnawing within me. At times it appears to me as if our love were nothing but a fiction, an attempt at self-defence, a passion kept up as a matter of honor—and I can't think of anything that would give me more pain than to have him know that I am unhappy. Oh, I have never seen him—but the mere thought that a person exists who is waiting for my misfortune to arrive, who is ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... recalled how Reine shrank from him when he solicited a caress; how she insisted on their betrothal being kept secret, and how many times she had postponed the date of the wedding. It was evident that she had received him only in self-defence, and on the pleading of Julien de Buxieres. Julien! the name threw a gleam of light across his brain, hitherto as foggy as the country around him. Might not Julien be the fortunate rival on whom Reine's affections were ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... to remind you that this is the last opportunity the law allows you, to speak in your own vindication. The testimony has all been presented to those appointed to decide upon its value. If there be any final statement that you may desire to offer in self-defence, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... "But let that pass.") "Oh, don't think of it again; so many people disturb the birds, don't you know, that we're obliged in self-defence to warn trespassers sometimes off our lovely mountains. But I do it with regret—with profound regret. I admire the—er—the beauties of Nature myself; and, therefore, I desire that all others should have the freest possible access to them—possible, ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... Oriental countries in a single word: Religion! Must, then, a government seek to advance the cause of its State religion, not from religious conviction, but in the spirit which seeks to retain the privileges and wealth it has acquired and its powers of self-defence? ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Selincourt did anything which took their trade away, and left them face to face with starvation, would it be their duty to sit down meekly and bear such an injustice, without attempting a blow in self-defence, and all because of that evil from the past which, although so long buried, had suddenly come to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... place on a raft that held the self-made colonials even at the risk of losing their lives. The self-made folks, snubbed and a little hurt, were rather inclined to be blatantly loud and assertive in self-defence. Between the two Marcella would be a shuttlecock. But she clinched the discussion herself by remarking airily that she was going in the cheapest ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... path through the bushes, satisfied herself that no one was in sight, she returned to the house, and the baby's voice rose louder than before. The mother, as she set out her ironing table, raised a dirge-like hymn, which she chanted, partly from habit and partly in self-defence. She ironed carefully the ragged shirt she had just taken from the line, and then, after some search, finding a needle and cotton, she drew a chair to the door and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... his head. Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a great crime: not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was not an unprecedented offence; not his duel with her husband, for after all it was a duel in self-defence; and, at all events, divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or authorised the storm which was now about to burst over the late spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis had been guilty of the offence ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... MULLER:—Self-defence, Monsieur Dorinet, is contrary to the rules of the game. Revenge only is permitted. Revenge yourself on Madame Desjardins, whose secret it is your ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... asked; and there was so much confusion in the carriage when the porter came, that in self-defence the two friends got out with their bags. I also descended and would have followed in the wake of the crowd, if the little man had not called after me. He had lost his ticket, he said. Would I be so extremely obliging as to throw an eye about ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... washed and drew and scaled his spoil. He was a clean-skinned, blue-eyed Canadian Irishman, well made and sinewy, bright and open of countenance. His blond hair clung in almost flaxen tendrils to his warm forehead. No ill-nature was visible about him, yet he turned like a man in fierce self-defence on his partner, who followed Jess ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Mike flashed on the light. As he did so, he wheeled about, and shot one mighty clinched fist straight into West's face. This was done so suddenly, so unexpectedly, the man attacked found no opportunity to even throw up a hand in self-defence. The giant Pole flung his whole weight into the crashing blow, and the ex-soldier went down as though struck by a pole-ax. For an instant, he realized that Sexton was in a fierce struggle; that his ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... of the young squire having wanted to buy the bantams, and on his not being permitted to do so, of his endeavouring to take them by force. "And when I wouldn't let him carry away my sister's birds, he flew on me like a game cock, and in self-defence I struck him ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power
... to look the result of deliberate reflection.' Claudius fears the people may imagine Hamlet treacherously used, driven to self-defence, and hurried out of ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... glass, putting on her best dress and the newest hat to impress you with her magnificence. She is disappointed that you have not noticed them yet, that's why she pretends to be humble!" explained Geoffrey in self-defence, whereat his wife grimaced at him in a manner singularly undignified and eloquent. Then she glanced hastily across the room at Sylvia, looking so girlish, so abashed at having been discovered in her schemes, that Sylvia laughed involuntarily, and ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... felt just now—but as, please you mustn't go on feeling.—What he had done seemed to me treacherous; and it pained as well as displeased me. But in all that I was unjust and mistaken.—And it was then, because he saw he'd pained me, displeased and made me angry, that he told me in self-defence—told me to show he wasn't treacherous, but had the right—a right no one else in all the world has over me ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... step toward buying must be a bit of pleasant study which shall serve in the nature of self-defence. Not by books alone, however, shall this subject be approached, but by happy jaunts to sympathetic museums, both at home and abroad, by moments snatched from the touch-and-go talk of afternoon tea in some friend's salon or library, or ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... exposed, the interior of the hut quite dark; the position far from sound. The gendarmes knelt with their pieces ready, and Captain Hart advanced alone. As he drew near the door he heard the snap of a gun cocking from within, and in sheer self-defence—there being no other escape— sprang into the house and grappled Timau. 'Timau, come with me!' he cried. But Timau—a great fellow, his eyes blood-red with the abuse of kava, six foot three in stature—cast ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hold, and after another dash, that broke her ear of corn in twain, Salina was left defenceless, with nothing but her two hands to fight with; but she plied these with great vigor, leaving long, crimson marks upon her assailant's cheeks with every blow, till, in very self-defence, he was compelled to lessen the distance between her face and his, thus receiving her assault ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... St. Clare, in one way or other, would make peace for her. From him she got many a stray picayune, which she laid out in nuts and candies, and distributed, with careless generosity, to all the children in the family; for Topsy, to do her justice, was good-natured and liberal, and only spiteful in self-defence. She is fairly introduced into our corps be ballet, and will figure, from time to time, in ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "GYMNASIUM AND SCHOOL OF ARMS." In the long, narrow entry hung a framed manuscript which set forth that Ned Skene, ex-champion of England and the colonies, was to be heard of within daily by gentlemen desirous of becoming proficient in the art of self-defence. Also the terms on which Mrs. Skene, assisted by a competent staff of professors, would give lessons in dancing, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... length the children were quiet, as she turned her harshly outlined head so as to see who the other occupants of the glade might be, her look had in it the dull hostility of the hunted creature whose powers of self-defence are almost gone. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made in this particular case—what degrading proposals, backed by the insidious offer of foreign gold? A weak character might have succumbed. But the victim was made of different stuff. He belonged to another type—the heroic type. Suffering anguish of soul, he yet preferred honour to baseness. In self-defence—" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... so familiarly known. There is a ghost much to my mind in Beaumont and Fletcher's Lover's Progress. Cleander has a beautiful wife, Calista, and a friend, Lisander, Calista and Lisander love each other, en tout bien, tout honneur. Lisander, in self-defence and in fair fight, kills a court favourite, and is obliged to conceal himself in the country. Cleander and Dorilaus, Calista's father, travel in search of him. They pass the night at a country inn. The jovial host had been long known to Cleander, who had extolled him to Dorilaus; but on inquiring ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... a retired prize-fighter who kept a public-house on Bank Side. In a large room attached to the house he gave sparring exhibitions twice a week, with the aid of other fellow-pugilists, and also gave private lessons in the art of self-defence. Bank Side was not out of bounds, but it was strictly against the rules for any boy to enter a public-house; nevertheless, a good many of the Westminster boys had learned boxing from this worthy. There was a private entrance behind the house into what Perkins ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... under his challenge, and which certainly had no taste in it of personal or private quarrel. On my part, I retain towards him such a sense of personal obligation as would render my continuing this combat, unless compelled to it by self-defence, a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Egyptian tax-gatherer, who, while Pharaoh was passing through Succoth toward the east, had attempted to drive off a herd of his finest cattle for "the kitchen of the lord of both worlds." For this act of self-defence the hapless man had been conveyed to the mines as a prisoner of state, and every one knew that the convicts there perished, soul and body, from torturing labor far beyond their strength. Through the influence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all the auditors were so surprised at this that they lowered their eyes. The remark spread directly; nobody was able to blame the Pere La Chaise. He was generally regretted, for he had done much good and never harm except in self-defence. Marechal, first surgeon of the King, and possessed of his confidence, related once to me and Madame de Saint-Simon, a very important anecdote referring to this time. He said that the King, talking to him ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... fenced with walls, but many of the surrounding villages were fortified, while the watch-towers, or migdols* built at the bends of the roads, at the fords over the rivers, and at the openings of the ravines, all testified to the insecurity of the times and the aptitude for self-defence ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... why I can't get the same comfort out of things. I don't see where the fellow gets his vim. If I worked as hard as he does, I'd be ready to tumble into bed instead of pegging away at Latin and Mathematics. I'll have to put on a spurt in self-defence or he'll be tripping me up with his questions. He's got the longest head of anyone I know. The idea of the governor daring to set such a fellow ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... necessary tools—but lived in the forests which then very nearly covered the globe, using such natural shelter as they found ready for them, almost like the savage animals which it was their main business to fight and kill in self-defence and also for food and clothing. Caverns in steep mountain-sides must have been their most luxurious, because safest and best-protected, retreats. Many dozens of such caverns are known in all parts of the world, and the tale they ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 40, August 12, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... threatening manner. On coming near the house they crossed sticks with the bride's friends, who gradually fell back and allowed the bridegroom's friends to advance in their direction. The women of the house gathered with baskets and fans and some threw about rice in pretence of self-defence. When the sticks of the bridegroom's party struck the roof of the bride's house or of the marriage-shed her friends considered themselves defeated and the sham fight was at an end." Among the Maratha Chamars of Betul two earthen pots full of water are half buried in the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... distinctly opposed to the Church and the State—who in the instance of the one acknowledges a foreign supremacy, and in the instance of the other anathematizes the religion—is one of the grossest acts that faction ever committed, or that feebleness in government ever complied with. Self-defence is the first instinct of nature; the defence of the constitution is the first duty of society; the defence of our religion is an essential act of obedience to Heaven. Yet the permission given to individuals, hostile to both, to make laws for either, was the second triumph at which Irish ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his well known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would be compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegand in "self-defence." But ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... permitted him to see. How the battle sped in other quarters I am in no position to describe. The rogue that fell to my share was exceedingly agile and expert with his weapon; had and held me at a disadvantage from the first assault; forced me to give ground continually, and at last, in mere self-defence, to let him have the point. It struck him in the throat, and he went down like a nine-pin and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surprise, Sir?" says I. "And in case you lose your temper, will you excuse my remarking, that I am the stronger man of the two, and that, if you allow yourself to lay hands on me, I may unintentionally hurt you, in pure self-defence?" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... she is. I do not see her wince, though I drum upon the keys with most ingenious discords, and sing false on purpose as loud as I can bellow. I will not ask her if she can play; she can have no ear at all, or she would box mine in self-defence. ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... The Lady Juliana had to pair off with a dapper Papworth, and her mama was subjected to the gallantries of Sir Miles, who talked land and steam-engines to her till she was sick, and had to be impertinent in self-defence. Lady Blandish, the delightful widow, sat apart with Adrian, and enjoyed his sarcasms on the company. By ten at night the poor show ended, and the rooms were dark, dark as the prognostics multitudinously hinted by the disappointed and chilled guests concerning the probable future of the hope ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... already to keep the peace, and this last had surely been in self-defence, and he felt he could prove it. What he wanted now was to get away, to get back to his own people and to lie hidden in his own cellar or garret, where they would feed and guard him until the trouble was over. And still, like the two ends of a vise, the ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... absolutely made him ill. After a good deal of sparring she took up the birch-rod and began to whip him with an uncommon degree of asperity. When the poor lad found that he must either drink the nauseous dish of tea or be flogged to death, he turned upon her in self-defence, showed her to the outside of the nursery- door, and never more allowed her to meddle ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... such,—particularly whenas they are jealous without cause,—to be well done and holding that, if the makers of the laws had considered everything, they should have appointed none other penalty unto women who offend in this than that which they appoint unto whoso offendeth against other in self-defence; for that jealous men are plotters against the lives of young women and most diligent procurers of their deaths. Wives abide all the week mewed up at home, occupying themselves with domestic offices and the occasions of their families and households, and after ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... swineherd, and of Wamba the jester; that the castles of great lords are no longer the dens of banditti, from whence they issue with fire and sword, to lay waste the land; that we no longer expire in loathsome dungeons without knowing the cause, or have our right hands struck off for raising them in self-defence against wanton insult; that we can sleep without fear of being burnt in our beds, or travel without making our wills; that no Amy Robsarts are thrown down trap-doors by Richard Varneys with impunity; that no Red Reiver ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... advertisement, declaring himself to be already in possession of the originals. Curll was too wary to commit himself to such a statement, which would have made him responsible for the theft; or, perhaps, have justified Pope in publishing the originals in self-defence. The matter slept till March 1735, when Curll wrote to Pope proposing a cessation of hostilities, and as a proof of goodwill sending him the old P. T. advertisement. This step fell in so happily with Pope's designs that it has been suggested that Curll was prompted in some indirect manner ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... slipped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. The long lessons in self-defence had given him some confidence and, what was as useful, had developed ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... plunged into literary work and dissipation in London; and he outlived Greene only to fall a victim to debauchery in a still more tragical way. His death (1593) was the subject of much gossip, but the most probable account is that he was poniarded in self-defence by a certain Francis Archer, a serving-man (not by any means necessarily, as Charles Kingsley has it, a footman), while drinking at Deptford, and that the cause of the quarrel was a woman of light character. He has also been accused ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... The way to the door was cut off. He raised his arm in self-defence and retreated as far as possible ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... nothing further about the geographical conditions. Every one who studies a map can see for himself what is required by a country anxious to protect its shores or its boundaries. If we suppose that armaments are strictly limited to the needs of self-defence, and if we further assume that in the new Europe countries are not animated by the strongest dislikes against one another, but are prepared to live and let live (a tolerably large assumption, I am aware), we can readily imagine ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... piracy, but the Spanish Ambassador, who brought the charge, was without evidence and could not obtain convictions. They pleaded that "the Spaniards fired at us first," and that they had acted only in self-defence, so they 'scaped hanging, though Sharp admits that they "were very near it." Three more of the crew were laid by the heels at Jamaica, and one of these was "wheedled into an open confession," ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... are told that Robin could stand anything but a "tho wind". The Red Campion, the Ragged Robin, and the Herb Robert are known in several counties by his name. His greatest claim to popularity was that he took away the goods of none save rich men, never killed any person except in self-defence, charitably fed the poor, and was in short, as an old writer tells us, "the most humane ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... strange that a hundred different schemes of salvation should have been deduced from it by those who came to it with different prepossessions. While many of the Anabaptists were perfect quietists, preaching the duty of non-resistance and the wickedness of bearing arms, even in self-defence, others found sanction for quite opposite views in the Scripture, and proclaimed that the godless should be exterminated as the Canaanites had been. In ethical matters some sects practised the severest code of morals, while others were distinguished ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... "Oh, come! You did, as near as I can see the matter, what you downright had to do in self-defence. Suppose I got into trouble, where would you be? This second little matter flows clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of Miss Galbraith. You can't begin and then stop. If you begin, you must keep on beginning; that's the truth. No ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place to mingle with the frightened throng. Dismayed at the approach of so strange and unaccountable an object, the Mandans stood their ground but a few moments; when, by an order of the chiefs, all hands were ensconced within the piquets of their village, and all the warriors armed for desperate self-defence. A few moments brought the boat in front of the village, and all was still and quiet as death; not a Mandan was to be seen upon the banks. The steamer was moored, and three or four of the chiefs soon after walked boldly down the bank, and ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... of the Constitution was based on the argument that it did not allow that independence in the several States which alone would justify them in seceding;—yet, as slavery was universally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference could be drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in self-defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical enough to satisfy minds untrained to detect fallacy, as the majority of men always are, and now too much disturbed by the disorder of the times to consider that the order of events had any legitimate bearing ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... point Daphne ceased to think about her friend. She found herself suddenly engaged in a heated self-defence. What comparison could there be between her case ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... neighbour), you all the while were mocking every credulous excess of Faith. In the sermons preached to Agnes we surely hear your private laughter; in the arguments for credulity which are presented to Don Juan by his valet we listen to the eternal self-defence of superstition. Thus, desolate of belief, you sought for the permanent element of life— precisely where Pascal recognised all that was most fleeting and unsubstantial—in divertissement; in the pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... no other man would be believed. Still, perhaps it would be best to choose a different messenger and to silence this fellow at once. Write down that Jeffrey Stokes, a prisoner, strove to escape and was killed by the guards in self-defence. Take him hence and let ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... grounds for three months, free of charge, had they shown a desire to labor; but what was the lamentable fact? the people would not work, because Mr. Fishbourne had influenced them not to do so, and he (Mr. Mason) had been a loser of one thousand pounds in consequence. He had been compelled in self-defence to issue summonses against two of his people. He had purchased his property—it was his all—he had sacrificed twenty of the best years of his life as a planter, he had a wife and family to support, and what was the prospect before him and them? He admitted having served ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Its nearest neighbour, Bellechasse, contained two hundred and twenty-seven persons, living upon three hundred and twenty arpents of cultivable land. With an arsenal of sixty-two muskets it was better equipped for self-defence. The census everywhere took more careful count of muskets than of ploughs; and this is not surprising, for it was the design of the authorities to build up a 'powerful military colony' which would stand on its own feet without support from home. They ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... prey; so that when a man, threading the mazes of a forest, sees a serpent gliding towards him, he has but to turn into a side path, and be safe. But if a snake is trodden upon, or otherwise roused to anger, it will dart forward upon its enemy, in self-defence; also, if one of the enormous snakes comes upon a man, it may seize him before he has time to run away. Waterton, however, did not know what fear was; and instead of being paralysed with terror at the sight of serpents, once [Footnote: Life of Charles Waterton, p. 55.] caught a large ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... labour to keep clear of enemies by a mildness of behaviour. Disarm those enemies you may unfortunately have (and few are without them) by a gentleness of manner, but make them feel the steadiness of your just resentment; for there is a wide difference between bearing malice and a determined self-defence; the one is imperious, but the other ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... declares that in Mexico existed neither state nor nation, nor political society of any kind, but tribes representing dialects, and autonomous in matters of government, and forming confederacies for the purposes of self-defence and conquest. The ancient Mexican tribe was composed of twenty autonomous kins. According to Brinton the social organization of ancient Peru was a government by a council of the gentes. The Inca was a war chief ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... did not think of this then; I did not even bestow a thought upon the narrowness of our escape, or the price which the darling of my heart might be called upon to pay for this supreme act of self-defence. My mind, my heart, my interest were with Felix, in whom the nearness of death had called up all that was strongest and most commanding in his strong and ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... secure in its own vast numbers and vast resources has, for all future needs of expansion the continent of Siberia into which to overflow. Russia cannot be threatened within Russia and has no need to go outside Russia. A Russian army of 4,000,000 is not necessary to self-defence. Its inspiration can be due only to a policy of expansion at the cost of others, and its aim to extend and to maintain existing Russian frontiers. As I write it is engaged not in a war of defence but in a war ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... he had forgotten to say how long it took him. Every time he was alone he was wafted away to Egypt and set down at that Pyramid. But he could not find the inscription, and if he had found it he could not have translated it. So, in self-defence, he spent most of his waking-time with Ethel. But every night the Pyramid had its own way, and it was not till he had cut an inscription himself on the Pyramid with the broken blade of his pocket-knife, and translated it into English, that he was ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... shall have to give up, for it is very unlikely that I shall get beyond the second act of the "Valkyrie" here. Such as I am, I want a soft, clinging element around me, in order to feel gladly inclined for work. This eternal need of self-condensation for the purpose of self-defence supplies me with obstinacy and contempt, but not with the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... this part of their voyage was again very low, and they fell in with a large body of savages, with whom they were on the point of being forced, in self-defence, to have a deadly encounter, when suddenly the four natives who had accompanied them appeared running at full speed, and, through their assistance, though not without some difficulty, bloodshed was ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... other people our conversation dropped. I was, in fact, dead off colour, and the sight of those three Cliborough fellows almost took away my appetite. Until that moment it had never occurred to me that I had been in the habit of thinking a lot of myself at Cliborough, and in self-defence I must add that I do not see how a public school can prosper unless some of the fellows stick together and try to make things go on properly. Any "side" I may have had was certainly unconscious, but I haven't an idea whether that is the worst or the best kind. I know that I should have ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... The Emperor hath urged me to the uttermost. I can no longer honourably serve him. 45 For my security, in self-defence, I take this hard step, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... child home, and didn't mean nothing more. I ask you, sir, what could I do?" cried Mr Elsworthy. "Folks in Carlingford will talk o' two straws if they're a-seen a-blowing up Grange Lane on the same breath o' wind. I couldn't do no more nor contradict it," cried Rosa's guardian, getting excited in his self-defence; "and to save your feelings, Mr Wentworth, and put it out o' folks's power to talk, the missis has been ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... soon followed by the French captain and his lady, who was now all gratitude, and would have kissed my hands, but I prevented her, and said, "Madam, at least now you have no occasion to hate me. If I was so unfortunate, in self-defence, as to slay your first husband, I have restored to you your second. Let us, then, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... too much for the Count's patience, and letting go the bell rope, he snatched up a walking cane that was leaning against the chimneypiece, and made a rush toward his visitor. But Mascarin did not move or lift his hand in self-defence, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... upon her," answered Alfred, "in self-defence. It's the only way I can keep her from making me utterly ridiculous." And he proceeded to read from the secretary's telegram. "'Shopped all morning. Lunched at Martingale's with man and woman unknown to me—Martingale's,'" he repeated with ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... to be disturbed by our presence. They must have seen that we were all commissioned officers. But, I suppose, they looked upon the garrison of Chattanooga as prisoners of war, feeding or starving themselves, and thought it would be inhuman to kill any of them except in self-defence. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the "Herakles" which it includes is a masculine and masterly effort to transport the whole sense and spirit of the original into English verse, and the rendering of the choral passages into lyric form gives it an advantage over the transcript of the "Alkestis." Perhaps not a little of the self-defence of Aristophanes and his statement of the case against Euripides could have been put as well or better in a critical essay in prose; but the method of Browning enables him to mingle, in a dramatic fashion, truth with sophistry, and to make both serve his ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... nothing remarkable in my behaviour? When a merchant has attached himself to your collar, can you do less than smite him on the other cheek? I merely acted in self-defence. You ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... ('Very true'). In questions of defence of one's own country every people rejects foreign interference and is guided only by considerations bearing on its own security and its own needs ('Quite right'). Of this right to self-judgment and self-defence Germany also makes use when she builds a fleet to secure the necessary protection for her coasts and her commerce ('Bravo!'). This defensive, this purely defensive character of our naval programme cannot, in view of the incessant attempts to attribute to us aggressive ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... curses of the multitude on his head. Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a great crime: not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was not an unprecedented offence; not his duel with her husband, for after all it was a duel in self-defence; and, at all events, divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or authorised the storm which was now about to burst over the late spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... with nineteen men, and with the avowed resolution to take no life but in self-defence. Nat Turner attacked Virginia from within, with six men, and with the determination to spare no life until his power was established. John Brown intended to pass rapidly through Virginia, and then retreat to the mountains. Nat ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... get coal; there were posters illustrating the treatment of the peasants by the Whites; posters against desertion, posters illustrating the Russian struggle against the rest of the world, showing a workman, a peasant, a sailor and a soldier fighting in self-defence against an enormous Capitalistic Hydra. There were also-and this I took as a sign of what might be-posters encouraging the sowing of corn, and posters explaining in simple pictures improved methods of agriculture. Our own recruiting propaganda ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... the time!" Emmy put in, having reached a point of general self-defence in the course of her mental explorations. She was recovering from her shock and her first ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... greatest political historian of the British Empire, foreign trade and modern war have always been one and the same thing. Some small nation-state resented the advent and methods of the foreign traders, and began to prepare for self-defence, asserting that it wished to be left alone, and that it meant to defend its own sacred traditions. This the government that backed the traders would not permit, and a clash of arms ensued. Or two rival sets ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... requiring the Pacific Railroad Companies to make annual payments for a sinking fund to meet the bonds loaned to them by the Government;— Tennessee v. Davis (100 U. S. 257), as to the right of a United States officer to be tried in the Federal courts for killing a person in self-defence whilst in the discharge of his official duties;—The Civil Rights case of Strander v. W. Virginia and others (100 U. S. 303-422), in which were settled the rights of all classes of citizens, irrespective ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... age the world has ever known, as in most respects it is; and it seemed scarcely compatible with our estimate of the age's excellence to believe that it could send a couple of million of men into the field for the purpose of cutting one another's throats, except clearly as an act of self-defence. Man is the same war-making animal now that he was in the days of Marathon, but he readily admits the evils of war, and is peremptory in demanding that they shall not be incurred save for good and valid reasons. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... these cases the woman is seldom so well equipped for self-defence as the man. Owing to her invincible ignorance of her own nature, she must be more or less at a disadvantage. And if this is true of women in general, it was doubly true of any one so specially prone to illusion as Audrey Craven, who would have had difficulty in recognising any part of her true ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the same authority a transgression of the law, to the end that the will of men may thereby be the better disposed to obedience. Now, this right of punishment is not transferred by the subjects to the sovereign since they cannot surrender their right of self-defence against violence. But as all before had the natural right of hurting others, that right is left by the covenant to the sovereign alone, strengthened by the resignation ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... great impulse of the authorities was in the direction of self-defence, and Washington was fortified and garrisoned. This done, it was believed that the accumulating forces of the Union, which had become thoroughly equipped and somewhat disciplined, ought to advance into the revolted Territory, scatter the defiant hosts ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... hain't no right ter take human life, 'cept in self-defence. Even ef Mulock was so bad as this loryer feller tries ter make him out—but he hain't, 'cause 'tain't in natur for a man ter be wuss than th' devil himself—ye'd hev no right to stop his breath. Ye didn't guv it ter him; it doan't b'long ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... she had heard Druce say to her father, "You know, Stuart, I never intended to kill him. I only struck in self-defence." ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... other side is to demonstrate its reality, it is evident that there is an advantage on the side of the philosopher who maintains his proposition as a practically necessary supposition (melior est conditio possidentis). For he is at liberty to employ, in self-defence, the same weapons as his opponent makes use of in attacking him; that is, he has a right to use hypotheses not for the purpose of supporting the arguments in favour of his own propositions, but to show that his opponent knows no more than himself regarding the subject ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... blue-eyed Canadian Irishman, well made and sinewy, bright and open of countenance. His blond hair clung in almost flaxen tendrils to his warm forehead. No ill-nature was visible about him, yet he turned like a man in fierce self-defence on his partner, who followed Jess ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... poetry, to which he made no pretensions, was at least quaintly-turned rhyme. He had, besides, a competent knowledge of geometry, and was skilled in architectural drawing; and—strange accomplishment for a Celt—he was an adept in the noble science of self-defence. But George never sought out quarrels; and such was his amount of bone and muscle, and such the expression of manly resolution stamped on his countenance, that they never came in his ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... clearly at the last gasp, and when at length the children were quiet, as she turned her harshly outlined head so as to see who the other occupants of the glade might be, her look had in it the dull hostility of the hunted creature whose powers of self-defence are almost gone. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with Lord Wolseley (then Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's troops), the best time at which to make an attack on the two Republics. Your Excellency will thus see that it was not we who drew the sword, but that we only put it away from our throats. We have only acted in self-defence—one of the holiest rights of man—in order to assert our right to exist. And therefore I think, with all respect, that we have a right to trust in a ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... fill his pockets with the gold for which his human soul is ever hungry. There is no law of man he dares not break but he shrinks in horror from the infringement of the unwritten rules of savagery. Though he might cut a throat in self-defence, he would never walk under a ladder; and if the 13th fell on a Friday, he would starve that day rather than obtain a loaf by the method he best understands. He consults the omens with as patient a divination as the augurs of old; and so long as he carries ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... on the right-hand side of the road, he perceived first of all the barrel of a gun, and then a head, rising over the top of the wall. The gun was levelled, and he recognised Orlanduccio, just ready to fire. Orso swiftly prepared for self-defence, and the two men, taking deliberate aim, stared at each other for several seconds, with that thrill of emotion which the bravest must feel when he knows he must either ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... were still actualities, not, as they have now become, historical entities, the terror of the foreign community there. The sword was an important and, indeed, an essential weapon in the conditions of society that obtained in old Japan, not only for self-defence but for offensive purposes, either in respect of family feuds or individual quarrels, which were almost invariably settled by the arbitrament of the sword. That weapon was also used for those suicides known as hara-kiri, the outcome of wounded honour or self-respect, which were such prominent ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... bearded. The sound of their straining breath was continuous, the ripping of coarse cloth an occasional interruption; but from the first, a spectator could not but have foreseen the end. The elder man was fighting in self-defence: the younger, he of the massive protruding jaw—a jaw now so prominent as to be a positive disfigurement—in unappeasable ferocity. Against him in that hour a very giant could not have held his own. Merely a glimpse of his face inspired terror. Again and again as they ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Game), a low fellow, to be heard of at the bar of the Black Badger. Mr. Toots selects this man as his instructor in fencing, betting, and self-defence. The Chicken has short hair, a low forehead, a broken nose, and "a considerable tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear."—C. Dickens, Dombey and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... organ-grinder wanders in and wanders out again, disgusted. In holiday-time the street is the arena of the young bloods of the neighbourhood, and the householders have an opportunity of studying the manly art of self-defence. And yet Norfolk Street has one claim to be respectable, for it contains not a single shop—unless you count the public-house at the corner, which is really ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... head so that the spanner only grazed his scalp. The motor-bicycle toppled over, its owner sprang to his feet, and found the short man, very pale and gasping, about to renew the assault. In such a crisis there was no time for inquiry, and the cyclist was well trained in self-defence. He leaped the prostrate bicycle, and before his assailant could get in a blow brought his left fist into violent contact with his chin. Dickson tottered a step or two and then ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... very early at morning; that made him husk more bushels of corn, and toss more bundles of grain into the self-feed of a threshing machine than any other man he knew; that kept him awake thinking at night until the discordant snores of the family sent him to bed, with the covers over his ears in self-defence. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... worried Braddish's peace of mind like a cancer. Details of the actual killing were kept from us children. But I gathered, since the only witnesses of the shooting were heelers of Hagan's, that it could in no wise be construed into an out-and-out act of self-defence, and so far as the law lay ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... be thus? No!" says the poet. "Dry your tears, little JACK, go to the well-stocked pantry, my boy, and get something to eat. The jury will not convict you of stealing, for their verdict will be that you did the deed in self-defence." And he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... it was in self-defence; he drew first, and I had to hit him. Didn't mean to kill him; but it doesn't worry me as much as it ought, I'm afraid. I've more than paid for it, and such a rascal is better out of the world than in it, showing boys the way to hell. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... great patriot maintain the noble character of a captain the patron of peace, and a statesman the friend of justice. Dying, he bequeathed to his heirs the sword which he had worn in the war for liberty, and charged them "never to take it from the scabbard but in self-defence, or in defence of their country and her freedom;" and commanded them that, "when it should thus be drawn, they should never sheathe it, nor ever give it up, but prefer falling with it in their hands to the relinquishment thereof,"—words, the majesty and simple eloquence of which are not surpassed ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... phenomenon that men, with the mildest characters, who seemed incapable of witnessing the sufferings of any living creature, much less of inflicting pain, quietly prepared to murder men, nearly all of them considering murder lawful and just on certain occasions as a means for self-defence, for the attainment of higher aims or for the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... in unlimited sympathy has been emphasized by the most divergent students of psychological law. Herbert Spencer analysed it with characteristic thoroughness. Nietzsche went farther. He reacted violently against the onslaughts of pity in his own soul, and in philosophical self-defence inverted the promptings of compassion. The war has shown the human need of self-defence against excessive sympathy. We are surfeited with horrors on land and sea; the ghastly truth of a carnage which exceeds anything known in history, of maimed and broken lives, of starving and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... first time, gentlemen," he said, on rising to speak, "that the individual who now addresses you, has ever appeared in a high court of justice, as an act of self-defence. I have never yet been solemnly called upon to account for my past actions by any fellow-creature. My moral motives have never yet been publicly impugned. The position in which I now stand, accused of denying the just rights of another, of wilfully ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... existing in Ludamar, to the west of Timbuctoo, where a negro population is subjected to the tyranny of the Arab chieftain Ali, between whom and his southern neighbours of Bambarra and Kaarta we find a continual struggle of aggression and self-defence; and the well-known character of the Arabs would lead us to expect a similar state of things along the whole frontier of the negro population. In the pauses of such a warfare, we should expect to find no intermission of the animosity or precautions of the antagonist parties. The Arab ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... can be undertaken by a just and wise state unless for faith or self-defence. This self-defence of the State is enough to insure its perpetuity, and this perpetuity is what all patriots desire. Those afflictions which even the hardiest spirits smart under—poverty, exile, prison, and torment—private individuals seek to escape ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... compelled, in self-defence, to use similar methods, it is satisfactory to be able to record, on the evidence of prisoners, of documents captured, and of our own observation, that the enemy has suffered heavy casualties from our gas attacks, while the means of protection adopted by us have ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... 'with the ships under his charge, and the Dutch squadron, to anchor near the entrance of the harbour, to take care that the ships riding near Cadiz do not escape,' and he took up a position that commanded St. Lucar as well as Cadiz. He was 'not to fight, except in self-defence,' without express instructions. At the mouth of St. Lucar he found some great ships, but they lay so near shore that he could not approach them, and finally they escaped in a mist, Raleigh very nearly running his own vessel aground. Meanwhile Essex ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... ought to be thoroughly searched out at once, he nourished a dark suspicion, which he feared to impart to his better half, the aunt of the person suspected. But the longer he concealed it, the more unbearable grew this misery to a candid nature, until he was compelled, in self-defence, to allow it some sort of outlet. "I will speak to the fellow myself," he said, heartily disliking the young man now, "and judge from his manner what next I ought ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... steel and the thrusts of her deadly reproach pierced deep. He was on his feet, in the impulse of self-defence, before she had half done, trying to silence her—he was at her side, calling her by her name, but she would not ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... jealous without due cause. And had our legislators taken account of everything, I am of opinion that they would have visited ladies in such a case with no other penalty than such as they provide for those that offend in self-defence, seeing that a jealous husband does cunningly practise against the life of his lady, and most assiduously machinate her death. All the week the wife stays at home, occupied with her domestic duties; after which, on the day that is sacred ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... anybody!" Later, when he was lying in her cabin weak from his bullet wound, but each day stronger beneath her nursing, at a certain word of his there had gone through her a shudder of doubt. Perhaps in his many wanderings he had done such a thing in self-defence, or in the cause of popular justice. But she had pushed the idea away from her hastily, back into the days before she had ever seen him. If this had ever happened, let her not know of it. Then, as a cruel reward for his candor and his laying himself bare to her mother, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... which had been directly denied. Mr. Canning, "exceedingly irritated," complained of the word "captious." Mr. Adams retaliated by reciting offensive language used by Mr. Canning, who in turn replied that he had been speaking only in self-defence. Mr. Canning found occasion to make again his peculiarly rasping remark that he should always strive to show towards Mr. Adams the deference due to his "more advanced years." After another very uncomfortable passage, Mr. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Bourgeois might be killed in a sudden fray, when blood was up and swords drawn, when no one, as De Pean remarked, would be able to find an i undotted or a t uncrossed in a fair record of the transaction, which would impose upon the most critical judge as an honorable and justifiable act of self-defence. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... brief from the Irish Office, Lord CURZON made a long reply, the purport of which was that many of the reprisals were bogus, many were actions undertaken in self-defence, while the rest were generally due to men "seeing red" after their comrades had been brutally murdered. The Government did not palliate such cases, and had instituted inquiries and taken disciplinary action against the offenders, when known; but they were not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... how it comes that that wrapper has been suppressed? Can you tell us how—the matter being as you state it—in very self-defence against the dangers of keeping such a letter, your brother did not also ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Southern Africa, such as their robbing the traveller of his food, and then going off to some distance, and mocking him, while they devour it. The natives also say that they sometimes use a stick in walking, "crowing" for roots, and in self-defence. Also, when a young one has succeeded in finding a choice root, and is observed by an older and stronger one, that the latter takes it away; but, should the young one have already swallowed it, then the bully picks him up, turns ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... must be defended from their oppressors, so also must they be strictly prevented from oppressing those who are below them, whom God has armed to labour but not to self-defence. Uncompromisingly justice must ensure security, under shelter of your laws, to the least and feeblest of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... that she would come in was clear. It was now a full month since diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States had been broken off, and about a week since President Wilson had asked Congress to arm American vessels in self-defence against the new submarine campaign announced by Germany in January. "It can't be long," said my companion quietly; "Germany has gone too far to draw back. And the President will have the whole country with him. On the ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... voice; and then Mrs. Herrick resumed her smooth manner. She was a good-tempered woman, and seldom indulged in sarcasm; but things had gone wrong that morning, and her young secretary had made several mistakes. Anna had at last been obliged in her own self-defence to own that she had ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... must repeat, the beginning, middle, and ending of each, lies with her. She will bully, and I never could stand being bullied—I always knock under. But I warn her—a day of retribution is at hand. In self-defence I mean to marry her, and then, base miscreant, beware! The trodden worm will turn, and plunge the iron into her own soul. May I ask what you are laughing at, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... enemy. For while from lack of unanimity among the tribes, from want of a hero like Schamyl to lead them, from the superiority of the Russian forces, or from whatever other cause, the mountaineers were engaged in no great, combined movements of self-defence, there was notwithstanding constantly kept up, by most of the tribes of both the eastern and the western Caucasus, the running fire of the guerilla, and the predatory expeditions of a ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... inclination, had caused her to be a witness of such profligacy, and had condemned her in this vile abode to be a servant, rather than in the lower rank of mistress. Use softened those horrors every day; at length self-defence, the fear of ridicule, and the hope of favour, induced her to adopt that very conduct ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... you choose," he replied, in the patient manner of one who quietly endures unjust reproaches when self-defence is useless. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... veneration the Green One of the Pool might be held, such respect did not extend to other parts of the river, where the green ones were sought out and slain in their early youth. Bones spent an exciting seven days chasing, lassoing and, at tunes in self-defence, shooting at great reptiles without getting any nearer to ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... and Nutter, when there was none but submissive little Mrs. Sturk by, was more fierce and coarse than ever. To hear him, then, one would have supposed that they were actually plotting to make away with him, and that in self-defence he must smite them hip and thigh. Then, beside their moral offensiveness, they were such 'idiots,' and: 'noodles,' and botching and blundering right and left, so palpably to the danger and ruin of their employers, that no man of conscience could sit easy and see it going on; and all this simply ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... doer and the circumstances under which the deed was done. Actions may be desirable or undesirable, good or bad, according to their setting. How shall we judge of the blow that takes away human life? It may be the involuntary reaction of a man startled by a shock; it may be a motion of justifiable self-defence; it may be one struck at the command of a superior and in the defence of one's country; it may be the horrid outcome of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... admitted that this is not the ideal way to do with college students who suppose they are studying literature, but it is contended—college students and college electives being what they are—that there is nothing else to do. The situation sums itself up in the attitude of self-defence. "It may be (as no one needs to point out), that the teaching of literature, as at present conducted in college, is a somewhat faithful and dogged farce, but whatever may be the faults of modern college-teaching ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena's narrow-mindedness and ignorance. And what good had come of it? She was a hundred times bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her: the one pleasure left her was to inflict pain on him. All the healthy instincts of self-defence rose up ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... becoming brutality. If this is the natural disposition of boys and men, don't you see that this schoolboy licking and fighting is a necessary part of one's moral education? It learns one to use his strength, his limbs and sinews, as he may be compelled to use them, in self-defence, in every future day of his life. You know very well what follows a boy at school who doesn't show himself ready to bung up his neighbor's eye the moment he sees it at a cross-twinkle. He gets his own bunged up. Well, it's just the same ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Slav peril, and her militarist philosophy taught her that the best defence was to get her blow in first. Her diplomacy in July was directed towards combining this advantage with the appearance, needed to bemuse her people and the world at large, of acting in self-defence. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... wasn't it enough? But you'd better not tell the master; he might say he didn't object to an Injun or two killed in self-defence, ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... cherub bears everlasting witness, was that of being a patriot and a Liberal (in the truest sense of that term) during the anxious times of the ill-fated Parthenopean Republic, that short-lived period of aristocratic government which was set up in self-defence by certain Neapolitan nobles, prelates and men of science after the abrupt departure of their cowardly King and Queen to Palermo. We all remember the terrible ending of that government: how the vile rabble-army of Cardinal Ruffo assaulted Naples; ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... what it was to us! Our prisoner hears that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and tells him he is welcome to silence her, but it will do us ne good now, as you know that the ship was wilfully burned, and with what object. It is the single blow she can strike in self-defence; but a shrewder one could scarcely be imagined. She had talked to you, at the very last; and by that time she did know the truth. What more natural than that she should confide it to you? She had had time to tell you enough to hang the lot of us; and you may imagine our consternation ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... part of it seems tolerably able to survive without them even now; but no nation has ever come to any good or greatness, since the world began, unless its men have kept their wives from other men. Yet nature is not mocked, and woman is a match for man; she first drove him to invent divorce for his self-defence, and see, it is a two-edged sword in her own hands and is turned against him! No strong nation, beginning its life and history, ever questioned the husband's right to kill the unfaithful wife; no old and corrupt ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... place there. Susan Hornby and Elizabeth had grown closer than ever since the storm, when each had feared the loss of the other. They worked and sewed together, skimping Nathan and Luther on the cooking till the former threatened to turn cook in self-defence. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... spite of mishandling and a scandalous disregard of the rules of the noble art of self-defence (not yet elaborated, but only roughly understood as "Fair play to all"), Boyd Connoway carried ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... "Nay—self-defence," replied the knight. "And now, boy, the news of this battle, and the presence of yon crooked devil here in mine own wood, have broken me beyond all help. I go to Holywood for sanctuary; thence over-seas, with what I can carry, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seat, a bit uncertainly. His hands were trembling uncontrollably; in self-defence he thrust them deep into ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... discovered," said Mary. "You must have no part in this transaction, mother. Father would not kill me; I am too valuable as a chattel of trade. With my poor little self he can buy the good-will of kings and princes. I am more potent than all his gold. This alteration can be no sin; it is self-defence. Think how small it is, mother. It is only a matter of the crossing of a 't.' But I care not how great the crime may be; I believe, mother, I would commit murder to save myself from the fate father wishes to put ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... instruction. Even this coarse principle of control itself, it may be alleged, this prudence of reciprocal fear became refined into something worthier of moral agents. For it passed, by a compromise among the species, from the form of individual self-defence and revenge into that of institutions of law; and legislation, it will be said, is a teacher of morals. Retaining, indeed, the rough expedient of physical force, in readiness to coerce or punish where it cannot deter by warning, it yet strongly endeavors the repression of evil emotions ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the aid of those who would, the Russians and Persians, who were eager to avail themselves of so fair an occasion to establish a footing in India. Such a footing would have been manifestly incompatible with the peace and security of our dominions in India, and we were obliged, in self-defence, to give to Shuja the aid which he had so often before in vain solicited, to enable him to recover the throne of his very limited ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... public-house. A gigantic drayman (they always seem bigger than they really are) was squaring up to a poor drunken lout of a navvy not half his size, who had been put up to fight him, and who was quite incapable of even an attempt it self-defence; he could scarcely lift his arms, I thought at first it was only horse-play; and as little Joe Lintot wanted to see, I put him up on my shoulder, just as the drayman, who had been drinking, but was not drunk, and had a most fiendishly brutal face, struck the poor tipsy wretch with all his might ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... no matter for what reason, they do sometimes remark of them that their temper is 'uncertain.' When this happens and the fact is communicated to Jane or Betsy by the lady to whom they have proposed themselves, they have one invariable method of self-defence: 'Temper, mum? Well, I 'ave my faults, I daresay, but not that; all as knows me knows my temper is 'eavenly. But the fact is, mum, Mrs. Jones [her late mistress] was a bit flighty.' And she touches her forehead, and even sometimes winks, to indicate aberration ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... have uneasy, unsatisfied consciences, though they seem to sin so boldly; and are as afraid of the world as you can be, nay, more so; they join in ridiculing you, lest others should ridicule them; or they do so in a sort of self-defence against the reproaches of their own consciences. Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They are cowards, and rely on each other for support against their fears. They know they ought to be other than they ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... republications of particular articles; such, for instance, as the tales of "Ten Thousand a-Year," and "Caleb Stukeley"! I think I hear you exclaim at such wholesale grand-larceny; but though not inclined to take up the cudgels for Reprint and Co., it is but justice to tell you what they would say in self-defence. The truth is, they would not have known what you meant, had you told them, when their republication was established, that there was any question as to the ethics of such a business. The laws not only permitted, but even encouraged the enterprise; and they do so still. The most respectable booksellers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... skin through her long glove thrilled him unexpectedly. His impulse had been one of self-defence, but the result was of a different character. At the quick contact the wish to fight for—to hold and defend—the position that had grown so dear woke in renewed force. With a new determination he ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... my idea, without heeding this insinuation. "She's a charming girl, but she is a little odd. It's a necessity of her position. She is less submissive to her mother than she has to pretend to be. That's in self-defence; it's ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... life-long mutilation. This sentiment few were at any pains to conceal; but as the poorer and more ignorant classes can be handled with greater impunity than those who are intelligent and have the means of self-defence, Mr. Justice Child, the very day after the tragedy, and without waiting for the pro forma official inquiry into the tragedy in which he bore so conspicuous a part, actually caused to be arrested, sat to try and sent to hard labour, persons whom the police, in obedience ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... antagonist has by this time satisfied the desire which brought me under his challenge, and which certainly had no taste in it of personal or private quarrel. On my part, I retain towards him such a sense of personal obligation as would render my continuing this combat, unless compelled to it by self-defence, a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... attacks which France for the past fifteen years had directed against the Lancastrian throne, its encouragement of every enemy without and of every traitor within. Henry may fairly have regarded such a ceaseless hostility, continued even through years of weakness, as forcing him in sheer self-defence to secure his realm against the weightier attack which might be looked for, should France ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
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