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More "Self-reliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alone, of all the great ones in our art, was in thought and action purely and simply American. The influence that led others into the error of imitation, seems to have been exerted unavailingly upon his self-reliant mind. We shall search vainly if we look elsewhere than within himself for the suggestions upon which his art was established. Superficial resemblances to other painters are sometimes to be noted in his works, but in governing ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... outdoor life. And even while she did sometimes fall into danger, the same thing often occurred when mothers watched a child's every breath. Mrs. Davenport decided that the wiser way was to educate a child to be self-reliant and fearless, trusting to ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... helped by an amiable wife and by a charming English girl scarcely out of her teens. The missionary's work has, he tells me, been "abundantly blessed,"—he has baptised six converts in the last three years. A fine type of man is this missionary, brave and self-reliant, sympathetic and self-denying, hopeful and self-satisfied. His views as a missionary are well-defined. I give them in his own words:—"Those Chinese who have never heard the Gospel will be judged by the Almighty as He thinks fit"—a contention which does not admit of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... self-reliant lad. He leaves Plympton village to seek work in New York, whence he undertakes an important mission to California. Some of his adventures in the far west are so startling that the reader will scarcely close ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... hand, was not nervous at all, but very tall and strong, with bronze-red skin, and flaxen white hair, mustache and eyebrows. The latter peculiarity earned him his nickname. He was at all times absolutely fearless and self-reliant in regard to material conditions, but singularly unobservant and stupid when it was a question of psychology. He had been a sawyer in his early experience, but later became a bartender in Muskegon. He was in general a good-humoured animal enough, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... purposes, alone in New York—attending a great educational establishment, far more independent and irresponsible than a young man at an English University, yet perfectly trustworthy—never subject to the bevues of the 'unprotected female,' but self-reliant, modest, and graceful, in the heterogeneous society of the boarding-house—she was a constant marvel to Averil, and a warm friendship soon sprang up. The advances were, indeed, all on one side; for Ave was too sad, and oppressed ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... detail the experience of a party of boys among the mountain pines. They teach the young reader how to protect themselves against the elements, what to do and what to avoid, and above all to become self-reliant and manly. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... Jacqueline's affairs. She had had her warning. Moreover, though she would have denied it even to herself, the younger girl had come to occupy a far larger share of her heart than had even been given to the self-reliant Jemima. She had felt, lately (and the thought frightened her) that in watching Jacqueline she was watching her own youth over again. What possibilities lay in the girl's nature for strength and weakness, for hot-headed folly, for sacrifice and ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... discontent, but a broad, courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for service—and the workingman as well as the leader must serve—can pay wages sufficiently large to permit every family to be both self-reliant and self-supporting. A philanthropy that spends its time and money in helping the world to do more for itself is far better than the sort which merely gives and thus encourages idleness. Philanthropy, like everything else, ought to be productive, and I believe that it can be. I have personally ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... to-morrow, I had the greatest trouble to get away. But I promised to come back this afternoon, and, do you know, Aunt Caro, I had the queerest feeling this morning. I thought you wanted me, wanted me urgently. As if you could ever want anybody urgently, you self-reliant wonder." She gave the shoulder she was caressing an affectionate hug. "But it was odd, wasn't it? I nearly telephoned, and then I concluded you would think I had taken leave ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... when Hugh and Mrs. Gordon read Mr. Grant's letter at Kuryong, the train deposited at Tarrong a self-reliant young lady of about twenty, accompanied by nearly a truck-full of luggage—solid leather portmanteaux, canvas-covered bags, iron boxes, and so on—which produced a great sensation among the rustics. She was handsome enough to be called a beauty, and everything ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... kind of thing which Hillquit's Socialist gang of would-be labor "exploiters" would lure America's liberty-loving workingmen into by calling them "slaves" in their present dignified situation as self-governed and self-reliant freemen? On December 13, 1919, the presidents and secretaries of the 113 national and international unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor met at Washington, D. C., with the heads of the four railway brotherhoods and several farmers' organizations, and are ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... it to the floor, Jones sprang to his feet exclaiming, "I will go to Versailles this very day." Before night he set out, and soon reached the royal court. His reputation easily gained him an interview; and his frank, self-reliant way so impressed the monarch, that in five days the American was tendered the command of the ship "Daras," ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... handicrafts were set aside, and their places filled with a grim array of medicaments. The servants, who loved their mistress, went about with melancholy faces and muffled voices; and the master of the house, hitherto so confident and self-reliant, presented to the world a stony front of silent desolation, for which nobody would have ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and self-reliant as was the nature of Asenath Mitchenor, the thought of resistance to her father's will never crossed her mind. It was fixed that she must renounce all intercourse with Richard Hilton; it was even sternly forbidden her to see him again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cried like a child. "Elizabeth—Elizabeth!" but there was no response; only a sleepy bird stirred in the shrubbery. In spite of his great intimacy with the Kestons and his very real friendship, Malcolm did not confide in either of them. He was undemonstrative and self-reliant by nature, and, as he said himself afterwards, "There are some things that a man ought to keep to himself." But neither Amias nor Verity expected any ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... womanhood. If a girl would be a good woman, she must commence now. If she would be wise, she must not frolic away her early life. If she would not feel the hand of oppression in age, she must lay now the foundation of a noble independence which will make her self-reliant, energetic, calm, and persistent in the pursuit of life's great aim. Not only is a pure character needed, chastity of thought and feeling, but one of energy. It is grand to be pure of heart; it is glorious to be virtuous, to be able to resist ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... her colour and fire—the choked, smouldering fire of opals. He saw the curve of her wrist, the confident swing of her walk, the easy poise of her head, her bearing, at once girlish and womanly, the little air, half of wistful appeal, and half of self-reliant assertion. Yet he failed not to regard these indulgences as utter folly. It had been folly enough while he believed that she stood ready to accept him and his wealth. It was more flagrant, now that her quest for a husband with millions had been ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... not bend him; what he is the others had it in them to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's alertness; his ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... and the Englishman are fundamentally democratic because they are fundamentally self-reliant. Each demands to know why he should do a thing before he does it. This is, I think, the great link between two peoples in many ways very different; and they who ardently desire abiding friendship between our two countries will do well never to lose sight of it. Any sapping of this quality ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... see, there are women. It will be rather painful. If you would—" He hesitated, and gave Antony a timid little smile, pathetic in so big and self-reliant a man. "Just your moral support, you know. It ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... but he made up his mind that sweetbriery would be the word for Miss Hernshaw, in whose face a virginal youth suggested the tender innocence and surprise of the flower, while the droop of her figure, at once delicate and self-reliant, arrested the fancy with a sense of the pendulous thorny spray. She looked not above sixteen in age, but as she was obviously out, in the society sense of the word, this must have been a moral effect; and Hewson was casting about in his mind for some appropriate form of thought ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... nature; an amount of animal spirits that were just a constant little impetus to me; and from the first I got an impression of strength, such as weakness loves to have near. Bodily strength he had also, in perfection; but I mean now the firm, self-reliant nature, quick at resources, ready to act as to decide, and full of the power that has its spring and magazine in character alone. So, enjoying each other, we went slowly up the zigzags of the hill, very steep ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to let her go. It would be better and pleasanter for Annie to have her sister near her; and Christie was very desirous to go. And, after all, the change might be good for her, as Aunt Elsie said. It might improve her health, and it might make her more firm and self-reliant. Going away among strangers could hardly be worse for her than a winter under the discipline of her aunt. Partly on account of these considerations, and partly because of Christie's importunities, Effie was induced to consent to her going away; but it was with the express understanding ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... about the quiet, self-reliant, unrecorded hardihood of the class of which this man was an excellent type. We asked him why he had no partner, and he said he had had several partners, but they all snored, and he would not live with a man that snored. He had prospected and mined in many districts of Alaska ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... innocent women and compels her tender children to acknowledge his power by saluting his flag four times a day. The gospel of Non-co-operation addresses itself to the task of making the people strong and self-reliant. It is an attempt to transform hatred into pity. A strong and self-reliant India will cease to hate Bosworth Smiths and Frank Johnsons, for she will have the power to punish them and therefore the power also to pity and forgive them. To-day she can ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... man under forty ever lost a woman without feeling in some degree compensated by a sense of freedom regained, and in the man of solitary and self-reliant nature, to whom freedom is a boon if not a necessity, this feeling is not slow to assert itself. Moreover, Ramon was now caught in the inevitable reaction from a purpose which had gathered and concentrated his energies with passionate ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... steady pulse and a devotion to art so absorbing that it even prompted his impulses and gave character to his recreation, was led to feel, on this occasion, that his mistress was vague and shadowy, and to half wish for that companionship which the most self-reliant natures have craved at times, ever since man first felt, and God knew, that it was "not good for him to be alone." If he could turn from the beauty of the sun-tipped hills and rocks and the gloaming shadows ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... such a glow of eager friendliness as this half-seen, mysterious stranger inspired. "It is because I was lonelier than I knew," he said mentally. "It is because human companionship gives courage to the most self-reliant of us"; and somewhere in the words he was aware of a false note, but he did ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... serious for us than it may turn out too he for the nations which have suffered the disarrangements and the losses of war longer than we. Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached and led. They know their own business, are quick and resourceful at every readjustment, definite in purpose, and self-reliant in action. Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily become hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them and go their own way. All that we can do as their legislative and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... should, indeed, despair of her, for even the genius of Hannibal and the valour of his troops cannot avail alone to carry to a successful conclusion a struggle between such a state as Carthage now is and a vigourous, patriotic, and self-reliant people like those ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... well handled; all who were not were soon weeded out by a process of natural selection, of which the agents were French picaroons, Spanish buccaneers, and Malay pirates. It was a rough school, but it taught Jack to be both skilful and self-reliant; and he was all the better fitted to become a man-of-war's man, because he knew more about fire-arms than most of his kind in foreign lands. At home he had used his ponderous ducking gun with good effect on the flocks of canvasbacks in the reedy flats of the Chesapeake, or among ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... those strong, self-reliant natures that can, when there is no alternative, face the most frightful situations with unthumping heart. He kept his presence of mind, and decided in the fraction of a second what he must ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... feet, and she had chosen bravely and wisely, chosen her part of service and simplicity and love. Life would go on, changes indeed and growth everywhere, but she knew that the years would bring her back a new Norma—a developed, sweetened, self-reliant woman—and a new Wolf, his hard childhood all swept away and forgotten in the richness and beauty of this woman's love and companionship. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... an America living within and for herself alone, but we would have her self-reliant, independent, and ever nobler, stronger, and richer. Believing in our higher standards, reared through constitutional liberty and maintained opportunity, we invite the world to the same heights. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... occasion, for the first time in her life, she felt real meaning in religious worship. Never before had she felt the sentiment of dependence, which is the primary sentiment of religion. She had been busy, and prosperous, and self-reliant; all she said and did had been considered good and wise; her position was good, her temper even, and her pleasures many. Now she was baffled and defeated on every side—disappointed in the present, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... succession. Bach first built on Reinke; next he transferred his allegiance to Buxtehude; from this he gradually developed courage and self-reliance until he fearlessly trusted himself in deep water, heedless of danger. And it is this fearless, self-reliant and self-sufficient quality that marks the work of every exceptional man in every line of art. "Here's to the man who dares," said Disraeli. All strong men begin by worshiping at a shrine, and if they continue to grow ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... with his wife, family, and two native servants, and settled down as a resident trader at the large and populous village of Tuuhora, where he soon gained the respect and confidence—if not the friendship—of the Anaa people, one of the proudest, most self-reliant, and brave of any of the Polynesian race, or their offshoots. For though he was a keen business man, he was just and honest in all his transactions, never erring, as so many traders do, on the side of mistaken generosity, ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... he said. "They saved the day for me. I'm beginning to think they are a pretty self-reliant lot. If you can see your way to doing so, take them along. The trip ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... gentlemen, personal friends of theirs, who receive and dispose of them—sugar and molasses—at a price much above the market value, to encourage them. This can only last while these friends continue, when it must then cease. To succeed as a state or nation, we must become self-reliant, and thereby able to create our own ways and means; and a trade created in Africa by civilized Africans, would be a ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... had discovered in his violin a source of income, whereas, hitherto, he had looked upon it merely as a source of amusement. This made him feel more independent and self-reliant. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... down as you are in dark, miry ways, you are on the path which leads upward to high places in the sunshine afar-off; you are not working to scrape together wealth for another man; you are independent, self-reliant, labouring in your own cause—the daring ambition which had once counselled thus, sank dead within me at last. The strong, stern spirit was beaten by spirits stronger ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... lead them to understand that they are not through with the study of topics until the ideas have been used in some way, perhaps many times. And, particularly, she will put forth effort to keep them natural in whatever they do and say, reasonably contented with their abilities, and self-reliant. While most of such instruction will be incidental, a portion of many a recitation will be directly occupied ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... be understood here that girls employed in factories may lack social education, but they are always more self-reliant, more capable of handling emergencies and difficulties, and more surely skilled in precision and mechanical accuracy than are the girls of same age situated in the more fortunate walks of life, the difference in comparison being always in favor of normal conditions, and general education, ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... something in his voice and in the gentle acceptance of help from one so strong and self-reliant which touched Erica more than any praise or demonstrative thanks could have done. They were going to work together, he had promised that she should fight side by ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... that word. They are men, aren't they? They are stanch friends and good enemies. They are true to their own laws and to their conceptions of right and wrong. And they are strong and self-reliant and ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... command would be altogether superfluous. And though I consider it wise and right—yes, an unquestionable duty to exact prompt, cheerful obedience from my children, I do not think I should ask it of my wife. The women of the apostle's day were not the educated, self-reliant ones of the present time; therefore our wives are hardly to be expected to conform themselves strictly to the rules he lays down for them. But if husband and wife love each other as they ought,—as you and I do, for instance,—any ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... detective's next errand was to the prison, where he now stood looking up into the deep-set, dark eyes of a tall, broad-shouldered, black-bearded man, who had arisen from the cot at his entrance. Albert Graumann had a strong, self-reliant face and bearing. His natural expression was somewhat hard and stern, but it was the expression of a man of integrity and responsibility. Muller had already made some inquiries as to the prisoner's reputation and business standing in the community, and all that he ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... through the hysterical scenes so many times that it was growing difficult, especially in her present condition of weakness, to arouse the necessary spirit to undergo it. Not only this, but she found herself inevitably pitting him against the strong self-reliant character of Donaldson. It had been easier for her to condone when she had seen Arsdale only as the loved son of the big-hearted elder, but now that this other unyielding personality had come into her life it was difficult to avoid comparison. Arsdale when standing ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... house, dyed tawny-gray in the evening light, and talked on, the words falling unconscious and simple as a stream of milk. The old plodder was no longer dumb. Blecker had hit on the one valve of the shut-up nature, the obstinate point of self-reliant volition in a life that had been one long drift of circumstance. This old stone house, shaggy with vines, its bloody script of Indian warfare hushed down and covered with modern fruit-trees and sunflowers,—this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... their colleges, office work, mercantile and other occupations, to go forth at their country's call, and had never encountered the perils of war or seen a hostile shot fired in their lives. But the high spirit of courage and patriotism which animated the hearts of all, rendered them self-reliant and determined to do their utmost in performing their sacred duty to their ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... but his deep chest and short neck were huge. This lack of proportion did not, however, interfere with his gait, which was firm and steady. The student of character would have declared the stripling to be self-reliant and secretive; ambitious and calculating; masterful, but kindly. In an age when phrenology was a mania, its masters found in his cranium the organs of what they called imagination and causality, of individuality, comparison, and locality—by which jargon they meant to say that he had a strong ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... went her own ways, calm and self-reliant outwardly, but inwardly tortured with a host of womanly griefs and regrets, a helpless sense of wrong and desolation. She flew to her beautiful art for consolation, flinging herself, with a sort of desperate abandonment, out of her own life of monotonous misery into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... a tall, queenly looking woman, was courageous, self-reliant, and at her ease under all circumstances and in all places. She was the daughter of Colonel James Livingston, who took an active part in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... lads," cried Thorward. "Get into the bow, Tyrker, and see that you do your duty like a man. Much depends on you—more's the pity!" He added the last words in a low voice, for Thorward, being a very self-reliant man, would like to have performed all the duties himself, had ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... his family was induced to remove from Kelso to London. The position they occupied we have not learned; but young Hume is remembered as being a quick, intelligent, and most affectionate boy, eager, industrious, self-reliant, and with an occasional dash of independence that made him both feared and loved. He might have been persuaded to adopt almost any view, but an attempt at coercion only excited a spirit of antagonism. To use an old and familiar ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... does a great deal of good down there, but I can't help thinking sometimes that she is a little wasted. Life must now and then be dreary for her." Tallente seemed for a moment to be looking through the walls of the room. "We are all made differently. Lady Jane is very self-reliant and Devonshire is one of those counties which have ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have thought it justified if they had seen Avdotya Romanovna, especially at that moment when she was walking to and fro with folded arms, pensive and melancholy. Avdotya Romanovna was remarkably good looking; she was tall, strikingly well-proportioned, strong and self-reliant—the latter quality was apparent in every gesture, though it did not in the least detract from the grace and softness of her movements. In face she resembled her brother, but she might be described as really ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... anything to do to relieve the tension of waiting for the attack that didn't come. He gladly accompanied the self-reliant Westerner to the boiler house. They found, as Geisler had said, that in one of the ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... and city; and the American girl is listening eagerly. It is awakening in her longings for free, wholesome, and adventurous outdoor life, for the innocent delights of nature-loving Thoreau and bird-loving Burroughs. Sturdy, independent, self-reliant, she is now demanding outdoor books that are genuine and filled with practical information; books that tell how to do worth-while things, that teach real woodcraft and are not adapted to the girl supposed to be afraid ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... so long. No tenderness for his own child appears. He is engrossed in BUSINESS, and she in PLEASURE. Avarice is the gentlemanly passion of his later years. "Royal days of every pleasure" for the brilliant woman; she, ambitious and self-reliant, lives only ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Kelmscott was evidently ill at ease; a thing most unusual with that proud, self-reliant aristocrat. He held himself, to be sure, as straight and erect as ever, and moved about the grounds with that same haughty air of perfect supremacy, as of one who was monarch of all he surveyed in the county of Surrey. But Elma could see, for all that, that he was absent-minded and self-contained; ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... fear and trem- 23:27 bling." "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!" expresses the helplessness of a blind faith; whereas the injunction, "Believe . . . and thou shalt be saved!" 23:30 demands self-reliant trustworthiness, which includes spir- itual understanding and confides all ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... at the sudden intensity of the girl's sharp gasp when I said this, and marvelled too, how she, who had always been so mannish, nestled close to me and allowed her head to sink down on my shoulder. I pitied the strong-willed, self-reliant nature which had given way under some strain of which I had yet to be told. So I stooped and touched her cheek with my lips in a friendly way, at which she looked up to me with half-closed eyes, and whispered in a voice strangely soft and ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... spirit in our manhood: we cannot throw the blame for any weakness over on external conditions. The woman is in the same position. She must understand that greater than the need of the suffrage is the more urgent need of making her fellow-woman spirited and self-reliant, ready rather to anticipate a danger than to evade it. When she is thus trained, not all the men of all the nations can deny her ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... healthy, self-reliant child, a staff to my sister Georgia, who, on account of a painful accident and long illness during her first year, did not learn to walk steadily until after I was strong enough to help her to rise, and lead her to a sand pile near the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... miracle. She was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which almost broke him. More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and more than that—a solution ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest the good name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make; and self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice. It was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... herself more energetically than ever. A clever, brainy girl, she was highly sensitive to every surrounding influence, with ideas and ideals of her own, in full sympathy with the social side of life, yet independent and self-reliant, and just beginning to choose her own path in the bewildering maze of the world's devious thoroughfare. In High School she made astonishing progress. Her fine mentality enabled her to grasp quickly the most obtuse scientific and economic problems, and her natural taste for ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... to myself every day. Once when she was ill, and was given back to me in all the precious helplessness of babyhood, there was such a strange sweetness in it, I thought the charm might remain; but it vanished when she could run about once more. And she is such a healthy, self-reliant little thing," added Laura, glancing toward the bed with a momentary look of motherly pride that seemed strangely out of place amid these self-denunciations. "I wish her to be so," she added. "The best service I can do for her is to teach her to stand alone. And at some day," ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... no place for clingin' vines, 'cause there hain't nothin' to cling to." Ida Mary, under that quiet manner of hers, had always been self-reliant, and I was learning ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if new honor and pride and love did come with the breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almost wished it were his. (Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of life shall be bared, this man with his self-reliant soul will know the subtile instincts that drew him to true manhood and feeling by the homely practice of poor Lois. He did not see them now.) A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the old custom of gifts and kind words. Love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... of Rome he was met by a little band of Christian brethren, who, hearing of his approach, had come out to welcome him; and, ten miles farther on, he came upon another group, who had come out for the same purpose. Self-reliant as he was, he was exceedingly sensitive to human sympathy, and the sight of these brethren and their interest in him completely revived him. He thanked God and took courage; his old feelings came back in ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... not put this aside—nor did he wish to. Her own confidence had been so simple, so fine, so sure of his sympathy, that he felt it would be unworthy to equivocate; the confessions of the self-reliant are sacred things. Yes, and there had been times when he had longed to unburden himself; but he had had no intimate on this plane, and despite the great sympathy between them—that Euphrasia might understand had never occurred to him. She had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... treasures of the earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment that the professor was right, and that he stated the case as fairly as it can be stated. In an emergency or in trying circumstances the English boy would be readier and more self-reliant: but when you meet him where entertainment is wanted rather than resource, his ignorance will make you open your eyes. This, at any rate, is the kind of story told and believed of Englishmen in Germany. A student who was working at science in a German ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... apprenticeship, his brother John David, was removed by death and an opportunity was presented of taking the stock and tools and carrying on the business. He was ambitious and his early experiences had made him self-reliant and courageous. The opening was promising, but he had neither money nor credit. In this exigency a partnership was formed with Mr. Samuel B. Melendy, who had some knowledge of the craft. With the beginning of the year 1821, the firm of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... respects, and in others like them, the Rough Riders were the equals of the regulars. They were hardy, self-reliant, accustomed to shift for themselves in the open under very adverse circumstances. The two all-important qualifications for a cavalryman, are riding and shooting—the modern cavalryman being so often used dismounted, as an infantryman. The average recruit requires a couple of years ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... poultry work must be self-reliant labor and the only test for such efficiency is number of chicks reared and the weight of the egg basket. Even this will not be a complete test unless from the income be ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... capable of. And all summer long she spent her days riding up and down the range alone, or with her father, or with Joe, or, best of all, with The Duke, her hero and her friend. So she grew up strong, wholesome and self-reliant, fearing nothing alive and as untamed as a ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... responsibility ever be developed in such an unwholesome atmosphere of petty moral officialdom. The two methods of moralization are radically antagonistic. There can be no doubt which of them we ought to pursue if we really desire to breed a firmly-fibred, clean-minded, and self-reliant race of manly men ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... ideas of the worth and proper condition of woman. Their precepts were full of mutual help, courtesy, and fraternal love. All these the Princess Woo learned under her preceptor's guidance. She grew to be even more assertive and self-reliant, and became, also, expert in many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... most sceptical as to her goodness. Without being in any way smug she was radiant with self-satisfaction and well-doing. A child of the people; an early riser; a help to her mother; a good angel to her father; a little mother to her brothers and sisters; cleanly in mind and body; self-reliant, full of faith, cheerful. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... ranges forward, picturing a free, industrious, self-reliant people swarming on the land that he has won from the sea and made fit for human uses. In the ecstasy of altruistic emotion he exclaims: "Such a throng I would fain see, standing with a free people on a free soil; I might say ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the commercial part of the expedition, and his manner proclaimed it. Thin-lipped, cunning-eyed, but strong and self-reliant, he was absorbed in the chances of trade. He had been twenty years in the Marquesas islands. A shrewd man among kanakas, unscrupulous by his own account, he had prospered. Now, after selling his business, he was paying a last visit to his ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... on the fifth we made a long picnic drive to the fresh field of enterprise; and the sixth was passed entirely in the preparation of prospectuses. The pioneer of McBride City was already upright and self-reliant as of yore; the fire rekindled in his eye, the ring restored to his voice; a charger sniffing battle and saying ha-ha, among the spears. On the seventh morning we signed a deed of partnership, for Jim would not accept a dollar of my money otherwise; ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... infant family, for whose preservation she had struggled so hard and wrought so ceaselessly, grow to manhood and womanhood. In prosperity, as in adversity, she was ever good, kind, courageous, and "affable to the congregation of the Lord." She was always, self-reliant, and equal to the most trying emergencies; and yet, at all times, she had a deep and abiding faith in God, and firmly relied on the mercy and goodness of Him to whom she prayed so ardently and confidently in ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... was not simply the energies that tended towards this particular type that were set free during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Every sort of feminine energy was set free. And it was not merely the self-reliant, independence-seeking women who were discontented. The ladies who specialised in feminine arts and graces and mysteries were also dissatisfied. They found they were not important enough. The former type found itself insufficiently respected, and the latter type ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... clustered about Gurney, down on the main deck, it was easy to determine, even before I came within sound of their tongues, that they were British—Australians, that is to say, for they one and all bore the well-marked characteristics of that sturdy, independent, self-reliant race. Gurney at once took it upon himself to perform the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... growth, and the failure of the German operations at sea, regarded broadly, must be credited not to the British navy, but to the whole body of British seamen, naval and civilian. The British navy was at its appointed stations; the temper of a seafaring people, self-reliant, resourceful, and indomitable, was everywhere, and shone like a phosphorescence over thousands of ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... all through life, liked to take things easy, and hated to face trouble. Most of us do, you know; but it was the readiness of Napoleon to boldly face danger, and to attempt what appeared to be the impossible, that made him the self-reliant boy, the successful man, the conqueror, ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... them in the front garden. Blanche flew into her arms and devoured her with kisses. Sir Patrick took her hand in silence. For the first time in Anne's experience of him, the bright, resolute, self-reliant old man was, for the moment, at a loss what to say, at a loss what to do. His eyes, resting on her in mute sympathy and interest, said plainly, "In your husband's presence I must not ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy" and the strong, self-reliant man whose fame had filled two continents, Gadshill Place was an immediate link. Everyone knows the story which Dickens tells of a vision of his former self meeting him on the road ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... present. Even the manifest presence of Doctor Winchester and Miss Trelawny could not altogether comfort or satisfy me at such moments. It was with a distinct sense of relief that I saw a new personality in the room in the shape of Nurse Kennedy. There was no doubt that that business-like, self-reliant, capable young woman added an element of security to such wild imaginings as my own. She had a quality of common sense that seemed to pervade everything around her, as though it were some kind of emanation. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... destiny that cramps another's life cannot affect him, living righteously; always removing that which excites desire, he is strong in the absence of desire; seeking to find, not what vain thoughts suggest, but that to which religion points him. Relying on external help, he has sorrow; self-reliant, there is strength and joy. But in the case of woman, from another comes the labor, and the nurture of another's child. Thus then should everyone consider well, and loathe and put away ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... was seventeen, young Olaf Haraldson was a remarkable boy, even in the days when all boys aimed to be battle-tried heroes. Toughened in frame and fibre by his five years of sea-roving, he had become strong and self-reliant, a man in action though but a ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Morrison, but I went to his neighborhood, and asked a few questions. Everybody spoke well of the doctor, which, of course, might mean much or little, and I was fortunate enough to see him with his wife in a motor. He looked like a doctor, a forceful and self-reliant man, not one to lose his head or give himself away. He would be likely to carry through any enterprise he set his mind to. His wife, without being beautiful, was attractive, the kind of woman you begin to call pretty after you have known her a ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... deplorably defective, but with considerable elements in it of strength and manliness, with keen instincts of contempt for all that savoured of affectation and hollowness, and with a sort of largeness and freedom about it, both in its outlook and its discipline, which suited vigorous and self-reliant natures in an exciting time, when debate ran high and the gravest issues seemed to be presenting themselves to English society. The reformed system which has taken its place at Oxford criticises, not without some justice, the limitations ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the two old friends was very affecting. Since the disappearance of Nimbus, Eliab had grown more self-reliant. His two years and more of attendance at a Northern school had widened and deepened his manhood as well as increased his knowledge, and the charge of the school at Red Wing had completed the work there begun. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... safely married," he remarked scornfully, and Gabriella agreed with him. There was no doubt in her mind that for some women, and Fanny promised to be one of these, marriage was the only safeguard. Then she looked at Archibald, strong, sturdy, self-reliant, and clever; and she realized, with a pang, that some day he also would marry—that she must lose him as ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... their difficulties bravely. Most obstacles grow small before a contented mind, and boys who bring this to their work will find their studies much easier than if they came to them discontented and worried. Courage and steadiness lead to self-reliance, and one who is self-reliant can always be depended on to do his duty, even ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... another O. B. alter Mr. Brotherson's position? He still will be the one person on the spot, known to have cherished a grievance against the victim of this mysterious killing. To my mind, this discovery of a more favoured rival, brings in an element of motive which may rob our self-reliant friend of some of his complacency. We may further, rather than destroy, our case against Brotherson by locating a ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... farther than La Salle might deem it expedient to consult him or any other of his subordinates. With views so different, a speedy quarrel was inevitable. Beaujeu is represented as a man full of conceit, of narrow mind, and very irritable. La Salle was reserved, self-reliant, keeping his own counsel. Scarcely had the two men met, before they found themselves in antagonism. Before the vessels sailed, Beaujeu wrote to the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... political philosophers—works under all this tumult and confusion of tongues. The newspapers and politicians fret and fume and shout and denounce; but the great mass, the nineteen or twenty millions, work away in the fields and workshops, saying little, thinking much, hardy, earnest, self-reliant, very tolerant, very indulgent, very shrewd, but ready whenever the government needs it, with musket, or purse, or vote, as the case may be, laughing and cheering occasionally at public meetings, but when you meet them individually on the highroad or in ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... like a child, of course. I believe in children praying—well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don't hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. It seems such cheek. Anyhow, this morning I—I have never done any harm to any God's creature knowingly—I prayed. A sudden ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... sea-combats; but as object-lessons in the qualities by which the empire has been won, and by which it must be maintained, these ancient sea-fights have real and permanent value. What better examples of cool hardihood, of chivalrous loyalty to the flag, of self-reliant energy, need be imagined or desired? The generation that carries the heavy burden of the empire to-day cannot afford to forget the tale ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... with a fateful certainty independent of will; possessed of such uncommon strength as to make it dangerous if opposed while moving, and at the same time having an extraordinary inertia when not wound up to do a certain piece of work; self-reliant to a fault, as the lion is self-reliant in the superiority of physical endowment; gentle when not opposed, because almost incapable of action without a determinate object and aim; but developing an irresistible momentum when the inertia was overcome; thorough, in the sense in which ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... above the rest of mankind to trouble about their petty distinctions, he is equally at home with duke or costermonger. And valuing no one's standard but his own, he is never tempted to practice that miserable pretense that less self-reliant people offer up as an hourly sacrifice to the ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... mean. But he wouldn't go. I believe in wild oats to a certain extent. I have told him from the first he must look after himself and decide for himself. That's my theory. It makes a youngster self-reliant. He goes and comes as he likes. If he comes home late from hunting I ask no questions; I don't wait dinner. Don't ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and her children. In those days, when sometimes a letter took a week to go a couple of hundred miles, she was not the one to wait for help from her husband; so she immediately rented a house and took boarders. The boy, as resourceful and self-reliant as his mother, now showed his energy as well as his devotion by doing the first thing he found to help her. In going along the street he saw some apples for sale, and, buying as many of them as he could afford, he peddled ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... who suffer worst from shell-shock. It is often the stolid fellow, one of those we describe as being utterly without nerves, who goes down badly. Something snaps in him. He has no resilience in his nervous system. He has never trained himself in nerve-control, being so stolid and self-reliant. Now, the nervous man, the cockney, for example, is always training himself in the control of his nerves, on 'buses which lurch round corners, in the traffic that bears down on him, in a thousand and one situations which demand self-control in a 'nervy' man. That helps ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... beneficial instinct. If you catch a child when it is young enough to be instinctively docile, and keep it in a condition of unremitted tutelage under the nurserymaid, the governess, the preparatory school, the secondary school, and the university, until it is an adult, you will produce, not a self-reliant, free, fully matured human being, but a grown-up schoolboy or schoolgirl, capable of nothing in the way of original or independent action except outbursts of naughtiness in the women and blackguardism in the men. That is exactly what we get at present in our rich and consequently governing classes: ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... She is practical and self-reliant, as a rule, but she does not object to be courted. When they plan a Saturday outing she will not propose what she knows to be beyond his means, but she will pardon him for a little extravagance ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... without limit. There was no other illumination, except for the glow here and there of pipes and cigarettes, or matches flaring for a moment. Barring the tobacco, we lay like a baron's men-at-arms in Europe of the Middle Ages, with a captive woman to make sport with in the midst, only rather too self-reliant for the picture. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... reticent and self-contained at all times, he gave no outward sign. That he felt it less than other men would have done may be regarded as certain; for, as has already appeared to some extent, and as will appear much more in this narrative, he was singularly self-reliant, and, at least in appearance, was strangely indifferent to any counsel or support which could be brought to him by others. Yet, marked as was this trait in him, he could hardly have been human had he not felt oppressed by the personal solitude and political isolation of his position when the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... finances necessary to run a troop of scouts should be met by the scouts themselves. It is a main principle of scouting to teach the boys to be self-reliant, and anything which will militate against the constant sending round of the hat will ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... readily accept progress beyond that to which he had been bred up; and in border lands like these, an unfavourable medium made much difference to the clearness of the sight. Clement's contempt for what had satisfied his father annoyed him: and his mind was self-reliant, his soul accustomed to find its requirements met by the system around him, and his character averse to intermeddling, so that it was against the grain with him that spiritual guidance should be sought outside the family, or, at any rate, outside the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yet with a certain under-meaning. As, however, Maurice Guest, on whom her words made a sympathetic impression, as of something strong and self-reliant—as he did not respond to it, she fell back on directness, and asked him what he had been doing when she met him, both on this day and the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... experience in frontier life had made her self-reliant, lent me some patterns, and I bought some of John Smith's calico and went to work to make gowns suited to the hot weather. This was in 1877, and every one will remember that the ready-made house-gowns were not to be had in those days in the excellence and profusion in which they can to-day be found, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... a turkey. But are you anxious that he shall have as good a chance as you have to buy a turkey for himself? Are you really enthusiastic about so equalizing opportunities that by and by you shall be surrounded by happy, self-reliant people who have no need ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... hundredth time. He recompared the signatures which he had forged with their originals. Consciously a villain, he regarded himself still as a man who was struggling for his rights. But something of his old, self-reliant courage was gone. He recognized the fact that there was one thing in the world more powerful than himself. The law was against him. Single-handed, he could meet men; but the great power which embodied the justice and strength of the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... for a sudden quaking in the region of his heart—such a fate is too terrible to calmly contemplate; but this qualm is only momentary, and then Doctor Chicago is himself again, brave and self-reliant. ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... the days of his own stormy youth, when he had ridden the range and when his life had depended on his iron nerve and his quickness with the trigger. Though older than they by forty years, they were all cut on the same pattern of sturdy, self-reliant American manhood, and it was with the utmost cordiality that he had crushed their hands in his strong grip and urged them to visit him at his ranch in the Rockies. Since then he had been East on a business trip and had been present on that memorable day when Bert, ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... aneurism in a branch artery, to tie the main trunk where no surgeon before him had dared to tie it, and the life of his patient was saved. Like many original men, he worked for a long time as it were underground, digging and laying foundations. He was a solitary and self-reliant genius, holding on his course without the solace of sympathy or approbation,—for but few of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate object of his pursuits. But like all true workers, he did not fail in securing his best reward—that which depends less upon others than upon one's self—the approval ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... tall, well formed, and with remarkable muscular strength and agility. He greatly excelled in fencing, horseback riding, and all those manly exercises which were then deemed far more essential for a Spanish gentleman than literary culture. He was fearless, energetic, self-reliant; and it was manifest that he was endowed with mental ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... habit of reflection, of choice, and most of all the habit of either acting or holding back, as a result of all this. If in the earliest years his will is in the hands of others, and he has the habit of obedience to the exclusion of all other habits, then his development as a self-reliant individual is arrested, and may be permanently weakened. There is no other way to learn life, and build up an ideal from the raw material he has gained in other ways. In the rehearsal of life at school he ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... passionate affection would give place to a chill aversion that seemed almost like hate. Perhaps it had been good for her, so she told herself in after years, her lonely, unguided childhood. It had forced her to think and act for herself. At school she reaped the benefit. Self-reliant, confident, original, leadership was granted to her as a natural prerogative. Nature had helped her. Nowhere does a young girl rule more supremely by reason of her beauty than among her fellows. Joan soon grew ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... task of doing your chosen work to the very best of your ability, and do not for an instant doubt your own capabilities. Perhaps they may be dwarfed and enfeebled by years of morbid thought; but if you persist in a self-respecting and self-reliant and God-trusting course of thinking your powers will increase and your ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... administration in the hands of the inhabitants; by instituting needed sanitary reforms; by spreading education; by fostering industry and trade; by inculcating public morality, and, in short, by taking every rational step to aid the Cuban people to attain to that plane of self-conscious respect and self-reliant unity which fits an enlightened community for self-government within its own sphere, while enabling it to fulfill all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of New York politics is shown in Van Buren, the devotee of "regularity" in party and the adroit manager of its machinery. Shrewdness, tact, and self-reliant judgment, urbane good- humor, mingled with a suspicious and half-cynical expression, were written on his face. "Little Van" was an affable, firm, and crafty politician. Although he was not a creative statesman, neither was he a mere schemer. He had definite ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... years went by. She grew up and filled her life with many interests and ambitions. She was at least a worker, if nothing else; she had always been a diligent scholar, and now she took her place as an able teacher. She was self-reliant, and, perhaps, somewhat conceited. But, at least, Bernardine the young woman had learnt something which Bernardine the young child had not been able to learn: she learnt how to smile. It took her, about ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... Mr. Hulbert's appearance at that time. He stood in the neighborhood of six feet, and weighed close to 215 pounds. He had a stern expression of countenance and impressed one right from the start as being a self-reliant business man of great natural ability, and such he turned out to be. He was good-hearted and of a convivial nature when business hours were over, but as honest as the day was long, and would tolerate nothing that savored of crookedness in any shape or form. As an executive ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... soon as Mrs. Crymble could get her thin lips nipped together and her hands on her hips she pulled herself into her accustomed self-reliant poise. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... some one on whom she could entirely depend. The doctor's greeting was an every-day cheerful response to the women's welcome, and he stood for a minute warming his hands at the fire as if he had come upon a commonplace errand. There was something singularly self-reliant and composed about him; one felt that he was the wielder of great powers over the enemies, disease and pain, and that his brave hazel eyes showed a rare thoughtfulness and foresight. The rough driving coat which he had thrown off ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... you before the spring campaign opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant, and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or the capture of our men in great numbers should be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when Pundita rules it will be under the protecting hand of England. Now let us try to look at the cheerful side of the business. Think of what that girl has gone through with scarcely a scratch! Can't you read something in that? See how strong and self-reliant she has become under such misfortunes as would have driven mad any ordinary woman! Can't you see light in all this? I tell you, there is good and evil working for and against us, and that Ahmed's fakir will in the end prove stronger than your bally old guru. When ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... word, Horace is logical, self-reliant, and self-sufficient. He sees no happy future after this life, is conscious of no providence watching over him, is involved in no obligation to the beings of an eternal world. He looks this world and the next, gods and men, directly in the face, and expects other men to do the same. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... that New France never became self-reliant. From first to last her natural growth was throttled, either by the greed of the fur companies or by the mistaken paternalism of the Bourbons. The Company of One Hundred Associates, which Richelieu founded in 1624, was no improvement on the previous administrations of New France, in spite ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... them, that they must not take up a collection for me ... I did not really feel that way, at heart, but I liked better seeming proud and independent, American and self-reliant.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... will be "honored as a God," and will be sent home with abounding wealth, "more than he would ever have received at Troy, returning unharmed with his share of the booty." Such is the promise of the world-governor to the self-reliant man; this promise is not fate but foresight on the part of the Supreme God. "Thus is the Hero destined to see again his friends," namely by means of a small raft or float, which he alone must control in his own strength, without the help of God or man. Such is the reward of heroic endeavor, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... preparatory school, is situated in Wiltshire, in a perfectly beautiful country, close to the Savernake Forest—one of the finest in all England. As everything and everybody was strange to me on my arrival, had I been brought up to be less self-reliant the events of my first day or two would probably have impressed themselves more deeply on my memory than is the case. Some Good Samaritan, hearing that I was bound for a certain house, allowed me to follow him from the station to the inn—for a veritable old inn it was. It was one of those lovely ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... healthy growth in the life of a race or a nation without a self-reliant spirit animating the whole body; if it amounts to optimism, devoid of egotism and vanity, so much the better. This spirit necessarily carries with it intense pride of race, or of nation, as the case may be, and ramifies the whole mass, inspiring and shaping its thought and effort, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... he studied Miss Montague. She was blond—to his suspicious eye a trifle too blond—and she wore her hair bobbed. She was petite and, both in appearance and in mannerism, she was girlish; nevertheless, she was self-reliant, and there was a certain maturity to her well-rounded figure, a suggestion of weariness about her eyes, that ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a low murmur of voices, the faces watching me showing their increasing excitement and eagerness. Our little talk had served to arouse their confidence in my leadership, and with gleaming weapons in their hands they became self-reliant volunteers. Once turned loose my greatest difficulty might be to restrain them, rather than urge them on. Revenge for past wrongs was in each heart, and they welcomed a chance to strike ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the jewels of her life, which are absolute purity of mind and heart; for the sweet sincerity of her disposition; for her loving, charitable thought; for her strength of character? because she is pitiful to the sinful, tender to the sorrowful, capable, self-reliant, modest, true-hearted? in brief, because she is the embodiment of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... modern democracy, a system stronger even in its infancy than the ancient rule of the aristocracy which it has gradually supplanted. The resistance of Italy came not from its knights and lords, but from its great cities, which had been slowly growing more and more self-reliant and independent. The rise of these city republics of the Middle Ages cannot be fully traced. Everywhere little communities of men seem to have been driven by desperation to build walls about their group of homes and to defy all comers. As it was in Italy that the ancient Roman civilization ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... deception, a belief that I could not fall; that after God had once pardoned my sins I was as surely saved as if already in Paradise. That they were pardoned I had not a doubt, for the manifestations were as clear as light. Falsely thinking that I was pardoned for all time, my soul grew self-reliant: I became at the same time careless of my religious duties. I neglected to pray, to beware of temptation, and, naturally enough, soon found myself drifting into the society of those who neither loved nor feared God. Had I trusted alone in ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... nothing, but the tone was a great deal; there was a kind of quiet intelligence in it. Fleda looked up, and something in the clear steady self-reliant eye she met wrought an instant change in her feeling. She met it a moment, and then looked at her work ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a numerous family, gave him only such attention as was necessary to keep him in good health. Young Ulysses was, therefore, left to his own devices almost as soon as he could toddle, and he quickly became self-reliant to a degree that alarmed the neighbors. Indeed, some of them rushed into the house one morning shouting that the boy was out in the barn swinging himself on the farm horses' tails and in momentary danger of being kicked to pieces; but Mrs. Grant received the announcement with perfect ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... of the face the property of Captain Johnson. I do not mean to say that they were the eyes of a bad bold man, but you had not to look twice at them to see they belonged to a man courageous in the African manner, full of energy and resource, keenly intelligent and self-reliant, and all ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... supporting walls that scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep—for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... thus witnessing to-day the inauguration of a vast system of international charity. As in our more limited communities and cities, where self-sustaining and self-reliant sections of the population are forced to shoulder the burden of the reckless and irresponsible, so in the great world community the more prosperous and incidentally less populous nations are asked to relieve and succor ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... inspecting a knot in a diamond hitch, the other man grinned, then straightened up, and, shading his eyes from the sun with his hat, looked off into the distance. He was younger than his partner, whose hair was grizzled to a badger gray, but no less determined and self-reliant in appearance. He did not look his thirty years, while the other man looked ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... looked them over and saw what a lot of keen, fearless, and self-reliant men I was among, I was very proud to think that I was one of this ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... of all the great New England writers of this age was to make individuals freer, more cultivated, more self-reliant, more kindly, more spiritual. Puritan energy and spirituality spoke through them all. Nearly all could trace their descent from the early Puritans. It is not an infusion of new blood that has given America her greatest writers, but an infusion of new ideals. Some ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the United States of North America, whose extension of its federal system over a vast territory suggested what Brazil with its provinces might accomplish in the southern continent. Hence the vast majority of intelligent Brazilians felt that they had become self-reliant enough to establish a republic without fear of lapsing into the unfortunate experiences ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... American rule the Pueblo has preserved itself intact which fact stamps the Pueblo people as being eminently valiant, self-reliant and persevering. They are peaceable, industrious and hospitable and are said to be the best governed people in the world. As nearly as can be ascertained they are free from every gross vice and crime and Mr. C. F. Lummis, who knows them well, believes ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... preeminent ability drew after them, we perceive the dominant impulse to be of alien origin; Fuller alone, of all the great ones in our art, was in thought and action purely and simply American. The influence that led others into the error of imitation, seems to have been exerted unavailingly upon his self-reliant mind. We shall search vainly if we look elsewhere than within himself for the suggestions upon which his art was established. Superficial resemblances to other painters are sometimes to be noted in his works, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy" and the strong, self-reliant man whose fame had filled two continents, Gadshill Place was an immediate link. Everyone knows the story which Dickens tells of a vision of his former self meeting him on the road ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... supreme interests of social legislation, I always felt in my intercourse with Lord Shaftesbury that it would have been impossible for him to act for long together in subordination to, or even in concert with, any political leader. Resolute, self-reliant, inflexible; hating compromise; never turning aside by a hair's-breadth from the path of duty; incapable of flattering high or low; dreading leaps in the dark, but dreading more than anything else the sacrifice of principle to party—he was essentially the type of politician ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire him; but he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... group of strangers clustered about Gurney, down on the main deck, it was easy to determine, even before I came within sound of their tongues, that they were British—Australians, that is to say, for they one and all bore the well-marked characteristics of that sturdy, independent, self-reliant race. Gurney at once took it upon himself to perform the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... man in many ways if he had but little need of a razor. Seeing other boys so seldom and being thrown so much with men had made him rather old for his years and more than ordinarily capable and self-reliant. He loved horses and was clever in managing them, breaking in many a colt that had tried the patience and courage of his elders. But his day dream for the past twelve months had been college. He had confided all his hopes and fears to Chicken Little. The ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... of these states would better facilitate the action of the Holy Spirit in the present Providence of God; and which of them would tend to produce a type of character fitted to evangelize a nation of independent and self-reliant men and women? ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... This energetic, self-reliant and prosperous community now see before their eyes what the practical working of government by the League is. They see it generally in the condition of the country, and especially in the Dublin Convention of 1909, the narrow-minded administration of the Local Government Act wherever ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... of eager friendliness as this half-seen, mysterious stranger inspired. "It is because I was lonelier than I knew," he said mentally. "It is because human companionship gives courage to the most self-reliant of us;" and somewhere in the words he was aware of a false note, but he did ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... many girls her age in some things. She was self-reliant and used to observing for herself, and she had a rich fund of warm and ready sympathy that was essentially practical. She saw that the mother of these lively, untidy children was very young, hardly more ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... Self-reliant, hardy, convinced they possessed in their own strong arms the power to live and rear their families in this great country of the new world without interference from England, they spoke very plainly. Meetings were held, and at one of these a speech was made which, alluding to what they had ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep—for such a purpose, too, in order to supply ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... his great life, an experience which almost broke him. More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and more than that—a solution of all the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Horace is logical, self-reliant, and self-sufficient. He sees no happy future after this life, is conscious of no providence watching over him, is involved in no obligation to the beings of an eternal world. He looks this world and the next, gods and men, directly in the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... fastidious creature, vain of a little exclusive information or of an uncommon knack in Latin verse or mathematical logic; he is to be a man of quick perceptions, broad sympathies, and wide affinities, responsive but independent, self-reliant but deferential, loving truth and candor, but also moderation and proportion, courageous but ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... of labor in poultry work must be self-reliant labor and the only test for such efficiency is number of chicks reared and the weight of the egg basket. Even this will not be a complete test unless from the income be ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... could have protected them or enabled them to move westward. Colonists fresh from the old world, no matter how thrifty, steady-going, and industrious, could not hold their own on the frontier; they had to settle where they were protected from the Indians by a living barrier of bold and self-reliant American borderers.[45] The west would never have been settled save for the fierce courage and the eager desire to brave danger so ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... fall, Peter's gracious restoration, were no small part of the equipment which made him what we see him in the days after Pentecost—when the coward that had been ashamed to acknowledge his Master, and all whose impulsive and self-reliant devotion passed away before a flippant servant-girl's tongue, stood before the rulers of Israel, and said: 'Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye!' The sense of sin, the assurance of pardon, shatter a man's unwholesome self-confidence, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bright, self-reliant lad. He leaves Plympton village to seek work in New York, whence he undertakes an important mission to California. Some of his adventures in the far west are so startling that the reader will scarcely close the book ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... cunning of incipient madness? Was his concealing his hiding-place from his son-in-law an insane development of that self-reliant caution, which for so many years of his life he had been compelled to make a habit, in the face of the most serious risks? Why did he give such an exaggerated colour to the infamous conduct of his son? It is easy to make out from the passage I have quoted, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... tinted cheeks. Her head rested on one bare white arm and one hand curled under her daintily molded chin. Caroline caught her breath—this was a pathetic Phoebe when one thought of the most times Phoebe, cool, self-reliant—perforce! ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... insisted on retaining her other guests till Philip's cure should be complete. Meantime, Claude de Mericour had written to his brother and arranged a meeting with him. He was now no boy who could be coerced, but a staid, self-reliant, scholarly person, with a sword by his side and an English passport to secure him, and his brother did not regard him as quite the disgrace to his family he had at first deemed him. He was at least no rebel; and though the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ago my first impulse would have been to evacuate the spot there and then, so that even if I were followed, my start would be a good one. But the last few days had changed me much. From being absolutely self-reliant, I had grown to be curiously dependent again. I shrank from taking a flight alone. And, moreover, there was another thing that held me back: I could not bear to rush away so suddenly from my companion. It seemed to me that if I deserted her then, I should never ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... fail to?" said Aunt Susan. "Women are coming into their own, Alice. They're growing sensible and self-reliant. Look at our Grandmothers and at us. Do you notice the difference? And our grandchildren will be just as far ahead of us as we are of our grandmothers. ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... pelican, for never did mother-sheep love her lamb as the pelican loves its young. When the young are born, the parent bird devotes all his care and thought to nourishing them. But the young birds are ungrateful, and when they have grown strong and self-reliant they peck at their father's face, and he, enraged at their wickedness, kills ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... who prided himself on his steady pulse and a devotion to art so absorbing that it even prompted his impulses and gave character to his recreation, was led to feel, on this occasion, that his mistress was vague and shadowy, and to half wish for that companionship which the most self-reliant natures have craved at times, ever since man first felt, and God knew, that it was "not good for him to be alone." If he could turn from the beauty of the sun-tipped hills and rocks and the gloaming shadows ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... began to apply herself more energetically than ever. A clever, brainy girl, she was highly sensitive to every surrounding influence, with ideas and ideals of her own, in full sympathy with the social side of life, yet independent and self-reliant, and just beginning to choose her own path in the bewildering maze of the world's devious thoroughfare. In High School she made astonishing progress. Her fine mentality enabled her to grasp quickly the most obtuse scientific and economic problems, and her natural ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... dead sister's child in the way it should go, nor ever for one moment grudged her labor or her time. Neither did she spoil Content by over-indulgence; her good sense kept the child unharmed, taught her hardy and self-reliant habits, made her useful all the time, and, even if Nature had not been beforehand with her, would have made her happy. But 'Tenty had her father's firm and sunny character; she never cried but for good reason, and then screamed lustily and was over with it; fretting was out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... promontory, or looking down from a machicolated tower, keeps open the Khyber Pass from dawn to dusk and protects the caravans. The eighteen months had written their history upon his face; he stood before Ralston, for all his youthful looks, a quiet, self-reliant man. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... years came and went, with all their dark and painful experiences. A firm and self-reliant spirit like Washington's, however, could not be long cast down by even severer trials than those by which we have just seen his strength and manhood tested: so, from that time forward, come what might, he resolved to hold right on, nor bate a jot ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... nearer he kept asking himself (as if the question were necessary) whether he would be able to take away a keen mental photograph of those fine features—the clear and placid forehead, the strongly marked eyebrows, the calm, self-reliant eyes, the proud and yet not unsympathetic lines of the mouth. She came nearer; a smile lit up her face; and there was a kind of radiance there, he thought. He had leaped down from the wagonette: he went forward to meet her; ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... marriage was a true one in all but the legal form, that she was faithful to its every social obligation, has been abundantly shown. She was a most faithful wife to Lewes, and the devoted mother of his three children by the previous marriage, while she found in him that strong, self-reliant helpmate ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... my little sphere can by this book lead one father to train his children to be more strong and self-reliant, one mother to teach her daughters a purer, more patient, more heroic womanhood—if I have placed one more barrier in the tempter's way, and inspired one more wholesome fear and principle in the heart of the tempted—if, by lifting the dark curtain a moment, I can reveal enough to keep one ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... weakling or he would never have set out to shape his own course as he was now doing. He was a man of considerable purpose, self-reliant and reasonable, with sufficient easy good-nature to be compatible with strength. He liked his own experiences too, though he never scorned the experiences of another. Slum had sized him up pretty shrewdly when he said "he'll bob out on top like a cork in a water bar'l," but he ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... handsome young man leads to the altar a delicate, beautiful, blooming bride, whose bent head and blushing cheek, and modest mien and dependent air, contrast pleasantly with the gladsome firm countenance, stalwart frame, and self-reliant aspect ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... Tribe warred with tribe, and village with village; even within the village itself feuds parted household from household, and passions of hatred and vengeance were handed on from father to son. Their mood was above all a mood of fighting men, venturesome, self-reliant, proud, with a dash of hardness and cruelty in it, but ennobled by the virtues which spring from war, by personal courage and loyalty to plighted word, by a high and stern sense of manhood and the worth of man. A grim joy in hard fighting was already a characteristic of the race. War was the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... a landing, from which a path ascended the steep hill among the trees. The silence was broken only by the deep, distant, low roar of the Shawenegan Falls. Mr. Trenton sat in his place, while the half-breeds held the canoe steady. Miss Sommerton rose and stepped with firm, self-reliant tread on the landing. Without looking backward she proceeded up the steep hill, and disappeared among the dense foliage. Then Trenton leisurely got ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... others will follow. That is a great little girl of his, mother. She told me some of the greatest yarns about what she did in an organization called the Girl Scouts. It certainly is interesting and a wonderful thing for girls. Teaches them all sorts of things, you know. Why, that child was more self-reliant than lots of the grown girls I know. You must be sure to have Rosanna join it, mother. She needs it, I feel sure. I scarcely know Rosanna, but her letters always had about as much originality as ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... being informed that many distinguished men were but dull fellows in the school-house, or unnoticed on the play-ground. But we have changed all that. The Bobbin Boy was the most industrious, the most persevering, the most self-reliant, the most virtuous, the most exemplary of all the boys of his time. So was the Ferry Boy, and the Pioneer Boy so. "Nat"—we blame and protest, but we join in the plan of using this undignified sobriquet—Nat was the one that swam three ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... had not been brought up as gently as I worked an immediate, and, in some respects, a beneficial change in my character. I had the nonsense taken out of me, as the saying is—some of the nonsense, at least. I became more manly and self-reliant. I discovered that the world was not created exclusively on my account. In New Orleans I labored under the delusion that it was. Having neither brother nor sister to give up to at home, and being, moreover, the largest pupil at school there, my will had seldom been opposed. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... would have been impossible to believe that he had reached three-score years and ten, for his form was still erect, his step elastic, and his voice clear and strong. His features were regular and strong, giving proof of the man's self-reliant and indomitable character. Years, perhaps a lifetime of activity in the woods and on the lakes, had bronzed the man. From beneath heavy eyebrows looked eyes gray in color and baffling in depth. The man's whole appearance ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... character is the direct result of the golden law 'If one will not work, neither let him eat'; a law whose stern kindness, unflinchingly applied, has produced whole nations of living creatures, without a pauper in their ranks, flushed with health, alert, resolute, self-reliant, and singularly happy." ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... every man of active mind between the desire for self-expression and the desire for safety, for public respect, for emotional equanimity. It is, in a sense, the story of Cowperwood told over again, but with an important difference, for Eugene Witla is a much less self-reliant and powerful fellow than Cowperwood, and so he is unable to muster up the vast resolution of spirits that he needs to attain happiness. "The Titan" is the history of a strong man. "The 'Genius'" is the history of a man essentially weak. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... worse, the Balkan nations, who had long been subject peoples, ill-organized, poverty stricken, had grown with the help of the Turk's enemies into sturdy, self-reliant, independent communities with good-sized armies and something approaching national wealth. The long years of subjection had left behind a consuming hatred of the Turk in their breasts; as Christians, they hated the Turk as the Infidel; and they ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... he gave no outward sign. That he felt it less than other men would have done may be regarded as certain; for, as has already appeared to some extent, and as will appear much more in this narrative, he was singularly self-reliant, and, at least in appearance, was strangely indifferent to any counsel or support which could be brought to him by others. Yet, marked as was this trait in him, he could hardly have been human had he not felt oppressed by the personal solitude and political isolation of his position when the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... decline of conservatism. For better or for worse the modern man is intellectually more self-reliant than his ancestors, more prone to try new inventions and to profit by new discoveries, more conscious and therefore more critical of conditions about him, more convinced that he lives in a better world than did his fathers, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Grace's flow of eager talk with a smile of content on her fine face. To her fond eyes Grace looked absurdly immature in her simple frock of white dotted swiss. She was secretly glad that Overton, rather than marriage, had claimed her alert, self-reliant daughter for another year. Like every other mother she wished some day to see Grace happily settled in a home of her own, but she preferred to think of that someday as ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the quarters which he and Dick had been jointly occupying in the temple; and it was at once apparent to the younger of the two that the troubles and difficulties with which Stukely had been wrestling were at an end, for he was once more his former self, frank, genial, self-reliant, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... clumps of altheas and plum-trees, at the old stone house, dyed tawny-gray in the evening light, and talked on, the words falling unconscious and simple as a stream of milk. The old plodder was no longer dumb. Blecker had hit on the one valve of the shut-up nature, the obstinate point of self-reliant volition in a life that had been one long drift of circumstance. This old stone house, shaggy with vines, its bloody script of Indian warfare hushed down and covered with modern fruit-trees and sunflowers,—this fort, and the Gurneys ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and nose became apparent to all. There was much chaff and fun, therefore, when Mrs. Rayner finally appeared, over the supposed affliction of the big Irishwoman at the prospect of parting with her patroness. Miss Travers saw with singular sensations that both the captain and her usually self-reliant sister were annoyed and embarrassed by the topic and strove to change it; but Foster's propensity for mimicry and his ability to imitate Mrs. Clancy's combined brogue and sniffle proved too much for their efforts. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... get along somehow," she assured him in the same self-reliant tone. Suddenly she felt it would no longer give her the horrors to speak of what she had been through. "I'm not very old," said she, and hers was the face of a woman now. "But ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... scarcely believe it. You seem so sure and self-reliant. Your eyes are full of expression—only a little quieter than they used to be. I believe you were typing when I came....Aren't ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... intercourse with his parents and sisters, save through the medium of officially inspected letters. Returning now at last he found his mother in frail health, but his father still vigorous and active. Sister Christophine had grown into a strong and self-reliant young woman, the mainstay of the household. She took an interest in literature, loved her brother devotedly, had a sister's boundless faith in his genius, and now became his confidante and amanuensis. Another sister, Louise, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... thanks than by any of his preceding adventures. The blood flushed to his weather-tanned, clear-cut face, as smooth as that of a boy, and yet marked by a firmness of lip and a shrewdness in the keen blue eyes which spoke of a strong and self-reliant nature. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the question squarely, I'm going to be candid. I'm alarmed about you. The strain on your nerves is too great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing from self-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it 'brotherhood,' the 'solidarity of the race.' Sentimental mush. It's a stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhood has been evolved. This idea is destroying your will, your brain, your religion, and ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... suspect those gentle, patient characters," replied Madame. "Nothing is more full of courage than a patient heart, nothing more self-reliant than ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... picturesque idolatries, "The Lord thy God is one Lord"; only that here it made no claim to touch the affections, or even to warm the imagination. Israel's Greek cousin was to undergo a harder, a more distant and repressive discipline in those matters, to which a peculiarly austere moral beauty, at once self-reliant and submissive, the aesthetic expression of which has a peculiar, an irresistible charm, would ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... that, in the last autumn, he had been very anxious to get as large an allotment as he could into his own hands, and that he had been for ever up towards the Rectory, but perhaps not always on the allotment business. He was naturally a self-reliant, shrewd fellow, and felt that if he could put his hand on three or four acres of land, he could soon make himself independent of the farmers. He knew that at harvest-times, and whenever there was a pinch for good labourers, they would be glad enough to have him; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... that uncompromising New England grit," exclaimed Miss Maxwell, "and so far, I don't regret one burden that Rebecca has borne or one sorrow that she has shared. Necessity has only made her brave; poverty has only made her daring and self-reliant. As to her present needs, there are certain things only a woman ought to do for a girl, and I should not like to have you do them for Rebecca; I should feel that I was wounding her pride and self-respect, even though she were ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... treason. His lady, still graceful and slender, resumed her youth. Fanny, who had ever forced herself to the diffusion of merriment when there was cheerlessness to be dispelled, reflected with happy eyes the old-time jocundity now reawakened. My mother, always a cheerful, self-reliant, outspoken soul, imparted the cordiality of her presence to the household, and both Tom and I rejoiced to find the old state of things in part returned. Margaret, perhaps for relief from her private dejection, took part in the household festivities ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Was he wrong? Could she honestly assure herself that Ralph was stronger, more self-reliant, more able to stand alone without the stimulus of constant support and encouragement? Instinctively Darsie's hand went up to touch the little golden brooch which fastened the lace collar of her ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hillside in a group, that makes the monkeys in a cage squat together, rubbing sides and elbows. The home in which our child finds himself, though a social institution, is not gregarious; it gives him only a limited contact, and as soon as he is able and self-reliant he seeks out a little herd, and on the streets, in the schoolroom and playground, he really becomes a happy ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... noble and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if new honor and pride and love did come with the breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almost wished it were his. (Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of life shall be bared, this man with his self-reliant soul will know the subtile instincts that drew him to true manhood and feeling by the homely practice of poor Lois. He did not see them now.) A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the old custom of gifts and kind words. Love coming into the world!—the idea pleased his artistic taste, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Sheldon, and strange to say, Helen and Worthington were among those present. From that time on it was Jack who chased away the shadows and kept Helen amused. There was something wonderfully sweet and soothing about this strong, self-reliant man of the West. Life cannot exist without sunshine, and this man was slowly becoming the sunshine of Helen's life, with each walk in the moonlight along the banks of the Truckee, and with each ride through the wonderful, silent places, ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... and I called him to us. He was a clean-cut seamanly fellow of about thirty. His blue eyes were frank and self-reliant. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... Prohack." She smiled anew; and her smile, so clever, so self-reliant, so enigmatic, a little ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... encouraging remarks were what she needed very much in the present crisis of her affairs. She was showing him a new and hitherto unsuspected side of her character. The Elizabeth whom he had known—the valiant, self-reliant Elizabeth—had gone, leaving in her stead someone softer, more appealing, more approachable. It was this that was filling him with strange emotions as he led the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... had with the chieftains; and the ascendancy which he won by his character was marked. Perhaps his qualities were such as could be more easily appreciated by orientals than by his own countrymen, for he was impetuous, self-reliant, and autocratic in no common degree. He was only one of a number of great Englishmen of this century whose direct personal contact with Eastern princes was worth scores of diplomatic letters and paper constitutions. Such men were Henry Lawrence, John ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... great sea-fights, and of many smaller ones, before he was seventeen, young Olaf Haraldson was a remarkable boy, even in the days when all boys aimed to be battle-tried heroes. Toughened in frame and fibre by his five years of sea-roving, he had become strong and self-reliant, a man in action though but a boy ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... once more,—a companion ready for a frolic. The next morning Lane insisted on cooking their breakfast, for he was a competent woodsman. She admired the deft way in which he built his little fire and toasted the bacon. In the undress of the woods he showed at his best,—self-reliant, capable. There followed a month of lovely days which they spent together from sunrise to starlight, walking, fishing, canoeing, swimming,—days of fine companionship when they learned the human quality in each other. He was strong, buoyant, perfectly sure of himself. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... it said that even in this nerve-racking emergency they did not altogether lose heart and courage. Of course there was that first instinctive fear, and something like a gasping for breath, as when one plunges into cold water. But the reaction came, and the girls were themselves once more—brave and self-reliant. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... whisper, "that she was sure grandma was drawing near the brink of the dark river, and the bright expression of her countenance was but a reflection of the happiness in store for her on the other side." Strong and self-reliant as was my aunt, the death of her mother was something of which she could not bear to speak, and the widow was one who so often talked of dreams and mysterious warnings, that my aunt usually paid little heed to her remarks in ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... peculiarly helpful and elevating ideas of the worth and proper condition of woman. Their precepts were full of mutual help, courtesy, and fraternal love. All these the Princess Woo learned under her preceptor's guidance. She grew to be even more assertive and self-reliant, and became, also, expert in many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... altogether superfluous. And though I consider it wise and right—yes, an unquestionable duty to exact prompt, cheerful obedience from my children, I do not think I should ask it of my wife. The women of the apostle's day were not the educated, self-reliant ones of the present time; therefore our wives are hardly to be expected to conform themselves strictly to the rules he lays down for them. But if husband and wife love each other as they ought,—as you and ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... discovered in his violin a source of income, whereas, hitherto, he had looked upon it merely as a source of amusement. This made him feel more independent and self-reliant. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... over all she had just heard and finding much to interest her in it, because, to her imaginative and enthusiastic nature, there was something irresistibly attractive in the strong, solitary, self-reliant man. Mark watched her for a moment, then asked ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... had played their part so gallantly. They recalled to him the days of his own stormy youth, when he had ridden the range and when his life had depended on his iron nerve and his quickness with the trigger. Though older than they by forty years, they were all cut on the same pattern of sturdy, self-reliant American manhood, and it was with the utmost cordiality that he had crushed their hands in his strong grip and urged them to visit him at his ranch in the Rockies. Since then he had been East on a business trip and ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... Dr. Dix are also said to have reappeared in his granddaughter. He was self-reliant, aggressive, uncompromising, public-spirited, and sturdily honest. To his enterprise, Worcester owed its first shade trees, planted by him, when shade trees were considered great folly, and also the Boston and Worcester turnpike, when mud roads were ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... and advises it. I shall write to her exactly what has occurred. She is nearest to you and therefore to her belongs the decision. But, while I am endeavoring to work for your interest I wish you to work for it, too. I would like to see you more self-reliant. You have been brought up in luxury, but you must forget that. As matters now stand you will one day be obliged to earn your own living. You must build your foundation for a useful life during ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... a good woman, she must commence now. If she would be wise, she must not frolic away her early life. If she would not feel the hand of oppression in age, she must lay now the foundation of a noble independence which will make her self-reliant, energetic, calm, and persistent in the pursuit of life's great aim. Not only is a pure character needed, chastity of thought and feeling, but one of energy. It is grand to be pure of heart; it is glorious to be virtuous, to be able to resist temptation and confound all tempters. This, we confess, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... state where the seat of central authority is distant or its power only exercised feebly and at intervals, the local units secure much greater independence and importance, through the very necessity of performing many functions left unheeded by the ruler of all; and if the people are self-reliant in character, they will in time develop a sort of self-government which, although it would not at first think of questioning the theoretical right and overlordship of the central power, will eventually brook but little interference ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... social theorists before him, Piper attempted to chart the progress of human-kind; unlike most, however, he did not envision or try to create a system of ethics that would end all of humanity's problems. The best he could offer was his model of the self-reliant man: The man who "actually knows what has to be done and how to do it, and he's going to go right ahead and do it, without holding a dozen conferences and round-table discussions and giving everybody a fair and equal chance to ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... prepare an American force which should be able to take the offensive in every respect. Accordingly, the development of a self-reliant infantry by thorough drill in the use of the rifle and in the tactics of open warfare was always uppermost. The plan of training after arrival in France allowed a division one month for acclimatization and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... humility, as at the best only inquirers after truth. But the case is very different with teachers of the common branches concerned in our present remarks. On these points the teacher ought to have a certainty and a readiness of knowledge, so as to be thoroughly self-reliant before the class. Teaching is like fighting. Self-reliance ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... interested in great political questions, he could not endure the trivial treatment of them in the daily press, and cared far more for principles than for the incidents of party warfare. Here again he showed that impatience of detail, and that audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the source of both his weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion of a Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had been suggested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, he could never bring himself to mix with the rabble ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... germ of the present British penal system, was premature. The government in this dilemma steered a middle course and resolved to adhere to transportation, but under a greatly modified and it was hoped much improved form. The colony of Van Diemen's Land, younger and less self-reliant than its neighbour, had also endured convict immigration but had made no protest. It was resolved to direct the whole stream of deportation upon Van Diemen's Land, which was thus constituted one vast colonial prison. The main principle of the new system ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... sunburnt, disciplined men and officers he had met.... And our little army, too, must be gathering to-night, the little army that had been chastened and reborn in South Africa, that he was convinced was individually more gallant and self-reliant and capable than any other army in the world. He would have sneered or protested if he had heard another Englishman say that, but in his heart he ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained. We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction to call them the founders of American civilization. They helped to lay in the foundation stones of that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... away the trouble, or free them from the hardness, or make all things easy and pleasant for them. Such a course would keep us always children, untrained, undisciplined. Only in burden-bearing and in enduring can we learn to be self-reliant and strong. Jesus himself was trained on the battlefield, and in life's actual experiences of trial. He learned obedience by the things that he suffered. It was by meeting temptation and by being victorious in it that he ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the hysterical scenes so many times that it was growing difficult, especially in her present condition of weakness, to arouse the necessary spirit to undergo it. Not only this, but she found herself inevitably pitting him against the strong self-reliant character of Donaldson. It had been easier for her to condone when she had seen Arsdale only as the loved son of the big-hearted elder, but now that this other unyielding personality had come into her life it was difficult to avoid comparison. Arsdale when standing ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... decided that the cash would be a dead loss and the claim might be repeated, whereas the conscript would get both pay and plunder out of government, while taking excellent care that government got very little out of him. A shrewd, slow-spoken, self-reliant specimen, was Flint; yet something of the fresh flavor of the backwoods lingered in him still, as if Nature were loath to give him up, and left the mark of her motherly hand upon him, as she leaves it in a dry, pale lichen, on the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... those days, when sometimes a letter took a week to go a couple of hundred miles, she was not the one to wait for help from her husband; so she immediately rented a house and took boarders. The boy, as resourceful and self-reliant as his mother, now showed his energy as well as his devotion by doing the first thing he found to help her. In going along the street he saw some apples for sale, and, buying as many of them as he could afford, he ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... Against real character, passionate, determined, and organized, they are less availing than children's catapults. English domination feeds and thrives on weak character. When every Nationalist makes his or her character strong and self-reliant and beautiful, English domination will die from sheer lack of sustenance. If you are weak of will or base in your character, you are as valuable a support to the English garrison in Ireland as though you hated the Irish language and imported all your clothes from Yorkshire. The only way to be ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... over to nervousness in regard to imaginary thieves, but in the presence of real danger she was cool and self-reliant. As noiselessly and swiftly as any burglar himself, Miss Calista slipped out of bed and into her clothes. Then she tip-toed out into the hall. The late moonlight, streaming in through the hall windows, was quite enough illumination for her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Flemming had landed on the island with his wife, family, and two native servants, and settled down as a resident trader at the large and populous village of Tuuhora, where he soon gained the respect and confidence—if not the friendship—of the Anaa people, one of the proudest, most self-reliant, and brave of any of the Polynesian race, or their offshoots. For though he was a keen business man, he was just and honest in all his transactions, never erring, as so many traders do, on the side of mistaken generosity, ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... an elder brother—a brother who has grown old early in thought and feeling, who at twenty-five has already lived half the life of man—at least in the brain and heart. Listen. I was always impulsive and sanguine, always proud and self-reliant. My father was wealthy. I was told from my boyhood that I was a genius—that I had only to extend my hand, and the slaves of the lamp, as the Orientals say, would drop into it all the jewels of the universe. Success in politics, poetry, law, or letters—the choice lay with me, but ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... up a gay, fashionable girl. Her personal beauty and qualities of mind and heart challenged the admiration of all who came in contact with her. More brilliant than Sarah, she was also more self-reliant, and, though quite as sympathetic and sensitive, she was neither so demonstrative nor so tender in her feelings as her elder sister, and her manner being more dignified and positive, she inspired, even in those nearest to her, a certain degree of awe which forbade, perhaps, the fulness of ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... to a fatal deception, a belief that I could not fall; that after God had once pardoned my sins I was as surely saved as if already in Paradise. That they were pardoned I had not a doubt, for the manifestations were as clear as light. Falsely thinking that I was pardoned for all time, my soul grew self-reliant: I became at the same time careless of my religious duties. I neglected to pray, to beware of temptation, and, naturally enough, soon found myself drifting into the society of those who neither loved nor feared God. Had I trusted alone in God and permitted the Savior to lead and keep ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... were broad, but not too broad—just enough to accentuate the waist, and to give a pleasant sense of ease and power. She was strong, upright, self-reliant, finished in herself. Her bust was full, but not too prominent—more after nature than the dressmaker. There was something, though, of the corset-maker in her waist, it appeared naturally fine, and had been assisted to be finer. But ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... She had always had her way with the father—why should she doubt her power over the son? Supremely maternal as she was, the sheltering instinct had extended even to the man she loved. He had been outwardly strong and self-confident, assured, self-reliant, even severe with others, but behind the bold exterior, as always to the eyes of the beloved woman, had been a little, shrinking, helpless child, craving the comfort of a woman's hand—the sanctuary of a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... covering a period of about twelve months from July 1817, I set out here as giving better than any comment of my own an account of his life and experiences in Nova Scotia at that time. They present a self-reliant character, and the young midshipman who was so early recognised by his superior officers as efficient and capable was found worthy of a small, but most important, command soon after joining this station. His father, Sir Joseph Yorke, who lost no opportunity ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... woman who was about acquiring a strong influence over the undisciplined, self-willed and too self-reliant young wife of Hartley Emerson; and this was the class of personages among whom her dangerous friend was about introducing her. At the house of Mrs. Talbot, where Irene became a frequent visitor, she ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
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