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More "Assertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saying a good deal. But no matter. I am willing to credit the assertion. Lead on, Sweetwater; ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... presence of a superior force to her own, and was checked into silence. I had always felt sure that there was a reserve of force in the timid nature of our Coach which seemed to peep forth at times and then retire again. It was curious to mark on these rare occasions how the more boisterous self-assertion of Mrs. Porkington seemed for a time to cower before the gentler but finer will. Natures are not changed in a day, but the effect of the singular scene which had been enacted at that time was never effaced, and a gradual and mutual approach was made between husband and wife towards ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... seen, the usual conversation in the taproom of a country public-house is a lazy and innocent interchange of remarks, which wander aimlessly from one subject to another, because nobody wants to bother his head with thinking; or else it is a vehement discussion, in which dogmatic assertion does duty for argument and loudness for force. In either case it rests and stimulates the tired men, while the drink refreshes their throats, and it has no more necessary impropriety than the drawing-room talk of the well-to-do. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... sigh of relief. He had had his doubts to the last, and none knew better than he how much depended on the correctness of the schoolmaster's assertion. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... laid their restraint on Buckley Simmons, her present companion. His immobile face, with its heavy, good features and slow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loud self-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his clean shaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatient opinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmons was a close second. Indeed, one might be found as wealthy as the other; ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some black day in the whole year's circle,—his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice. And yet, strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice was wrong. Hidden from mankind,—forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the lead of Tucker, and in Alabama under Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate impossible demands so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker at Nashville "ridiculed Webster's assertion that the Union could not be dissolved without bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's speech, Garnett of Virginia published a frank advocacy of a Southern Confederacy, repeatedly reprinted, which Clay declared "the most dangerous pamphlet he had ever read". ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... appeal to God, invoked as witness, that some statement made is true. The declaration may be an assertion concerning fact, or a promise. No creature, besides the being that gives the oath, may know certainly whether the statement be true or false; but God always knows, and he is called upon in this, as knowing the truth. In every case in which it ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... scoundrel!" Cappy shrilled angrily, for Mr. Skinner's assertion carried the hint that Cappy had been outgeneraled. "The Yankee thief!—acting as broker for a company in which he owns all the capital stock! In business a week and he's made over four hundred dollars already, neat and nice, and as clean as a hound's ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... a horrible person, who would persist in following Min about under the false pretence that his name was on her card for several of the after-supper dances—an assertion I knew to be ridiculously unfounded; for, I had taken care to place my own name down for as many as Min would give me, and, all the latter ones I had appropriated also without asking her permission, thinking that when that happy time arrived, she would not be very hard on ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by those who at once understand such matters, and really wish to know the truth; while young ladies in general will still look on Henry as a monster in human form, because no one dares, or indeed ought, to undeceive them by anything beyond bare assertion without proof. ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... compelled to believe that some of Mr. Pope's actions, at the same time that they prove him to be querulous and petulant, lead us to suspect that he was also envious, malignant, and cruel. How far this will tend to confirm the assertion, that when a boy, he was an amateur of this royal sport, I do, says Mr. Ireland, not pretend to decide: but were a child, in whom I had any interest, cursed with such a propensity, my first object would be to correct it: if that were impracticable, and he retained ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... can now reply to the often-repeated assertion, even heard from scientists of our own day, that the descent of man from the lower animals, and proximately from the apes, still needs to be "proved with certainty." These "certain proofs" have been available for a long time; one has only to open one's eyes to ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... Successful Migrant much information is given us of individuals who succeeded by sheer grit in making their way to freedom, and in some cases in building neat fortunes for themselves and their families. The charge that the Negro appears to be naturally migratory, an assertion which comes to light in recent studies in economic progress, is declared untrue. Dr. Woodson asserts that "this impression is often received by persons who hear of the thousands of Negroes who move from one place to another from year to year because ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... so Mr. Tulliver. He was irate and defiant; and Tom, though he espoused his father's quarrels and shared his father's sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that oppressed Maggie when Mr. Tulliver got louder and more angry in narration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert. The attention that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine was distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world, and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conducted without a good deal of quarrelling. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... The assertion of Tacitus, that Germany was destitute of the precious metals, must be taken, even in his own time, with some limitation, (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.) According to Spener, (Hist. Germaniae Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,) Argentifodin in Hercyniis montibus, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was as sure of the fact as it was possible to be, but her cautious nature reminded her of the possibility of mistake, and she would not venture on a definite assertion. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a very worthy servant of the United States, that his brother Arthur Lee, has complained against me in a Memorial to Congress, as if I had extolled Dr Franklin at his expense in the Leyden Gazette. Whoever told him so, has told him an absolute falsehood. This assertion may perhaps receive, even in his own mind, additional strength, by my ingenuously telling him, however, that his being at enmity with Dr Franklin, will not hinder me to retain still in my bosom a most tender respect and love for the latter. I am sure he will do the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Cameron realized that the existence of any kind of community probably implied leaders, but he had ignored this in view of Marthasa's insistence that the Ids had no culture of their own. He wondered just how untrue that assertion might be. ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... time of my youth, when Cotta and Hortensius were in such high reputation, who, that had liberty to choose for himself, would have employed any other?"—"But what occasion is there," said Brutus, "to quote the example of other speakers to support your assertion? have we not seen what has always been the wish of the defendant, and what the judgment of Hortensius, concerning yourself? for whenever the latter shared a cause with you, (and I was often present on those occasions) the peroration, which requires the greatest exertion ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to the truthfulness of the assertion I do not vouch, for it did not happen under my personal knowledge—that a man by the name of McGee, who was a teamster on a train loaded with flour for the Government, was captured not far from there and was scalped and left for dead; that the Eastern mail happening to come along ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... adventures, in the course of which they tell or hear stories and take part in various "controversies and complayntes." Many topics are philosophically discussed; the chief being, as in Lyly, woman. One of the speakers puts forward the assertion that there may be, after all, some good in women; but another demonstrates that there is none at all; and that their name of "wo-man" contains their truest definition. Whereupon, we are treated once more to a description of dresses and fashions: "Her face painted, her beautie borrowed, her ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... merely stated, with every formula of apology, that, owing to the extraordinary depreciation in licensed property, the directors had not felt justified in declaring any dividend at all on the Ordinary Shares of the company. He had made this quite simple assertion, and instantly a body of shareholders, less reasonable and more avaricious even than shareholders usually are, had begun to turn the historic hall of the Cannon Street Hotel into a bear garden. One might have imagined that the sole aim of brewery companies was to make ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... answered pregnantly, as who would say: Thus is my folly clearly proven! and seeing that the assertion was not one that admitted of dispute, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... musician. [Footnote: Tytler.] But he had been promised his life for this confession. However, it was not thought advisable to keep this promise, for fear that, when confronted with the queen, he might not have the strength to sustain his assertion. But not to be altogether unthankful to him for so useful a confession, they showed him the favor of not executing him with the axe, but the more agreeable and easier death of hanging was vouchsafed to him.[Footnote: ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... and were, as well, men whose association with manufacturing districts or protected interests raised a fair question as to the impartiality of their decisions. The Republican reply, in their hands, to the assertion that the tariff was the mother of trusts was to raise the tariff still higher and to forbid the trusts to engage ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... But the assertion of the West Coast tribes that the soldiers of the mystic land of Mo know not fear is certainly true, for never once did they falter, although the citadel seemed absolutely unassailable by reason of the fierceness and strength of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... the seamy-faced man. "Quite an idea that! Makes him one of us again! Well, he's welcome—in oils. Can't say much to us from canvas, eh?" And the rafters above him vibrated, as his violent efforts at joviality went up in loud and louder assertion from ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously, "that's a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make London a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will go. That being settled, there is another ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... What tyranny of barbarians could be more cruel than the tyranny of Germany which, wherever it extends, oppresses the racial instincts of mankind, ruins and absorbs a people, reducing it to servitude by the assertion of the rights of a superior race over ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Farmer, affirmed that they were not Shakspeare's. In this case, we might well ask them to point out the other works of the unknown author, who was capable of inventing, among many others, the noble death-scenes of Talbot, Suffolk, Beaufort, and York. The assertion is so ridiculous, that in this case Richard the Third might also not be Shakspeare's, as it is linked in the most immediate manner to the three other pieces, both by the subject, and the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... walking often to and fro, every gesture expressive, art perfectly concealing art. It was all melody and grace and magic, all wit and paradox and power. The apt quotation, the fine metaphor, the careful accumulation of intensive epithet to point an audacious and startling assertion, the pathos, the humor. But why try to describe beauty? It was consummate art, and as noble a display of high oratory as any hearer or spectator ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... or two remarks on the incisive summary of this adroit and able theorist are obvious. First, the implied assertion,—"Ecclefechan had declared that the earth did not move,"—that Carlyle was in essential sympathy with the Inquisitors who confronted Galileo with the rack, is perhaps the strangest piece of recent criticism extant: for what is his French Revolution but ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Shelton, and for a time Deerfoot was seriously annoyed, but he strove to bear it with the sensible philosophy of his nature. Those who saw him as he moved here and there with the boys, or Mul-tal-la, or Spink and Jiggers, had to admit the truth of the assertion heard many times; he was the most prepossessing young warrior upon whom any of them had ever looked. Neither among the Blackfeet nor any of their neighboring tribes had so comely a youth been seen. And this being the fact, many were ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... This assertion must be qualified by a fact stated by Mr. E.A. Layard, who mentions that on visiting one of the fishing stations on a Singhalese river, where the fish are caught in staked enclosures, as described at p. 342, and observing that the chambers were covered with netting, he asked the reason, and ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and precision of the trapper's shooting, besides which he was deeply impressed with the undercurrent of what we may style grave fun, coupled with calm enthusiasm, which characterised the man, and the utter absence of self-assertion or boastfulness. ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... people are likely to be interested, that institution will remain precisely in the same situation in which it is placed by the State constitutions, and will be in no degree altered or influenced by the adoption of the plan under consideration. The foundation of this assertion is, that the national judiciary will have no cognizance of them, and of course they will remain determinable as heretofore by the State courts only, and in the manner which the State constitutions and laws prescribe. All land causes, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... illustrates what I have said: a supreme and guiding intelligence—apart from a blind rule called nature of things—was an hypothesis. The absolute denial of such a ruling power was not in the plan of the higher philosophers: it was left for the smaller fry. A round assertion of the non-existence of anything which stands in the way is the refuge of a certain class of minds: but it succeeds only with things subjective; the objective offers resistance. A philosopher of the appropriative class tried it upon the constable who appropriated him: I deny your existence, said ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... himself is not content if his work is mistaken for another's, even if that other be one of the gods of his idolatry. He would rather write his own signature across faulty work than sink into a copyist of merit. This eternal temper of self-assertion, this spirit of invention, this determination to add something or alter something, is no doubt the principle of life. It questions accepted standards, and makes of reaction from the reigning fashion a permanent force in literature. The young ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... liberty of a commonwealth consists in the empire of her laws, the absence whereof would betray her to the lust of tyrants. And these I conceive to be the principles upon which Aristotle and Livy (injuriously accused by Leviathan for not writing out of nature) have grounded their assertion, "that a commonwealth is an empire of laws and not of men." But they must not carry it so. "For," says he, "the liberty whereof there is so frequent and honorable mention in the histories and philosophy ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... Warrender had now been lying in that silent state which the most insignificant person holds immediately after death, for three days, and there was still another to come before he could be laid away in the dark and noisome bed in the family vault, where all the Warrenders made their last assertion of superiority to common clay. This long and awful pause in the affairs of life was intolerable to the two people now walking softly through the paths of the little wood, where the moonbeams shone through ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... upon the common. By some gaucherie the conversation took a disagreeable turn on our late misunderstanding, and I could not help repeating what I had said in my note, that Mr Rip had proved himself ungrateful, considering the many difficulties from which I had extricated him. At this last assertion before the lady, he took fire, and flatly denied it. I was too proud to enumerate the many instances of scholastic assistance that he had received at my hands, so I became sullen and silent, my opponent in an equal degree brisk and loquacious. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of the conventional—provided it be glib. One reads such an assertion, and provided it be suave and brief and conventional, one seldom questions—or thinks "very strange" and then forgets. One has an impression from geography lessons: Mediterranean not more than three inches wide, on the map; ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology of feminine implements and tasks while the boys were still in the current of the affairs of the race, we should indeed want President Thomas of Bryn Mawr to repeat on a thousand lecture platforms her indignant assertion of the fact that "nothing more disastrous for women, or for men, can be conceived of than specialized education ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... great force in M. Sismondi's observation (Hist. des Francais, xviii. 264): "Malgre leur assertion, il est difficile de ne pas croire qu'au moment ou ils se reunissoient en armes pour disputer aux protestans l'exercise public de leur culte que leur accordoit l'edit de janvier, c'etoit un coup premedite que l'attaque du duc de ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... "Le Juif" has five acts; but I have not yet committed myself to the assertion that he was in seven tableaux, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... ideas had first been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta; suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer, whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, that authors have ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... says his life was saved by this chap," put in the old man, who had been gazing at Richard ever since the assertion ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... importance of the subject; and by declaring that he was actuated by no narrow principle or personal consideration, for though his bill might be looked upon as one of concession, it was likewise one of assertion. The bill which Chatham proposed was briefly to the following effect: That the parliament of Great Britain had full power to bind America in all matters touching the weal of the whole dominion of the crown of Great Britain, and especially in making laws for the regulation of navigation and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Europe; D'Azeglio illustrates the inspiration which liberty yields to genius; journalism ventilates political rancor; debate neutralizes aggressive prejudice; physical resources become available; talent finds scope, character self-assertion; Protestantism builds altars, patriotism shrines; and genuine Italian nationality has a vital existence so palpably reproachful of circumjacent stagnation, ruin, and wrong, that no laws or material ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Wanumbai—anybody can say Wanumbai. I'm an orang-Wanumbai; but, N-glung! who ever heard of such a name? Do tell us the real name of your country, and then when you are gone we shall know how to talk about you." To this luminous argument and remonstrance I could oppose nothing but assertion, and the whole party remained firmly convinced that I was for some reason or other deceiving them. They then attacked me on another point—what all the animals and birds and insects and shells were preserved so carefully for. They had ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... his duty as high priest in inquiring into such claims, but he was somewhat late in the day, and he had made up his mind before he inquired. What he wished to get was a plain assertion on which the death sentence could be pronounced. Jesus knew this, and yet He answered. But Luke tells us that He first scathingly pointed to the unreality and animus of the question by saying, 'If I tell you, ye will not believe.' But yet it was fitting that He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... but Richard held her back. "You did not seem to believe my assertion of innocence. Barbara, we are here alone in the still night, with God above us; as truly as that you and I must sometime meet Him face to face, I told you the truth. It was Thorn murdered Hallijohn, and I had nothing ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of them conjunctively.... Next the Nicene Creed, as originally published, did undoubtedly make the Holy Ghost proceed from the Father alone. The intent was to defend the unity of the Godhead. Subsequently the Latins, designing to cast the assertion of the identity of the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son in a form which they thought more explicit, planted in the body of the Creed the word filioque, meaning from the Son. This the Greeks declare an unwarranted addition. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... territory from their allegiance to the Union, and as there is no rebellion where there is no allegiance, resistance by its population and territory to the Union, even war against the Union, would not be rebellion, but the simple assertion of popular sovereignty. This is only the same objection in another form. The lapse of the State releases the population and territory from no allegiance to the Union; for their allegiance to the Union was ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... been subjected from the cradle to a similar discipline and training, forbidden to engage in any trade or business, and consecrated to the service of the state, there would have been nothing surprising in this uncompromising assertion of equality. But in Athens the citizenship was extended to every rank and calling; the poor man jostled the rich, the shopman the aristocrat, in the Assembly; cobblers, carpenters, smiths, farmers, merchants, and retail traders met together ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... language. We have worked together in this investigation; my only advantage over him being my greater familiarity with like phenomena in Europe and North America, and consequent readiness in the practical handling of the facts, and in perceiving their connection. Major Coutinho's assertion, that on the banks of the Amazons I should find the same red, unstratified clay as in Rio and along the southern coast, seemed to me at first almost incredible, impressed as I was with the generally received notions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... that he follows some of the Raja Yoga methods, and that Concentration is one of his strongest weapons. And from all reports, Prof. Elmer Gates, of Washington, D.C., whose mind has unfolded many wonderful discoveries and inventions, is also a practical Yogi although he may repudiate the assertion vigorously, and may not have familiarized himself with the principles of this science, which he has "dropped into" unconsciously. Those who have reported upon Prof. Gates' methods, say that he fairly "digs ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... town on Saturday for the worst cold I ever had in my life, and, what I care less to own even to myself, a cough. I hope Lord Chesterfield will not speak more truth in what I have quoted, than in his assertion, that one need not cough if one did not please. It has pulled me extremely, and you may believe I do not look very plump, when I am more emaciated that usual. However, I have taken James's powder for four nights, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... namely, of orderly structure, and such qualities generally as depend upon second thoughts. A collection of specimens of English poetry, for the purpose of exhibiting the achievement of prose excellences by it (in their legitimate measure) is a desideratum we commend to Mr. Saintsbury. It is the assertion, the development, the product of those very different indispensable qualities of poetry, in the presence [8] of which the English is equal or superior to all other modern literature—the native, sublime, and beautiful, but often wild and irregular, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... it remembered, has the recognition of a purely optical character in the revelation been restricted to the assertion of any one theory of reconciliation. It was as certainly held by Chalmers and Dr. Pye Smith, as by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise; nay, it has been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Granville ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... He was delighted to have become the owner of what appeared to him one of the loveliest spots on the earth, and assured Mary that the house was vastly superior to any cottage, advancing so many good reasons for this assertion, and describing in such glowing terms the beauty of the surrounding scenery, and the happiness they should enjoy, that she could not help sympathizing with him, although her dislike to her future home ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.—Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... vigorous self-assertion. I stood up in that empty, unfurnished room, digging the nails into my palms and clenching my teeth. I was determined to assert my individuality and my courage as a new woman ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... virtue); to the master, because he contracts with his slave all sorts of bad habits, insensibly accustoms himself to want all moral virtues; becomes haughty, hasty, hard-hearted, passionate, voluptuous, and cruel." The lamentable truth of this assertion was quickly verified in the English plantations. When the practice of slave-keeping was introduced, it soon produced its natural effects; it reconciled men, of otherwise good dispositions, to the most hard and cruel measures. It quickly ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... with this article, the Catholic Primate contradicted Mr. O'Connell's assertion respecting the rescript, and laid rescript and contradiction before the public. "I was surprised and sorry," he writes, "to find that you had ventured to assert that a letter sent to me some time past from the Propaganda was not a canonical document." He adds that ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... measured some waves of which the vertical height was thirty-five feet, and which measured not less than 196-1/2 feet from the crest to the lowest point, making a total length of 393 feet for a single wave. These measurements were an answer to the ironical assertion of Arago, who, settling the matter in his own study, would not allow that a wave could exceed from five to six feet in height. One need not hesitate a single moment to accept, as against the eminent but impulsive physicist, the measurements of the navigators ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... world." At another time Mrs. Cobden Sanderson of Great Britain, speaking as a fraternal delegate, eulogized the self-sacrifice of the "militants" as the principal factor in the movement, and Mrs. Catt, speaking from the chair, said that she would like to answer the assertion that it was only the "militant" women who were the martyrs. To the women who had made such protests had come the glory, whereas there were thousands who had given their lives to the cause whose names had never been heard. All down the centuries ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... agreed the darky, not for a moment questioning the assertion that fell from his master's lips. If "Marse David" said he was there, he was there; that is all there could be to it. "He suttinly mus' be thah, sah. But I 'spec's he mussa fo'got to ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... a grain of truth in the assertion of Jim Cadwalader that the war for Independence had, like the great rivers of the country, many sources, cannot be gainsaid. There were oppressive tax laws as well as restrictions on popular rights. There were odious navigation acts together with a host of iniquitous, tyrannical ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... make the assertion to oneself, "I am composed," is not all that is necessary. One must prove to oneself that one is ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... quite convinced," Gladys said, "that Kelson does his flying through supernatural agency. His assertion that it can be done through mere will power, is sheer humbug. It wouldn't be a bad idea to consult a ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... we see that Jesus does not rail against them, nor flatly deny their base assertion that He does His miracles by the power of the Devil, but shows how logically false must be their statement. And then, with grave authority, and, I think, with solemn tenderness in His voice and in His eyes, He adds, "Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... in matter is undoubtedly that airy one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and instrument of friendship. It is in talk alone that the friends can measure strength, and enjoy that amicable counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge of relations and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... To indulge sensibility but a little were to be heart-broken! But no personal grief can authorise me in deserting the post I am placed in; nor palliate the crime of neglecting its duties. To the end of time I shall persist in thinking you mine by right; but I will never trouble you more with an assertion of that right—Never!—Unless some new and unexpected claim should spring up, of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... stopped. Omai, meantime, who was by himself, surrounded by a crowd of natives, and equally anxious with the rest, described, in exaggerated terms, the power of the English guns, which, he affirmed, could blow the whole island to pieces. He had some cartridges in his pocket, and to prove his assertion he let several of them off together. The sudden flash and report seem to have produced a great effect on the minds of the natives, as the party were sent off with a large supply of cooked plantains as a gift; and a bag containing a pistol, which ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... that which Lord John Russell, in the previous session, had attempted to alter by proposing to enfranchise Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. But the election which followed the death of George IV on June 26th had not borne out the Duke's assertion; it had gone heavily against him. Lord Grey, forming his Ministry out of the old Whigs and the followers of Canning and Grenville, at once made Reform a Cabinet measure. During the stormy elections of July the news came from Paris that Charles X had been deposed, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... had been the delight of his infancy. The price demanded was sixpence, which the owner, himself a squab little duodecimo of a character, enforced with the asseverance that his own mother should not have it for a farthing less, supplementing the assertion with an oath and 'Now, I have put my soul to it.' The book was the 'Queen Like Closet,' which, it is scarcely necessary to say, Elia rescued from the man of profanity. Soho has long been more or less of ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... claim of Spiritualism is its assertion of power to hold communication with the spirits of the dead; or rather, it claims to have demonstrated that ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... possessed what I think might very well be called the spirit of aggressiveness, or, possibly better, the spirit of sanctified self-assertion. He never thought of self-assertion for his own sake, or for the sake of honor or promotion, but he had in him a kind of push and an earnestness of purpose—you might almost say audacity—that somehow stirred him and prompted him always to be in the place of greatest advantage at a given ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... she often told her friends in profound disgust, she received as salary no more than "tuppence farden a day. It don't find me in shoe-leather; no more it don't." As Mrs Crump was never seen out of her own house, unless it was in church once a month, this latter assertion about her shoe-leather ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... had in some degree recovered my good looks; still my eye and cheeks were tinged black and yellow in various places, and the cuts on my head not quite healed. However, I was satisfied that the surgeon of the regiment was correct in his assertion that I should not be the least disfigured by the treatment which I ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... be nothing unnatural in his entertaining some idea of that kind about you," replied Mrs. Tempest, with a sudden assertion of matronly dignity. "But for him to think of me in that light would be too absurd. I must be some years, perhaps four or five years, his senior, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... us that it is the essence of art, because the proper aim of art is to do good. This is implied in his doctrine that art can be good only if it is intelligible to most men. "The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people, is extremely unjust; and its consequences are ruinous to art itself." The word unjust implies the moral factor. I am not to enjoy a work of art if I know that others ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... so successfully by means of a steam-pumping arrangement that it ended by yielding over 300,000 litres of water per diem. The critics of the camp have said that the spot was very damp and muddy, and therefore necessarily unhealthy, and there is truth in that assertion; but the same might be remarked of all the camps of the period, notably that of D'Aurelle de Paladines in front of Orleans. Moreover, when a week's snow was followed by a fortnight's thaw, matters could scarcely be different. [From first to last (November 12 ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... of Pandu, and pacifying him said, 'O mighty-armed one, without doubt, thou wilt, assisted by the wielder of the Gandiva, slay Suyodhana at the expiry of the thirteenth year. But, O son of Pritha, as for thy assertion, O Lord, the time is complete, I cannot dare tell an untruth, for untruth is not in me. O son of Kunti, without the help of fraud, wilt thou kill the wicked and irrepressible Duryodhana, with ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... he did not fawn over the dignitary or lose his own quiet self-assertion. He was an American. He told of finding the tortured prospector and of the plight of the approaching ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... His bold attitude justified their reliance on his moral courage and enabled them to demand the enactment of those measures which were necessary for the preservation of the army and the successful assertion of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... which he got the aid of the first Romany scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson. And this was followed in 1901 by his edition of ‘Lavengro,’ which, notwithstanding certain unnecessary carpings at Borrow—such, for instance, as the assertion that the word “dook” is never used in Anglo-Romany for “ghost”—is beyond any doubt the best edition of the book ever published. The introduction gives sketches of all the Romany Ryes and students of Romany, from Andrew ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... longer daring to resist, took his razor, and with a trembling hand separated two of the handsomest ears from one of the finest heads in the world: for be it known, that the princess only made a pretext of this assertion, because she had taken a ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... corroborate her assertion that it had gone on and on, it commenced to cry afresh. Out of politeness to the Woman, though the sound hurt them, the tenderhearted animals uncovered their ears and listened intently. This is what they heard, repeated over and over, ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... close these volumes with a deeper sense of the superior dignity, self-reliance and independence that belong by nature to woman, enabling her to rise above such multifarious persecutions as she has encountered, and with persistent self-assertion to maintain her rights. In the history of the race there has been no struggle for liberty like this. Whenever the interest of the ruling classes has induced them to confer new rights on a subject class, it has been done with no effort on the part of the latter. Neither the American ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... who had for days held in his keeping the Proclamation of Emancipation until his friend President Lincoln was ready to issue it. I remember the talk he gave at Hull-House on one of our early celebrations of Lincoln's birthday, his assertion that Lincoln was no cheap popular hero, that the "common people" would have to make an effort if they would understand his greatness, as Lincoln painstakingly made a long effort to understand the greatness of the people. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... My nephew must not hear of this accursed loss—be secret on that head, I charge you! but in regard to this man's bold assertion, I must consult him instantly—haste and follow me ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... church received a letter from one of his members with the extravagant assertion that the people whose funerals he had preached were in Chicago (meaning Heaven) because they were good Christians. To give assurance on the question of weather migrants in the North would mention the fact that they were writing with their coats off. A fact which strengthened ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... self-control, being accustomed to feel that whatever he thought or wished was good—his hatred as well as that which appealed to him—since he honestly sought nothing for himself, despising riches and station from the depths of his soul, with an open scorn for the great ones of earth and an imperious assertion of his own methods and judgments which he would have denounced in any earthly ruler, however wise. He never dreamed himself an autocrat over that continuous stream of pilgrims who made their way into the House ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... only a very white lie he was telling, having heard, at all events, a very good imitation of a gobbler. He repeated roundly his assertion. The man regarded him with a steady scowling scrutiny for near a minute, his surly lips apart, his hands thrust into his pockets. Frank, who could speak the truth with as clear and beautiful a brow as ever was seen, could not help wincing a little ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... Apostle making the same solemn assertion in regard to Christian men, 'Know ye not that ye are'—as your Master, and because your Master is—'that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... nutritive articles, meat and vegetables, and drink wine or beer. Another savant, taking nearly the same views, insists that the Arabs are able to live moderately, and to make long abstinences, as they do, entirely on account of their extensive use of coffee. But this last assertion is demolished, by the declaration of M. d'Abbadie, who has just returned from Abyssinia, that certain tribes of Arabs and Abyssinians who do not use coffee can support greater fatigue than those who do. In presence of such very contradictory facts, who shall say which of the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... years older. His face was as smooth as the head of a new axe, and had something else chopper-like about it. He reminded me of pictures I had seen in the advertisement pages of American magazines; pictures showing a wedge-like human face, from the lips of which some such an assertion as "It's you I want!" was supposed to be issuing. I subsequently learned that this Mr. Charles N. Pierce had spent several years in New York, and that he was credited with having largely increased the circulation of the Daily Gazette since taking over his present ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Poree, and Rollin; he had been then convinced how little Occasion there was for his lamenting the Loss of an Art in this Kingdom, which breathes there in full Maturity of all it's persuasive Charms. This his dogmatical Assertion of the long-lost Art of Oratory, his wild Academical Projects, with the foregoing theatrical Inconsistencies, too much subject that Gentleman to the Character given, by the Roman Satirist, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... the right or the wrong—per fas et nefas.[1] A man may be objectively in the right, and nevertheless in the eyes of bystanders, and sometimes in his own, he may come off worst. For example, I may advance a proof of some assertion, and my adversary may refute the proof, and thus appear to have refuted the assertion, for which there may, nevertheless, be other proofs. In this case, of course, my adversary and I change places: he comes off best, although, as a matter of fact, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the importance comes in for me. But this man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinks Him more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a great demonstration and assertion—something that will set the world on fire like the first Christian persecutions. If you like, we are attempting a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up every town against us. Scotland Yard has fortified every police station with our enemies; we are driven therefore to the edge ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the streets. All such cottages look neat and substantial at first; their massive brick walls deceive the eye, and, on passing through a newly-built working- men's street, without remembering the back alleys and the construction of the houses themselves, one is inclined to agree with the assertion of the Liberal manufacturers that the working population is nowhere so well housed as in England. But on closer examination, it becomes evident that the walls of these cottages are as thin as it is possible to make them. The outer walls, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... existed before the Constitution. Our institutions had their beginnings well-nigh with the beginning of time. They have developed through the ages. Magna Charta only marked a period in their growth; the assertion of the rights of the Commons marked another; our Revolution marked another; the adoption of our ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... towards the end of the century, awoke with alarm to the perception of serious evil, betokened by the general thinness of congregations. The migration of population from the centre of London to its suburbs had already set in; but the following assertion was sufficiently startling nevertheless. 'The amazing and afflictive desertion of all our churches is a fact beyond doubt or dispute. In the heart of the city of London, in its noblest edifices, on the Lord's day, repeated instances have been known that a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... his purpose, or in the least relax the violence of his endeavours to subdue whatever may be the object of his dislike or resentment. Amidst the many instances which might be adduced in support of this assertion, we shall notice one which is well-authenticated. Some years since, when bull-baiting was more common than in the present improved state of civilization, a juvenile amateur, at an entertainment of this kind in the north of England, confident in the courage and purity of blood in ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... had from the first a clearly defined scheme in mind, carrying its own inevitable title, which was in due course adopted. I may here remark that I never resisted any idea of Rossetti's at the moment of its inception, since resistance only led to a temporary outburst of self-assertion on his part. He was a man of so much impulse,—impulse often as violent as lawless—that to oppose him merely provoked anger to no good purpose, for as often as not the position at first adopted with so much pertinacity ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... trifle stern. "There are times when you tax our patience, Lance," he said. "Still, there is nothing to be gained by questioning your assertion. What I fail to see, is where your reward for all this will come from, because I am still convinced that the soil will, so to speak, give you back eighty cents for every dollar you put into it. I would, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... Baillie says that when the first volume of Plays on the Passions was published anonymously in 1798, Walter Scott was at first suspected of being the author. But as Scott had done nothing to give him a literary reputation in 1798, the assertion is incredible. It seems to be based on the following very inexact statement in Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. (Vol. V, Art. Joanna Baillie.) "Rich though the period was in poetry, this work made a great impression, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... that one hears another calmly assert that he is so-and-so or so-and-so, and in his next action, or next hundred actions, sees that same assertion entirely contradicted. Daily familiarity with the manifestations of mistaken brain-impressions does not lessen one's surprise at this curious personal contradiction; it gives one an increasing desire to look to one's self, and see how far these private theatricals extend in one's own ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... reply to this confident assertion, for the fact was that they were too full of laughter to ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... agree that the present intervention shall not form a precedent for future similar action and that in the future no interference in the internal affairs of the Republic will take place. (b) That Her Majesty's Government will not further insist on the assertion of the suzerainty, the controversy on the subject being allowed tacitly to drop. (c) That arbitration (from which foreign element other than Orange Free State is to be excluded) will be conceded as soon as the franchise scheme has become law. (6) Immediately on Her Majesty's Government accepting ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... this declaration was repeated times innumerable, and as it happened that Miss Rodney made no demand for her landlady's attendance, the good woman enjoyed a sense of triumphant self-assertion. On Monday morning Mabel took in the breakfast, and reported that Miss Rodney had made no remark; but, a quarter of an hour later, the bell rang, and Mrs. Turpin was summoned. Very red in the face, she obeyed. Having civilly greeted her, Miss Rodney inquired at what hour Mr. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... twelve to twenty birds, all breeding females, may be caught in the course of a single day. The natives assert that the females after laying their eggs associate in flocks, and leave the males to sit on them. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion, which is supported by some observations made in China by Mr. Swinhoe. (15. Jerdon, 'Birds of India,' vol. iii. p. 596. Mr. Swinhoe, in 'Ibis,' 1865, p. 542; 1866, pp. 131, 405.) Mr. Blyth believes, that the young of both ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... is urged, moreover, on this side that a sudden rousing of a man from sleep always discovers him in the act of dreaming, and that this goes to prove the uniform connection of dreaming and sleeping. This argument, again, may be met by the assertion that our sense of the duration of our dreams is found to be grossly erroneous; that, owing to the rapid succession of the images, the realization of which would involve a long duration, we enormously exaggerate the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... the other, without raising his voice; and coming from the mouth of that obviously miserable organism the assertion caused the robust Ossipon to bite his lower lip. "Force of personality," he repeated, with ostentatious calm. "I have the means to make myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the way of protection. What is effective is the belief those people have ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... storm of words. M. Emanuel was eloquent; but Madame Panache was voluble. A system of fierce antagonism ensued. Instead of laughing in his sleeve at his fair foe, with all her sore amour-propre and loud self-assertion, M. Paul detested her with intense seriousness; he honoured her with his earnest fury; he pursued her vindictively and implacably, refusing to rest peaceably in his bed, to derive due benefit from his meals, or even serenely to relish his cigar, till she was fairly rooted out of the establishment. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... monkeys of curious intelligence and rare physical powers. Their wonderful instinct for organization, their attachment to particular localities, their occasional journeys in large numbers over mountains and across rivers, their obstinate assertion of supposed rights, and the ridiculous caricature which they exhibit of all that is animal and emotional in man, would naturally create a deep impression.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Indeed the habits of monkeys ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... clearness the truth of Mr. Flexen's assertion that he was a babbling idiot. His dream of outing William Hutchings from the post of head-gamekeeper and filling it himself was for ever shattered, and he had been the great man of the village for little more than fourteen hours, ten of which he had spent in sleep. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... impression even as a youth on all who knew him. Aside from the palpable marks of his power, there was an indomitable hauteur, a mysterious, self-wrapped air as of one constantly communing with the invisible, an unconscious assertion of mastery about him, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... we have observed, reiterates the assertion that the errors of Gil Blas are such as no Spaniard could commit, leaving altogether unguarded against the goring horn of the dilemma which can only be parried by an answer to the question—how came it to pass that Le Sage could enumerate the names of upwards of twenty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... lately advanced to the rank of tribune of one of the chief Roman cohorts in Syria. His coming, as Odhainat and even the young Bath Zabbai knew, meant a stricter supervision of the city, a re-enforcement of its garrison, and the assertion of the mastership of Rome over this far eastern ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... invention, which may be compared with the tale of the island of Atlantis and the poem of Solon, but is not accredited by similar arts of deception. The other statement that the Dorians were Achaean exiles assembled by Dorieus, and the assertion that Troy was included in the Assyrian Empire, have some foundation (compare for the latter point, Diod. Sicul.). Nor is there anywhere in the Laws that lively enargeia, that vivid mise en scene, which is as characteristic of Plato as of ...
— Laws • Plato
... ... eiselthein kai gennaethaenai], and interpolating an expression, instead, which is neither in the original text nor in the thought. Probably Mr. Sawyer's motive for taking this extraordinary liberty was a false delicacy, amounting to prudery; but it ill assorts with his assertion, that his work is not a paraphrase, nor one of compromises, or of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... semi-civilized races. The women seemed to be worn down by hardships, and were pitiable to look upon; but the men were of dark hue, straight in figure, always thin in flesh, and remarkably like our American Indians. Nudity is the rule among them, clothing the exception. It seems like a strange assertion, but it is a fact, two thirds of the human family go naked in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... these Verses, though it has been generally overlooked, is the most important of any: admitting, as it does, of no evasion: being simply, as it is, decisive. I have now fully explained the grounds of that assertion. I have set the Verses, which I undertook to vindicate and establish, on a basis from which it will be found impossible any more to dislodge them. Whatever Griesbach, and Tischendorf, and Tregelles, and the rest, ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... meaning in this dream. Indeed Tennyson always appears to use dreams for purposes of symbol. The lines are an application of the expression; "The old order changeth," etc. The parson's lamentation expressed in line 18, "Upon the general decay of faith," is also directly answered by the assertion that the modern Arthur will arise in modern times. There is a certain grotesqueness in the likening of King Arthur to "a modern gentleman of stateliest port." But Tennyson never wanders far from conditions of his own time. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes; "Arthur, as the modern gentleman, as ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of the last chapter that it was like being in the nightmare of some horrible dream. I repeat that assertion; for as I recall my sensations I see again the horrible swaying head playing gently up and down, nearer and nearer, the sun glistening on the burnished coils, while others were hidden, to have their ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... graceful creatures was brought to us and offered for a sum equal to six shillings; it was very tame, and we carried it for some distance. But at length it died, in consequence, as was said, of having eaten bread, which, according to Abou Nabout's assertion, is very unwholesome for these animals. The more probable cause was the trying journey it made in a basket on a camel's back. There are only a few street dogs in Khanyunis; but, as a compensation, any quantity of kites, kestrels, and crows, which alight in hundreds on the loftier sidr or sycamore ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... of being good company, checking up our efforts to be sure we are hitting {329} the right vein, and persisting in our self-training till we become real artists. It takes some determination for a grouchy individual to make such a revolution in his conduct; his self-assertion resists violently, for the grouchiness is part and parcel of himself and he hates to be anything but himself. He must conceive a new and inspiring ideal of himself, and start climbing up the practice ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... their first coming of age when they are weaned; and it is noteworthy that this rather cruel and selfish operation on the part of the parent has to be performed resolutely, with claws and teeth; for your little mammal does not want to be weaned, and yields only to a pretty rough assertion of the right of the parent to be relieved of the child as soon as the child is old enough to bear the separation. The same thing occurs with children: they hang on to the mother's apron-string and the father's ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... she. But to give the lie to her assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... become a truism to say that technic is only a means to an end, but I very much doubt if this assertion should be accepted without question, suggesting as it does the advisability of studying something that is not music and which is believed at some future time to be capable of being marvelously transformed into an artistic expression. Properly ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... had occupied her so much during this and the previous days was not to be banished at night. For the first time Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. Rhoda Brook dreamed—since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep, was not to be believed—that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay. The pressure of Mrs. Lodge's ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... independence, the noble energy, the almost superhuman intrepidity of the Mrs. Judsons, how weak and despicable seem the struggles of many misguided women in our day, who seek to gain a reluctant acknowledgment of equality with the other sex, by a noisy assertion of their rights, and in some instances, by an imitation of their attire! Who would not turn from a female advocate at the bar, or judge upon the bench, surrounded by the usual scenes of a court-house, even if she ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... least, he had not as yet connected with his art certain faculties which become essential characteristics of his later work. There is no humour in these early poems, or (since Naddo and the critic tribe of Sordello came to qualify the assertion) but little; there is no wise casuistry, in which falsehood is used as the vehicle of truth; the psychology, however involved it may seem, is really too simple; the central personages are too abstract—knowledge ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... preserved from all stain of original sin.' The senior cardinal then prayed the Pope to make this Decree public, and, amid the roar of cannon from Fort St. Angelo and the festive ringing of church bells, the solemn act was accomplished.'"[42] Here is an assertion regarding Mary's Conception which has only the most tenuous connection with religious experience and which was pronounced for ecclesiastical and political reasons. Here we have dogma at its worst. Here, indeed, it is so bad as to resemble many of the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Gilfillan, and like "Ammon's great son," he carried one shoulder a little higher than the other. His face was thin, his nose somewhat accipitrine, casting a broad shadow; his mouth rather wide, well formed and well closed, carrying a question and an assertion in its finely finished curves; the lower lip a little prominent, the chin shapely and firm, as becomes the corner-stone of the countenance. His expression was calm, sedate, kindly, with that look of refinement, centring about the lips, which is rarely found in the male New Englander, unless the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... He is going to visit his brother in Zinder, and then returns to Tripoli by the way of Bornou and Mourzuk. Like all these shereefs, or marabouts, he pretended that had he been with us, or had we travelled with him from Mourzuk to Tintalous, no one would have dared to molest us; an assertion wholly false, for the Tuaricks care little for marabouts when they are bent ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... degree. Instead of indicating, however, that controversy by the designation under which it is known in literature, it would be more correct to put SHAKSPERE'S name in the place of that of Dekker. Many a reader who perhaps does not fully trust yet our bold assertion that Hamlet is a counterfeit of Montaigne's individuality, will now, we hope, be convinced by vouchers drawn from dramas published in 1604 and 1605, and which are in the closest connection with that controversy. We intend partly making a thorough examination of, partly ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... He thought only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then obliterated in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... activity, are of the former class; the inductive conclusions of physical experimental science, being gathered by observation and measurement from sensible data, are empirical and approximate. A geometrical proposition—such, for example, as the assertion that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles—is not merely approximate. It has no dependence on measurement. It is absolutely true. It is ascertained deductively, and therefore measurement is not involved, and ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... Empire, after its last display of energy under Trajan, was registered in the revolt of its peripheral districts beyond the Euphrates, Danube, and Rhine, as also in the rapid Teutonization of eastern Gaul, which here prepared the way for the assertion of independence. The border satraps of the ancient Persian Empire were constantly revolting, as the history of Asia Minor shows. Aragon, Old Castile, and Portugal were the first kingdoms in the Iberian ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... affirmance, affirmation; statement, allegation, assertion, predication, declaration, word, averment; confirmation. asseveration, adjuration, swearing, oath, affidavit; deposition &c (record) 551; avouchment; assurance; protest, protestation; profession; acknowledgment &c (assent) 488; legal pledge, pronouncement; solemn averment, solemn avowal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... nature as rivers, wells, and trees were held to be the abode of gods or spirits. Thus it is doubtful whether the Celts ever thought of their gods as dwelling in one Olympus. The Tuatha De Danann are said to have come from heaven, but this may be the mere assertion of some scribe who knew not what to make of ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression, our familiar English 'I ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... pleasure," she said, with some approach to self-assertion, "which Bertha and I are rather ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scarcely any great abuse was ever removed till the public feeling had been roused against it; and that the public feeling has seldom been roused against abuses without exertions to which the name of agitation may be given. I altogether deny the assertion which we have repeatedly heard in the course of this debate, that a government which does not discountenance agitation cannot be trusted to suppress rebellion. Agitation and rebellion, you say, are in kind the same thing: they differ only in degree. Sir, they are the same thing in the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... synonyms for strong as applied to a person in regard to his health; ten as applied to him in regard to his muscularity of physique; four as applied to a fortress; three as applied to a plea or assertion; three as applied to an argument or reason; three as applied to determination; two as applied to liquor; three as applied to a light; two as applied to corrective measures; two as applied to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... innocent child silences everybody who is not a blasphemer. In the general satisfaction at the unexpected solution of the situation, no one even pointed out that the actual statement to which Ezekiel had borne testimony, was an assertion of the superior knowledge of Malka's children. Shortly afterwards the company trooped downstairs to partake of high tea, which in the Ghetto need not include anything more fleshly than fish. Fish was, indeed, the staple of the meal. Fried fish, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... full swing of the intellectual renaissance.[8] In 1341 Petrarch, recognized by all his contemporary countrymen as their leading scholar and poet, was crowned with a laurel wreath on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. This was the formal assertion by the age of its admiration for intellectual worth. To Petrarch is ascribed the earliest recognition of the beauty of nature. He has been called the first modern man. In reading his works we feel at last that we speak with one of our own, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Bali, however, the Orang Binua re-appear, and here the type is that of the Semangs. From Ombay, parts of Ende, and parts of Sumbawa, we have short vocabularies—short, but not too scanty to set aside the hasty, but accredited, assertion of the Australian language, having nothing in common with those ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... age's temper I admire: The Samnites' chief, as by his fire he sate, With a vast sum of gold on him did wait; 'Return,' said he, 'your gold I nothing weigh, When those who can command it me obey.' This my assertion proves, he may be old, And yet not sordid, who refuses gold. In summer to sit still, or walk, I love, Near a cool fountain, or a shady grove. 620 What can in winter render more delight, Than the high sun at noon, and fire at night? ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... we accept the teachings of the Old Testament, inference gives much stronger testimony to the immortality of animals than it does to the immortality of man, for while in neither case is there a direct assertion of a future life, yet there is no direct denial of future life to the animals, as has been shown to ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... spoke then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was something of threat in the strong animal countenance, something of laughter ready to break out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been in the face, and now, as substitute for what was gone, was the brag look of assertion that it was still all there. Many stranded travellers knocked at Jessamine's door, and now, as always, she offered the hospitalities of her neat abode, the only room in Separ fit for a woman. As she spoke, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only spared my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that at first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive; and why I was allowed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rather a bold assertion; and we should be sorry to maintain the fact as universal; but the crystals of almost all the rarer minerals are larger in the larger mountain; and that altogether independently of the period of elevation, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the "Ossemens Fossiles," I can understand the position he has taken up; if he has ever opened a respectable modern manual of palaeontology, or geology, I cannot. For the facts which demolish his whole argument are of the commonest notoriety. But before proceeding to consider the evidence for this assertion we must be clear about the meaning ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... them got hold of me, I assured them that I had been prevented from the first by force from going on deck, and that I had not joined the mutineers. They laughed at my assertion, and I was dragged along the deck and ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... over-statement of a good cause, habitually throws the minds of his hearers into an attitude of opposition. There are the many men who, by ill-timed or too frequent levity, lose all credit for their serious qualities, or who by pretentiousness or self-assertion or restless efforts to distinguish themselves, make themselves universally disliked, or who by their egotism or their repetitions or their persistence, or their incapacity of distinguishing essentials from details, or understanding ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of the assertion, which I have heard made, that the prosperity of Atlanta is "founded on insurance premiums, coca-cola, and hot air," it seems to me that it is founded on something very much more solid. Nor do I refer to the layer ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... For Mark informs us, that the miracles which followed the preaching of the apostles were wrought in confirmation[10] of it, and Luke tells us, that[11] "the Lord gave testimony to the word of his grace," when "signs and wonders" were "done by the hands" of the apostles. Very similar to which is the assertion of the apostle, that "salvation was confirmed" by the preaching of the Gospel, "God also bearing witness with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles."[12] But those things which we are told were seals of the Gospel, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... that of the lamented poet-professor, Edmund Rowland Sill, who said of 'The Science of English Verse', "It is the only work that has ever made any approach to a rational view of the subject. Nor are the standard ones overlooked in making this assertion."** ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... effect of sugar on the teeth, it is believed, is not now seriously contended for by any persons who think and make observations on the matter, though, undoubtedly, the assertion respecting it holds its place as strongly as ever, among the economical maxims of prudent matrons. A word or two as to lime. When this is spoken of, let it be understood always what is meant; whether pure lime, that is what is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... fetiches had been overthrown, and, though professing to defend them, she had rejoiced. When Mr. Wilcox said that one sound man of business did more good to the world than a dozen of your social reformers, she had swallowed the curious assertion without a gasp, and had leant back luxuriously among the cushions of his motor-car. When Charles said, "Why be so polite to servants? they don't understand it," she had not given the Schlegel retort of, "If they don't understand it, I do." No; she ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... in the background, the dog running away, all these details help each other to carry out the effect of line and colour. There is not a square inch in this canvas which does not betray a rare talent. This is a case in which the assertion, "Cut me a piece out of a picture and I will tell you if it is by an artist," ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... were taken for an investigation of Mr. Clinton's affairs, and the estate was pronounced insolvent, and all was offered for sale. At first Henriette could scarcely believe the assertion, but when she became convinced of its truth, she nerved her mind to meet the trial, relying upon that God "who tempers the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii Paulini ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... this island appeared to be so exactly like the Taheitians, that we could perceive no difference, nor could we by any means verify that assertion of former navigators, that the women of this island were in general fairer, and more handsome; but this may vary according to circumstances. They were, however, not so troublesome in begging for beads and other presents, nor so forward ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... that thought two ideas. One is the unmistakable assertion of the whole fulness of the divine nature as being in the Incarnate Word, and the other is that the whole fulness of the divine nature dwells in the Incarnate Word in order that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... not found his pretensions upon miracles, properly so called; that is, upon proofs of supernatural agency capable of being known and attested by others. Christians are warranted in this. assertion by the evidence of the Koran, in which Mahomet not only does not affect the power of working miracles, but expressly disclaims it. The following passages of that book furnish direct proofs of the truth of what we allege:—"The infidels say, Unless a sign be sent down ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... wearing out your clothes on this gala day," laughed Miriam Nesbit, who had appeared in the open door in time to hear Grace's plaintive assertion. She was wearing a becoming suit of blue and a blue ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... "Geographical Grammar," tells us, that the English language is a compound of the Saxon, the French, and the Celtic. As far as this latter is concerned, the assertion appears to me to have been made without due consideration; I do not believe that there are twenty words of genuine Celtic in the English language; there are, it is true, a very few Irish words, which have become as it were, English denizens, and of these I have sent you a specimen above; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... keep thee in doubtful reflection. The study of greatest interest is religion. I have travelled the world over—I mean the inhabited parts—and in its broad extent there is not a people without worship of some kind. Wherefore my assertion, that beyond the arts, above the sciences, above commerce, above any or all other human concernments, religion is the superlative interest. It alone is divine. The study of it is worship. Knowledge of it is knowledge of God. Can as much be said ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... upright and true, he would openly say what he found. Louvois, piqued, grew angry. The King, who was not less so, allowed him to say his say. Le Notre, meanwhile, did not stir. At last, the King made him go, Louvois still grumbling, and maintaining his assertion with audacity and little measure. Le Notre measured the window, and said that the King was right by several inches. Louvois still wished to argue, but the King silenced him, and commanded him to see that the window was altered at once, contrary to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... friend of the deceased, and Mr. Hale, a lawyer of repute and the legal adviser of Miss Loach, depart before ten o'clock. In her evidence Mrs. Herne stated that she and Mr. Hale left at half-past nine, and her assertion was corroborated by Mr. Hale himself. Mr. Clancy, the third friend, left at ten, being shown out by the maid Susan Grant, who then returned to the kitchen. She left Miss Loach seated in her usual chair near the fire, and with a pack of cards on ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... lips to speak to Bob, that Bob might share with him the sight of Danny O'Flannigan's discomfiture. He longed to display this overwhelming proof of the falseness of Bob's assertion that dad would sell his vote; but—best let by-gones be by-gones; he had punished Bob for that, and, after all, Handy Mike was Bob's father. He could tell Bob of it later—how dad had sent Danny O'Flannigan to the ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... Norma jumped along at his side for a few minutes, eyeing him expectantly, but Wolf's mind was honestly busy with this assertion, and he did not speak. Wasn't she pretty? Girls had funny standards. "You know," she resumed, "you'd hate a ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... stranger—let me call him by this title, who to all the world was still a stranger—the person of the stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have been below rather than above the medium size: although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with a force that was almost vicious. As she said them it happened that Claude Heath turned a little. His eyes travelled down the room and met hers. Perhaps her mother had just been speaking to him of her, had been making some assertion about her. For he seemed to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... dormitory had been accustomed to agree that if they were questioned by any master about the smell of smoking, they would all deny that any smoking had taken place. The other nine boys in the dormitory, with the doubtful exception of Elgood, had promised that they would stick to this assertion in case of their being asked. The question was, "Would Charlie promise the same thing?" If not, the boys felt doubly insecure—insecure about the stability of their falsehood and the secrecy ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... interesting facts and comparisons; but although his work comprises two volumes, he devotes to the origin of self-consciousness, individuality, abstraction, general ideas, etc., only a single page, and justifies his brief treatment with the assertion that the attempt at discussing these higher faculties is useless, because hardly two authors agree in their definitions of these terms. What he says about self-consciousness is really contained in two sentences, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... These fine blocks of ice clearly refute the assertion made by some travellers, that the first real glaciers are found in 19 deg. S. lat. The extensive fields of ice from which the blocks in question are brought are situated in ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the ancient and modern poets, and his masterly and eloquent developement of every subject that his acute intellect chose to dilate upon." His conversation was ever egotistical in the extreme: the bold assertion that his Lacon was the most clever work in the English language, was ever on his lips, and I regret to add, obscenity and irreligion too often supplied the place of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... slouch hat or helmet dimly seen in the mirk was the only badge of friend or foe. A singular letter is extant from young Reitz (the son of the Transvaal secretary), who was present. According to his account there were but eight Boers present, but assertion or contradiction equally valueless in the darkness of such a night, and there are some obvious discrepancies in his statement. 'We fired among them,' says Reitz. 'They stopped and all cried out "Rifle Brigade." Then one of them ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reference to an individual centre predominates over helpless gravitation. First, aggregation about a centre, as in the crystal,—then, arrangement of the parts, as upper, under, and lateral, as in the plant,—then, organization of these into members. Form is the self-assertion of the thing as no longer means only; this makes its attractiveness to the artist. The root of his delight in ideal form is that it promises some finality amid the endless maze of matter. But this higher completeness, which is beauty, whether it happen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... our preacher's eyes, and so thoroughly does it bespeak a state of affairs under the sun in confusion, that Solomon ventures the strongest possible assertion. Better, he says, an untimely birth, that never saw light, than a thousand years twice told, thus spent in vanity, without real good having been found. How bitter life must show itself to lead to such ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... speaking, the most important question in the present state of things. It is the organisation of the European task. In principle, nationality ought to be to humanity that which division of labour is in a workshop—the recognised symbol of association; the assertion of the individuality of a human group called by its geographical position, its traditions, and its language, to fulfill a special function in the European work ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... included in this passage has three main sections: his noble and dignified assertion of his official purity, his summary of the past history, and his solemn declaration of the conditions of future wellbeing for the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... recent date, have excited in the reader a great astonishment. We had supposed that the constituents, and the functions of our atmosphere were very well understood, that little, if anything, could be learned by further investigation. Yet the revelations which are now being made show the assertion of SIR LYON PLAYFAIR to ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... matutinal operation I struck my hand against something and looking, observed that it was the hideous little ivory image of Zikali, which he had set about my neck. The sight of the thing and the memory of his ridiculous talk about it, especially of its assertion that it had come down to him through the ages, which it could not have done, seeing that it was a likeness of himself, irritated me so much that I proceeded to take it off with the full intention of throwing it ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... is a mere transformation of the primary forces before alluded to; that the correlation of forces includes those of animal life, and that will itself is but the result of molecular change in the brain. I think, however, that it can be shown, that this latter assertion has neither been proved, nor even been proved to be possible; and that in making it, a great leap in the dark has been taken from the known to the unknown. It may be at once admitted that the muscular force of animals and ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... formerly of Millbank. With this lady (who assisted in the business) he lived in great domestic happiness, only chequered by those little storms which serve to clear the atmosphere of wedlock, and brighten its horizon. In some of these gusts of bad weather, Mr Tappertit would, in the assertion of his prerogative, so far forget himself, as to correct his lady with a brush, or boot, or shoe; while she (but only in extreme cases) would retaliate by taking off his legs, and leaving him exposed to the derision of those urchins ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that effect, which few understood and none presumed to call in question. This important step secured, with the assistance of a man of law whom he brought with him for the purpose, the dwarf proceeded to establish himself and his coadjutor in the house, as an assertion of his claim against all comers; and then set about making his quarters ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... things show," said I, "that the staff of power has passed from the hands of gentility into those of labor. We may think the working classes somewhat unseemly in their assertion of self-importance; but, after all, are they, considering their inferior advantages of breeding, any more overbearing and impertinent than the upper classes have always been to them in all ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Francis Geraldine. Out of her milk-white innocency no confession was to be made. But what there was had all been laid bare to him. There had been no lover,—but if there had, then there would have been a lie told. She had said that there had been none, and he had heard her assertion with those greedy ears which men sometimes have for such telling. It was a comfort to him that there had been none; and when something uncomfortable came in his way he immediately thought that she had deceived him. ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... interests than for their suffering fellow-creatures, begin to murmur rather loudly against the Berkeley Adonis, representing that the town itself suffers in respectability and increase of visitors, by its being known as the rendezvous of the bloods and blacks of Berkeley. The truth of this assertion may be gathered from the 228following jeu d' esprit, only one among a hundred of such squibs that have been very freely circulated in Cheltenham and the neighbourhood within the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the production of a genuine prodigy. We are not aware that Mrs. Green's favourite Alderney spoke on that occasion, or conducted itself otherwise than as unaccustomed to public speaking as usual. Neither can we verify the assertion of the intelligent Mr. Mole the gardener, that the plaster Apollo in the Long Walk was observed to be bathed in a profuse perspiration, either from its feeling compelled to keep up the good old classical custom, or because the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... on this point of the consciences of some persons, timorous in literary matters, whom I have seen affected with a personal sorrow on viewing the rashness with which the imagination sports with the most weighty characters of history, I will hazard the assertion that, not throughout this work, I dare not say that, but in many of these pages, and those perhaps not of the least merit, history is a romance of which the people are the authors. The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... that the powers of evil are active in the world to find that the family is the very centre of their attack at the present time. The crass egotism lying back of so much modern teaching is nowhere more clearly visible than in the assertion of the right of self-determination so blatantly made in popular writings. By self-determination is ultimately meant the right of the individual to seek his own happiness in his own way, and to make pleasure the rule of his life. "The right to happiness" ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... is a foe to nationality, so is it the mortal enemy of individualism. The caste system is really a glorification of the multitude as against the individual. Individual initiative and assertion, liberty of conscience, the right of man to life and the pursuit of happiness,—all these are foibles of the West which it has been the chief business of caste to crush; and upon their ruin it has erected this mighty ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... angry at the failure of "Lavengro," and in the appendix to "The Romany Rye" he actually said that he had never called "Lavengro" an autobiography and never authorised anyone to call it such. This was not a lie but a somewhat frantic assertion that his critics were mistaken about his "dream." In later years he quietly admitted that "Lavengro" gave an account ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion that he would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew that Firio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail. He wrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that he might come ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Maitresse." When I read at Marienbad a little while ago the newspaper notices on the production of "La Femme de Tabarin" I even wrote to you, dear Signor Sonzogno, thinking this was an imitation of "Pagliacci." This assertion will suffice, coming from an honorable man, to prove my loyalty. If not, then I will place my undoubted rights under the protection of the law, and furnish incontestable proof of what I have stated here. I have the honor, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Not that you haven't done your work well enough, so far as I know. But you have more than a young man's self-assurance and self-assertion. I have noticed also a note of condescension, of criticism in your bearing to those about you. The critical attitude to society and individuals is a bad one for a successful practitioner of medicine to fall into. It is more ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... influence to imagination, it was boldly answered that the cure took place when the wounded party did not know of the application made to the weapon, and even when a brute animal was the subject of the experiment, and that this assertion, as we all know it was, came in such a shape as to shake the incredulity of the keenest thinker of his time. The very same assertion has been since repeated in favor of Perkinism, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... direction of hers, met the long, bright rays, whose still witness-bearing was almost too powerful to be borne. The sun was just dipping majestically into the sea, and its calm self-assertion seemed to him at that instant hardly stronger than its vindication of ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... from popular with any party, Pius IX. was respected and beloved by a vast majority of the gentlemen as well as of the people. Giovanni's first impulse was to resist any interference whatsoever in his affairs; but on receiving the Cardinal's mild answer to his own somewhat arrogant assertion of independence, he bowed politely and professed himself willing to listen ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... others say he died at Salisbury in 1744. Although Farquhar, like Goldsmith, undoubtedly drew his incidents and personages from his own daily associations, there is probably no more truth in these surmises than in the assertion (repeatedly made, though denied in his preface to The Inconstant) that Farquhar depicts himself in his young heroes, his rollicking 'men about town,' Roebuck, Mirabel, Wildair, Plume, Archer. Archer (copied by Hoadley in his character ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... out that the stars are minding their own business instead of meddling with theirs." Now, while it is true that modern Astronomy has superseded the ancient system, and people have ceased to believe that the stars are intervening in mundane affairs, nothing could be further from the truth than the assertion that "Astronomy has shattered the fallacies of Astrology;" and those of our readers who will accord to this work an unprejudiced perusal can hardly fail to be convinced that a large majority of the people of Christendom are dominated as much by these fallacies as were our Pagan ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... of disentangling or expressing the flood of ideas that overwhelmed her, the good lady relieved herself after a few broken sentences, with the assertion that it was of no use arguing with Ruth, for ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... a paper on the steamer, that—" Mrs. D'Alloi hesitated, remembering that it had charged Peter with about every known sin of which man is capable. Then she continued, "But I knew it was wrong." Yet there was quite as much of question as of assertion in her remark. In truth, Mrs. D'Alloi was by no means sure that Peter was all that was desirable, for any charge made against a politician in this country has a peculiar vitality and persistence. She had been told that Peter was an open supporter of saloons, and that New York politics ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... story of the midnight tragedy. Further questioning elicited the assertion that he was utterly unable to account for Maillot's presence in the house; that he had never seen him before, and that he was sure the young man's call had been unexpected by Mr. Page, as the latter had, the last thing the previous evening at his office, instructed ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... and found an additional proof of the assertion as, one by one, a picturesque band of carollers entered the room by the farthest door and took up their position in a semicircle facing the audience. They were uniformly robed in black, with cowl-like hoods hanging loosely round the face, and each bore ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... why it was so, went out thoughtfully. She knew the appearance of a jewel-case tolerably well, and had more than a suspicion as to whom the girl had obtained it from. Miss Schuyler, who would not have believed Clavering's assertion about the trinket had she heard it, wondered what he expected in exchange for it, which perhaps accounted for the fact that she contrived to overtake him in the corridor at the head ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the truth of the lad's assertion. It spoke in the dignity of his whole figure; in the proud poise of his head; in the unflinching gaze with which he met ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... statement by Darwin disposes of Mr. Grant Allen's assertion that geology was Darwin's "first love" (p. 36). He reckoned himself an entomologist when he went to Cambridge, and certainly Mr. Ainsworth's statement shows that he was a naturalist in a wide sense while at Edinburgh. C. V. Riley, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... since, not even when Henry had told him the lady of his heart was called Howard—obscured by his friend's assertion that her husband was an American, he had not for an instant suspected ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... because everything happens of necessity, through the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth, which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events, as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must always be true or false in itself, even though we know not always which it is. And all these reasons for determination which appear different converge finally like lines upon one and the same centre; for there is a truth ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... that industrial and social system far above all others, in the choice of a secure basis for the foundation of a true republic. In fact, George! After carefully considering the bearings of the questions involved, I feel sure that you will heartily agree with me in the assertion, that co-operative society, is the very embodiment of even handed justice, in which the rights of all are considered. Furthermore, you will be willing to admit, that it teaches the value of labor, and how to discover its uses and abuses. In eliminating its abuses, it will appear, that ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... tell me that man cannot create; that he can only combine into new shapes elements which God has furnished to his hands. I do not know this. That he has not created I admit; but that he has not capabilities, as yet undeveloped, as a creator, I do not KNOW. I will not venture the assertion that the time will ever come when he will have discovered wherein lies the mystery of life; that he will ever find an antidote to disease; that he will search out some recuperative agency stronger than ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... when some one caught sight of the pendent sheet. The masters soon heard the report, and sent Carter to make inquiries, but they did not succeed in discovering anything definite about you. Then, of course, everybody assumed as a certainty that you were guilty, and I fear that my bare assertion on the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... of the Lord,' religion with the Russian implies a genuine abasement and loss of self, a bowing before the will of Heaven, and true brotherly love. The Western mind rises to greatness by concentrating the will-power in action, by assertion of all its inner force, by shutting out forcibly whatever might dominate or distract or weaken it. But the Russian mind, through its lack of character, will-power, and hardness, rises to greatness in its ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... been bound to him from the beginning," but Aben Ezra and most of the commentators contend that Keturah and Hagar are two distinct persons, and the use of the plural concubines, in verse 6, bears them out in this assertion. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... von Thiele. "Visibly embarrassed," he writes, "he told me that the Prussian Government was absolutely ignorant of the matter and that it did not exist for them." This was the only answer to be got; in a despatch sent on the 11th to the Prussian agents in Germany, Bismarck repeated the assertion. "The matter has nothing to do with Prussia. The Prussian Government has always considered and treated this affair as one in which Spain and the selected candidate are alone concerned." This was literally true, for it had never been brought before the Prussian Ministry, and no ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... promiscuously. As often as I get hold of trustworthy persons to whom I may safely deliver them, I will not omit to do so. As to your question about each particular person's loyalty and friendly feelings towards you, it is difficult to speak in regard to individuals. I can venture on this one assertion, which I often hinted to you before, and now write from close observation and knowledge—that certain persons, and those, above all others, who were most bound and most able to help you, have been ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of Commons on the 3d of August he declared that the British attitude was laid down by the British Government in 1870, and he verbally cited Mr. Gladstone's speech, in which he said he could not subscribe to the assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee was binding on every party, irrespective altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself at the time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises. He ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... suppress the acknowledgment, my dear sir, that I have always felt a kind of gloom upon my mind, as often as I have been taught to expect I might, and perhaps must ere long, be called to make a decision. You will, I am well assured, believe the assertion (though I have little expectation it would gain credit from those who are less acquainted with me), that if I should receive the appointment, and should be prevailed upon to accept it, the acceptance would be attended with more diffidence and reluctance ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... 'I am the head partner,' she says 'and the rich one of the firm; they daren't turn their backs on Me.' You remember the information I received—in perfect good faith on his part—from the man who keeps the inn? The visit to the London doctor, and the assertion of failing health, were adopted as the best means of plausibly severing the lady's connection (the great lady now!) with a calling so unworthy of her as the keeping of an inn. Her neighbors at the seaport were all deceived by the stratagem, with ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Alden and with herself. Why couldn't the man go to sleep? It must be past midnight, now, and she would walk, if she wanted to. Defiantly and in a triumph of self-assertion, she went to the open window and peered out into the stillness, illumined by neither moon nor stars. The night had the suffocating quality of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... not sink altogether before he could be made to begin to rise. But one thing was clear. He should be contradicted in nothing. If he chose to say that the moon was made of green cheese, let it be conceded to him that the moon was made of green cheese. Should he make any other assertion equally removed from the truth, let it not be contradicted. Who would oppose a man with one foot ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Treason, Charles the Martyr, the Restoration and the Accession—gave suitable occasion for sermons of the most polemical vehemence. Even the two Collects for the King at the beginning of the Communion Service were regarded as respectively Tory and Whig. The first, with its bold assertion of the Divine Right of Sovereignty, was that which commended itself to every loyal clergyman on his promotion; and unfavourable conclusions were drawn with regard to the civil sentiments of the man who preferred the colourless alternative. As in the Church, so in our educational system. Oxford, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of loving sympathy. The dominance in one's life of a critical spirit which saps the warmth out of everything it touches. Jealousy, and the whole brood which that single word suggests. Keeping money which God would have out in service for himself. Self-seeking. Self-assertion. A frivolous spirit, instead of a joyous winsomeness, or a sweet seriousness. Overworking one's bodily strength, which grows out of a wrong ambition, and is trusting one's own efforts more than God's power, and which always involves disobedience ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... its success, and with as many fears for the result. The experiment of 1863, under all its disadvantages, gave us convincing proof that the production of cotton and sugar by free labor was both possible and profitable. The negro had proved the incorrectness of the slaveholders' assertion that no black man would labor on a plantation except as a slave. So much we had seen accomplished. It was the result of a single year's trial. We desired to see a further ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Slavs would still be able to muster barely more than a third of the total population. By far the strongest title which the Slavs have to the city, and the one which commands for them the greatest sympathy, is their assertion that Fiume is the natural and, indeed, almost the only practicable commercial outlet for Jugoslavia, and that the struggling young state needs it desperately. In reply to this, the Italians point out that there are numerous harbors along the Dalmatian coast which would answer the needs ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the various aspects of beauty which one may find in studying natural objects. This argument from design in nature has been overruled by a study of the evolutionary processes. Paley based his argument on the assertion of a mind behind phenomena, the workings of which could be seen in the forms of animal life. The theists no longer use Paley's original arguments, but a great deal of the theistic arguments are still based on his assumptions. From the humanistic ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years that clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible self-assertion: so great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of the spirit from routine. Perhaps the surest sign of his election—that he was indeed, on the spiritual side, the child of a noble house—is that story of the Pantisocratic ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was on the other side, and from an early period she listened to the conversation between them. Hurriedly crossing over, "what are you up to again?" she said to Pao-yue, "why, there's nothing to put your monkey up! I'm perfectly right in my assertion that when I'm away for any length of time, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it. But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the iron our lads must needs give ground ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... they were now forgotten and the loud British boastings equaled all the tales of Yankee brag. A member of Parliament declared that the "action which Broke fought with the Chesapeake was in every respect unexampled. It was not—and he knew it was a bold assertion which he made—to be surpassed by any other engagement which graced the naval annals of Great Britain." Admiral Warren was still in a peevish humor at the hard knocks inflicted on the Royal Navy when he wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At this critical moment you could not have restored ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... man is in love, to be reasonable is often to be cowardly. But Hyde was no coward; so then, it was not long ere he put all fears and doubts behind him and set his musings to the assertion: "I said to my heart, last night, that I would meet Cornelia at Richmond Hill this morning. I will not go back on my word. Such fluctuability ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... retorts a sharp voice, which belonged to a sturdy figure well out at the elbows. He declared he had driven the whigs out of Old North Carolina—had carried strong the, State for Pierce and posterity. Another individual near by, and who seemed inclined to doubt the assertion, suggested whether it were not more probable he carried all the watering establishments of that renowned state, seeing that his nose and eyes had stood the storm of spirits. No one ever heard of his carrying ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... do but she must quit his roof forever and come to be a burden on her brother, who has quite enough to stagger under already." ("Hum!" thought Bayard at this juncture, "how little she realizes the truth of that assertion!") "Mr. Courtlandt had been devoted to her from her childhood, had lavished everything on her, had educated her, sent her abroad, provided for her in every way, and—she rewarded him by taking this silly prejudice against his son, whom she ought ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... was nothing to be so mightily timorous about, for, according to my calculation, two smaller or whiter feet didn't leave their prints in the sand that day, though I do make that assertion with my own lips, that ought to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... to produce a light by using his knife on a bit of flint for five or ten minutes, said he had "just got it," and proved the truth of his assertion by handing his son a mass of smoking material. Billy blew this into a flame, and applied it to the wood, which soon kindled ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... "but since you yield the technical point of logic, I will confess that I made the assertion hastily and overshot the mark. I do not remember, however, to have met any one who felt so strongly on ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... doublet of light blue, very nearly resembling the jacket of the English light cavalry. This portrait was taken when the King was in his twenty-eighth year, and therefore is probably a far more correct resemblance than those which were taken at a more advanced period—so true is the assertion, of the poet, that old men ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of natural laws, the history of the internal and external careers of the human race—this is the affair of science and philosophy; rules of conduct, individual and communal, grow up through men's association with one another in society, their basis being certain primary instincts of self-assertion and sympathy; art is the product of the universal sense of beauty. All these lines of growth stand side by side and coalesce ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... trying his best. His description would have fitted any one of a round million of American women, I suppose; yet out of it I thought I could draw some faint touches of familiarity. The stumbling description, coupled with Barton's assertion that Agatha Geddis was living in Colorado, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... support of this assertion I translate a letter addressed (Milan, September 15, 1622) by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo to the Prioress of the Convent of S. Margherita at Monza (Dandolo, Signora di Monza, p. 132). 'Experience of similar cases has shown how dangerous to your holy state is the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... notions; one or two even went so far as to accuse him of being a snob and to twit him on having changed the spelling of his name and dropped the first "r" for the sake of a stylishness he pretended to despise. He protested hotly; they stuck to their assertion. He declared his name was Patridge, always had been Patridge, and never could be anything else; they disbelieved him, and so the dispute remained a drawn battle for want of an umpire till long afterwards, when Robert Hart himself proved the point ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Irishmen have been declared by a great and certainly not an unfavourable critic—Mr. Matthew Arnold—to be "eternal rebels against the despotism of fact." If this is so—and who upon the Irish side of the channel can wholly and absolutely deny the assertion?—then our one poor standing-point is plucked from under our feet, and we are all abroad upon the waves again. Will Home Rule or would Home Rule, it has been asked, recognize this fact as one of the immutable ones, or would it sooner or later incline to think ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
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