"Self-reliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lived in houses so long, where the air is often close and impure and where we have no need of sharp senses for protection, that we have lost some of the strength and sturdy self-reliance of our ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... and some other light ships, was between the blockading fleet and the blockaded, where perpetual vigilance was needed. This sharp service was the very thing required to improve his character, to stamp it with decision and self-reliance, and to burnish his quiet, contemplative vein with the very frequent friction of the tricks of mankind. These he now was strictly bound not to study, but anticipate, taking it as first postulate that every one would cheat him, if permitted. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... went an inspiration lifting its votaries to a self-reliance founded on God, a harbinger of hope to ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some youth among them who has over- eaten himself, or has been worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son: but this is a rare case: perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... was conscious of its great potential superiority over Canada, in men and in available resources. So evident, indeed, was the disparity, that the prevalent feeling was not one of reasonable self-reliance, but of vainglorious self-confidence; of dependence upon mere bulk and weight to crush an opponent, quite irrespective of preparation or skill, and disregardful of the factor of military efficiency. Jefferson's words have already been quoted. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... inferior to man. She had lost her equality. She was excluded from general intercourse, and her confinement to her own home and apartments, without education, without social recognition, left her without strength of character, self-reliance, or resources with herself. "Woman's safety in society lies in two elements: her own virtue and intelligence, and the consequent respect for her which such a character inspires. Where these two things are found, she may participate ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... his complexion. It would seem that all the color of his frame had gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they were laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naivete and wonder of the child; and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained much of calm self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and experience ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Many noted border scouts and Indian fighters—such men as Boon, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, McCulloch, Mansker[51]—grew to overmatch their Indian foes at their own game, and held themselves above the most renowned warriors. But these men carried the spirit of defiant self-reliance to such an extreme that their best work was always done when they were alone or in small parties of but four or five. They made long forays after scalps and horses, going a wonderful distance, enduring extreme hardship, risking the most terrible of deaths, and harrying the hostile tribes into ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in the colonies must take with him a quantity of self-reliance, energy, and perseverance; this is the best capital a man can have. Let none rely upon introductions—they are but useless things at the best—they may get you invited to a good dinner; but now that fresh arrivals in Melbourne ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... to go home. It won't be long now, but I shall be content if I know the fortune which failed to make me happy is bringing joy and sunshine into the lives of scores of homeless children—hundreds in time, perhaps—and is giving them the education and self-reliance and refinement and love which will make them noble ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... know how to adapt herself to circumstances," said Mr. Goodlow. "I was conversing last summer with that Mrs. Bland who boarded at Mr. Parker's, and she told me that girls in Europe are brought up with no habits of self-reliance whatever, and that young ladies are never seen on the streets alone ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... did not feel above useful employment, on the farm, or in the workshop and factory. And this quality was a great help to him. For it is cousin to that hopefulness which he possessed, and brother to his self-reliance and independence. No man ever accomplished much who was afraid of doing work beneath his dignity. Dr. Franklin was nothing but a soap-boiler when he commenced; Roger Sherman was only a cobbler, and kept a book by his side on the ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... death at the eleventh hour, and of all men would she not save Ferriss? In such sickness as this it was the nurse and not the doctor who must be depended upon. And, once again, never so strong, never so fine, never so glorious, her splendid independence, her pride in her own strength, her indomitable self-reliance leaped in her breast, leaped and stood firm, hard as tempered steel, head to the Enemy, daring the assault, defiant, immovable, unshaken in its resolve, unconquerable in the steadfast tenacity of ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... him, as is shown by his strenuous advocacy of increased armaments, better coast defenses, and more and more powerful ships. "He never ceased for a single moment to keep before the nation the great lesson that empires are kept as they are gained, by courage and self-reliance." ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... our duty, and God gave us the victory," said Paul. He stood before them taller and stouter than when he went away. He was sunburnt; but his countenance was noble and manly, and marked with self-reliance. He never had made a speech. He did not know what to say. To stand there facing the audience, with his mother, Azalia, Daphne, and all his old friends before him, was very embarrassing. It was worse than meeting the Rebels in battle. But why ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... met with, in putting this theory into practice, that the industry, once that it has learned to depend on the help of the state, never reaches a stage when it is willing to give up the assistance of the duties. Dependence on legislation begets a want of self-reliance, and destroys the stimulus to progress and good management. It is said: "There has never been an instance in the history of the country where the representatives of such industries, who have enjoyed protection for a long series of years, have been willing to submit to a reduction of the tariff, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... they cannot endure even a momentary separation from the herd. They are essentially slavish, and accept the common determination, seeking no better lot than to be led by any one ox who has enough self-reliance to accept the position. The men who break in these animals for harness, watch assiduously for those who, by grazing apart, shew a self-reliant disposition, and these they train as fore-oxen. Mr. Galton ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a sanguine nervous temperament, with her likes and dislikes of the strongest possible, with a great deal of animal nature, cheerful and talkative, yet lacking in force, by nature kind and benevolent to a fault, and her development of individuality and self-reliance small, she was one who could be easily persuaded but never driven. Jackson was not slow to learn this, and with honeyed words and protestations of love, he won Pearl Bryan's heart. This won, the accomplishment of his devilish designs, her ruin, was easy. She fell a victim to ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... at wigwams instead of cottages. One fancies that, had it been summer, Israel would have travelled with a wheelbarrow, and so trundled his wares through the primeval forests, with the same indifference as porters roll their barrows over the flagging of streets. In this way was bred that fearless self-reliance and independence which conducted our ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... enemies, from the very fact that we were unknown to them—all these are removed; we have none behind us to fall back upon, as our countrymen in former battles have leaned upon us—and we are reduced to the necessity of self-defence and self-reliance. The sed seems to be antithetic to the whole as far back as priores pugnae; whereas nunc is opposed only to the clause which immediately precedes it, and constitutes an antithesis ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... late flowering against the casement-window of what had been her mother's room. When she took her seat in the gig, she was little able, even if she had been inclined, to profit by her guardian's lectures on economy and self-reliance; but she was quiet and silent, looking forward with longing to the night-time, when, in her bedroom, she might give way to all her passionate sorrow at being wrenched from the home where she had lived with her parents, in that utter absence of any anticipation of change, which ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... person in the room, one whose appearance contrasted strongly with that of the old man. It was a boy of sixteen, a boy with dark brown hair, ruddy cheeks, hazel eyes, an attractive yet firm and resolute face, and an appearance of manliness and self-reliance. He was well dressed, and, though the tenant of such an humble home, would have passed muster upon the streets of ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... answered, giving her a look of loving reverence, "but surely the passing years must have brought you so much wisdom and self-reliance that that can be no such very hard ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... land, harvest his own crops, defend his own fireside; his temporal and eternal salvation were strictly his own affair. He asked, and expected, no aid from the community; he could at most "change works" in time of harvest, with a neighbor, if he had one. It was the sternest school of self-reliance, from babyhood to the grave, that human society is ever likely to witness. It bred heroes and cranks and hermits; its glories and its eccentricities are written in the pages of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman; ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... this irregularity has a most pernicious effect upon the character of the worker. Professor Foxwell has thus strikingly expressed the moral influences of this economic factor: "When employment is precarious, thrift and self-reliance are discouraged. The savings of years may be swallowed up in a few months. A fatalistic spirit is developed. Where all is uncertain and there is not much to lose, reckless overpopulation is certain to be set at. These effects are not confined to the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... "Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour truly to get his own living, and carefully to save and expend the good things committed ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... fifteen years; but to him, her teacher, she is not the same, for while in some respects she is more a woman and less a child, in everything pertaining to himself she is far more a child than when first he met her one short year ago. Then there was about her a certain self-reliance, which is now all gone, and he who has looked so often into the thoughts and feelings of that childish heart knows he can ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... not always the lord of the house. He is as often, if not more frequently, its slave. Then there are the conventions of life. In place of a fine sense of courtesy prevailing between man and woman, which would recognise with the woman's finer sensibility a fine self-reliance, and with the man's greater strength a fine gentleness, we have a false code of manners, by which the woman is to be taken about, petted and treated generally as the useless being she often is; while the man becomes an effeminate creature that but cumbers the earth. Fine courtesy and fine comradeship ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... in a conversation held with him at the Newsboys' Lodging House. He figures here, however, under an assumed name, partly because the record in which his real name is preserved has been mislaid. The impression made upon the mind of the writer was, that Jim had unusual business ability and self-reliance, and might possibly develop into a successful and ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... indiscriminate alms-giving. "In proportion as justice between man and man has declined, that form of charity which consists in giving money has been more quickened." The promotion of industry, the repression of injustice, the encouragement of self-reliance and thrift, are needed far more than the temporary relief of those who suffer from oppression or ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... though with little hope, the girl saw the defeat of her natural champion with sympathetic anguish. Though he had not spied the student, she had regarded him with no faint opinion of his manliness for—repelling the kind of proud self-reliance of her race to have no recourse to strangers during persecution—she lifted her voice with a confidence which startled her ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... inherent optimism is at least a serviceable weapon when it takes the form of self-reliance. It is always at hand in an emergency—a guard of honour to the soul. The loneliness of individual life must learn self-respect from within, not without; and were all creeds to be mixed, that truism ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... periodicals; in her vacations, by her studies of nature, or it may be other communities than her own. The freedom which she enjoys she does not trespass upon, for if she did not learn at school she has acquired since habits of strong self-reliance, self-support, earnest thinking, deep discriminations, and firmly believes that the most perfect liberty is that state in which humanity conforms itself to and obeys strictly, without deviation, those laws which are best fitted ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... front, have been proof enough to the French authorities of the folly of setting rigid standards, making hard-and-fast rules to be met by prospective aviators. As our own experience increased, we saw the wisdom of a policy which is more concerned with a man's courage, his self-reliance, and his powers of initiative, than with his ability to work ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... father, and was at all times devoted to him. In his likeness, then, Apollo said, "Aeneas, can you not manage, even though heaven be against us, to save high Ilius? I have known men, whose numbers, courage, and self-reliance have saved their people in spite of Jove, whereas in this case he would much rather give victory to us than to the Danaans, if you would only fight instead of being so ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... people, and I don't think that is a good system. When a bad year comes, they expect that the fish-curer has to advance them meal; and they will tell him that if he won't do it, they won't fish for him again. In that way he must do it; in fact they think he is bound to do it. They have no self-reliance or independence. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... gigantic intellect, they had forgotten the dignity of their own nature, and were astonished to find how transcendant its resources and sufficient its strength. The publication of the Nation was really an epoch which marked a wonderful change, and from that day forth self-reliance and self-respect began to take the place of grateful but stultified obedience ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... replied, using the pet name the men in barracks frequently called the child. "It's just a wee story of one man fighting it out alone—just alone, single-handed—with no reinforcements but his own courage, his own self-reliance." ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... Harry on a tender spot. No boy of fourteen likes to be considered very young. By that time he generally begins to feel a degree of self-confidence and self-reliance, and fancies he is almost on the threshold of manhood. I know boys of fourteen who look in the glass daily for signs of a coming mustache, and fancy they can see plainly what is not yet visible. Harry had not got as far as that, but he no longer looked upon himself ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... domination. After failing in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed republic in the southern portion by force, North Korea, under its founder President KIM Il Sung, adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence. It molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's control. KIM's son, the current ruler KIM Jong Il, was officially ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... so want to develop self-reliance and initiative in these children, two sturdy qualities in which they are conspicuously lacking (with the exception of Sadie Kate and a few other bad ones). Children who have spirit enough to be bad I consider very hopeful. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... things at hand, and many of the things which can be bought cheaply. Mr. Hall's books have won the confidence of parents, who realize that in giving them to their boys they are providing wholesome occupations which will encourage self-reliance and resourcefulness, and discourage tendencies ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... commercial companies, almost wholly unassisted and uncontrolled by the Government at home. An Empire formed by such methods is not likely to exhibit much symmetry and unity of plan, but it is certain to be pervaded in an unusual degree, in all its parts, by a spirit of enterprise and self-reliance; it will probably be peculiarly fertile in men not only of energy but of resource, capable of dealing with strange conditions and unforeseen exigencies. England in the past periods of her history has, on the whole, been singularly successful in adapting her different ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... "self-culture" we substituted self-reliance, buoyancy, a sense of responsibility, we should scarcely go too far; for, indeed, it would be difficult to say from what sources the consistent determinist is to derive these qualities. He regards himself as the inevitable product of forces which have ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction. We have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the titled European does his social fictions. As a people, we do ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Dundas, indeed, was half inclined to snub Carleton. Simcoe desired to establish military posts wherever he thought they would best promote immediate settlement, a policy which would tend to sap both the government's resources and the self-reliance of the settlers. He also wished to fix the capital at London instead of York, now Toronto, and to make York instead of Kingston the naval base for Lake Ontario. Thus the friction continued. At length Carleton wrote ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... Phoebe follow in quick succession. Then a Tufted Titmouse squeals. To display his versatility, he gives a dull performance which couples the 'go-back' of the Guinea fowl with the plaint of the Wood-pewee, two widely diverse vocal sounds. With all the performance there is such perfect self-reliance and consciousness of superior ability that one feels that the singer has but to choose what bird he will ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... have been poured into his lap. But he preferred to breast the stream, to speak ungrateful truths. He set a wholesome example in this respect; none the less valuable because so few have had the manliness and self-reliance to imitate him. More than twenty years ago De Tocqueville said,—"I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America": words which we fear are not less true to-day than when they were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... company, well embarked on the homeward road, and victualling where the grass was good. Right glad they were to see us again—not for the pleasure of carrying, but because a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... teacher, and the school; while Susan, who lisped, had been provided with a humorous poem in which she impersonated a lisping child. Emma Jane and Rebecca had a dialogue, and the sense of companionship buoyed up Emma Jane and gave her self-reliance. In fact, Miss Dearborn announced on this particular Friday morning that the exercises promised to be so interesting that she had invited the doctor's wife, the minister's wife, two members of the school committee, and a few mothers. Living Perkins was ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... disappointed me on two important occasions—in the Luray Valley during the battle of Fisher's Hill, and on the recent Gordonsville expedition—and I mistrusted his ability to conduct any operations requiring much self-reliance. The column was composed of Custer's and Devin's divisions of cavalry, and two sections of artillery, comprising in all about 10,000 officers and men. On wheels we had, to accompany this column, eight ambulances, sixteen ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not been trained to self-reliance. Except for her northern adventure, she had never been obliged to face difficulties, to care for and protect herself, to work with her hands and do everyday tasks. To build a fire, to repair a leaking tap, to take responsibility for anything above such schoolday projects ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... That he had not committed himself—that his self-betrayal was only known to self—was no merit of his—simply a circumstance. And circumstances seemed mighty in their influence upon him, he thought, with a feeling of deepest contempt. All pride and self-reliance were taken out of him. Absence, at least, would be a safeguard, since it would render harmless such impulses as those of that night. However much he might sin in yearning, she; should never know, never be exposed to the risk of being drawn into his guilt and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and never feel the need of prayer. And though I admit, as above, that it may have some present advantage, yet I am inclined to think that it is bought too dearly at the price of a decrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to be always asking for help, for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me that such a habit must tend ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... mother's constant companion and solace. It was touching to see this pitiless intellect, which had bruised and broken the idols of so many faiths, to which Luther himself was recommended only by his bravery and self-reliance and the grandeur of his aims,—it was touching, we say, and suggestive also of many things, to behold the strong, stern man paying homage to language whose spirit was dead to him, out of pure love for his dear mother, and veneration also for the great heart in which that spirit was once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... There is of course much to be said for and against each system, and perhaps a blend of the two would give good results. Anyhow, we can trace in American customs that spirit of equality which pervades the whole of American society, and observe the germs of self-reliance and independence so characteristic of Americans, whether men, women, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... strength and activity, dexterity, and rapidity of movement. The foil is still the best training tool for the consensus of eye and hand, for the judgment of distance and opportunity, and, in fact, for the practice of combat. And thus swordsmanship engenders moral confidence and self-reliance, while it stimulates a habit ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... self-reliance is not the last word. As Beatrice, the image of tenderness and holiness, comes to Dante in the earthly paradise, and leads him from the summit of purgatory into the heaven of heavens, and even to the eternal light; so there is added to the mere human, intellectual, and moral resources ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... would only have bloomed with more immortal freshness; but such a thought would not have occurred to you at all, if you had not already felt that she was no longer young,—she possessed so perfectly that certain self-reliance, self-understanding, aplomb, into which little folk crystallize at an early age, but which is not to be found with those whose identities are cast in a larger mould, until they have passed through ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the Camp Fire, which allows the girls to work out their ideas unaided if they possibly can, so as to encourage self-reliance and independence, Wanaka did not ask her what she had done. But when the meal was over Bessie slipped away, while Wanaka was serving out some preserves, and returned in a moment, bearing her pie—nobly browned, with ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... honest man who simply desired to express his better self. The elements of caution and expediency were singularly lacking in his character. These qualities of independence and self-reliance brought him into speedy collision with those who stood in the front rank of the artistic world of his day, and he became a marked man. His offense was that he expressed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... impressed on the people. To bring the genius of the Bible into English life and literature, to impress each man with the idea of living for duty, to reduce politics and the whole life of the state to ethical standards, are undoubted services of Puritanism. Politically, it favored the growth of self-reliance, self-control and a sense of personal worth that made democracy possible ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space which had made their lives ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... uncommon. In Ireland he wisely accepted the fact that the Roman Catholic priests had the heart of the people, and shaped his conduct accordingly. His 'Word to the Wise' was an appeal addressed in 1749 to the priests, exhorting them to use their influence to promote industry and self-reliance among their congregations. This sort of Episcopal charge to the clergy of another Communion was received, it is said, with a no less cordial feeling than that in ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... had not affected him to the same extent. The idea, however, that his wife was suffering ill-effects from her terrible ordeal, braced him up. He remained with her for a time, then he sought Sir Nathaniel in order to talk over the matter with him. He knew that the calm common sense and self-reliance of the old man, as well as his experience, would be helpful to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... understand the bearings of the transcendent fact. And as a mother will go a little way off from her little child, in order to encourage it to try to walk, they were left alone to make experiments of that self-reliance which was also reliance on Him, and which was to be their future and their permanent condition. So the week passed, and they became steadier and quieter, and began to be familiar with the thought, and to see some glimpses of what was involved in the mighty ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... looking after him long after his form had disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker had faded. It was wide-eyed with an ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... "Bismillah" in royal and official papers) containing the name of the prince. There is an older "Lamiyat al-Arab" a pre-Islamitic L-poem by the "brigand-poet" Shanfara, of whom Mr. W. G. Palgrave has given a most appreciative account in his "Essays on Eastern Questions," noting the indomitable self-reliance and the absolute individualism of a mind defying its age and all around it. Al-Hariri quotes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... my object to deal generally with the actor's calling, a calling, difficult and hazardous in character, demanding much patience, self-reliance, determination, and good temper. This last is not one of its least important demands on your character. Remember that the actor is not in one sense of the word an independent artist; it is his misfortune that the practice of his art is absolutely dependent on the fulfilment of elaborate ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... way it was settled that the Great Experiment might be tried, especially as so wise a woman as Collins and so old an ally as Runcie were not against it. Both, indeed, were of Uncle Christopher's opinion that the self-help and self-reliance which the caravan would lead to would be ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... progress in sweetness and light, but on the number of the railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the middle classes are told they have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they have done it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to put its trust in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be Philistines to take the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... merely the woman unconsciously at play. A man is bound to remember the seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not shun the society of the sex. My long robust health and perfect self-reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to fitful impressions. Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but to stand firm with such shattered forces was a bold and hazardous resolve, for which Lord Raglan deserves the fullest credit, and the coming winter, with its terrible trials, was destined to put his self-reliance to the proof. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Duncan Yordas were not merely of commonplace. For he was a man of great self-reliance, quick conclusion, and strong resolve. These had served him well in India, and insured his fortune; while early adversity and bitter losses had tempered the arrogance of his race. After the loss of his wife and child, and the breach with all ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Confucius was different.[122-1] No speculative dreamer, but a practical man, bent on improving his fellows by teaching them self-reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the attainment of material comfort, he did not see in the religious systems and doctrines of his time any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like Socrates and many other men of ancient and modern times, without ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... daughter, Mrs. Wingate. The mother, old and withered, was made strong by her power as mother-in-law and her faith in her country and her gods. The daughter was weak and negative by reason of no particular faith and no definite gods. The system by which she had been trained did not include self-reliance nor foster individuality. Under it many of the country's daughters grow to beautiful womanhood because of their gift of living their own inner lives entirely apart, while submitting to the external one ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal subject of a king,—not too despotic, but still a strong-handed, visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a constitution, to a flag; respect for law as law; sturdy independence and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's own,—all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all—the reverence for law—is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman detests law. He loves, indeed, mercy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the sort of man to carry through the burden of a half-discovered secret. It needs a special temperament for this—one that is able to inspire fear in whomsoever it may be necessary to hold in check—a temperament with sufficient self-reliance and strength to play an open game steadily through to the end. Since Durnovo's plain-spoken threat had been uttered Gordon had thought of little else, and it was well known that Jocelyn's influence was all that prevented him from taking hopelessly to drink. When away from her at the sub-factories ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... some sudden thought bringing gravity and self-reliance into his face. "My little girl is going with Uncle Dan. It's the last walk I can take with her. Go, child, and bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... his age, many of them his playmates, were planning to fit themselves, by a long course of study, for the duties of life, he was at once confronted with the duties and burdens of life, without such advantages as an education affords, and he met them with a manliness and a self-reliance which now seem truly marvelous. I have often heard him tell of these early days; but I will pass by the recollections for fear that the recital of them might discourage many ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... phrases which his excogitation had attached to them, and which embodied the ideas in perfect form. He believed he had been particularly fortunate in his notion for the speech of that evening, and he had worked it out in joyous self-reliance. It was the notion of three tramps, three deadbeats, visiting a California mining-camp, and imposing themselves upon the innocent miners as respectively Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell, Holmes. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lavish and wasteful age. The young man who shows what enlightened self-control, what high probity and fidelity to the details of little wants and expenditures can do to lift a man high above debt, to thrift and self-reliance, is a valuable citizen, exerting an influence as wholesome as it ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... hand to his breast. He might have done so if he had met her chambermaid, or any straggling damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be looked upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked like one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to self-reliance, and command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without being struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon her, in that conflict of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of your capability can nowadays allow himself the luxury of independence and manly self-reliance, even if he is one of the nine children of a poor farmer; if one has few wants, one is ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... not reason's fault, but his who misused reason. True, also, that he who believed on others' authority believed not ideas but men, and was destitute of self-reliance or dignity. Yet the hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, it ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... that they have retained throughout their history. From their early nomadic life they inherited physical strength, hardihood, adaptability even to the most unfavorable environment, courage, perseverance and that individual initiative and self-reliance which come from protracted struggles against seemingly insuperable odds. It was a harsh but thorough school in which the infant nation Israel was trained. Their life in the wilderness and in the period ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... however, it had incalculable value. Many of the strongest examples of our national character have been men who owed the best that was in them to the apparently unkindly circumstances of their youth. What was denied to Clark in easy opportunity had ample compensation in the firmness and self-reliance which ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... necessity of character as the chief factor in any man's success—a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others. All this individual morality I was taught by the books I read at home and the books I studied at Harvard. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... although probably a lad about twelve years of age, observed how worthless were the animals which his father was offering. His heart at once became filled with Shraddha. There is no one English word which can convey the meaning of this Sanskrit term. It is more than mere faith. It also implies self-reliance, an independent sense of right and wrong, and the courage of one's own conviction. As a boy of tender age, Nachiketas had no right to question his father's action; yet, impelled by the sudden awakening of his higher nature, he could not but ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... Corpus Act, entirely ignoring the fact that there was no Habeas Corpus Act in Prussia. We can easily understand how repulsive this was to a man who, like Bismarck, wished nothing more than that his countrymen should copy, not the details of the English Constitution, but the proud self-reliance which would regard as impertinent an application ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this time I had from boyhood made a free use of tobacco. The struggle with opium in which I was now so seriously engaged had repeatedly suggested the propriety of including the former also in the contest. While the severity of the struggle would, I supposed, be enhanced, the self-respect and self-reliance, the opposition and even obduracy of the will would, I hoped, be enough increased as not seriously to hazard the one great object of leaving off opium forevcr. Still I dreaded the experiment of adding a feather's weight to the sufferings ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... interested in your account of Miss Kavanagh. The character you sketch belongs to a class I peculiarly esteem: one in which endurance combines with exertion, talent with goodness; where genius is found unmarred by extravagance, self-reliance unalloyed by self-complacency. It is a character which is, I believe, rarely found except where there has been toil to undergo and adversity to struggle against: it will only grow to perfection in a poor soil and in the shade; if the soil be too indigent, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... at me from every corner of the room. My English was so bad, so thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered into an arrangement with her that she was ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... especially of penitence for sin, are distasteful and loathed. Persons of this order prefer to have their religious teacher silent upon these themes, and urge them to courage, honor, magnanimity, and all that class of qualities which imply self-consciousness and self-reliance. To them apply the solemn words of the Son of God to the Pharisees: "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see, therefore ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... the center of political or ecclesiastical power in Rome. If the independence of the Roman consul in Britain was duplicated later by the attitude of the Thirteen Colonies toward England, and again within the young Republic by the headstrong self-reliance, impatient of government authority, which characterized the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths in their aggressive Indian policy, and led them to make war and conclude treaties for the cession of land like sovereign states; ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... sensitive temperament. His hair was dark brown, his features were refined, his eyes were blue and he looked like a boy of affectionate temperament, who would feel injustice and harshness keenly. This was indeed the case. He lacked the strong, sturdy character, the energy and self-reliance which made Robert Coverdale successful. Robert was not a boy to submit to injustice or wrong. He was not easily intimidated and could resist imposition with all his might. But Bill—to call him by the name given him by Mr. Waldo—was of a more gentle, yielding disposition, and so ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... him clearly enough, but, so stubbornly had he set himself to rebuff this young man, and so closely was he wrapped in that pride of reserve that makes a merit of obstinate self-reliance, that it never even occurred to him to answer or to accept this last offer of a fellow-man's interest in the search he was just ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... he the regenerative value of political forms, but his ideal was never that of a millennium to be won by Act of Parliament—he was ever on the watch for some opportunity to remind his countrymen of the indispensable need of self-discipline and self-reliance, of toil, of veracity, of justice and fairness towards opponents. No one ever said sharper and sterner things to the Irish people—witness his articles on "Scolding Mobs," on "Moral Force," and on the attack upon one of the jurors who had convicted ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the necessities of life. The letters written by the women in that period reveal an intelligent grasp of affairs and a strength of spirit altogether admirable. Here was indeed a charming mingling of feminine grace, tenderness, sympathy, self-reliance, and common sense. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... characteristics which go to make a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, manly deference to superior officers, and manly consideration for inferiors. The absence of these traits is not supplied by wide knowledge of books, or by promptitude in answering questions, or by any other quality likely to be brought to light ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... pale. From her eyes had been plucked all look of self-reliance. She leaned with a dependent air toward her companion. She was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure. She seemed to beseech tenderness ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... night more simple, more unassuming, more modest, more unpretentious, more conscious of his own defects than Abraham Lincoln; and yet we now know that within his soul there burned the fires of an unbounded ambition, sustained by a self-reliance and self-esteem that bade him fix his gaze upon the very pinnacle of American fame and aspire to it in a time so troubled that its dangers appalled the soul of every American. What were this man's thoughts when he was left alone? Did a faint shadow of the future ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... the year, a battle royal of man against mother earth? And the man who fights here successfully a winning fight, not stopping to ask at what odds, must be endowed with a great strength, a rugged physical and moral constitution, self-reliance, a true, deep insight into the natures of other men. Those things my father has. So has Bat Truxton, so has Brayley, so, for that matter, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... superintendents may be needed, but, besides doing little good, their own position I think will be very unpleasant. Nor do I think it unmanly to withdraw from such plantations. The irregular wayward life which the people on such places would probably lead undoubtedly will help to develop their self-reliance, but our style of development—that of regular, persistent industry—is so wholly different, that I doubt the wisdom of attempting to yoke the two styles together. In one point experience confirms what theory would suggest,—that their own increasing comfort or misery ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... is not an excess of self-conceit and self-reliance which makes me pass by, rather lightly, I confess, some of the advice that very well-intentioned people occasionally volunteer to missionaries. I have had (D.Gr.) the Primate and Sir William Martin's men, who know what heathenism is, and the latter ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ornaments. She was of a bright and cheerful nature, at first sight extremely open, but with that reserve which so often shows itself, on further acquaintance, in minds of unusual thoughtfulness and depth. There was something especially interesting in her manner—a mixture of shyness and diffidence with self-reliance and decisiveness, quite peculiar to herself. Her look, 'brimful of everything,' seemed to win sympathy and to command respect. Without marked accomplishments, unless that of singing most sweetly, with a good taste and natural power that were always evident, she had a passion for books, about which, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... small book. It was well marked and showed constant usage. It was a volume of Emerson's Essays, a number of which he knew almost by heart. It was only natural that the book should open at the essay on Self-reliance, for there the pages were most thumb-marked. His eyes rested upon the words: "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance." He read on to the beginning of the next paragraph, "Trust thyself: every heart ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... had been trained in self-reliance, for he had been fatherless from childhood. At the age of sixteen he was working at the profession, largely self-taught, of a surveyor of land. At the age of twenty-seven he married Martha Custis, a rich widow with children, though her marriage with Washington was childless. His estate ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... technical skill were despised. Our colleges and schools do not attempt to build character on a foundation of useful habits and tastes that sweeten life; to ennoble ideals, or inspire self-knowledge, self-reliance, and self-control. Technical education is still in its infancy; and the aesthetic instinct which lies dormant in every Aryan's brain is unawakened. A race which invented the loom now invents nothing but grievances. In 1901 Bengal possessed ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... produced in my mind the picture of a noble farm-house in a park-like valley, just as the line, "Well have our rifles ready, boys," expressed the boldness and self-reliance of an ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Knowing himself to be addressing a wider audience than the Senate chamber and its crowded galleries, he appealed with intuitive keenness to certain fundamental traits in his constituents. Americans admire self-reliance even in an opponent, and the spectacle of a man fighting against personal injustice is often likely to make them forget the principle for which he stands. So Seward, who surely had no love for Douglas and no respect for his political creed, was moved to exclaim in frank ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... at first supposed possible, they fell back into their old ways again. Rose's dignity and self-reliance were for her brothers and her friends generally. With Graeme she was, in a day or two, just what she had been before she went away—a dear child and sister, to be checked and chided, now and then; to be caressed and cared for always; growing, day by day, dearer and fairer to her sister's loving ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... others who say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of man,—to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin—our need of pardon. But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed by ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... girls, and to place them wantonly with women of the streets has in general an outrageous irresponsibility and folly quite insufficiently implied by the experience of a girl of Natalya's individual penetration and self-reliance. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... broad-shouldered fellow, as, with creaking steps, he walked from the house, might bring a laugh from the young farmers of this more fastidious day, but Martin was dressed no worse than any of his neighbors and far better than many. Health, vigor, sturdiness, self-reliance shone from him, and once his make-up had ceased to obtrude its clumsiness, he struck one as handsome. His was a commanding physique, hard as the grim plains from ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... Mr. Maynard, "the children must be taught self-reliance. But we'll talk this matter over some other time. Marjorie, you'll be late to school if you're not careful. And listen to me, my child. I don't want you to tell any one of what you did last evening. It is something that it is better ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... in misfortune did not realize how greatly her calm self-reliance had comforted them until they witnessed this unlooked-for collapse. The Spanish maid slipped to her knees, Mrs. Somerville began to rock in her chair in a new agony, and Isobel, to whom a turbulent spirit denied the relief of tears when they were ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... discipline or order, and they learned to control themselves better and to pay better attention. It took months to break the habit of studying aloud, and will take years to instil habits of perseverance and self-reliance. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it. That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered spirit more, will never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... foes, that to cross its eddying tide, and penetrate into the unknown and unexplored regions beyond, leaving the broad, and deep, and rapid stream to cut off the hopes of retreat, implied the possession of extreme self-reliance, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... indulge fearlessly the suggestions of his imagination; in short it was too apparent that, in spite of his delusion, Rode's former confidence in himself was gone; and we know the importance of that feeling of self-reliance which men of talent derive from the innate consciousness of their own superiority: once destroyed, everything else vanishes with it. He was applauded; respect for the last efforts of what had once been first-rate talent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... taken away from her, almost immediately. No sooner had she learned the sweetness of clinging than she had been forced to stand alone. One by one the supports had been removed, until she stood alone, desolate and wretched, indeed, but alone. Of such things as these self-reliance is made. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... prince of Kapilavastu? Lessons of gratitude and benevolence. Lessons of tolerance for the clashing opinions of men who live, move and have their being, think and aspire, only in the material world. The lesson of a common tie of brotherhood among all men. Lessons of manly self-reliance, of equanimity in breasting whatsoever of good or ill may happen. Lessons of the meanness of the rewards, the pettiness of the misfortunes of a shifting world of illusions. Lessons of the necessity for avoiding every species of evil ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... not allow the efforts of medical science to lessen the sufferings of child-bearing, to rob womankind of their natural and commendable courage, endurance, and self-reliance. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... capacious; their ingenuity was more inventive. I felt assured that in either Liverpool or Manchester—the centres of commercial and manipulative energy—I could settle down with my limited capital and tools, and in course of time contrive to get on, helped by energy, self-reliance, and determination. I also found that the demand for machine-making tools was considerable, and that their production would soon become an important department of business. It might be carried on with little expenditure ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... of the Irish priest as an individual or as a minister of his Church. He is kind-hearted, charitable, and conscientious; and, except that it does not encourage self-reliance and enterprise, his influence with his own people is no more open to criticism than that of any other body of religious ministers. But the Roman Catholic Church has always made a larger claim than any other on the obedience of its ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... urban life, their commercial employment, and their frequent contact in business. The feeling of individualism was as naturally bred in the latter by their rural surroundings, their agricultural occupation, and the self-reliance induced by their solitary environment. The opposition to the Constitution in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania had been confined almost entirely to the country. The rural States of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina did not adopt the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... acknowledged that reliance upon others may be carried so far as to result in loss or disadvantage. "Self-reliance" is one of the most admirable traits of character. The pioneer farmer possessed it from necessity to a remarkable extent. A habit of depending upon others may quickly cause a person to lose the "knack" of doing things ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... curdle the blood. He excelled in all exercises of strength and activity, could load his rifle while running with almost the swiftness of a deer, and was so habituated to constant action, that an imprisonment of three days, as ordered by General Harmar, was nearly fatal to him. He had the most thorough self-reliance as his long, solitary and perilous expeditions into the Indian ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... in arms. The girl who had feared nothing so much as to find herself at variance with her fellows, and had believed the affection and the goodwill of those about her to be the first essentials to happiness, felt no weakness, no lack of self-reliance, now that she was in some measure pitted against the many. She resented the conduct of the passengers in making her the subject of their tittle-tattle with a bitterness she had never felt before. In overlooking her actions and assuming a right to influence ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... spent such wretched days and nights as formerly. Her baby was every day growing interesting and a source of great comfort to her, while her life generally was tending to bring out the latent qualities of her character, the energy and self-reliance, the skill and talent which otherwise might ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tenderness, sympathy, and love, and out of the fullness of her heart, she was a real minister of mercy among the poor and degraded. Believing that the inner life developed the outer, she considered the poor, and strove to awaken within them self-reliance, and self-control, feeling that one of the surest ways to render people helpless or dangerous is to crush out their self-respect and self-reliance. She thought it one of the greatest privileges of her life to be permitted to scatter flowers by the wayside ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... is in the right path, he must persevere. I speak of this because there are some persons who are "born tired;" naturally lazy and possessing no self-reliance and no perseverance. But they can cultivate these qualities, ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... walked on, "what a mistake in Delia Floyd! She is just as capable of high development as a woman as he is as a man. How admirably would they have mated. In him, self-reliance, reason, judgment, and deep feeling would have found in her all the qualities they seek—taste, perception, tenderness and love. They would have grown upwards into higher ideas of life, not downwards into sensualism and mere worldliness, like the ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... vast and formidable an experiment as that of 5 administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, also have brought the care and anxiety 10 inseparable from the accumulation of great ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... troubled Mr Harding. They, as a rule, are as satisfied with the wisdom and propriety of their own conduct as can be any Mr Slope, or any Dr Proudie, with his own. But unfortunately for himself, Mr Harding had little of this self-reliance. When he heard himself designated as rubbish by the Slopes of the world, he had no other recourse than to make inquiry within his own bosom as to the truth of the designation. Alas, alas! the evidence seemed generally to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... for example, whom the more we would do for, the more we would have to do for, who, in other words, would become dependent, losing their sense of self-dependence. For such the highest service one can render is as judiciously and as indirectly as possible to lead them to the sense of self-reliance. Then there are others whose natures are such that, the more they are helped, the more they expect, the more they demand, even as their right, who, in other words, are parasites or vultures of the human kind. In this case, again, the greatest service ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... ballot in the hands of woman is to do a great work for society, it will be first and foremost because of its wholesome influence on herself—because it rouses in her more of hope, more of laudable ambition, more of earnest purpose, more of self-reliance, more independence of the fashions, frivolities and conventionalities of society and the dictates of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... left it. The pallor of her face, increased by her sorrow, was accentuated by the black dress, almost as plainly made as that which the red-eyed Jessie wore in her kitchen. Though nearly a week had elapsed since her father had died in her young arms, and notwithstanding her capacity for self-reliance, Ida had not yet recovered from the stupor of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... should start alone on a hundred mile journey through the wild forest, nothing was said about such a thing as the personal danger attending it. And that, too, directly on the heels of the Winnebago's attempt on Terry Clark. The habit of self-reliance was taught to the children of the pioneers at such an early age, that their parents felt no solicitude, where in these times they would have been tortured by anxiety, and, ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... stock of self-reliance had been largely improved by twenty years of grass-widowhood, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... effect, and soon awakened a slumbering conscience. But its upbraidings were not accepted unquestionably by Angelina, as they had been by Sarah. They only stung her into a desire for investigation. She must know the why; and her strong self-reliance helped her judgment, and buoyed her up amid waves of doubt and anxiety that would have ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... earthly feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned this, perhaps He ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... place. But this was not the fault of Augustus, whose intellect expanded with his fortunes, and whose magnanimity grew with his intellect—a man who comprehended his awful mission, and who discharged his trusts with dignity and self-reliance. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... cultivation it implies, what peace and comfort in all classes, when society could hold together for a day with no more complete defence. And, moreover, there are disadvantages in elaborate police systems. Self-reliance is one of the highest virtues in which this world is intended to discipline us; and to depend upon ourselves even for our own personal safety is a large element ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... was ever supported by military strength, except for a time, and then only when the soldiery were animated by noble sentiments. The imperial forces of Rome, while they preserved the throne of absolutisms, destroyed the self-reliance of the citizens, and supported wicked institutions. The difference in the aims of government under the Caesars, and under the consuls, was heaven-wide. The military genius which created an empire, was misdirected when that empire sought to perpetuate wrong. How different is the spirit ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... has been introduced into this Volume, but such subjects as will teach a dependence upon Divine Providence, in aid of self-reliance and self-sacrifice, while details of war and bloodshed have ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous |
