"Self-respect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... individual gifts and aptitude,[75] which sets up methods of training and apprenticeship in the different trades—or, as I would prefer to call them the different professions—such as to counteract the deadening influence of premature specialization, and which ensures good conditions and a sense of self-respect and community-service to all in their self-chosen line of life, whether their bent be manual or mechanical or commercial or administrative, or for working on the land or for going to sea, or towards the more special vocations of teaching or scholarship or the law or medicine or the cure of souls. ...
— Progress and History • Various
... penalties of evil, rather than because he was enamored of the right. Some special temptation would soon sweep him away into the old life, and thus, because of his broken promises and repeated failures, he at last lost faith in himself also, and lacked that self-respect without which no man can cope successfully with his evil nature and an ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop a tiger ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... system of small holdings changed, which would sever old and respectable ties, and would force the present independent Indian cottage-farmer to seek employment from the extensive cultivator, and, without getting more work out of him in the course of a year, would lower him in self-respect, and in the many virtues which that teaches, without deriving any correspondent ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her intermittent impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her self-respect. If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without conscious ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... end of the trial shows that summary measures were not necessary to enable the trial to go on. Departure from established judicial practice, which makes it unfitting for a judge who is personally involved to sit in his own case, was therefore unwarranted. Neither self-respect nor the good name of the law required it. Quite otherwise. Despite the many incidents of contempt that were charged, the trial went to completion, nine months after the first incident, without a single occasion making it necessary ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... need all my energy and all my resources not to be discouraged. Fortunately, with me, these little gibes are only so many pin-pricks which stimulate me to further exertions. Once the sting is allayed and the wound in my self-respect closed, I always end by saying: 'Laugh away, my lad. Sooner or later, you will be betrayed by your own hand.' For, when all is said, Wilson, wasn't it Lupin himself who, with his first telegram and the reflection which ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... evident that he was sincerely desirous of re-establishing friendly relations between us, whether from any selfish motive or not I cannot of course say, but I think not—I believe his pride was hurt at his late lamentable exhibition of weakness, and he was chiefly anxious to recover his own self-respect. Whatever his motive may have been, his demeanour was a perfect blending of politeness and cordiality that won upon me in spite of myself; and before the meal was over I had determined to render him the small amount of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... prudent Barbaro, "take that word in its literal sense, but the wretched man is dead to all honour and self-respect." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... this tremendous pressure which the sentiment of the country exerts that is operating on the race. There is involved not only the question of higher opportunity, but often the question of earning a livelihood; and so I say it is not strange, but a natural tendency. Nor is it any more a sacrifice of self-respect that a black man should give to his children every advantage he can which complexion of the skin carries than that the new or vulgar rich should purchase for their children the advantages which ancestry, aristocracy, and social position carry. I once heard a colored man sum it ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... self-respect; haughtiness, arrogance, hauteur, superciliousness, contumely, conceit, vanity, priggishness, lordliness, imperiousness. Antonyms: humility, shame, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of decorum which, under the circumstances, seemed almost coldness. After some words, not over ardent, and yet not exactly inappropriate, he took leave, making a bow which had one knows not what of a certain chastened independence about it; as if misery, however burdensome, could not break down self-respect, nor gratitude, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... any claim to purity; her self-respect is lost; she sinks lower and lower; society shuns her, and she is to-day a brothel inmate, the toy and plaything ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... that it is! But thought is a tonic which sometimes restores a man's enfeebled self-respect. I was beginning to lose that particular condition of health and sanity, Roger!—my self-respect was becoming a flaccid muscle—a withering nerve;—but a little thought- exercise has convinced me that my mental sinews are yet on the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... friends who will cheat him at betting, cheat him at horse-dealing, cheat him at gambling when the orgies of the course are over, borrow money as long as he will lend, and throw him over when he has parted with his last penny and his last rag of self-respect. Those who can carry their minds back for twenty years must remember the foolish young nobleman who sold a splendid estate to pay the yelling vulgarians of the betting-ring. They cheered him when he all but beggared himself; they hissed him when he failed once to pay. With lost ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... creatures, even disembodied spirits, if there be such, and this among them, if it be one, are under His control. Why should I be afraid? I am being tried; my courage and trust are being tried to the utmost: let me prove them, let me keep my own self-respect, by mastering this cowardly, unreasonable terror.' And after a time I began to feel stronger and surer of myself. Then I rose from my seat and turned towards the door again; and oh, the relief of seeing that the way was clear; my terrible visitor had ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... inward corruption than when it is allowed to show itself as it is. We may also admit that while in Protestantism there is more of TRUTH, and all the virtues which go therewith,—such as honesty, manliness, self-respect, conscientiousness,—in Catholic countries there is more of LOVE, and all the virtues which follow it,—as kindly, genial manners, ready sympathy with suffering, a spirit of dependence and trust. Still, this does not prove that there is ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... I will not be silent, I will cry it upon the house-tops, if I must. Ah! you have taken me like a thing which one makes use of when convenient, and which one throws away, when one has no more need of it: I understand you; but I have more self-respect than that, although I am only ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... a byword and a scorn; my story will be found amusing at every dinner-table in the country-side, and my shame will even cling to my unborn child. This is the return he has made me for my sacrifice of self-respect, and for consenting to marry him at all; to outrage my love and make ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... words in conveying ingenious ideas or elevated feeling. Pity that to all these graces he cannot add what would give them the utmost finish—the occasional admission that he has been in the wrong, the occasional frank welcome of a new idea as something not before present to his mind! But no: Mordax's self-respect seems to be of that fiery quality which demands that none but the monarchs of thought shall have an advantage over him, and in the presence of contradiction or the threat of having his notions corrected, he becomes astonishingly unscrupulous and cruel for so kindly and conscientious ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... from the roadside, behind rich meadows rippling with gold and silver grain, were huge farmhouses, with an air of dignity born of self-respect and venerable age. We had pretty garden glimpses, too, and once in a while passed a fine mansion, good enough to call itself a chateau so long as there were no real ones in the neighbourhood. Often chestnut-trees in full glory of white blossom, as if blazing with fairy candles, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... guilty connection, and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting circumstances. The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to render nearly as trying on earth. She had died, as she had lived, impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her, while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... protect property and society. Yet where a case is attended with such circumstances as that of Jones's, some disposition to accommodate might have been evinced without endangering the State's sovereignty. And I must also differ with you, George, so far as the girls maintained their self-respect. It was commendable in them to get husbands whom they could live with in the bonds of matrimony. My word for it, George, though I am a Southerner, and may give rein to improprieties at times, nothing can be more ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... I respected the institution, for its discipline, though at times harsh, was, on the whole, just, and thereby came a great gain to my own self-respect. But as to the education given, never was a man more disappointed at first. The president and professors were men of high character and attainments; but to the lower classes the instruction was given almost entirely by tutors, who took up teaching for bread-winning ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... this hopeful theory, partly to save an argument; for Mark's reverence for his opinion was confined to scientific matters; and he made up to his own self-respect by patronising the Doctor, and, indeed, taking him sometimes pretty sharply to task on ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger," is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle. This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the non-commissioned officers, which is always difficult to sustain, even in white regiments. "He needn't try to play de white man ober me," was the protest of a soldier against his corporal the other day. To ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... scornfully. 'Thank goodness, I've got enough self-respect left not to pray!—Yes, I must pray, I MUST . . . Oh, God! I do not ask forgiveness for him or for myself; I only beg that, in some way I cannot see, we may be punished, and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she would go to the Milan Conservatory, and as soon as she came of age she would go upon the stage, under a feigned name, of course, and in a foreign country. She would prove to the world, she said to herself, that the career of an actress is compatible with self-respect. This resolve that she would never be found wanting in self-respect held a prominent place in all her plans, as she began to understand better those dangers in life which are for the most part unknown to young ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... down-town, pondering. His first impulse, I regret to say, was to send Ruth's father an anonymous letter. This plan he abandoned from motives of fear rather than of self-respect. Anonymous letters are too frequently traced to their writers, and the prospect of facing Kirk in such an event did ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... illiberal—and this the "moralist" has yet to learn—to punish a man who has done a wrong in one relation by excluding him from the performance of useful social functions for which he is perfectly fitted, by which he could at once serve society and re-establish his own self-respect. There may, however, yet come a time when Liberalism, already recognized as a duty in religion and in politics, will take its true place at the centre of our ethical conceptions, and will be seen to have its application ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... thank you, grandpapa, for having granted my request, and received Harry as of old. It is much better that the past should be entirely forgotten. Self-respect seems to require that we should not show resentment under the circumstances," ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... fired the young hearts to enthusiasm and made them forget the day's toil. And in "The Cotter's Saturday Night" we have a glimpse of Scotch peasant life that makes us almost reverence these heroic men and women, who kept their faith and their self-respect in the face of poverty, and whose hearts, under their rough exteriors, were ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... important custom has often, we imagine, led to rudeness from natives towards foreigners, where otherwise extreme courtesy would have been shown. In such cases a foreigner must yield, or take the chances of being snubbed; and where neither self-respect or national dignity is compromised, we recommend him by all means to adopt the most conciliatory course. Chinese etiquette is a wide field for the student, and one which, we think, would well repay ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... will have, at her father's death . . . but as for my income, it is moderate, and only sufficient to maintain a gentlemanly appearance in proper self-respect. I make no show. I say I make no show. A wealthy marriage is the last thing on earth I should have aimed at. I prefer quiet and retirement. Personally, I mean. That is my personal taste. But if the lady . . . . I say if it should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That self-respect demands race pride; that virtue is its own reward; that character is the greatest thing in human life, are taught and emphasized in other ways also. Dr. Washington has succeeded, to a remarkable degree, in developing the Tuskegee Institute ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... fairly married rheumatism. It has been to her as a husband and children. I tell you, young man, one has to have his little footstool of elevation among his fellows, even if it is a mighty queer one, or he loses his self-respect, and self-respect is the ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... the Cross! Do you mean to say—Louise," he broke off, gazing upon her, "your mind is unsettled. Yes, you are crazy, and, of course, all your self-respect is gone. You needn't say a word, you are crazy. You are—I don't know what you are, but I know what I am, and now, after the uselessness of my appeal to your gratitude, I will assert the authority of a father. You shall ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... however, I can not forget what is due to the character of our government and nation; or to a full and entire confidence in the good sense, patriotism, self-respect, and fortitude of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... moral influence will do all that is necessary. The great thing is to awaken the conscience. Patients who once feel sincerely that such courses are depraved may cure themselves—if they are not robbed of their self-respect. The most hopeless causes I have, come from that class of people who give each other bits of their mind—very objectionable bits, consisting of vulgar abuse for the most part, and the calling of names that rankle. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... not the time. That morning, Press agencies grovelled to me in The Bun office for leave to use certain photos, which, they understood, I controlled, of a certain village dance. When I had sent the fifth man away on the edge of tears, my self-respect came back a little. Then there was The Bun's poster to get out. Art being elimination, I fined it down to two words (one too many, as it proved)—'The Gubby!' in red, at which our manager protested; but by five ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... and as he spoke he came round so that he was standing near to her, but with his back to the fireplace. "I do hear, and I blush to think that there is a man in England, holding the position of a county magistrate, who can so forget all that is due to honesty, to humanity, and to self-respect." ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... unmoved by its environment, so that, in the storm and stress of battle, the bushi remains as calm and as self-possessed as in the quietude of the council chamber or the sacred stillness of the cloister. The crown of all his qualities was self-respect. He rated himself too high to descend to petty quarrels, or to make the acquisition of rank his purpose, or to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... perfect; their defects differed from those of their modern descendants in the ethical consequences; they did not make offenders ashamed of themselves, and afraid of being found out; they did not necessarily vitiate the substance of their characters, and destroy their self-respect. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... not yet bent as she pleased were those of her stepmother and of Ian Stafford—one, because she was jealous and obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and an ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give save at the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there was in England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this moment, when so profoundly disheartened, and when in idle hopes and plans I had lost sight of my higher goal, by her firm belief in me she imparted to me augmented self-respect. Her confidence in me gave me increasing confidence in myself, and a vehement gratitude awoke in me for the good she thus ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... began to pettifog with his conscience, he began to lose peace of mind. His self-respect was impaired, and he became impatient, and chafed under his restraint. As the trial drew on, he was more than ever filled with questionings in regard to the course he should pursue. For conscience ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... believe you are right, Ned. I often wonder how they can be so lacking in self-respect. Oh, I am certain you must be right, for it is just what I felt without being able quite to express it You will stay for supper with us, of course. Yes, but you must, because it is always a great comfort for me to talk with really ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... I cannot forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a lamp within me, that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... brandy, stole into the room where she lay cold in her coffin, put the tumbler into her withered hand, and then took it out and drained it to the bottom. John B. Gough told this as a true story. How powerless a man is in the presence of a mighty habit, which has robbed him of will-power, of self-respect, of everything manly, until ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... home armed, too, with a discovery. The discovery that a man not enslaved by a possessive sense, a man whose self-respect is not dependent upon the number of things he owns, a man able therefore to thumb his nose at all the maxims of success, occupies ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sister; Damie had a certain begging propensity, and then again the next minute showed a kind of pride; Barefoot, on the other hand, was always good-natured and yielding, but was nevertheless supported by a certain self-respect, which was never detracted from by her willingness to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... he had not those which a mother would desire to see in the future husband of her daughter. He was profligate, extravagant, careless, and idle; his prospects in life were in every respect bad; he had no self-respect, no self-reliance, no moral strength. Was it not absolutely necessary that she should put a stop to any love that might have sprung up between such a man as this and her ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Croisier. "Their eyes will be opened to the morality of your party when they see nobles going to be tried at the Assize Court like Pierre and Jacques. They will say, then, that small folk who keep their self-respect are as good as great folk that bring shame on themselves. The Assize Court is a light for all the world. Here, I am the champion of the people, the friend of law. You yourselves twice flung me on the side of the people—once when you refused an alliance, twice when you put me under the ban of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same principle he should hold a street-argument with every fish-wife who might call him a name. He may tell you "he will make so-and-so respect him," but he offends his own self-respect if he cannot consider some things beneath him. One must have a sense of proportion and not elevate every little act of impudence into a challenge of life to be fought over as for life and death. It may be corrected with a little humour or a little disdain, but always with sympathy ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... could charm him, no vice shock him. He had about him a natural good manner, which seemed to qualify him for the highest circles, and yet he was never out of place in the lowest. He had no principle, no regard for others, no self-respect, no desire to be other than a drone in the hive, if only he could, as a drone, get what honey was sufficient for him. Of honey, in his latter days, it may probably be presaged, that he will ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... There are disadvantages in reducing a man to a subordinate position and allowing him no use for his self-respect; it is a virtue that has a tendency to atrophy. Julia recognised this with something like personal shame. "Your debt is discharged," she said gently, "but mine is not; it has been shifted, not cancelled; it lies with me ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... "you must think I have lost all manhood, all self-respect, when you hear what I say; but the only thing that could make me think of trying to do what is ten thousand times my duty to do, is that you will give me some hope that, if I should succeed, you will be the wife of such a ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the last chapter of his Topica: not to dispute with the first person you meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... ever let me hear of your associating with her. The little girl that doesn't keep her own self-respect cannot expect ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... short of that. But we're well enough out of it, anyway. It was mighty lucky I came in with my little amendment just when I did. There's all the difference in the world between asking a lady whether she is a cook and whether she's seen a cook. That difference just saved the self-respect of the McIlhenys, and saved your life. It gave the truth a slight twist in the right direction. You can't be too careful about the truth, Roberts. You can't offer it to people in the crude state; it's got to be prepared. If you'd carried it through the way I wanted you to, the night you ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... shoulders themselves he allowed to drop forward. With his hands in his pockets he glided slowly across the room toward the bar, for all the world a picture of the guttersnipe who had been kicked from pillar to post until self-respect is dead in him. And pausing in his advance, he leaned against one of the pillars and looked hungrily ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... next few days Blenkinthrope discovered how little the loss of one's self-respect affects one when one has gained the esteem of the world. His story found its way into one of the poultry papers, and was copied thence into a daily news-sheet as a matter of general interest. A lady wrote from the North of Scotland ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... brutes, and who wonders? What self-respect could we keep, Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers, Worse fed than ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... never more in earnest than when he promised Mary Oliphant that he would observe strict moderation. He had everything to induce him to keep his word—his love for Mary; his desire to please his own parents, who had begun to tremble for him; his own self-respect. So he left the rectory strong as a lion in his own estimation, yet not without a sort of misgiving underlying his conviction of his own firmness; but he would not listen to that misgiving ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... this man's use of his power had been unquestionable abuse. Terrorization and the prostitution of law had been its keystone and arch, but he had not yet surrendered his self-respect, because he thought of himself as a strong man charged with responsibility and accountable to his own conscience. Now he remembered the Ken Thornton who had once been almost a brother. Old affections had curdled into wormwood bitterness, but if the woman told ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... was sad, and his sadness was pleasure. He had already stacked most of his school-books in the other attic. He would need a table and a lamp; he knew not for what precise purpose; but a table and a lamp were necessary to the continuance of his self-respect. The only question was, Should he remodel his bedroom, or should he demand the other attic, and plant his flag in it and rule over it in addition to his bedroom? Had he the initiative and the energy to carry out such an enterprise? He was not able to make up his mind. And, moreover, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... maintenance from their poor-rate, neither they nor their relatives feeling that to do so was any disgrace. The system must have been fearfully vicious that produced such depravation of moral feeling, and such a shocking want of self-respect. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... April 10th; and I have La Presse behind me, sending to me every day, and the 'Paysans,' which is my first long work. I am between two despairs, that of not seeing you, of not having seen you, and the literary and financial trouble, the trouble of self-respect. Oh, Charles II. was quite right to say: 'But she?' in all the affairs submitted to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... for one thing," said the Harvester. "You didn't appear half so terrified at the sight of me as you did at the mere mention of a cow. I have risen inestimably in my own self-respect. Belshazzar, you may pursue the elusive chipmunk. I am going to guard this woman myself, and please, kind fates, send a ferocious cow this way, in order that I may prove ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Negro was such as that in the isolated society to which Cotton Mather gave rules, or in a spasmodic insurrection, or a rather crude development of native African worship. As yet there was no genuine basis of racial self-respect. In one way or another, however, in the eighteenth century the idea of association developed, and especially in Boston about the time of the Revolution Negroes began definitely to work together; thus they assisted individuals ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... control it exposed him to all the miscarriages and all the indignities which such an attempt is sure to entail. He was a vessel of earthenware, or rather of very fragile porcelain, swimming among vessels of brass. Self-respect would perhaps have prescribed retirement from public life; but, to say nothing of his egotism, he had done too much to retire. Egotistical he was in the highest degree, and that failing made all his humiliations doubly ignominious; but still, I think, if ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... made to seem a benevolent criticism, by the actualities of my experience. I say that you cannot put faith in a woman. Even now, I do not—it's against reason—I do not believe that she—this Dahlia—means to go through with it. She is trying me. I have told her that she was my wife. Her self-respect—everything that keeps a woman's head up—must have induced her to think so. Why, she is not a fool! How can she mean to give herself to an ignorant country donkey? She does not: mark me. For her, who is a really—I may say, the most refined nature I have ever met, to affect ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... low chamber, with a huge stone stove, wide benches fixed along the walls, and a great oval table. We sit how and where we can. Red wine is produced, and eier-brod and kuechli. Fraeulein Anna serves us sedately, holding her own with decent self-respect against the inrush of the revellers. She is quite alone; but are not her father and mother in bed above, and within earshot? Besides, the Comus, even at this abnormal hour and after an abnormal night, is well conducted. Things seem slipping into a decorous ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude—save for a few black faces—have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. It was in some such spirit, with an added touch of self-consciousness, that, at seven o'clock in the evening of 23rd September in a recent year, I was making my evening toilet in my chambers in Pall Mall. I thought the date and the place ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... ago, when she had married him, what a ruin her life had been! There had been, again and again, thank Heaven! periods of peace, periods of regained self-respect, of the enjoyment of the respect of others. These had been secured by flight only, by concealment of her whereabouts, and were of varying lengths of duration. Two years ago, with her hard-earned savings, she had paid his passage out to Africa. ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... rapped for order and stated the question for debate, and made some inspiring remarks about "parliamentary" rules. John Short opened the debate with a plea for independence of character, and self-respect and personal liberty. ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and a painful feeling, closely resembling shame, stole over him as he crossed the viridarium, and glanced at the grass from which—thanks to Paula's ill-meant warning—he had carefully brushed away his foot-marks before daybreak. How cowardly, how base, it all was The best of all in life: honor, self-respect, the proud consciousness of being an honest man—all staked and all lost for nothing at all! He could have slapped his own face or cried aloud like a child that has broken its most treasured toy. But of what use was all this? What ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... language, which was one of the most difficult tasks they had to perform. The dignified way in which the pupils conducted themselves, the respect which they showed their teacher, and the way in which they went about their work, delighted me. The discipline it gave them, the self-respect it engendered, and the power of acquisition that came with it were worth more perhaps than the knowledge they acquired, useful as ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... their authority, but attempted persuasion. Mounting the steps, they in turn addressed the throng, which now kept momentarily increasing, and exhorted them as law-abiding citizens to use no violence. Some made most pathetic appeals to their feelings, their pride and self-respect; indeed, begged them, by every consideration of home and justice, to desist, and retire peacefully to their homes. They solemnly promised that a most thorough investigation should be made, and they should have all the satisfaction the laws could afford. More they ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... and a word or two of farewell that even now I cannot write down. So I judged, and judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered back to the side of the 'rickshaw. My face was cut and bleeding, and the blow of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. I had no self-respect. Just then, Heatherlegh, who must have been following Kitty and me at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... required the merest trifle of encouragement to change the steady decorous tide of advancing knowledge and respect into an abruptly awkward cataract, threatening the rupture of pleasant relations or the loss of self-respect. She would have preferred talking with Wilkinson, as a check upon the fervour of his friend, but, although she laughed at the dominie's culpable ignorance of her city existence, in her secret soul it piqued her not a little. No; she would rather take refuge ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of her material failure is forgotten in her pride of a finer success. The shame of commercial and civic obscurity is lost in the light of national recognition. And that self-respect and pride of place, without which neither man nor town can look the world in the face, is saved to her ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... these dogs showed the liveliest interest in 'Dolph, raising themselves with their forepaws on the gunwale, and gazing across the intervening twenty yards of water. But they were dignified creatures, and their self-respect forbade them to bark. 'Dolph, who had no breeding, challenged back loudly, all his bristles erect—and still the more angrily as they forbore to answer; whereat the young men and women laughed. Their laughter would have annoyed Tilda had it been less unaffected; and, as ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... literary pursuits and universal respect soon told upon Johnson's personal appearance. He began to wash his face and hands. His self-respect seemed to grow, like love, by what it fed on; and the more he became respectable, the more his ambitions spread out and flourished. The next time he had big luck in a poker game, instead of spending his money in a spree, he bought a ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... my dear, very sorry, but there are some insults that no man with self-respect can submit to, even from ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... truly of the race of Mary Lyon, so in a moment she said, "Pray come in, sir!" with the self-respect of the daughter of a good house, as well as the dutifulness which she owed to one so reverend ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... loan of L30,000),—all this is the beauty that lighted up the black cloud of Scott's adversity. His efforts were finally successful, although at the cost of his bodily existence. Lockhart says: "He paid the penalty of health and life, but he saved his honor and his self-respect. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... have a harmony of the manifestation of the individual with the expression of the recognition of the equality of others we have what is called deportment or politeness, which combines dignity and grace, self-respect and modesty. We call it when fully complete, Urbanity. It treats the conventional forms with irony, since, at the same time that it yields to them, it allows the productivity of spirit to shine through them ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... conduct was always "without reproach." His own freedom from vice, and the tight hand he kept over me, who lived but to admire and imitate him, were of such benefit to me in the manifold temptations of school-life as I can never forget. His self-respect amounted to self-esteem, his love for other people's good opinion to a failing, he was refined to fastidiousness; but I think these characteristics helped him towards the exceptional character he bore. A keen sensitiveness to pain and discomfort, and considerable natural indolence, further ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... years and a half after this, he came into my shop one day; but how changed. Instead of the bloated, wild, and despairing countenance that once marked him as a drunkard, he now wore an aspect of cheerfulness and health, of manliness and self-respect. I approached, took him by the hand, and said, "Well, ——, how do you do?" "I am well," said he, shaking my hand most cordially. "Yes," said I, "well in more respects than one." "Yes, I am," was his emphatic reply. "It is now more than two years since I have tasted a drop ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... fifteen, still dawdled at school, where his record was not good. Perhaps it was partly because he had no spending money, no clothing to maintain his boyish self-respect, no prospects of any sort, that he had become ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... The first replied, "No, I'll go no further with you!" The other said, "I must know why you will go no further with me—you must tell me that!" The first replied, with great dignity, "Well, I will tell you that! It lowers my self-respect to be seen ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not harp continually upon that, but dwelt often upon other themes, trying so to treat the lad that his self-respect ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... would be prevented if a higher order of education were generally diffused among all classes. A well educated and enlightened people will have but little occasion for criminal courts, jails and penitentiaries. The educated man has ordinarily too much self-respect, too much regard for moral principle and the value of a good character to stoop to crime. In short, sir, the perpetuity of the government, and security of the citizen, and of property, depend upon the virtue and ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... grateful acknowledgment, the kind of speech he should have given at the Whittier dinner of two years before. No reference was made to his former disaster, and this time he came away covered with glory, and fully restored in his self-respect. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mood. "So do you. I'm a heavy handicap to you, Bertie, sure I am. As I see ye settin' there bloomin' as a rose and feel me own age a-creepin' on me, I know I should be takin' me conge out of self-respect—just ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... pretences: until we have almost come to be notorious? The licence of look and touch,' she said, with flashing eyes, 'have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the map of England? Have I been hawked and vended here and there, until the last grain of self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself? Has been my late childhood? I had none before. Do not tell me that I had, tonight of all nights ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... not so demean yourself. I wish you to have no relations whatever with that female in the kitchen. If you had proper self-respect, you would ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... of a deed which cost him his royal honor, and perhaps, also, his self-respect. Liberty struggled on still with despotism, in obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory; and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... judges. The young of her acquaintance fled to her for help in need, and she gave them no hard words, but generally more counsel than comfort—always, however, the best she had, which was of Polonius' kind, an essence of wise selfishness, so far as selfishness can be wise, with a strong dash of self-respect, nowise the more sparing that it was independent of desert. The good man would find it rather difficult to respect himself were he to try; his gaze is upward to the one good; but had it been possible for such a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... representative of an unpopular cause. But it seemed now as if his judgment had once and fatally played him false, and certainly his good name and his prestige were given over to his enemies, who dealt cruelly with them. He felt that it was the end of his usefulness, also that his own self-respect and dignity must be carefully preserved; and he wrote to the Assembly of Massachusetts to say that it would be impossible for him longer to act as its agent. From that time he never attended the levee of a minister. The portcullis had dropped; the days of his service ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... grocery one Sunday morning for a bottle of gin. On coming out of the dram-shop, with his decanter of fire-water, he perceived that the services in the church near by, were just closed, and the congregation were returning to their homes. Not having entirely lost his self-respect, and unwilling to be seen in the public street by the whole village, on such a day, and with such a burden, he hastily thrust his hand, holding the bottle, behind, for the purpose of concealing it underneath the skirts of his coat: and in this way, apparently with the greatest possible ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... opinion when he saw the man's face and his helping of bacon and eggs. Carr seemed to have enjoyed the cyclone, as he had no doubt enjoyed many a game of football in his youth, and many a spin across country later. For this man kept his hunters. He was moved thereto by that form of self-respect which urges some men to live like gentlemen, to, as they express it, "do themselves well," whether their mere monetary circumstances allow of it or no; and some one usually pays for these philosophers—that is ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... it was like a lash upon the raw skinless flesh. If she had been asked by the Almighty whether she loved Carnac, she would have said she did not know. This was not a matter of love; but of womanhood, of self-respect, of the pride of one who cannot ask for herself what she wants in the field of love, who must wait ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had he, for that matter. Yet he had been called "a likely feller" when he married the Widder Bixby, or rather when she married him. Well, the mischief was done; all that remained was to save a remnant of his self-respect, and make ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... depths of your own soul's experience. Let these lie hid. The world will be none the better for your confessions, but it needs your Lord. Show Him forth, not your own emotions about Him. What does the Apostle say close by my text? 'We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.' Self-respect and reverence for the sanctities of our deepest emotions forbid our proclaiming these from the house-tops. Let these be curtained, if you will, from all eyes but God's, but let no folds hang before the picture ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... no self-respect if I didn't take money. Nobody can be self-respecting when broke. None of the rest of us seem to be inquiring into our sources of ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... of him. Owen, you are a perfect spoon! It is not quite proper that you and Miss Edith should be spooning all the time, night and day; and to my mind, Colonel Shepard has decided to go in his own yacht to prevent this thing, as well as to retain his own self-respect. I dare say he is no longer willing to be the guests, with his whole family, of Alick or yourself. That's the whole of it. It is better for you to visit the young lady occasionally than to spend weeks or months with her in ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... upon a bold thing. These Roua Poua savages had caused us a vast amount of trouble and loss; through them we were short-handed to the extent of no less than six men; and I felt that for the sake of my own satisfaction and self-respect I must get something, though it were ever so little, back out of them. Therefore, since we white men were all armed, and therefore in a position to take good care of ourselves, as soon as the tackles were hooked into the jollyboat's ringbolts I ordered the four savages in the canoe ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties, and it came out and was very successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it. For this reason I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise I got the more I tried to deserve." ("David ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... not exist," it said, "where those nominally entrusted with affairs of government have not control of fiscal and economic policy. No nation with self-respect could accept the idea that while its citizens were regarded as capable of creating wealth they were regarded as incompetent to regulate the manner in which taxation of that wealth should be arranged, and that another ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... It is probable that no nation is worthy to survive which does not possess a military spirit, or, in other words, the instinct to defend itself and its liberties against an aggressor. It is a virtue which is closely interfused with high moral qualities—self-respect, a proper pride, self-reliance—and is compatible with real modesty and sobriety of mind. But militarism has nothing ethical about it. It is not courage, but sheer pugnacity and quarrelsomeness, and as exemplified in our modern history it means the dominion ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... Turin, if he could. He was thus comfortably banished from the seat of war during the closing scenes of the campaign, and to Bonaparte's satisfaction could not of course reach Leoben in time to conclude the preliminaries as the accredited agent of the republic. But, to save the self-respect of the Directory, he was henceforth to be associated with Bonaparte in arranging the final terms of peace; and to that end he came of course to Milan. Representing as he did the conviction of the government that the Rhine frontier must be a condition of peace, and necessarily emphasizing ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... beautiful, and noble, with a mind capable of comprehending his loftiest and his finest moods, with a soul of matchless purity, and a temper whose winning tenderness had only been equalled by her elevated sense of self-respect; a woman that might have figured in the days of chivalry, soft enough to be his slave, but too proud to be his victim. He called up her image in the castle of his fathers, exercising in a domain worthy of such a mistress, all those sweet offices of life which here, in this hired roof in a strange ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... things which at one time had lured me to student life. I became absolutely indifferent to the opinion of my former companions and avoided them entirely; I now lost myself in the smaller gambling dens of Leipzig, where only the very scum of the students congregated. Insensible to any feeling of self-respect, I bore even the contempt of my sister Rosalie; both she and my mother hardly ever deigning to cast a glance at the young libertine whom they only saw at rare intervals, looking deadly pale and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... nervous power of the man constituted his weakness, when brought under the subtle influence of the old tempter, and it is probable that on his recovery, with nerves shaken, old cravings awakened, and self-respect gone, he would have fallen again and again if God had not made use of the paroxysm of rage to destroy the opportunity and the cause of evil. Nobbs did not know at that time, though he learned it afterwards, that safety from the drink-sin—as from all other sin—lies not in strong-man ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... your recognition of human partnership in the goods of this world. People not paupers are all eager to take what is theirs of right; but anything in the semblance of charity is a bitter pill to swallow until self-respect is a little broken down. Probably the resentment lies in the recognition of the truth that it is much easier to be charitable than to be just. If Margaret had seen the effect produced by her letter she ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... secure that general style and bearing for which Foreign Affairs are so remarkable, the mind must be carefully divested of divers incompatible qualities—such as self-respect, the sense of shame, the reverential instinct, and that of conscience, as certain feelings are termed. It must also be relieved of any inconvenient weight of knowledge under which it may labour; though these directions are perhaps needless, as those who have any inclination ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... servants carried to the different apartments—he followed to the principal dining-room, where the minister's company were assembled; and between the intervals of carving and seeing that his guests ate to their liking, enjoyed the conversation, and, when invited, joined in it with tact and self-respect. As became a host of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... to the Emperor, and his equally well-known feelings towards yourself, no person is so well qualified to lay the expression of our sentiments before him. Your motives in doing so cannot be suspected; coming from you, the Emperor's self-respect would not suffer in the same way as it would do, were the message conveyed to him by ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... brave fellow a hearty cheer for his loyalty; and, I have no doubt, had he he been allowed to remain, he would have been trampled to death on his post. He had lost his rank, his fortune, everything but his self-respect, in the quarrel of his king, who had just fallen on the scaffold; he had a great respect for constituted authority, and was sadly grieved at being obliged to honour heroism in spite of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... not coming with you. And you must leave me and never come back. My sole reason for seeing you to-night was to tell you that. But—" she hesitated and then said, with quiet emphasis, "you may tell my aunt not to worry about me. In spite of my singing in a cafe chantant I shall keep my self-respect. I shall not be—like those others. And when I have paid my debt—I can't pay my father's; I wish I could—I shall send you the money. When I do that you will know that I have resigned my present position and am trying to find a ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sure that our daughters will marry wealthy men, we should, for their own happiness and comfort, teach them that there is work for everyone in this world, and certain duties which every man and woman should perform in order to preserve his or her self-respect. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... baronet, whom Mrs. Jarvis, out of pure ignorance of his rank in his own country, received with perfect propriety and self-respect. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... it be to me how death might come, so long as I am prepared to welcome it? I hate and loathe myself when I stop to consider all the contemptible acts I am compelled to perform, when I pause to realize the utter prostitution of self-respect I am forced to undergo, in order to carry on the plots of our 'good friends,' as you call them. Good friends, indeed! To whom, let me ask you, do they demonstrate the friendly spirit? Where can ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... he could not be! That he had no resentment against anything was certain from his patient eyes—not even against those two who sat, one on either side of him—unaware that he was what he was, in order that they who against his will had brought him into being, might be forced by law to keep a self-respect they had already lost, and have the insufficiency of things he could not eat. For he had as yet no knowledge of political economy. He evidently did not view his case in any petty, or in any party, spirit; he did not seem to look on himself as just a half-starved child that should have cried its eyes ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... commands, must be rejected by all mediums as debasing and inconsistent with self respect. Any associations or concessions which have a tendency to lower the spiritual standard must be carefully avoided, for there is no growth in any relations which can only be maintained by the sacrifice of self-respect and self-justice." ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... whiskered first mate, meeting the man as he dropped from the fore-rigging to the deck, received a threshing of fists and kicks that laid him out. We carried him aft, while Red-head retired to the forecastle. And, as we nursed the mate back to self-respect, we heard the profane vows of Red-head to clean us ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... speaks what is not true, may dazzle and perplex; but he will never touch with that power and pathos which spring from truth. Fiction is successful only by borrowing her habiliments. Now, James, for a little more advice. Don't let the idea of having been a poor scholar deprive you of self-respect; neither let your unexpected turn of fortune cause you to forget what you have suffered. Hold a middle course; be firm and independent; without servility on the one hand, or vanity on the other. You have also too much good sense, and, I hope, too much religion, to ascribe what this day has ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... then; than many of the rest of my sex; if I'm no weaker than that I don't have to lose my self-respect." ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... his self-mastery, he also seemed to lose his self-respect. He mingled with the depraved, and carried the consciousness of his inferiority into all his associations with ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... especially a man such as I was, was marvelled at. Did I not know that the foreigner must have a chair? (This was corroborated by my boy, on his oath, because he would have to pay the men.) Did I not know that no traveler in Western China, who at any rate had any sense of self-respect, would travel without a chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the honor and glory of the thing? And did I not know that, unfurnished with this undeniable token of respect, I should be liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at ferries, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... and he sternly asserted his rights. He was not so popular in camp as some, because he declined to drink or gamble, and, despite the rough circumstances in which he found himself placed, was resolved to preserve his self-respect. ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... character there might be seen emerging—and could have been, from the very first—the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage,—an uncontrollable will,—a sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect,—and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe fruit. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the staircase as if they were breathing the free air of the forests depicted on its dirty-brown wall-paper. It was the new atmosphere of self-respect that they were really absorbing. Each had at last explained herself and her brown wig to the other. An immaculate honesty (that would scorn to overcharge fifty centimes even to un Anglais), complicated with unwedded nieces in one case, with a royal shower of New Year's gifts in the other, had ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... others, we must respect ourselves; and sometimes the ruder classes of society make claims, deemed forward and offensive, when, with their views, such a position seems indispensable to preserve a proper self-respect. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... the kind upon which his fancy loved to labour, and opened to him a new mine of incident and of character. And he repaid the pleasure thus communicated, by an earnest attention, valuable to all story-tellers, more especially to the Baron, who felt his habits of self-respect flattered by it; and sometimes also by reciprocal communications, which interested Mr. Bradwardine, as confirming or illustrating his own favourite anecdotes. Besides, Mr. Bradwardine loved to talk of the scenes ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... selfishness by exile, was the son of a Wiltshire clergyman, and he first saw the light the year of the Armada, his mother being prematurely confined during the first panic of the Spanish invasion. Hobbes, with that same want of self-respect and love of independence that actuated Gay and Thomson, remained his whole life a tolerated pensioner of his former pupil, the Earl of Devonshire; bearing, no doubt, in his time many rebuffs; for pride will be proud, and rich men require wisdom, when in their pay, to remember its place. Hobbes in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... with the absence of any distinction in the matter of duties, whether large or small, hardship and ease will be unequally shared; and the fifth, that the servants being arrogant, through leniency, those with any self-respect will not brook control, while those devoid of 'face' will not be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fault to the shoulders of Atavism or those of Society, personified for purposes of excuse, but escaping into impersonality again from the grasp of retribution, weakens that sense of personal responsibility which is the root of self-respect and the safeguard of character. Dante indeed saw clearly enough that the Divine justice did at length overtake Society in the ruin of states caused by the corruption of private, and thence of civic, morals; but a personality so intense as his could ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... at first by a sense of pride, self-respect, and womanly indignation, that prevented me from feeling the whole extent of the wound I had received; but with reaction came that dull, dumb, aching of the heart, which all who have felt it may recognize as more wearing than keener pain, or more ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... powers, as we shall see later, makes a striking recommendation in his report from Moosomin in 1893. He says that the farther division of districts into groups in charge of a non-commissioned officer has increased the self-respect of these men and developed their interest and initiative. He says men are more to be trusted than regulations. "Get good men forward, give more power to individuals, create a confidence through all ranks one with the other and things will work harmoniously in maintaining the peace of the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... his work, and the artist who shows his self-respect in that best of ways will always be respected by the world. He has fairly won our affection and esteem, and we give them ungrudgingly. In seeming to belittle him I have taken an ungrateful piece of work in hand. But in the long run a moderately just estimate of a good man's work is ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray |
