"Self-appointed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes as these? we do not wish to be "worked for,"—to be carried heavenward on some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? If life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect the spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... distinctly seeing him at least twice before; once as the Practical Organizer of the Initial Association of Free Disciples, and once as the self-appointed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shoot him!' will be competent to cut down whomsoever he pleases untried, be it general or private soldier, if only he have sufficient followers, as was the case just now. But just consider what these self-appointed generals have achieved for you. Zelarchus, the clerk of the market, may possibly have done you a wrong; if so, he has sailed off and is gone without paying you any penalty; or he may be guiltless, in which ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... Schmucke trotted about the streets, La Cibot was mistress of the house and ruled the invalid. How should Pons superintend his self-appointed guardian angel, when he had taken no solid food for a fortnight, and lay there so weak and helpless that La Cibot was obliged to lift him up and carry him to the sofa while ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... nurses, and himself waited on patients night and day. He soon had the hospital in good shape again. When the crisis passed, and every one began to demand, Who is this man?—they were told: It is Stephen Girard. The work was not pleasant, but the spirit was kind, and the heart delighted in its self-appointed toil. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the genuine inquirer will find before long a number of self-appointed apostles who are eager to answer his question in many strange and inconsistent ways, calculated to increase rather than resolve the obscurity of his mind. He will learn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of religion, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group, he caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: "This poor gentleman is mad; he thinks he is Edward VII." At this the self-appointed Creator slightly winked. "Of course you won't trust him much; come to me for everything. But in my position one has to meet so many people. One ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... interview, proposing various plans for Natzie's disposition for the night. And other ladies hovering about had been sympathetically suggestive, but the Indian girl had turned deaf ear to everything that would even temporarily take her from her self-appointed station. At ten o'clock Mother Shaughnessy, after hanging uneasily about the porch a moment or two, gave muttered voice to a suggestion that other women ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... mothers sometimes looked out with wet eyes as the little ambulance went by, recalling thoughts of absent sons who might be journeying painfully to some far-off hospital, where brave women waited to tend them with hands as willing, hearts as tender, as those the gentle child gave to her self-appointed task. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the great laws of nature. They should be carefully and diligently studied and taught in all the schools, until the rising generation understand that all the affairs of mankind are governed by the uniform laws established by the great Creator and Ruler of the universe; and that self-appointed "leaders of the people" who would entice them to follow their own inventions cannot save them from the penalties which naturally follow the violation of any of the laws of the universe. In short, education,—wisely directed education,—both in science and in morals, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... publish their newspapers and pamphlets with no great interference on the part of the police or attention on the part of lawgivers. With the progress of the war this situation changed; police and lawgivers began to interfere, and government officials and self-appointed guardians of the public weal began to denounce the "reds" and those suspected of "radical tendencies". The report of the Lusk Committee in the state of New York is perhaps the most imposing monument to this ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... rather liked to stick the toasting fork into his subjects, and then hold them pretty close to the bars of a decidedly hot fire. The result was that many of them burned and smarted under the ordeal. One of the victims went so far as to propose that this self-appointed censor of public characters should be fought with his own weapons, and have a taste of his own nasty physic. In a word it was suggested that someone should draw Mr. H.J. Jennings' portrait on his own lines after ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... on his self-appointed task, and the white men felt, as they saw him disappear, how impossible it was for them to cope with the mystery of the forest. They were even more helpless than castaways at sea without a compass; for at sea in the day there is the clear ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... thou art, Take not the self-appointed leader's part. Follow no man, and by no man be led, And no man lead. AWAKE, and go ahead. Thy path, though leading straight unto the goal Might prove confusing to another soul. The goal is central; but from east, and west, And north, and ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is complete without its curmudgeon or self-appointed grumbler, just as every village has its special imbecile. The curmudgeon originates in a class above the idiot; very often he is an ex-churchwarden, guardian, way-warden, or other official, who has resigned in dudgeon or been ousted from his post for some neglect ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... store" keeper, acting as self-appointed chairman, asked if anyone had anything to report. For himself, he had seen the Major and asked point-blank for payment of his bill. The Major had been very polite and was apparently much concerned that his fellow townsmen should have ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "liberty of the subject" was involved; and though Mr. Blaine would have been forcibly restrained if he had shown any tendency to injure lamp-posts, or to lay hands upon his own worthless life, he was given every facility in his self-appointed task of inciting the public to all sorts of offences against the State, and to a variety ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... you've got," my self-appointed pilot blared. "None o' your agency whiskey, either. What's ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... buildings. At last, yielding to the almost superhuman efforts of the firemen, the fire was extinguished, leaving only the bare and blackened walls standing as monuments of the destruction that had been wrought. Foremost among the brave fellows who were performing their self-appointed and herculean duty was a man about thirty-five years of age, stout and muscular in form, and with a good-humored, honest face, that would attract your friendly regard at a glance. He was the most active and energetic man upon the ground, and it could be seen at once, ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... childhood, when existence had no toil beyond the day's simple lesson, no ambition beyond the neighboring approval of the night, I brought to you the morning's task for the evening's sanction, so now I bring to you this self-appointed taskwork of maturer years; less confident indeed of your approval, but not less confident of your love; and anxious only to realize your presence between myself and the public, and to mingle with those severer voices to whose final sentence ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... or represent them when they could not come. The provincial magistrates were generally members, though not always. As to the number of temporal lords, it was almost invariably more than twelve, sometimes double as many. From the very first, this self-appointed oligarchy saw that in unity was strength; and while the different members of the royal family were squabbling among themselves, the Cabinet seized the opportunity to increase its power. Though not ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... dominant factors in the evil doings of Marco. What deep gratification it afforded Pan! They might thrive for a time, but their heyday had passed. Matthews would be the laughing stock of the town. He could never retrieve. He had been proclaimed only another in the long list of self-appointed officers of ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... correspondence with them, go among them, talk to them. The difficulty, at first, would be in getting them to write to her, to open their minds to her. These voiceless masses that never spoke, but were always being spoken for by self-appointed "leaders," "representatives," who immediately they had climbed into prominence took their place among the rulers, and then from press and platform shouted to them what they were to think and feel. It was as if the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... dictatorial powers over a business in which their members were personally engaged. In order to render trading in unlisted stocks a possibility, at the time, similar powers must be granted and similar confidence must be given to some one. The Unlisted Stock Committee were not self-appointed because they came into being at the instigation and suggestion of the Committee of Five, and to disband them after they had started upon their work, substituting other individuals in their places, would merely stimulate ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... with treason, and Philadelphia had the grim experience of seeing two Loyalists led to the scaffold with ropes around their necks and hanged. Most of the persecuted Loyalists lost all their property and remained exiles from their former homes. The self-appointed committees took in hand the task of disciplining those who did not fly, and the rabble often pushed matters to brutal extremes. When we remember that Washington himself regarded Tories as the vilest of mankind and unfit to live, we can imagine the spirit of mobs, which had ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... now darkened landscape, and ever took the lead to urge us forward. If it came to a great upstanding mountain, with marked politeness it ran round by a circuitous route, more easily if of greater length; at other times it scaled clear up, nimbly and straight, turning not once to us in its self-appointed task, and at the top, standing like some fairy on a steeple-point, beckoned us on encouragingly. At times it became exhausted and stretched itself wearisomely out, measuring in width to only a few small inches, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... ere he returned. He had presented himself at the prison before the self-appointed tribunal that was consigning the prisoners to massacre, and had announced himself as a victim of the Bastille. One member of the tribunal had identified him; the member was Defarge. He had pleaded hard for his son-in-law's life, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in their sentimentality, dropped away into silence; the fire flared up and then suddenly died away into darkness. But, even in the darkness, Weldon could see the dim outline of the Captain's figure, moving steadily forward along his self-appointed way. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... to seats. A venerable clergyman sat in the pulpit with a face full of quiet benignity. Every one who came appeared to receive an almost personal welcome; and Madge and Mr. Muir looked enviously at the self-appointed usher. It was as evident that he was not a professional sexton as that the little congregation could not afford such a luxury. No care clouded his brow. Evidently his future did not depend on fluctuations in the maelstrom of commerce, nor had he one hope so predominant ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... cause of religious liberty and reform. He had been confined in the Tower for writing heretical pamphlets, and been prosecuted for preaching in the streets of London. He had traveled in Holland and Germany as a self-appointed missionary of the Society of Friends, and had not spared his own ease in pleading the cause of persecuted Quakers everywhere. When, therefore, he proposed to found a colony in America, his name alone was enough to attract a host of followers. Many immigrants flocked to Pennsylvania even ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... very few retaining any doubt of themselves. [Footnote: Exceptions are Jessie Rittenhouse, Patrius; Lawrence Houseman, Mendicant Rhymes; Robert Silliman Hillyer, Poor Faltering Rhymes.] Self-assertion is especially characteristic of their self-appointed leader, Ezra Pound, in whose case it is undoubtedly an inheritance from Walt Whitman, whom he has lately acknowledged as his "pig-headed father." [Footnote: Lustra.] A typical assertion is that ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... intuition of Marcia's antagonism. Jerry joined and chatted in Una's group for a moment, but I could see that he had lost something of his buoyancy. I watched Marcia keenly. Though absorbed apparently in the pouring of the tea, a self-appointed prerogative which she had assumed with something of an air—(meant, I am sure, for Una)—her narrowly veiled eyes lost no detail of any happening in Una's group, and her ears, I am sure, no detail of its conversation. Subtle glances, stolen or portentous, shot between ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Academy in the first two centuries of its existence. And the same acute critic, in his "History of Classical French Literature," pointed out that French novels were under a cloud of suspicion even so far back as the days of Erasmus, in 1525. It was many scores of years thereafter before the self-appointed guardians of French literature esteemed the novel highly enough to ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... this new correspondent of the MIRROR means to enforce? Drag us from our beds at peep of day! The visionary barbarian! Why, ferocious as our Innovator is, he would just as soon drag a tigress from her's! We will not obey this self-appointed Dictator!" Stay, gentle ladies; in the first place I am not going to enforce this or any other hour; in the second place, I am not going to enforce early rising at all.—Convinced you feel, with me, the importance of time, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... then the old lady said: "Young man, you have been leaning against something white," and taking her tree-switch she whipped some wall dust from the sleeve of Bok's coat. It was not until that moment that Bok recognized in his self-appointed "brush" no less a personage than Harriet ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... saw it,—saw that his enemy was escaping him unpunished! There yet remained one stimulant that might rouse him, and in the passion of the moment this self-appointed lieutenant of the Almighty ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... curtains, and doubtless if we could have seen her face we would have found tears upon it, for the evening with another woman of her kind had brought to her a breath of the old life which she had resolutely forsaken and which so seldom penetrated to her self-appointed exile. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... her powers of polite endurance, which had been put to such searching and repeated tests that day, St. Michael had planned out for himself a busy little time-table of afternoon visits, at each of which his self-appointed task of forestalling and embellishing the newspaper announcements of the Youghal-de Frey engagement would be hurriedly but ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... women—increasing the risks of this uncertain life?" But he was also full of respect for them. There was a certain nobility rightly attributable to emigration itself in the abstract. It was the cutting loose from friends and aid,—those sweet-named temptations,—and the going forth into self-appointed exile and into dangers known and unknown, trusting to the help of one's own right hand to exchange honest toil for honest bread and raiment. His eyes kindled to see the goodly, broad, red-cheeked fellows. Sometimes, though, he saw women, and sometimes ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the day my self-appointed guardianship of her began. Before we had a schoolhouse, Aunt Candace taught the children of the community in our big living-room. One rainy afternoon, late in the Fall, the darkness seemed to drop down suddenly. We could not see to study, and we ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... some self-appointed business of her own, the maid who had brought in the tea, and one of the very damp papers which the boys were still crying below, left the room with some abruptness to see what was demanded below and who was ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... of mind, who in spite of an office-boy's training possessed an irrelevant taste for literature which had made him an admirer of Lathrop's two published volumes. For some time past he had been Lathrop's chancellor of the exchequer—self-appointed, and had done his best to keep his friend out of the workhouse. From the tone of Paul's recent letters he had become aware of two things—first, that Lathrop was in sight of his last five pound note, and did not see his ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the little stream offered an attractive resting place for the self-appointed delegates, and the twilight hour a most opportune ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... knew London. It is no wonder now that her mind was in a perturbed condition. She was going to leave the place in which so far all her life literally had been passed. She was going to live in that other place which had for years been her dream, her study, her self-appointed destiny. She was going to pass away for ever from uncongenial and odious companionship, and to live a life of sweet, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself, had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling away, leaving his future ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... as his own humor, had herded him thither. Well, he would go there! The matter was slight, after all; she would explain the whole matter to her Chief of Police, how the istvostchik had been the assailant and so forth; he would be released, and her self-appointed function of "vice-vice" would shine forth justified and vindicated. It all fell out as dexterously ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... two, who usually took the roads and the fields at a flying gallop, daring each other on to further recklessness. Also, she recalled the last miles of that journey from Frankfort, when the girl sat between them, playing with hands, lips, and crooning voice her self-appointed role of comforter. It would be a stony-hearted celibate indeed who resisted little Jacqueline in the role ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... window looking east. The Silver Lady came and stood beside him. She did not seem to notice his face, but in the mysterious way of women she watched him keenly. She wished to satisfy her own mind before she undertook her self-appointed task. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... and Rip appeared to have the situation in hand, Dane turned to his own self-appointed job. He jammed the machine on reverse, maneuvering it with an ease learned by practice on the rough terrain of Limbo, until the gate doors were pushed shut again. Then he swung the machine around so that its bulk would afford an effective bar to keep the door locked ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... this self-appointed task, let me say to the reader, in the words of Montaigne, "I bring you a nosegay of culled flowers, and I have brought little of my own but the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... apartment hotel in which Grand lived. Fortunately the Colonel was not about the place. Dick, on missing the ex-convict, had hurried at once to Grand's hotel, finding his man there, seated in the small lobby, a sinister example of respectability, waiting patiently for the return of his enemy. The self-appointed guardian coaxed him away from the place, conducting him to the cheap, ill-favored thieves' lodging-house where he had taken a single room for temporary occupancy. Braddock, after a show of obduracy, finally had consented to make an effort to see his wife before visiting his wrath ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... that people, especially people doing our sort of work, were much more awake in the Nineties, much more alive, much more keen about everything, even a fight, or above all a fight, if they thought a fight would clear the air. Those clever young men, self-appointed historians of a period they know only by hearsay, may deplore or envy its decadence. But because a small clique wrote anaemic verse and bragged of the vices for which they had not the strength, because ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... they received into their family a poor young man from Jamaica, personally a stranger, but of whose labors as a self-appointed missionary among the recently emancipated slaves of the West Indies they had heard. He had labored for three years, supporting himself as he could, until he was utterly broken down in health, when he came back to die. His friendless situation appealed to the warmest ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the Arctic regions. Their names remain an added constellation in polar skies. But, we know that bitter skies and winter winds are not so unkind as man's ingratitude. And why, then, do we withhold sympathy and honor from these men who have so unflinchingly trod their isolated paths of self-appointed duty, accepting political and social excommunication—these heroes of the moral solitudes? But even as it is, our reformers have a better lot than history usually records for such; they have the satisfaction not only to see but to enter, with ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... occurred in this room, I have had to assume a triple obligation: that of host, that of self-appointed champion of the young woman who received the affront from another of my guests, and that of a life-long acquaintance with the man whom I was compelled, by circumstances, to expel from my house. The last was the most difficult of all to fill. There is not one of you who could not readily have assumed ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... meaning in that speech which Sandersen alone could understand. The others of the self-appointed posse had apparently made up their minds that Sandersen was right, and that this was ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... with a gesture, so that no tidings of the siege of Paris, the disasters on the Loire and all the daily renewed horrors of the invasion had gained admission there. But the colonel might stop his ears and shut out the light of day as he would in his self-appointed tomb; the air he breathed must have brought him through key-hole and crevices intelligence of the calamity that was everywhere throughout the land, for every new day beheld him sinking, slowly dying, despite his determination not to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals. Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its floor, gave the keynote ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert |
