"Self-assurance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bold in her manner. Life had not taught her domination—superciliousness of grace, which is the lordly power of some women. Her longing for consideration was not sufficiently powerful to move her to demand it. Even now she lacked self-assurance, but there was that in what she had already experienced which left her a little less than timid. She wanted pleasure, she wanted position, and yet she was confused as to what these things might be. Every hour the kaleidoscope of human affairs threw a new lustre ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... man that he had been, safeguarded by his star; but as he worked he found himself instinctively turning to the chair where Carl Bristoll should be and where now sat a more inept subordinate. Each such moment brought its tiny stab at his pride and self-assurance, and the brain which he must concentrate kept straying to the disquieting vision of a grief-maddened girl leaning against the wall, with her fingers twitching in little groping gestures as her lips rained accusation. Today he had made a panic, but between the opening and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... do more things than ever. Maybe "pep tablets" have been discovered on the other side as well! No longer is the ghost content to be seen and not heard, to slink around in shadowy corners as apologetically as poor relations. Wraiths now have a rambunctious vitality and self-assurance that are astonishing. Even the ghosts of folks dead so long they have forgotten about themselves are yawning, stretching their skeletons, and starting out to do a little haunting. Spooky creatures in such a wide diversity are abroad to-day that one is sometimes at a loss to know what ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... must come, of course, unconsciously; but we may be sure it will not be much like the gardens of any politically shut-in people. No, not even of those supreme artists in gardening, the Japanese. It will express the traits of our American domestic life; our strong individuality and self-assurance, our sense of unguarded security, our affability and unexclusiveness and our dislike to high-walled privacy. If we would hasten its day we must make way for it along the lines of ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... ended. The count felt that he had only a small formality to fulfil, a sacrifice to accept; and, recovering some of his self-assurance, he said, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of Rosenblatt's encouraging advice, Samuel recovered much of his self-assurance, which had been rudely shattered, and therefore much of his good humour. As a further result, he determined upon a more vigorous policy in his wooing. He would humble himself no more. He would find means to bring this girl to her place, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... not at all necessary. The moment he enters the room, or caffe, where a circle may happen to be conversing, he immediately takes part in the discussion—of whatever nature, or upon whatever subject that may be, is not of the most distant consequence to him. He strikes in with the utmost self-assurance and adroitness, maintains a prominent part in the conversation with the most perfect plausibility; and although, from his want of accurate information, he will rarely instruct, he seldom fails to amuse by the exuberance ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... feast for the lion, eh?" and the keeper, who had more self-assurance than manners, having laughed at his own nonsense, pulled a bell-cord, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... would be Maxwell Wyndham. So Piers told himself each time he turned in his endless pacing and looked at that lighted window. Tudor believed in him. And—yes, he believed in him also. There had been something in the great man's attitude, something of arrogant self-assurance that had inspired him with confidence almost against his will. He had watched him saunter up the stairs with his hands thrust into his pockets and an air of limitless leisure pervading his every movement, and he had been exasperated ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... marked with stripes and spots of brown, black and white. Whilst in Fiji I often came across natives far from any village who were being followed by pet pigs, as we in England might be followed by dogs. Masirewa amused me more each day by his cheek and self-assurance. Once I asked him what he said to the chief of the hut we were in, and he replied: "Oh! I tell him Get out, you black ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... secretaire particulier de M. le Duc d'Otrante," and below it the address, "Palais du Commissariat de Police, 12 Quai d'Orsay." This card I presented with a graceful flourish of the arm to the proprietor of the establishment, whilst I said with that lofty self-assurance which is one of my finest attributes and which I have ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... redefine notions brought from the East. The great success with which he has met in various co-operative schemes has also developed in him a high sense of self-reliance. The only danger is that he carries that same self-assurance into domains where he often over-reaches himself. This fact is very noticeable in the various annual Conventions. Unconsciously, in matters beyond his grasp, he is at the mercy of a few leaders. Resolutions are passed, legislation is suggested, without ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... this minority. On the evening when the girl from New England had been shown into the room at the end of the hall, Kathleen had conceived a strong dislike for this calm-faced, independent young woman, whose quiet self-assurance nettled her, and mentally decided that she belonged to the preaching, narrow-minded class of girls who made life a burden for those who did not live up to a certain impossible standard. Patience Eliot had been even less favorably impressed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... odd eyes challenged him with royal self-assurance. "Well? What is the news?" he questioned. "Fished for a sprat and caught a whale—or ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... was a bad prophet in this respect, his instinct did not always mislead him. He believed in himself, which was not only a more substantial faith, but more to the point in this narrative, for it enabled him, by dint of self-assurance, largely to dominate, and occasionally to domineer, the railway world of Montgomeryshire and the adjacent counties and to contribute in no small measure to the successful ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the most hostile had to admit it. On that, the day of her final victory, she surpassed herself. She shone as a queen with majestic self-assurance, wholly at her ease, sublimely indifferent to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... son, aged 25; has studied law, but has no definite occupation. Member of the Cycling Club, Jockey Club, and of the Society for Promoting the Breeding of Hounds. Enjoys perfect health, and has imperturbable self-assurance. Speaks loud and abruptly. Is either perfectly serious—almost morose, or is noisily gay and ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... diffidence himself, and more trust in the honest purposes of others,—if he could be brought to believe that old customs need not necessarily be evil, and that changes may possibly be dangerous; but no, Bold has all the ardour and all the self-assurance of a Danton, and hurls his anathemas against time-honoured practices with the violence of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... is best?' he said. His voice was hardly like his own as he spoke. There was wanting to it that tone of self-assurance which his voice almost always possessed, even when self-assurance was lacking ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... The Green, which she had just passed on her horse. Straight ahead of her was the wide street flanked by houses of which her home was one—a low white building hemmed in on each side by another and with a small walled garden in front of it; not a large house, but one full of character and of quiet self-assurance. Malletts had lived in it for several generations, long before the opposite houses were built, long before the road had, lower down, degenerated into a region of shops. These houses, all rechristened in a day of enthusiasm, Nelson Lodge, with Trafalgar House, taller, bigger, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the new world, no less to be respected, he was sure, than her sisters of Theos, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, yet viewing life from a wholly different standpoint. From the first there was something curiously fascinating to Reist in the perfect naturalness and self-assurance of the girl whose every thought and energy seemed centred just then upon that flying cork. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes were bright, her face was full of colour and vivacity. She sprang backwards and forwards, jumped and stooped with the delightful freedom of perfect ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... two lie in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood at her heels, is eying curiously, and with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that lies curled up, and dozing, upon the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... be hardly safe. I had been away for a long time now, and if we met any one I knew I might have to talk to them. But Frokenen insisted on Grand. She had had but a few days' practice in the capital, and had already gained a deal of self-assurance. But I liked ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... a safe means of self-assurance; yet I have sometimes found it to be "a way of the world,"—not to be altogether scorned or disregarded,—to purchase the good will of "confidential" persons. Accordingly, I made it "worth the while" of Ormond's body-servant ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... proof of rare presence of mind, for he broke in: "The Princess meant to say that after having landed at Malaga, the first place where she heard of your worship was Osuna." And Dorothea immediately corroborated the curate's explanation with great self-assurance. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
