"Self-reliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeking to know what His will is, that is recalling our deposit. Then you will get it back again, because God does not keep anybody's securities against his will—you will get it back again, and much good it will do you when you have got it! Self-will, self-reliance, self-determination—these are the opposites of committing the keeping of our souls to God. And, as I say, if you withdraw the deposit, you take all the burden and trouble of it on your own shoulders again. Do not fancy ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... activities of the wild creatures are more likely to appeal to the sympathy of child nature than under any other method of study. The method has also the advantage of being one of original discovery, and consequently it trains in self-reliance and independence of thought. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of Scott's first report to Holmes, he personally made reports[856] and issued appeals,[857] some of which, because of their grasp, because of their earnestness, and because of their spirit of noble self-reliance, call for very special mention. Watie's purpose in making and in issuing them was evidently nothing more and nothing less than to dispel despondency and to ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... enormously increased demand upon the teacher." Again, "it must not be thought, however, that the work of the school is limited to lesson hours. We aim not only at giving a definite intellectual equipment but at producing independence and self-reliance together with that public spirit which enables a girl quite simply and without self-consciousness to take her part in the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... is the way in which Servians are wearing their laurels, it can be imagined what the effect of recent events has been on impressionable Greece. To the trepidation with which the war was entered has succeeded the feeling of boundless self-reliance. All sense of reality and proportion has been banished, and there is no exploit which seems beyond ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... more capacious; their ingenuity was more inventive. I felt assured that in either Liverpool or Manchester—the centres of commercial and manipulative energy—I could settle down with my limited capital and tools, and in course of time contrive to get on, helped by energy, self-reliance, and determination. I also found that the demand for machine-making tools was considerable, and that their production would soon become an important department of business. It might be carried on with little expenditure of capital, as the risks were small and the returns ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... natural stock of self-reliance had been largely improved by twenty years of grass-widowhood, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... national credit abroad has not been strengthened and sustained by the fact that foreign investments in our securities have not been sought by us, and whether we have not found a pecuniary advantage in self-reliance." Reciting the steps which he had taken for placing loans, he declared; "These negotiations have afforded satisfactory evidence not only of the ability of the people to furnish at a short notice such sums as may be required but of the entire confidence felt in the national securities. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... began to enjoy her meals again, she began to look carefully to her appearance. Presently she was laughing, singing, bubbling with life and energy. Alice, watching her, rejoiced and marvelled at her recovery. Rachael's beauty, her old definite self-reliance, came back in a flood. She fairly radiated charm, glowing as she held George and Alice under the spell of her voice, the spell of her happy planning. Her letters to Warren were in the old, tender, vivacious strain. She was interested in everything, delighted with everything ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... deal of thought to the young girl behind him, and thought had deepened her charm. Her frankness, her humor, her superb physical strength and her calm self-reliance appealed to him, and the more dangerously, because he was so well aware of his own weakness and loneliness, and as the stage drew up before the hotel, he fervently said: "I hope I shall ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... who less hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... wrists, as if she had been suddenly summoned from the bread-bowl. She was fresh and sweet, strong and healthy, with a certain grace of manner about her that pleased Babcock instantly. He saw now that she had her mother's eyes and color, but not her air of fearlessness and self-reliance—that kind of self-reliance which comes only of many nights of anxiety and many days of success. He noticed, too, that when she spoke to the old man her voice was tempered with a peculiar tenderness, as if his infirmities were more to be pitied than complained ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of man,—to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin—our need of pardon. But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Emerson's ancestors were ministers of New England churches. He inherited qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. The form of his ideals was modified by the glow of transcendentalism which passed over parts of New England in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but the spirit in which Emerson conceived the laws ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... men, and at the same time will incite women to more and better endeavors along new lines. It will enable her to acquire more scientific ways and a better preparation for the business world. It will teach her a saving of energy and greater self-reliance. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... as ruinous, and lamented that the fruits of victory turned to ashes on the lips of the people, because there was no homogeneous and vital organization to conserve and administer the invaluable blessings won by the sword: against the suicidal jealousy of State rights as adequate for prosperous self-reliance without the bonds and blessings of a vital National Government, they earnestly directed the most patriotic and intelligent arguments: of these the 'Federalist' is the chief repertory; hence its value and interest as a popular treatise which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have to guard against the shock of the discontents, the ambitions, the interests, and the exuberant, and therefore sometimes irregular, impulses of opinion or of action which are the natural product of the present political elevation, the self-reliance, and the restless spirit of enterprise of the people ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his country was still strong within him, as is shown by his strenuous advocacy of increased armaments, better coast defenses, and more and more powerful ships. "He never ceased for a single moment to keep before the nation the great lesson that empires are kept as they are gained, by courage and self-reliance." ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... him of what Honnor Cunyngham, with her firm independence of character, her proud self-reliance, would have said to all these timorous fancies. He knew perfectly well what she would say. She would say, "Well, but even if Miss Burgoyne were to appear at Strathaivron Lodge, how could that affect you? You are ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... self-support and independence, and taking a little of the burden from her father, intoxicated her. Maria had the true spirit of the women of her race. She liked the feel of her own muscles and nerves of individuality and self-reliance. She felt a head taller after she ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... comes from the conviction that he is peculiarly capable of impressing for good the present condition of our national character. By giving us fuller realizations of liberty and justice his writings will tend to increase our self-reliance in the great emergency of civilization to which we have been summoned. "Our Progressive Independence," so brilliantly illustrated by Dr. Holmes, emancipating us from foreign fine-writing, leaves us free to welcome the true manhood and mature wisdom of Europe. In the time of our old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... England of the cause of the American Negro at the time of the beginning of the Civil War. It is to be regretted that she did not live to read the Emancipation Proclamation and to see the Negro started on an era of self-reliance and progress. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... The Excelsior brigade is rapidly pushed into the woods, north of the plank road; the Fourth Excelsior and the First Massachusetts south. Carr's brigade is kept in second line, one hundred and fifty yards in the rear. The men, with the instinctive pride of self-reliance, move up with the steadiness of veterans on drill, regardless of the stream of fugitives breaking through ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... towards me, with which he has been inspired by you, and his most absolute incapability, with all his aestheticism, of conceiving the slightest notion of what had to be conceived. The total confusion engendered in him by listening to my opera he transfers with bold self-reliance to my intentions and to the work itself. He, who apparently can see in opera nothing but kettledrums, trombones, and double-basses, naturally in my opera did not see the wood for the trees; but, being a clever and glib- penned litterateur, he produces a witty and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... see them roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some youth among them who has over- eaten himself, or has been worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son: but this is a rare case: perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... and goes with his pious wife and child to the house of God, and offers the child, for her, to be baptized, is more of a man than before, gains reputation for some desirable qualities, excites respect for self-reliance, the quiet performance of a duty from which certain feelings might lead him to shrink, and in the increased love and esteem of others, to say no more, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the Service Bureau has a desk installed in one corner of the living room," offered Grace, who had, up to this point, listened to the various girls' remarks, a proud light in her eyes. She loved the sturdy self-reliance of the members of her household. "And there will also be times when I can do duty on the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... there is a superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal subject of a king,—not too despotic, but still a strong-handed, visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a constitution, to a flag; respect for law as law; sturdy independence and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's own,—all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all—the reverence for law—is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman detests law. He loves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... that of the devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unnecessary asseveration that it does not intend to sacrifice just rights would seem only calculated to invite aggression. Such proclamations would seem better devised for concealing weakness and apprehension, than for manifesting conscious strength and self-reliance, or for inspiring respect ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... much interested in your account of Miss Kavanagh. The character you sketch belongs to a class I peculiarly esteem: one in which endurance combines with exertion, talent with goodness; where genius is found unmarred by extravagance, self-reliance unalloyed by self-complacency. It is a character which is, I believe, rarely found except where there has been toil to undergo and adversity to struggle against: it will only grow to perfection in a poor soil and in the shade; if the soil be ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that success does not as much depend on external help, as on self-reliance. Much, therefore, depends upon yourselves. As to the coal mines, I think I see the means available for your self-reliance. I shall, if I get a sufficient number of you engaged, have provision made that ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... you do not intend to have him on your hands all your life, and are generally rather impatient for the day when he will earn his own living and leave you to attend to yourself, you sooner or later begin to talk to him about the need for self-reliance, learning to think, and so forth, with the result that your victim, bewildered by your inconsistency, concludes that there is no use trying to please you, and falls into an attitude of sulky resentment. Which is an additional inducement to ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... of course much to be said for and against each system, and perhaps a blend of the two would give good results. Anyhow, we can trace in American customs that spirit of equality which pervades the whole of American society, and observe the germs of self-reliance and independence so characteristic of Americans, whether ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... he knew, if he did, that the latter would be a sort of safety valve, a life preserver—to mix similes—the real driver who would be on hand to take charge if necessary. Under such circumstances his own responsibility ceased to be a responsibility and his self-reliance nil. No, sink or swim, survive or perish, he would ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of school life and athletics, full of action and human interest. They deal with problems of life common to students and inspire the manly attributes of self-reliance and strength of character. ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... venture to do this. There was something in the girl, a quiet air of pride and self-reliance, in spite of her too evident sadness, which forbade any overt expression of sympathy; so Mrs. Tadman could only show her friendly feelings in a very small way, by being especially active and brisk in assisting all ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... made from heathenism by modern missionaries, it becomes an interesting question whether their faith possesses the elements of permanence, or is only an exotic too tender for self-propagation when the fostering care of the foreign cultivators is withdrawn. If neither habits of self-reliance are cultivated, nor opportunities given for the exercise of that virtue, the most promising converts are apt to become like spoiled children. In Madagascar, a few Christians were left with nothing but the Bible in their hands; and though exposed to persecution, and even death itself, as the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... mastership. Remember that a dog needs much liberty and independence to develop his individuality, and an enterprising puppy learns more by observation and experience in a week than a pampered lap-dog does in his whole life; he learns self-reliance, but he will always run to his master or mistress in any real difficulty, and you who are his master or mistress must be wary not to misunderstand or disregard him, for he needs sympathy and love, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... teaching is self-control; to Epictetus, then, the seat of the soul is not so much in the head as in the will. To Emerson, the great enemy of mankind is authority, and the central idea of his teaching, therefore, is self-reliance; to Emerson, then, the seat of the soul is not so much in man's will as in man's pride. To Carlyle, the great enemy of mankind is consciousness of self, and the central idea of his teaching is unconsciousness of self, the forgetting, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... these men at the front, have been proof enough to the French authorities of the folly of setting rigid standards, making hard-and-fast rules to be met by prospective aviators. As our own experience increased, we saw the wisdom of a policy which is more concerned with a man's courage, his self-reliance, and his powers of initiative, than with his ability to work out ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... to any comment on this fact, and made none. As there truly was no reason why he should have the least interest in it, Arthur Clennam went on to the present purport of his visit; namely, to make Plornish the instrument of effecting Tip's release, with as little detriment as possible to the self-reliance and self-helpfulness of the young man, supposing him to possess any remnant of those qualities: without doubt a very wide stretch of supposition. Plornish, having been made acquainted with the cause of action from the Defendant's own mouth, gave Arthur ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of 5 administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, also have brought the care and anxiety 10 inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in royal and official papers) containing the name of the prince. There is an older "Lamiyat al-Arab" a pre-Islamitic L-poem by the "brigand-poet" Shanfara, of whom Mr. W. G. Palgrave has given a most appreciative account in his "Essays on Eastern Questions," noting the indomitable self-reliance and the absolute individualism of a mind defying its age and all around ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... have the highest ideal so constantly before them as to find pleasure in the work when their own faults are of such a nature that success depends on overcoming them. A firm, quick-witted woman, with sufficient self-reliance to relish responsibility, is the only one who can be happy in a large school or at the head of a small one. Now, those are the lucrative positions for teachers, and, indeed, the positions in which the largest results can be accomplished, and they ought to ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... a good one in Mrs. Ried's opinion. Perhaps the giddy Sadie, at once her pride and her anxiety, might learn a little self-reliance by feeling a shadow of the weight of care which rested continually ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... the first adverse wind that blew; disgraced and sorrowful, because they could not please others. Truly 'the tears live in an onion, that should water such a sorrow.' Had they been men, they would have made these disappointments their best friends, and learned from them the needful lesson of self-reliance." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the Church of England, that stanch defender of the British monarchy. Each colony in time developed its own legislature elected by the voters; it grew accustomed to making laws and laying taxes for itself. Here was a people learning self-reliance and self-government. The attempts to strengthen the Church of England in America and the transformation of colonies into royal provinces only fanned the spirit of independence which they were ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... had slammed between himself and affairs to which he had supposed himself essential. He could not understand why she had done this thing instead of coming straight to his flat and making use of all that chivalrous service she surely knew was at her disposal. This self-reliance, this direct dealing with the world, seemed to him, even in the height of his concern, unwomanly, a deeper injury to his own abandoned assumptions than any he had contemplated. He felt it needed explanation, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to succeed in the colonies must take with him a quantity of self-reliance, energy, and perseverance; this is the best capital a man can have. Let none rely upon introductions—they are but useless things at the best—they may get you invited to a good dinner; but now that fresh arrivals in Melbourne are so much more numerous than heretofore, I almost doubt ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... of attraction for Wilbur. He liked her splendid ropes of hair, her heavy contralto voice, her fine animal strength of bone and muscle (admittedly greater than his own); he admired her indomitable courage and self-reliance, while her positive genius in the matters of seamanship and navigation filled him with speechless wonder. The girls he had been used to were clever only in their knowledge of the amenities of an afternoon call or the formalities of a paper german. A girl of two-and-twenty who ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... talent of the Irish race. Her rhythm is musical, flowing, and pure; her thoughts gentle and womanly; her diction refined; her form good; her powers of imitation great. What she wants now is more self-reliance, that she may write from the inner life of her own experience. Her poems lack originality. Let her not fear to dip her pen in her own heart, and sing to us the joys and sorrows of the poor. Burns were a better study for her than Moore; the Corn Law rhymer than Poe. With her talents and the cultivation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the evergreen oaks that grew upon the riverbank. Her mother having been dead for some years, Katherine had the principal domestic management of the household. This duty, with its accompanying cares, had given her a self-reliance and maturity of character beyond her years. She deftly prepared a tasteful supper for the new guest, set out with snowy napery and with the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... self-reliance were held up, and a judicious respect for, and imitation of, successful men. Covetousness was specially reprobated, and luxury and self-indulgence were looked on as a course which ends ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... relations: their weak points were apparent to every one, but their ability and honesty no less so. This one story destroyed his confidence, impaired his self-reliance, shattered his belief, and thus made him the poorer. How could he be fit for anything, when he so constantly allowed himself to ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... sight of the stars and stripes serves to recall it; "Yankee" in the mouth of a European gives something of its quality. One thinks at once of a careless abandonment of any pretension, of tireless energy and daring enterprise, of immense self-reliance, of a disrespect for the past so complete that a mummy is in itself a comical object, and the blowing out of an ill-guarded sacred flame, a delightful jest. One thinks of the enterprise of the sky-scraper ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... industrial organization or his regiment. He has an infinite capacity for 'team' work. And he brings to bear upon that work a high order of intelligence and understanding. In his other splendid qualities, his self-reliance, his devotion to his cause and his comrades, and his unfailing cheerfulness under hardship and distress, he displays other manifestations of that same ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... of these two manifest itself in all true helpfulness, but in a way that would draw out the noblest self-reliance in each. It should manifest itself in courteous words, in helpful deeds, in glances of the eye, in tones of the voice, in heartfelt sympathies that stimulate to nobler deeds, in every way that strengthens and uplifts; and if caresses are few, they will ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... billows with defiance, Undaunted and unshaken day by day, In spite of its unyielding self-reliance, Is by ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... writer of the period. His Autobiography has a value possessed by no other work of the kind. This and his Poor Richard's Almanac have taught generations of Americans the duty of self-culture, self-reliance, thrift, and the value of practical common sense. He was the first of our writers to show a balanced sense of humor and to use it as an agent in impressing truth on unwilling listeners. He is an ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... in her own nature which responded to the spirit of self-reliance, energy, and industry, which are so ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... she ranged the dresses in it side by side on the bed. Her last proceeding was to push the empty boxes into the middle of the room, and to compare the space at her disposal with the articles of dress which she had to pack. She completed her preliminary calculations with the ready self-reliance of a woman who thoroughly understood her business, and began the packing forthwith. Just as she had placed the first article of linen in the smaller box, the door of the room opened, and the house-servant, eager ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... interest. At first, many people did not understand him—hardly knew what to make of a personality so unlike any they had ever seen in high places before. But he soon began to show those qualities of calm self-reliance, quickness to grasp the essential factors of a situation and readiness to meet it, courage, patience, firmness, breadth of view and kindliness, practical tact and wisdom, which were a surprise to all who knew him, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... him long after his form had disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker had faded. It was wide-eyed with an almost awe-stricken ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... many years. The lessons of my constant companions have calmed and elevated me to a gentler and better spirit. From them I have learned humility as well as self-reliance; while from the history of the actions and thoughts of men in past ages, I have learned perhaps something of the machinery of human nature. The forms of the noblest of preceding generations, and the shapes of beauty which their imaginations have conceived and made to live, visit ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... some day of the most Spartan simplicity, all our needs cut down to the lowest and plainest of possessions, and yet a spirit of hospitality, of contentment, of gaiety, of self-reliance and mutual helpfulness. Books ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... voice. There was always a woman by the soldier's side, propping her chin in her hands and smiling into the depths of his eyes. For the soul of a Frenchman demands the help of women, and the love of women, however strong his courage or his self-reliance. The beauty of life is to him a feminine thing, holding the spirit of motherhood, romantic love and comradeship more intimate and tender than between man and man. Only duty ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... in God and the spiritual world, and he proclaims 'The Everlasting Yea,' wherein are affirmed, the significance of life as a means of developing character and the necessity of accepting life and its requirements with manly self-reliance and moral energy. 'Seek not Happiness,' Carlyle cries, 'but Blessedness. Love ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... smarter sailor could be found in all that noble fleet than this Lieutenant Blyth, who once had been the captain of all smugglers. He had fought his way up by skill, and spirit, and patience, and good temper, and the precious gift of self-reliance, failing of which all merit fails. He had always thought well of himself, but never destroyed the good of it by saying so; and whoever praised him had to do it again, to outspeak his modesty. But without ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and wasteful age. The young man who shows what enlightened self-control, what high probity and fidelity to the details of little wants and expenditures can do to lift a man high above debt, to thrift and self-reliance, is a valuable citizen, exerting an influence as wholesome as it is ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Cropper and Burgess, which would save her from being carried away to live among strangers in London! When she first became known to us on her coming to Exeter, in compliance with her aunt's suggestion, she was timid, silent, and altogether without self-reliance. Even they who knew her best had never guessed that she possessed a keen sense of humour, a nice appreciation of character, and a quiet reticent wit of her own, under that staid and frightened demeanour. Since her engagement with Brooke Burgess it seemed to those who watched her that her character ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion and uncommunicative self-reliance that none knew, none will ever know, the motive principle he employed or the enginery he devised. While he was working at this survey, near the spot at which we stand, the Board of Award gave the L20,000 to one John Harrison, almost at the very instant ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... something he's got to decide for himself. The police are useless; the fire department is useless; the railroads and street-cars are crippled. If a man is going to take care of his life and property, he must do it himself. He's buying back his self-reliance. Self-reliance is a valuable property. He ought to pay something for it. Generally he has to pay war or insurrection or bloody riot. In the present instance he's ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... heart. Her face was grave, its expression concentrated; she bent on me an unsmiling eye—an eye just returning from abstraction, just awaking from dreams: well-arranged was her simple attire, smooth her dark hair, orderly her tranquil room; but what—with her thoughtful look, her serious self-reliance, her bent to meditation and haply inspiration—what had she to do with love? "Nothing," was the answer of her own sad, though gentle countenance; it seemed to say, "I must cultivate fortitude and cling to poetry; one is to be my support and the other my solace through life. Human affections ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... knows that. I've been running with a machine for years." The calm way with which Muggles said this, shaking the ashes from his cigar as he spoke, showed a certain self-reliance. "Out in our village I'm foreman ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of independence, every atom of the old self-reliance had gone from the girl's manner. She clung to him, timid, loving, a gentle, weak woman. Her whole soul was in her appeal and the look ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... habit of writing, to the exclusion of any other bread-winning pursuit. He is already to be classed as a "general writer," corresponding to the comprehensive wants of the "general reader," and with this industry on his hands it is not enough for him to keep up the ingenuous self-reliance of youth: he finds himself under an obligation to be skilled in various methods of seeming to know; and having habitually expressed himself before he was convinced, his interest in all subjects is chiefly to ascertain that he has not made a mistake, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... teaching. He had been licensed to practice law, though not yet twenty-one years of age. He had opened an office in the courthouse at Jacksonville. His sharp wit, pugnacity, self-reliance, had already excited rivalry and envy. He had suddenly leaped into the political arena, carrying ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... were left to quiet reflection, to meditation, to adjust their thoughts, to get to understand the bearings of the transcendent fact. And as a mother will go a little way off from her little child, in order to encourage it to try to walk, they were left alone to make experiments of that self-reliance which was also reliance on Him, and which was to be their future and their permanent condition. So the week passed, and they became steadier and quieter, and began to be familiar with the thought, and to see some glimpses of what was involved in the mighty fact, of a risen Saviour. Then He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... lacking in self-reliance. I needed some one to help me over the rough spots in life, and finding them not, at the age of sixteen I was as rank a cynic and infidel as could be found in three ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... ne'er renowned For pride, or self-reliance, Knows little of the depths profound Of "Telegraphic" science: But now her peace she cannot hold And like a true Camena, With look half-blushing and half-bold, Descends ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed republic in the southern portion by force, North Korea under its founder President KIM Il Sung adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence and molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's control. KIM's son, the current ruler KIM Jong Il, was officially designated as KIM's ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... for friendship you must be able to do without it. That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered spirit more, will never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... German peoples, who never combined in any general alliance against it, is a very difficult question to answer satisfactorily. The inhabitants of the Empire appear gradually to have lost their energy and self-reliance and to have become less and less prosperous. This may be explained partially at least by the following considerations: (1) the terrible system of taxation, which discouraged and not infrequently ruined the members of the wealthier classes; (2) the existence of slavery, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... strikingly her opposite in every particular, she admired Kate exceedingly. The freshness of her candid friendly face, her general wholesomeness attracted her. She felt also the latent strength of character beneath the ingenuous surface, and the girl's courage and self-reliance drew her in her own trembling uncertainty at this period, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... poorest of whom, it would mean the cessation of highly prized privileges and immunities. The provinces would from the earliest moment of their subjection have welcomed such a change. The time was more than ripe for it when the Roman world lay at the feet of Sulla. Sulla had all the ability, self-reliance, prestige, and opportunity that were needed. But his moral nature was below the task. He had neither the insight, nor the sympathy, nor the noble ambition of Caesar, and he preferred ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... was content merely to stray from Suma's side only to return at her summons or when the odds were against him. Self-reliance came to him bit by bit. He learned that mastery in the wilderness depended largely upon a game of bluff—especially when cornered, and on one occasion when a fox, far larger than he, advanced menacingly ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... in Calabria, etc., began to have a personal meaning for a Roman ear, or until Sicily (as the common field for Greek, Roman, and Carthaginian) began to have a dangerous meaning for all three. As to the Romans, the very grandeur of their self-reliance and the sublime faith which they had in the destinies[29] of Rome, inclined them to carelessness about all but their nearest neighbours, and sustained for ages their illiterate propensities. Illiterate they were, because incurious; and incurious ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the column of figures from which I had got an important logarithm was in error. It was a matter I could prove beyond a doubt, and it made the difference as already stated. The tables being corrected, I sailed on with self-reliance unshaken, and with my tin clock fast asleep. The result of these observations naturally tickled my vanity, for I knew that it was something to stand on a great ship's deck and with two assistants take lunar observations approximately near the truth. As one of the poorest of American sailors, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... to loyalty revealed much that was worthy and much that was sordid in Canadian life. It was well that a sturdy national self-reliance should be developed and expressed in the face of American prophets of "manifest destiny," and that men should be ready to set ideals above pocket. It was unfortunate that in order to demonstrate a loyalty which ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... history. Orange had no difficulty in showing the sincerity of his motives and his devotion to the common weal. The reader of this eloquent document will, however, realize that its author lacked the energy and self-reliance necessary to deal with the desperate situation in which the country was placed. In his eagerness to save the Belgian towns and to safeguard unity, in spite of the unwillingness of Holland and Zeeland to depart from ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... the cost of some food and clean collars. So Thyrsis reflected when, after his week of waiting, he had his interview with the benevolent philanthropist, who explained to him, at great length, how charity had the effect of weakening the springs of character, and destroying those qualities of self-reliance and independence which were the most precious things in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... evidently never occurred to him that it was even remotely possible that I should ever adopt any other profession than that of the sea, and, knowing from experience how indispensable to the sailor are the qualities of dauntless courage, patient, unflinching endurance, absolute self-reliance, and unswerving resolution, he had steadily done his utmost to cultivate those qualities in me; and his stories were invariably so narrated as to illustrate the value and desirability of ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... expression was it that it now reminded me of? But the remarkable thing was that this expression was intermittent; it came and went like the shadows the fleeting clouds cast along the sunlit grass. Then it was followed by a look of steady self-reliance and daring. This last variation of expression was what now suddenly came into her eyes as she said, scrutinising ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... whatever line of business they may find their life work, it can be taken for granted that the lessons learned when living this life of self-reliance in the open must always prove of the greatest value ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... daughter, Mrs. Wingate. The mother, old and withered, was made strong by her power as mother-in-law and her faith in her country and her gods. The daughter was weak and negative by reason of no particular faith and no definite gods. The system by which she had been trained did not include self-reliance nor foster individuality. Under it many of the country's daughters grow to beautiful womanhood because of their gift of living their own inner lives entirely apart, while submitting to the external one imposed ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the end of a like period, the Normans became Englishmen. Some of the qualities that have helped to make the modern English a great people—their love of the sea and fondness for adventure, their vigor, self-reliance, and unconquerable spirit—are doubtless derived in good part from ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... it most willingly. This trait is very noticeable in his passion to revaluate theories, to 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. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... boy needed a strong fatherly hand to guide him, to teach him self-reliance and practical sense, it was this dreamy, tender-spirited child.[15] The love and sympathy which his mother bestowed upon him was not calculated to fit him for the rugged experiences of life, and while probably natural and ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... least, peculiarities belonging to the early emigrant, as much before as after his removal. And there were others, quite as distinctly marked, called into activity, if not actually created by his life in the wilderness. Such, for example, was his self-reliance—his confidence in his own strength, sagacity, and courage. It was but little assistance that he ever required from his neighbors, though no man was ever more willing to render it to others, in the hour of need. He was the swift avenger of his own wrongs, and he never ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... emergency. That he possessed the confidence and support of Government to the fullest extent, is attested by the following letter from Mr. Pitt; and that he displayed the qualities of resolution and self-reliance demanded by the occasion, is sufficiently shown ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Mr. Maynard, "the children must be taught self-reliance. But we'll talk this matter over some other time. Marjorie, you'll be late to school if you're not careful. And listen to me, my child. I don't want you to tell any one of what you did last evening. It is something that it is better ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... that was necessary, though some people might think it was degrading. He did not feel above useful employment, on the farm, or in the workshop and factory. And this quality was a great help to him. For it is cousin to that hopefulness which he possessed, and brother to his self-reliance and independence. No man ever accomplished much who was afraid of doing work beneath his dignity. Dr. Franklin was nothing but a soap-boiler when he commenced; Roger Sherman was only a cobbler, and kept a book by his side on the bench; Ben Jonson was ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... supplying the armies with the necessities of life. The letters written by the women in that period reveal an intelligent grasp of affairs and a strength of spirit altogether admirable. Here was indeed a charming mingling of feminine grace, tenderness, sympathy, self-reliance, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... well-conducted lives, and where the sacred fire of independent feeling is struggling through the long frost of misfortune with patient dignity. It is a touching thing to see the simple joys of life, in homes like these, crushed into a speechless endurance of penury, and the native spirit of self-reliance writhing in unavoidable prostration, and hoping on from day to day for better times. I have seen many such places in my wanderings during these hard days—cottages where all was so sweet and orderly, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... him by urging upon his consideration the manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance, which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude surroundings,—at the same time granting the necessity of sleepless vigilance and severe restraints. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... ill-effects from her terrible ordeal, braced him up. He remained with her for a time, then he sought Sir Nathaniel in order to talk over the matter with him. He knew that the calm common sense and self-reliance of the old man, as well as his experience, would be helpful ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... between them, she knew that sympathy with her heart and mind existed. She experienced the struggles, the moaning efforts, of affections doomed to solitude and silence; the shrinking from a whole long life of self-reliance, of exclusion from domestic life; the occasional horror of contemplating the waste and withering of some of the noblest parts of the immortal nature,—a waste and withering which are the almost certain ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... be established quietly." . . . "But while there are no difficulties from the disorderly but what can easily be overcome, the want of republican and political experience, combined with vanity and self-reliance and idealism, may throw impediments in the way of what the wisest wish, VIZ., two elected chambers ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... mother's constant companion and solace. It was touching to see this pitiless intellect, which had bruised and broken the idols of so many faiths, to which Luther himself was recommended only by his bravery and self-reliance and the grandeur of his aims,—it was touching, we say, and suggestive also of many things, to behold the strong, stern man paying homage to language whose spirit was dead to him, out of pure love for his dear mother, and veneration also for the great heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... certain self-reliance mingling with an innocent trust of others which Mrs. Isabel March had described to her husband as a charm potent to make everybody sympathetic and good-natured, but which it would not be easy to account for to Mr. Arbuton. In part it was a natural gift, and partly it came from mere ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-defined self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... for myself. You took me right out of my good position in the millinery-store. You have made me leave all my young friends. Oh, I am so homesick!" Her self-reliance departed suddenly. She choked. She tucked her head into the hook ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... here. To him, human life in its higher developments presented itself as a stern and strenuous affair; but he never faltered nor sought to escape from his share of the burden. "On the contrary, the prevailing note of his poetry is self-reliance; help must come ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... accustomed to go aloft; while he had fifteen prisoners below, who would naturally lose no opportunity of retaking the ship. His greatest difficulties were only now beginning. What consciousness of his superlative seaman-like qualities, what perfect and just self-reliance he must have possessed, to have undertaken the task of navigating a ship completely across the Atlantic with such means at his disposal! Considerate and generous, as well as brave, as soon as he had shaped a course for England, he went ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of your making the journey alone," grumbled Doctor Guerin; "but I don't see who there is to go with you. One thing, Betty girl, brushing up against the Peabodys has given you a practical fund of self-reliance. You're better fitted than Alice to find your way about alone. Not that I would have chosen to have you get your knocks just in the manner they've been handed to you, but the results leave nothing to be desired. You're ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... Ithaca, or of AEgisthus at Argos. On the other hand, what a state of cultivation it implies, what peace and comfort in all classes, when society could hold together for a day with no more complete defence. And, moreover, there are disadvantages in elaborate police systems. Self-reliance is one of the highest virtues in which this world is intended to discipline us; and to depend upon ourselves even for our own personal safety is a ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Not at all.—Only self-reliance, one of the most available qualities for getting on in the world; for, if a man does not believe in himself, how on earth can he expect other ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dwelling at length on the traits of character that have made them so rich and successful, believing that a careful study will convince all that the proverbial "luck" had little to do with it. On the contrary, one is taught those lessons of self-helpfulness and self-reliance which are so essential to success in life's struggles. It is fearful to think how many of our young people are drifting without an aim in life, and do not comprehend that they owe mankind their best efforts. We are all familiar with the parable of the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... faithful but unobtrusive subordinates. This system, which was essentially that of the French monarchy, presupposed for success the constant personal supervision of an industrious and strong-willed king. Henry III was never a strenuous worker, and his character failed in the robustness and self-reliance necessary for personal rule. The magnates, who regarded themselves as the king's natural-born counsellors, were bitterly incensed, and hated the royal clerks as fiercely as they had disliked the ministers of his minority. Opposed by the barons, distrusted by the people, liable ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... did not, at present, go very deep. "No one could call him anything but a fine boy," thought the mother, "and surely the outside is a key to what is within!—His firm chin, his erect head, his bright eye, his quick tread, his air of alert self-reliance,—surely here is enough, for any mother ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a world of gloom. Upstairs Huldah was singing— singing!—and it was Thanksgiving. He could hear her feet patter, patter on the floor above, and the sound had a cheery self-reliance that was maddening. Huldah was happy, evidently—and it was Thanksgiving! Twice he had walked resolutely to the back stairs with a brown-paper parcel in his arms; and twice a quavering song of triumph from the room above had ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength—I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... and self-reliance had come to Gwen with the emergency. She made her plans and arrangements as calmly as if she were accustomed to deal every day with accidents. No one questioned her authority, and all were willing ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... which to guide herself. She knew not distinctly why she had come to Capri. Her familiar self-reliance and cold disregard of anything but a few plain rules in regulating her conduct, were things of the past. She felt herself idly swayed by conflicting influences, unable even to debate what course she should take; the one ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... be sure," said Parlamente, "that the first step a man takes in self-reliance, removes him so far ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... great-grandfather served under Cope at Prestonpans; his grandfather fought in Boscawen's expedition at Louisburg and under Wolfe at Quebec. His father attained the rank of Lieutenant-General. From his mother, too, he derived qualities of self-reliance and endurance of no mean order. Despite the fact that she had eleven children, and that three of her sons were out at the Crimea, she is said never to have quailed during that dark time. Of these sons, Charles George was serving in the Engineers; he showed at his ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... exact place they hold in our great cenatorial system. He knows all liquors also by name, with their places and times of appearing. And he is as great in action as in knowledge. When he takes the command of a burra khana he is a Wellington. He plans with foresight, and executes with fortitude and self-reliance. See him marshal his own troops and his auxiliary butlers while he carves and dispenses the joint! Then he puts himself at their head and invades the dining-room. He meets with reverses;—the claret-jug collides with ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... of individual self-reliance and local exertion, under the superintendence of a central authority exercising an influence almost exclusively moral, is the ruling principle of the system. Accordingly, it rests with the freeholders and householders of each school section to decide whether ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... wave, stand up, or lie flat at will, were the individual features which collectively formed a remarkably interesting head. His manner showed a peculiar mingling of modesty, nay, timidity, and vigorous self-reliance. It was evident that he was unaccustomed to the drawing-room and large companies, and felt at ease only beside a sick-bed. He was rather awkward in aimless chatter, but, on the other hand, firm and clear in professional conversation. A mere boy in the presence ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... she shall! We'll show her that her girls have some spirit and self-reliance at a crisis. It's only making a practical demonstration of our new agricultural course! What's the use of learning if you can't apply it at the right moment? Run and fetch our coats and hats and gloves, that's a cherub, while I go and tell ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the eleventh hour, and of all men would she not save Ferriss? In such sickness as this it was the nurse and not the doctor who must be depended upon. And, once again, never so strong, never so fine, never so glorious, her splendid independence, her pride in her own strength, her indomitable self-reliance leaped in her breast, leaped and stood firm, hard as tempered steel, head to the Enemy, daring the assault, defiant, immovable, unshaken in its resolve, unconquerable in the steadfast ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris |
