"Self-reliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resignation but never-failing courage through the storms and agonies of a desolate, misunderstood, and wretched existence. She was a martyr to her birth and her love; she accepted this martyrdom with defiant self-reliance ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 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 if they ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... was different.[122-1] No speculative dreamer, but a practical man, bent on improving his fellows by teaching them self-reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the attainment of material comfort, he did not see in the religious systems and doctrines of his time any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like Socrates and many other men of ancient and modern times, without actually condemning the faiths around ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... 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 to re-establish ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... 'Gregariousness in Cattle, and in Man,' 'Macmillan's Magazine,' Feb. 1871, p. 353.), that they cannot endure even a momentary separation from the herd. They are essentially slavish, and accept the common determination, seeking no better lot than to be led by any one ox who has enough self-reliance to accept the position. The men who break in these animals for harness, watch assiduously for those who, by grazing apart, shew a self-reliant disposition, and these they train as fore-oxen. Mr. Galton ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... his 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
... Moses led a revolt in Egypt, and the people he carried with him in this exodus formed the nucleus of the Hebrew Nation. And further, the fact is beyond dispute that the personality of Moses was the prime cementing factor in the making of the nation. The power, poise, patience and unwavering self-reliance of the man, through his faith in the god Jehovah, are all beyond dispute. Things happen because ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Garrison, who, he was proud to say, believed in giving to colored men just the same rights and privileges as to others, and that Mr. Garrison's idea had not, by the professed friends of the black man, been reduced to practice. And finding that self-reliance was the best dependence, he and others had struck out a path for themselves. After speaking of the convention of colored people, which he and others called in 1854, to consider this subject of self-help, and of the general organization which began then, and ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... contrast they presented to their setting was too striking for beauty. They gave the old face a curiously exalted look, an expression hardly indicative of complete sanity, though every feature was expressive in itself of keen good-sense, quick apprehension, and strong self-reliance. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... give a transient support like a false stimulant. As they failed there was nothing to take their place—no faith in God, no self-respect or self-reliance. She could not turn to her own family for sustaining sympathy, such as many fin din their homes, and which is all the more grateful because not inquisitive nor expressed in formal terms. In her selfish pleasure-seeking life she found that she had made an ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and vice, and le coeur humain and so on, it has some of the worst faults of eighteenth-century criticism. He thinks it would have been more "moral" if Mme. de Cleves had actually succumbed as a punishment for her self-reliance (certainly one of the most remarkable topsyturvifications of morality ever crotcheted); is, of course, infinitely shocked at being asked and induced to "interest himself in a prostitute and a card-sharper" by Manon Lescaut; and, equally ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... their own nature, and were astonished to find how transcendant its resources and sufficient its strength. The publication of the Nation was really an epoch which marked a wonderful change, and from that day forth self-reliance and self-respect began to take the place of grateful but ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... 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 ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... evils, by being clad in the armor of self-respect; and then they will be able to encounter temptation and corruption, unstained and unpolluted. This feeling of self-respect is something stronger than self-reliance, higher than pride. It is an energy of the soul which masters the whole being for its good, watching with a never-ceasing vigilance. It is the sense of duty and the sense of honor combined. It is an armor, which, though powerless to shield from sorrows that purify ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... which seemed to be inherited by all the family, since even the present master of the estate, whom he had known as a mild-tempered and almost effeminate youth, acquired more and more as the years went by the same disposition. He therefore recommended me strongly to behave with as much resolute self-reliance and as little embarrassment as possible, if I desired to possess any consideration in the Freiherr's eyes; and at length he began to describe the apartments in the castle which he had selected to be his own once for all, since they were warm and comfortable, and so conveniently ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... she soon began to have a certain amount 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 ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... this it was the nurse and not the doctor who must be depended upon. And, once again, never so strong, never so fine, never so glorious, her splendid independence, her pride in her own strength, her indomitable self-reliance leaped in her breast, leaped and stood firm, hard as tempered steel, head to the Enemy, daring the assault, defiant, immovable, unshaken in its resolve, unconquerable in the steadfast tenacity of ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... we substituted self-reliance, buoyancy, a sense of responsibility, we should scarcely go too far; for, indeed, it would be difficult to say from what sources the consistent determinist is to derive these qualities. He regards himself as the inevitable ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... was up in arms. The girl who had feared nothing so much as to find herself at variance with her fellows, and had believed the affection and the goodwill of those about her to be the first essentials to happiness, felt no weakness, no lack of self-reliance, now that she was in some measure pitted against the many. She resented the conduct of the passengers in making her the subject of their tittle-tattle with a bitterness she had never felt before. In overlooking her actions and assuming a right to influence her in a purely personal matter, these ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... be associated with the adventurous self-reliance needed in the air. The British aeroplanes do not simply fight the Germans out of the sky; they also make themselves an abominable nuisance by bombing the enemy trenches. For every German bomb that is dropped ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... qualities of her sex. For the native fineness of her spiritual texture, her gentle dignity and feminine delicacy and grace, mark her as "every inch" a true and noble woman. In her combine in happy union the calm strength of soul and self-reliance of her younger, with the poetic ideality and a just degree of the quick sensibility of her elder sister, with better health than either, making her foremost of the three in that executive efficiency which did so much to give their ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... gave Alexandra, even at eighteen, a certain serene poise and self-reliance that lifted her above the old-fashioned topics of "trouble with girls," and housekeeping, and marketing. Alexandra touched these subjects under the titles of "budgets," "domestic science," and "efficiency." Neither she nor her mother recognized the old, ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... absence of eloquence and acuteness is a law-suit lost or a congregation lulled to sleep,) than that he should be active, energetic, skilful, in one of the "leviathans afloat on the brine." Science, zeal, courage, and self-reliance, are very pretty qualities to find in the fool of the family—and without these, no man can ever be a sailor. But what opportunity is there in the navy for the display of the wonderful abilities of the fool of the family's antipode, the genius? Nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... admiration, severe, and even stern, as impersonations of filial duty, cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old man; or of sisterly affection, maintaining the rights of a brother under circumstances of peril, of desertion, and consequently of perfect self-reliance. Iphigenia, again, though not dramatically coming before us in her own person, but according to the beautiful report of a spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in the very agonies of her ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... periodicals; in her vacations, by her studies of nature, or it may be other communities than her own. The freedom which she enjoys she does not trespass upon, for if she did not learn at school she has acquired since habits of strong self-reliance, self-support, earnest thinking, deep discriminations, and firmly believes that the most perfect liberty is that state in which humanity conforms itself to and obeys strictly, without deviation, those laws which are best fitted ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... all have to do with the mental attitude of the student, and may be summarized by simply stating that the student must be possessed of mental courage, self-reliance, discrimination, modesty, and ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... a fitting manner, a teacher in a Yonkers school told in detail the life of the first President of the United States. She emphasized his honesty, sincerity, bravery and self-reliance. At the close of her discourse, she put this question to ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... living and wakefulness, but moulded and firmed by discipline. Fifteen years had bitten their lines deeply about the under-jaw and streaked the temples with grey. But they had been years of service; and, whatever he had missed in them, he had found self-reliance. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... father and mother or chaperon know when to trust young people, and when it is best to throw them quite upon their honor. It is only by having responsibility for their actions thrust thus upon them, that they ever attain to natural dignity and self-reliance. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... 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 large element in ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Soviet-sponsored Communist domination. After failing in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed Republic of Korea (ROK) in the southern portion by force, North Korea (DPRK), 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. The DPRK demonized the US as the ultimate threat to its social system through state-funded propaganda, and molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... duties until March 31, 1865. Even then she began her new and untried work in much trembling and with great distrust of herself, though her trust in her Saviour never failed. "It often seems strange," she wrote, "that I, who have so little self-reliance, and would like every step directed, am obliged to take such an independent position; and yet I have been so led that I could not help it, and I only trust I may be more and more led to look to the guidance of the ever-present ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... overdo your 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, and if he does not get them he either becomes ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... work which gives us hope of seeing the rise of a stronger race, a race which will possess in abundance those same qualities which are lacking to the degenerate vanishing species, strength of will, responsibility, self-reliance, the power ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... at the approach of the sun, the agony of doubt will disappear in the genial warmth of the encouragement and the confidence that his poise and self-reliance have built up in those around him, and a sure faith will be given to him, the certain and faithful guide to the road that leads onward ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... white enemies were indeed at hand. Lewis Dernor, now that the moment of action had arrived, was as shrewd and far-sighted as either Tom or any of the others. It was these very qualities, coolness and self-reliance in the crisis of danger, that made him nominally the leader of the Riflemen of the Miami. He saw the great advantage gained by O'Hara's artifice in attracting the attention of the Indians to the point opposite to that from which the peril threatened; but, at the same time, he well knew that ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... how even the limitations of his environment helped the end. Self-reliance, that most vital characteristic of the pioneer, was his by blood and birth and training; and developed through the privations of his lot and the genius that was in him to the mighty strength needed to guide our great country through the titanic ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... honorable, and that you can do some one thing better than any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you will take care of yourself. If you are, after a while, called into another relation, you will all the better be qualified for it by your spirit of self-reliance; or if you are called to stay as you are, you can ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... very clearly and she clung to it. If she went away Paul and Grace need not leave Skeaton; soon they would forget her and be happy once more as they had been before she came. But where should she go? All her life she had depended upon her own self-reliance, but now that had left her. She felt as though she could not move unless there was some one somewhere who cared for her. But there was no one. Katherine Mark. No, she certainly could never go there again. Behind all this was the constant preoccupation ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... No,' the materialistic attitude of unfaith 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
... its own enjoyment so that she no longer spent such wretched days and nights as formerly. Her baby was every day growing interesting and a source of great comfort to her, while her life generally was tending to bring out the latent qualities of her character, the energy and self-reliance, the skill and talent which otherwise might never have ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... disaffected population and active, enterprising, and martial neighbors bent on recovering what they had lost. Yet it might be supposed that a neglect so invigorating in other cases might have developed among the Acadians habits of self-reliance and faculties of self-care. The reverse took place; for if England neglected Acadia, France did not; and though she had renounced her title to it, she still did her best to master it and make it hers again. The chief instrument of her aggressive policy was the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... 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
... madame. Do you know that your daughter believes you to have been a miracle of courage and self-reliance? What Calabressa used to say to her was this: 'Natalushka, when you are in trouble you will be brave; you will show yourself the daughter of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... to the Hebrews is their "forwardness"; socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history, seeing that ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... that the free State men were the best; they have more of the self-reliance, and approximate nearer to the qualities of the white man in respect to dash and energy, than those from ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of social gossip was apparently her regular business, which she not only was ready to acknowledge, but gloried in,—just as a merchant might take pride in his bargains, or a lawyer in his arguments. There was a certain savor of self-reliance and proprietorship in her use of the word "our," by which it was evident to me, though I was sadly puzzled at first, that she distinguished Bostonians from those who lived elsewhere. But horrified as I was by the general idea of ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... sometimes throw small copper coins to the beggars on the streets, but he is only pauperising cities wholesale and hindering the progress of real culture by taking away from civic life the spirit of self-reliance. If the people of a small town came together and said: "We ought to have a library in our town for our common advantage: let us unite and subscribe funds for a hundred books to begin with," that would be an ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... dear," said 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 ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... much endurance, is the best probation. Von Moltke has recorded that the comfortless routine of the Military Academy at Copenhagen inured him to privation, and Jackson learned the great lesson of self-reliance in the rough ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... lavish and wasteful age. The young man who shows what enlightened self-control, what high probity and fidelity to the details of little wants and expenditures can do to lift a man high above debt, to thrift and self-reliance, is a valuable citizen, exerting an influence as wholesome as it is wise, manly, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... part means a shrinkage in some other. Wild wheat is small and hard, quite capable of looking after itself, but its heads contain only a few small kernels. Cultivated wheat has lost its hardiness and its self-reliance, but its heads are filled with large kernels which feed the nation. There has been a great gain in usefulness, by cultivation, with a corresponding loss in hardiness. When riches are increased, so also are anxieties and cares. Life ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... to be little more than a girl, for as the young man watched she turned slightly toward him—though not seeing him—and he saw youth pictured on her face, and innocence, though withal she gave the young man an impression of sturdy self-reliance that awakened instant admiration for her ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... life. The letters written by the women in that period reveal an intelligent grasp of affairs and a strength of spirit altogether admirable. Here was indeed a charming mingling of feminine grace, tenderness, sympathy, self-reliance, and common sense. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... countless people are being broken to pieces. Endless endeavours are being made in order that this great nation by losing, as an inevitable result of this subjection, its moral, intellectual and physical power, its wealth, its self-reliance, and all other qualities, may be turned into the condition of the beasts of burden or be wholly extinguished. Why, oh Indians, are you losing heart, at the sight of many obstacles in your path, to make a stand against this unrighteousness? Fear not, oh Indians. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... non-ferruginous, cowardice, sloth and lying. The former would be mostly sins of commission, the latter, sins of omission. The virtues could, of course, be similarly classified; the ferruginous virtues would include courage, self-reliance and hopefulness; the non-ferruginous, peaceableness, meekness and chastity. According to this ethical criterion the moral man would be defined as one whose conduct is better than we should expect from the per cent. of iron in ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... engendered in the first by reason of their urban life, their commercial employment, and their frequent contact in business. The feeling of individualism was as naturally bred in the latter by their rural surroundings, their agricultural occupation, and the self-reliance induced by their solitary environment. The opposition to the Constitution in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania had been confined almost entirely to the country. The rural States of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina did not ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the strong self-reliance and bounding life proper to youth, without which at the opening of the flower, the bloom would be poor and the fruit little, ... the power of appeals to the unjaded and physically strong senses, ... the difficulty at such a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... kind in 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 ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on the 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 and Others • O Henry
... power in quickly conceiving the safest plan of action in difficult emergencies, and his bravery, which in his youth, sometimes amounted to rashness, caused his companions to follow his leadership. His courage, promptitude, self-reliance, caution, sympathy and care for the wounded, marked him at once as the master mind. Like the great Napoleon, when he joined the army for his first campaign, he was a hero, in spite of his youth, among ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... governing children; and, finally, they deny to the child the one power that can make his knowledge usable and insure his adaptation to his environment. Self- reliance, which parents and teachers strive for so much, becomes then impossible among children, for self-reliance is nothing more than independent direction of self, made possible by power to judge conditions. Certainly most persons are unwilling to take this position in regard to the nature of childhood. They will agree ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... struggle to preserve our nationality intact which has sanctified our war, from the red heart of which has grown a patriotism which, glowing like a central sun, burns away all the dross of our earlier materialism, gives as self-reliance, and frees us at last from our long tutelage to the Old World. And never had patriotism a more solid ground than ours, since the power, growth, and safety of our nationality are the progress, happiness, and prosperity of humanity itself. Everything that breathes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the North, he was yet, in private, a courteous and hospitable gentleman, and, apparently at least, frank in the expression of opinion. Probably he had as little principle in political and social life as most of his associates in treason; while his great self-reliance, activity, and mental ability gave him a very high position in their confidence. He was tall and stout, though not corpulent; and was very negligent of his toilet and dress. Self-conceit was written ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... committed to his charge with the results of knowledge, as to stimulate them to educate themselves—to induce them to develop their mental and moral powers by the exercise of their own free energies, and thus acquire that habit of self-thinking and self-reliance which is the spring of all true manly action. In a word, he sought to bring out and invigorate the character of his pupils. He felt that he himself had been made stronger and better through his encounters with difficulty; ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... degradation afforded by the humanity of the better class of masters. He has exchanged a human nexus for a "cash nexus." The nominal freedom of this cash relationship is in the case of the upper strata of workmen probably a real freedom; the irresponsibility of their employers has educated them to more self-reliance, and strengthened a healthy personality in them. It is the lower class of workers who suffer. More and more they need the humanity of the responsible employer to protect them against the rigours of the labour-market. The worst ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... his minute and interesting account of a life so short, yet so crowded with events, as that in which the character of Dr. Kane was formed, manifested, and matured. The character itself—so gentle and so persistent, so full at once of self-reliance and reliance on Providence, so tender in affection and so indomitable in fortitude—is now one of the moral possessions of the country, worth more to it than any new invention which increases its industrial productiveness or any new province which adds ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... enumerated, were, many of them, at 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 ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... 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 make the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... have been right in every point of his creed, but in the main he was correct, his purpose being to implant in his children a sturdy self-reliance. They could not hope to get along at all times without leaning upon others, but that boy who never forgets that God has given him a mind, a body, certain faculties and infinite powers, with the intention ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space which had made their lives in the old country ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... to have been the start and finish of this youngster's newspaper career, but quite the reverse was true. He took the lesson well to heart, thus starting himself on the road to self-reliance. If he had repeated the offense it is likely he would have lost his job and also his nerve—thereby spoiling his chances for a successful career. The fact that he did not, but went on and made of himself a famous newspaper man, proves that ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... Earth, he had been catapulted into a dubious present in a world full of criminals. He had gotten a glimpse of a complex class structure, and a hint of an institutionalized program of murder. He had discovered in himself a certain measure of self-reliance, and a surprising quickness with a gun. He knew there was a great deal more to find out about Omega, Earth, and himself. He hoped he would live long enough to ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... sudden hand to detain her. All the impatience of her fiery nature boiled in her veins as she hasted to the cottage, where Susan was discussing their journey with her Australian visitor. No remnant of pathos or love-sickening remained about Nettie, as she flashed in upon them in all her old haste and self-reliance—resolute to precipitate the catastrophe which nobody took any ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... attitude of the Faculty, traditional in all colleges of the time, and the beginning of a new and progressive spirit in University life. The students had been brought up in an atmosphere which developed individuality and self-reliance and they resented a meticulous regulation of their lives and doubtless contrasted it unfavorably with what they knew of European Universities. The whole fraternity struggle of 1848-50 may then be regarded, in part at least, as a successful effort on the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... change was a spiritual shock to him, making him gasp as if he had fallen into a tumultuous sea. There was the same chill, there was a like difficulty in getting his balance. But this was not for long. His innate self-reliance steadied him rapidly. His long-established habit of superiority helped him to avoid betraying his first sense of ignorance and unfitness. His receptiveness led him to assimilate swiftly the innumerable and novel ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fearlessness, their complacent rusticity, their childish notions of the uses of wealth, their personal modesty and communal vanity, their happy oblivion to world standards, their extravagance of speech, their political bigotry, their magisterial down-rightness, their inflammability, and their fine self-reliance. They saw these traits, we say, reflected in him as in a flattering hand-glass, perceived the blemishes rather plainer than the charms, and liked ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... that there was no Habeas Corpus Act in Prussia. We can easily understand how repulsive this was to a man who, like Bismarck, wished nothing more than that his countrymen should copy, not the details of the English Constitution, but the proud self-reliance which would regard as impertinent ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... called, from 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 ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... himself actively to get altered. No doubt, under a government partially popular, this freedom may be exercised even by those who are not partakers in the full privileges of citizenship; but it is a great additional stimulus to any one's self-help and self-reliance when he starts from even ground, and has not to feel that his success depends on the impression he can make upon the sentiments and dispositions of a body of whom he is not one. It is a great discouragement to an individual, and a still greater one to a class, to be left ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... 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 had read her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is an organization the purpose of which is character-building for boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is an effort to get boys to appreciate the things about them and to train them in self-reliance, manhood, and good citizenship. It is "peace-scouting" these boys engage in, living as much as possible out of doors; camping, hiking and learning the secrets of the woods and fields. The movement is not essentially military, but the military virtues ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... presented a different appearance from that we had been accustomed to see in our old home, and especially in its great cities. Rosy faces and figures full of robust health, vigour, and the joy of living, self-reliance, and strong intelligence were betrayed by every mien and every movement. Thus were our children equipped for entering upon ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... fighters—such men as Boon, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, McCulloch, Mansker[51]—grew to overmatch their Indian foes at their own game, and held themselves above the most renowned warriors. But these men carried the spirit of defiant self-reliance to such an extreme that their best work was always done when they were alone or in small parties of but four or five. They made long forays after scalps and horses, going a wonderful distance, enduring extreme hardship, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the officers whose length of service and professional reputation indicated them as suitable for the position, there was little to guide the department to the man who would on emergency show the audacity and self-reliance demanded by the intended operations. The action proposed, though it falls within the limits of the methods which history has justified, and has, therefore, a legitimate place in the so-called science of war, was, nevertheless, as the opinions of Barnard ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... cases on record where a child was stolen by adults for purposes other than ransom. It was not very likely that a child of six would be stolen by a neurotic adult to replace a lost infant, and Paul Brennan was personally convinced that James Holden had enough self-reliance to make such a kidnap attempt fail rather early in the game. He could hardly say so, nor could he suggest that James had indeed run away deliberately and skilfully, and with planned steps worthy of a much older person. He could only hint and urge the F.B.I. into any action that he could ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... ponder over the story of Napoleon, you will, I am sure, be ready to admit his greatness as an historic character his ability as a soldier, his energy as a ruler, and his eminence as a man. And in these you will see but the logical outgrowth of his self-reliance, his determination, and his pluck as a boy, when on the rocky shore of Corsica, or in the schools of France, he was turned aside by no obstacle, and conquered neither by privation nor persecution, but pressed steadily forward to his great and ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... without the appearance of new stars to take their place. But this was not the fault of Augustus, whose intellect expanded with his fortunes, and whose magnanimity grew with his intellect—a man who comprehended his awful mission, and who discharged his trusts with dignity and self-reliance. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... remnants and raised the siege. Retreat on the morrow of victory would have been craven indeed, but to stand firm with such shattered forces was a bold and hazardous resolve, for which Lord Raglan deserves the fullest credit, and the coming winter, with its terrible trials, was destined to put his self-reliance ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Doris, for all her sturdy self-reliance, began to feel a little nervous inwardly. She had been quite well-educated, first at a good High School, and then in the class-rooms of a provincial University; and, as the clever daughter of a clever doctor in large practice, she had always been in touch with the intellectual world, ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... development of climate but of opportunity. It is not so easy in Christian lands to stock immoral houses with slaves, for the reason that the slaves are not present with which to do it. Women have freedom and cannot be openly bought and sold even in marriage; women have self-reliance and self-respect in a Christian country; they have a clean, decent religion; women who worship the true God have His protecting arm to defend themselves, and through them other women who do not personally worship God share in the benefits. If free, independent ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... care of to scorn the woman or the helpless-bred man who marries for money or even entertains that idea. How little imagination these scorners have! To marry for a mere living, hardly better than one could make for oneself, assuredly does show a pitiful lack of self-reliance, a melancholy lack of self-respect. But for men or women all their lives used to luxury and with no ability whatever at earning money—for such persons to marry money in order to save themselves from the misery and shame that poverty means to them is the most natural, the most human action ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... conscientiously done, though few 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 be filled by the finest women. ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... pale. From her eyes had been plucked all look of self-reliance. She leaned with a dependent air toward her companion. She was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure. She seemed to beseech tenderness ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... be merciful to them—and now we get the fruit of their labors! The parish won't take the farm away again—not from us," he said. Lasse spoke in a tone full of self-reliance. Pelle had never seen ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... whether to feel grateful for the churlish advice or to resume his wonted attitude of self-reliance and hold himself unprejudiced by Presby's condemnation of the Croix d'Or. He wondered if Bully Presby suspected him of having been friendly with the mob of drunken ruffians at the road house, but he had been given no ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... 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
... 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 ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... them into everlasting 'Coventry,' is its delight. We contemn in turn every other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little and the least matters of not appealing to any but our own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt and give it the freedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not care for companions of his own age. He was peculiarly a mother's boy, content to grow up dreamy and impractical at her quiet hearthstone. Consequently he was awkward and reserved, easily imposed upon, and lacking in self-reliance. These qualities remained with him as long as he lived, and caused him many painful failures. On the other hand, the pious example of his mother and the tranquil life he led with her made the boy reflective and imaginative, while his soul became filled with great thoughts ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... what takes place at such an age in the production of such work. It is the first individual creation; the still undeveloped powers tend for the first time to crystallise; the staggering sensation produced by the demand for self-reliance imparts a seductive charm to these early performances, which is not only quite new, but which never returns. All the daring of nature is hauled out of its depths; all vanities—no longer constrained ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... slap his face. And Helen realized that however her intelligence had grasped the possibilities of leaving home for a wild country, and whatever her determination to be brave, the actual beginning of self-reliance had left her spirit weak. She would rise out of that. But just now this flashing-eyed little sister seemed a protector. Bo would readily adapt herself to the West, Helen thought, because she was so young, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... thing for the world's progress. We'd come to rely on it rather than on ourselves the trouble with the world is that it has been relying on it. Reason is the mind—it leaps to the stars without realizing always how it gets there. It is through reason we get the self-reliance that redeems us." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... penning of music as jagged, cubical, barbarous as the prelude to the third act of Strawinsky's little opera, "The Nightingale," or as naked, uncouth, rectangular, rocklike, polyharmonic, headlong, as some of that of "Le Sacre du printemps" required no less perfect a conviction, no less great a self-reliance. The music of Strawinsky is the expression of an innocence comparable indeed to that of his great predecessor. "Le Sacre du printemps" is what its composer termed it. It is ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... while favouring man up to a certain point, has at the same time compelled him to eat bread in the sweat of his brow. It has compelled him to enter into conflict with natural obstacles, the result of which has been to call forth his powers of industry, of energy, of self-reliance, and to sharpen his intellectual faculties generally. In addition to exercising and strengthening these personal attributes, the climatic influences of what has been called the zone of civilisation have brought man's social characteristics more fully and elaborately into play. The nature of these ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... courts of law, and founded the free common school in the South. On the other hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good-will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land. Its successes were the result of hard work, supplemented by the aid of philanthropists and the eager striving of black men. Its failures were ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... shall give him a Roland for his Oliver before we part. It will be no harm to give the the respectable old nobleman a hint of what's going on, at any rate. This discovery, however, won't signify, for I know Dunroe. The poor fool has no self-reliance; but if left to himself would die. He possesses no manly spirit of independent will, no firmness, no fixed principle—he is, in fact, a noun adjective, and cannot stand alone. Depraved in his appetites and habits of life, he cannot live without some hanger-on to enjoy his freaks of silly and senseless ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... an excess of self-conceit and self-reliance which makes me pass by, rather lightly, I confess, some of the advice that very well-intentioned people occasionally volunteer to missionaries. I have had (D.Gr.) the Primate and Sir William Martin's men, who know what heathenism is, and the latter of whom has ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to smile openly. It was no secret that Lew Hervey disliked the girl heartily. The fall of the horse which made Jordan a semi-invalid, killed his ambition and self-reliance at the same instant. Not only was it impossible for him to ride since the accident, but the freeswinging self-confidence which had made him prosperous disappeared at the same time; his very thoughts walked slowly on foot since his fall. Hervey gathered the reins of the ranch affairs ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... running, scrambling up the rocks on every side with the agility of young goats. He reflected that they had forgotten their weariness and seemed to be diverting themselves with an exercise to which each contributed his own effort, his individual tactics and his qualities of self-reliance and initiative. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... by these girls with their cigarettes and elfish knowledge. When they were most eager about soviets or canoeing, she listened, longed to have some special learning which would distinguish her, and sighed that her adventure had come so late. Kennicott and Main Street had drained her self-reliance; the presence of Hugh made her feel temporary. Some day—oh, she'd have to take him back to open fields and the right to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... To display his versatility, he gives a dull performance which couples the 'go-back' of the Guinea fowl with the plaint of the Wood-pewee, two widely diverse vocal sounds. With all the performance there is such perfect self-reliance and consciousness of superior ability that one feels that the singer has but to choose what bird he will ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... probably a lad about twelve years of age, observed how worthless were the animals which his father was offering. His heart at once became filled with Shraddha. There is no one English word which can convey the meaning of this Sanskrit term. It is more than mere faith. It also implies self-reliance, an independent sense of right and wrong, and the courage of one's own conviction. As a boy of tender age, Nachiketas had no right to question his father's action; yet, impelled by the sudden awakening ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... of civil and religious freedom. Here was a little republic, just born into the world, suddenly bereft of its tutelary saint, left to its own resources, yet already instinct with healthy vigorous life, and playing its difficult part among friends and enemies with audacity, self-reliance, and success. To a certain extent its achievements were anonymous, but a great principle manifested itself through a series of noble deeds. Statesmen, soldiers, patriots, came forward on all sides to do the work which was to be done, and those who were brought into closest ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... himself and to the world, is the man who by physical and mental training, the use of his muscles, the exercise of his faculties, the restraint of his appetites,—even those mental appetites which you call tastes,—has acquired vigor, endurance, self-reliance, self-control! Let a man be pure and honorable, do to others as he would have them do to him, and, in the words of the old Church of England Catechism, "learn and labor truly to get his own living in that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Buckingham to sustain his authority in this trying 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... his task would be far more difficult than he expected, and that he would have to be extremely guarded in order not to reveal his design, he was glad to learn that the foe was worthy of his steel. Meanwhile her ability and self-reliance banished all compunction. He had no scruples in humbling the pride of a woman who was at once so proud, so heartless, and so clever. Nor would the effort be wearisome, for she had proved herself both amusing and interesting. He might enjoy it quite ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... defective and disagreeable side of a national character lacking geniality and bristling with prickly individuality. This disposition of mind, whose favourable and laudable presentations are love of liberty and self-reliance, began with the beginnings of American history. The "Fathers," Pilgrim and Puritan, who left their country for their country's good and their own, fled from lay tyranny and clerkly oppression only to oppress and tyrannise over others in new and distant homes. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human nature; self-control, self-reliance, endurance, and altruism or the devotion of Self to the good of the community; and not the least of its merits is that it corrects and restrains the dreary materialism of the Labour ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... moral traits known to possess inheritable elements are generosity, piousness, independence, industry, will-power, faithfulness, fairness, sociability, reliability, self-reliance, tendency to work hard, perseverance, carefulness, impulsiveness, temperance, high-spiritedness, joviality, benignity, quietness, cheerfulness, hospitality, sympathy, humorousness, love of fun, neighborliness, love of frontier life, love of travel and of adventure. ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the powerful forces of tradition, of custom, or prejudice, have bolstered up the desperate effort to block the inevitable influence of true civilization in spreading the principles of independence, self-reliance, discrimination and foresight upon which the great practice of intelligent ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... still pale, and in spite of her perfect outward coolness and self-reliance her eyes would have betrayed her anxiety if she had not managed them with the unconscious skill of a woman of the world who has something very important to hide. Logotheti broke the short silence that followed ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... well embarked on the homeward road, and victualling where the grass was good. Right glad they were to see us again—not for the pleasure of carrying, but because a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... factor in bringing into closer relationship and a more direct union of effort the Bureau in Washington and its agents in the field; and with the co-operation of its branches thus secured the Indian Bureau would, in measure fuller than ever before, lift up the savage toward that self-help and self-reliance which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... drifted and Camille Corot, aged twenty-six, was a flat failure, just as he had been for ten years. He hadn't self-reliance enough to push out for himself, nor enough will to swing his parents into his way of thinking. He was as submissive as a child; and would not and could not do anything until he had gotten permission—thus much ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... President; and a similar society in Philadelphia, of which Stephen Colwell is Chairman, are societies of large-hearted men and women, banded together, as they express it, to 'teach the freedmen of the colored race civilization and Christianity; to imbue them with notions of order, industry, economy and self-reliance, and to elevate them in the scale of humanity, by inspiring ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a tender spot. No boy of fourteen likes to be considered very young. By that time he generally begins to feel a degree of self-confidence and self-reliance, and fancies he is almost on the threshold of manhood. I know boys of fourteen who look in the glass daily for signs of a coming mustache, and fancy they can see plainly what is not yet visible. Harry had not got as far as that, but ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... 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 and the humour of "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur," and of "Innocents Abroad." ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... point of view they were better there, knowing every nook and cranny, which enabled them to find exactly where to hide in case of danger. Even in the dark they were able to tell, after scouting, which way the enemy would be coming. This especially gave a commando the necessary self-reliance, which is of such great importance in battle. It has also been found during the latter part of the War to be easier for a burgher to get provisions in his own district than in others, notwithstanding the destruction ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... then your own interest is all that remains to be considered. There are few blessings in life that can compensate for the loss of self-reliance. She who derives her support from persons upon whom she has no natural claim, finds the effect upon herself to be decidedly narrowing. Perpetually in debt, without the means of reimbursement, barred ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... at him again, as if his appreciation of her taffy was a bond of good fellowship between them. She did not know it but, nevertheless, she was filling the heart of a desperate small boy, who had run away from home, with hope and encouragement and self-reliance. If there were such kind folks as this in the world, why, he would get along all right. The rosy lady's smiles and taffy—the smiles much more than the taffy—went far to thaw out of him a certain hardness and resentfulness against ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the students, but are held by the institution and assigned for their benefit, the aim being to do nothing for students which they can do for themselves, and thus help to develop in them a spirit of manly and womanly self-reliance. ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... enough combativeness to fight his way through difficulties. He had great self-reliance, and did not mind obstacles. If he had to take part in disturbances, he was ready, and had tact and tactics. He had a peculiar power of governing men, and a peculiar way of gaining confidence and esteem. He did ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... infinite determination and self-reliance—the square chin, the steadfast eyes, telling their tale as plainly as print. In India he might have passed for an officer of native cavalry in mufti; but when he spoke he used the curious nasal drawl of the far-out bushman, the slow deliberate ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... characteristic points of his nature, which made him at once the glory and shame of English manhood. He had begun to take a prominent place in any business in which he engaged. He had shown his audacity, his self-reliance, his resource, and some signs of that boundless but prudent ambition which marked his career. He had shown that freedom of tongue, that restless and high-reaching inventiveness, and that tenacity of opinion, which made him a difficult person for others to work with. Like so many ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... which meets the billows with defiance, Undaunted and unshaken day by day, In spite of its unyielding self-reliance, Is by the warfare ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... grew up was calculated to mould characters of strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the generations born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open fields wider than were offered to human activity in any other ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... unconsciously at play. A man is bound to remember the seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not shun the society of the sex. My long robust health and perfect self-reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to fitful impressions. Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived, supposing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on his oars when he had once shot into the waters of ordinary journalism. With Dickens it was not so. The alchemy of a fine nature had transmuted his disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons of such a childhood and boyhood as he had had, were energy, self-reliance, a determination to overcome all obstacles, to fight the battles of life, in all honour and rectitude, so as to win. From the muddle of his father's affairs he had taken away a lesson of method, order, and punctuality ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... into this Volume, but such subjects as will teach a dependence upon Divine Providence, in aid of self-reliance and self-sacrifice, while details of war and bloodshed have ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... spiritual self-reliance are qualities which we naturally associate with the Norse temperament; his fine sensibility and unfettered imagination strike us as much more characteristically Gallic or Celtic. It seems probable then that in his physical and spiritual composition we have a rare ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... be difficult to find a better example of the honourable independence and cheerful self-reliance which should distinguish a man of letters, and which characterised Hume throughout his career. By honourable effort, the boy's noble ideal of life, became the man's reality; and, at forty, Hume had the happiness of finding that he had not ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... peculiar abilities is open for him in the world, he probably will judge quite readily what line of study he should at first pursue, and following out this clue, at first by the aid of judicious external guidance, he will, with ever-increasing self-reliance and discrimination, proceed to fulfil the requirements of education and the inclination of his own mental disposition. This method of development is the natural order by which intellectual growth, by means of books, or any other means, proceeds. To make a choice ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... communications with its colonies, and weakened its hold on them. The defeat, in 1806 and 1807, of two British expeditions to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, resulting in the capitulation of the English force, gave a great impulse to the self-reliance of the colonists, to whom the credit of the victory entirely belonged. When the intervention of Napoleon in Spain plunged the mother country into anarchy, the colonists began to act for themselves. They were still loyal, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not reason's fault, but his who misused reason. True, also, that he who believed on others' authority believed not ideas but men, and was destitute of self-reliance or dignity. Yet the hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... ease her bursting heart by crying bitterly. But few people noticed her at those times, in the garb she wore: or if they did, believed that she was tutored to excite compassion, and passed on. Florence, too, called to her aid all the firmness and self-reliance of a character that her sad experience had prematurely formed and tried: and keeping the end she had in view steadily before her, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... English had been making soldiers of the fallaheen, to whom successful skirmishes under their English officers and drill instructors were yearly giving confidence and self-reliance; and in addition to the fallaheen regiments, Sudanese regiments were formed of the very men who fought so bravely against our squares at Abu Klea, the "Fuzzywuzzy" of Kipling, "a first-class fighting ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of fruit-trees on the sheltered side, and a row of blooming hyacinths and wall-flowers on the balcony, passed by on either side. The people we met were sunburnt and ugly, but there was a rough air of self-reliance about them, and they gave me a hearty "God greet you!" one and all. Just before reaching Trogen, the postilion pointed to an old, black, tottering platform of masonry, rising out of a green slope of turf on the right. The grass around it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... earthly feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned this, perhaps He will let ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fitted with dual controls, or with the watchful instructor on the pounce to save him from dangerous mistakes. If he prospered well, the great day soon came, which, however carefully it may have been prepared for, is always a thrilling experience and a searching test of self-reliance, the day of the first solo flight, sometimes ending in a too violent or too timid landing—that is, in a crash or a pancake. The training was almost wholly directed to producing airworthiness in the pupil. The various activities which had developed ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh |
