"Assert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves no match for his methods or his morals, their simple faith in the white man's honesty, their debasing fear of his prowess, their reverence for him as a superhuman being, little by little died out. They saw themselves wronged, despoiled, and abused, with less and less power to assert their rights and maintain their independence; and their hearts became more and more filled with a sullen desire for revenge. In the ethics of the North American Indian, there was but one mode of gratifying this feeling. Nothing would suffice but the blood of the offender. This fearful ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... been murder, robbery, and general ruin. The burden of taking care of one's self, which the North American had the strength to bear, has crushed the poor half-caste Spaniard. There are persons who assert that a political regimen which agrees so well with us must therefore be good for all others. It may be instructive to such believers in system to compare Humboldt's narrative of the cultivation shown by the great Colonial Universities of Mexico, Quito, and Lima, of the pleasing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... days in quarantine in view of the port, and the inhabitants refused to give the occupants any food, or to allow them in a bad storm to attach their cables to the port-rings. This they managed at last to do, in spite of the objections of the governor, who, determined to assert his authority, decreed that the cable should be taken off as soon as the sea became calm: a regulation which, as Balzac said, was absurd, because either the people would by that time have caught the cholera, or they would not catch it ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... sunset. Who can affirm that these ladies are in my dominions? who can presume to say, if it be so, that I have either countenanced their flight hither, or have received them with offers of protection? Nay, who is it will assert, that, if they are in France, their place of retirement is ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... who quote the Indian sage only to mock him. Such assert that the beauties of the Himalayas have been greatly exaggerated—that, as regards grandeur, their scenery compares unfavourably with that of the Andes, while their beauty is surpassed by that of the Alps. Not having seen the Andes, I am unable to criticise the assertion regarding ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... feeling toward Sollitt, occasioned by some rough words or treatment they had received. Sollitt was honest and faithful and in many things very efficient, but was devoid of tact and agreeable ways toward those under his control, especially if he took a dislike to them. One man urged me to assert my reserved authority and take direct charge of the whole business of the train to the exclusion of Sollitt. I had no longings for the disagreeable task of a train master, and simply poured oil on the troubled waters, and ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... Americans and English look upon it as dangerous, but the Germans, more mystical and far more lethargic about liberty than are we, are not greatly disturbed by it. The secular press, largely in Jewish hands, and the new socialist members of the Reichstag, jealous of their prerogatives but unable to assert them, criticise and even scream their abhorrence and unbelief; but I am much mistaken, if the mass of the Germans are at heart much disturbed by their Emperor's assertions of his divine right to rule. A conservative ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Criminologists assert, from many years' observation of many men in many lands, that no man positively desires to become a criminal. So little does the average man wish it, that it is usually difficult, even in the case of the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... adequate description of the horrors of the night which followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for even in such a position as ours wearied nature will sometimes assert itself. But I, at any rate, found it impossible to sleep much. Putting aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom—for the bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I never made ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... be difficult to point out the exact period at which leavening bread was adopted in Europe, but we can assert that in the Middle Ages it was anything but general. Yeast, which, according to Pliny, was already known to the Gauls, was reserved for pastry, and it was only at the end of the sixteenth century that the bakers of Paris used it ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... hot climate in the Carboniferous age, millions of years before the Tertiary, and three thousand miles farther south than localities where magnolias, tulip-trees, and deciduous cypresses, grew in the latter age. Some learned and cautious geologists even assert that there have been several Ice periods, one as ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... one thing that will gladden the hearts of the Negroes and the nation and make secure the glory of the South. We would have you good white people of the South to assert yourselves—that class of you who have not been carried away with that false doctrine that the problem can be solved with the Negro shorn of political power. In short, the one missing factor now needed is ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... assert our own old-fashioned notion boldly: and more; we will say, in spite of ridicule—That if such a God exists, final causes must exist also. That the whole universe must be one chain of final causes. That if there be a Supreme Reason, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of our Senators, our chief rulers? No. But we are afraid of our servants, of our street-car conductors. We are afraid of sleeping-car porters, and the drivers of huge trucks. We are afraid they will drive over us in the streets, and if we dare to assert our rights and hold them in check we are afraid of what they will say to us, in the name of liberty, and of the way they will look at us, in the name ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... always walks in front of our present narrow experience; it is the undying faith in the infinite in us; it will never accept any of our disabilities as a permanent fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; it dares to assert that man has oneness with God; and its wild dreams ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... have before said that the Shakers do not attempt to suppress discussion of the relations of the sexes; they do not pretend that their celibate life is without hardships or difficulties; but they boldly assert that they have chosen the better life, and defend their position with not a little skill against all attacks. A good many years ago Miss Charlotte Cushman, after a visit to Watervliet, wrote the following lines, which were published in ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... fangs, nor stings, nor proboscis, that would serve the purpose. How then does its reach the blood? Many theories have been offered; some assert that it rubs the skin with its snout until its brings it to bleeding: others say that it sets the sharp point of one of its large tusks against the part, and then by plying its wings wheels round and round, as upon a pivot, until the point has penetrated—that during this operation ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... death, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us. It is joy and strength in the present, and it lights up the future with a great hope. We are not much concerned about speculations regarding the future; for we know that we are in the hands of our Lover. All that we care to assert of the future is, that Christ will in an ever fuller degree be the environment of all Christian souls, and the effect of that constant environment will fulfil the aspiration of the apostle, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Communion ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... which never wholly faded from his thoughts, though he valued it at various times in different degrees. The human body in its beauty, as the highest potency of all the beauty of material objects, seemed to him just then to be matter no longer, but, having taken celestial fire, to assert itself as indeed the true, though visible, [93] soul or spirit in things. In contrast with that ideal, in all the pure brilliancy, and as it were in the happy light, of youth and morning and the springtide, men's actual loves, with ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... however, about six, and had a fine bracing march over a grassy valley among the mountains. After about four kos, the sun began again to assert his supremacy, and, in conjunction with the cold of the morning, rather took liberties with our faces and hands. About half-way we came upon the merry ring of axes among the trees, and found a party ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... its king. This was done in the following manner. The king drew some blood from his breast, and the captain did the same. The blood of both was placed in one cup of wine, which was then divided into two equal parts, whereupon each one drank one half; and this, they assert, constitutes inviolable friendship. Notwithstanding this, they had certain conflicts, and sacked a little village. In a poorly-built house was found an image of the child Jesus, such as comes from Flanders, with his veil and the globe in his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... course cultivated plants were originally wild and must have come under the general law. Hence we may conclude that when first observed and taken up by man, they must already have consisted of sundry elementary subspecies. And we may confidently assert that some must have been rich and others poor ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone—who as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to attack—employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... from the land, and will keep my mouth silent; but I will see, returning with my father's return, how you will look at him, both you and your mistress. But your boldness I shall know, having before had proof of it. May you perish: but never shall I take my fill of hating women, not even if any one assert, that I am always saying this. For in some way or other they surely are always bad. Either then let some one teach them to be modest, or else let him suffer me ever to utter ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... He was in doubt whether he might not properly take from his ward the money by force, but it occurred to him that it would be better not to assert his authority ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... of state Our monarch duly consecrate, With prayer and holy verses blessed By saint Vasishtha and the rest. Anointed king by us, again Seek fair Ayodhya, there to reign, And like imperial Indra girt By Gods of Storm, thy might assert. From the three debts(384) acquittance earn, And with thy wrath the wicked burn, O'er all of us thy rule extend, And cheer with boons each faithful friend. Let thine enthronement, lord, this day Make all thy lovers glad and gay, And let all those who hate ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... not know the extent to which he was anxious to go in serving them. When they had sat round the fire planning the scheme of their removal, their hearts had been hardened against him, and they had resolved to assert their independence. But now, when the time for action had come, they felt that their grievances against him had already been in a great measure assuaged. This tinged all that they did with a certain sadness; but still they ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... seem confus'd, as if my Sexes weakness must discover a Passion which my haughty Soul wou'd hide. The greedy Collonel catches at the Bait, deep Sighs, and sheepish Looks confess the Lover; then with what sparkling Pride I'll boast my Power, bravely assert my wonted Resolutions, rally the blustering Heroe, and pursue ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... length, sufficiently peopled, having several great towns, as Merida, Valladolid, San Francisco de Campeache, etc., and the government one of the most considerable next to Peru and Mexico.... So that Spain has as well too much right as advantage not to assert the propriety of these woods, for though not all inhabited, these people may as justly pretend to make use of our rivers, mountains and commons, as we can to enjoy any benefit to those woods." So much for the strict justice of the matter. But when the ambassador ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... help me out. If any of them remark anything about the whisky having a peculiar taste, you must stoutly assert that you don't notice; and, as they've seen you drinking from the same decanter—why, there you are. Don't worry over it. It's a very, very harmless draught; you won't even have a headache from it. Listen here, Bawdrey. Somebody is ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... no spy; nor do I assume to master the thoughts of any human heart; but I assert, by the chronicler's right, that before a quarter of an hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plaint a six-strand rawhide stake-rope, and Tonia had explained to him that were it not for ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... results, both physically and historically, that the existence of Thebes was prior to that of the other cities. The testimony of writers is very positive in this respect. "The Thebans," says Diodorus, "consider themselves as the most ancient people of the earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and the science of the stars. Their situation, it is true, is infinitely favorable to astronomical observation, and they have a more accurate division of time into mouths and years than ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... like manner you may find alum-crystals, quartz-crystals, and all other crystals, distorted in shape. They are thus far at the mercy of the accidents of crystallization; but in one particular they assert their superiority over all such accidents—angular magnitude is always ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... all alert. He had had some needed repose, and he was again under the stimulus of reputation to restore; for it would have been vain to assert, even to himself, that he was entirely clear, not merely of error, to which the most careful is liable, but of serious fault in the previous year. Moreover, he had been sharply assailed in Parliament for the transactions at St. Eustatius on the civil side, distinct from ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... done—he spoke to Jean Jacques concerning Carmen's neglect of mass and confession, and he received a rebuff which was almost au seigneur; for in Jean Jacques' eyes he was now the figure in St. Saviour's; and this was an occasion when he could assert his position as premier of the secular world outside the walls of the parish church. He did it in good style for a man who had had no particular ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... himself recently increased the family interest around Hawarden by purchase. About five years ago the state of his finances were the talk of the town, and a number of people, especially of the Conservative party, avowed themselves in a position to assert from personal knowledge that he was ruined. There was no just ground for such a statement, and like so many other absurd rumors it died out. None of Mr. Gladstone's daughters are married, nor is his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the king, the feudal baron, the court minion. The estate of the Church is the estate of the people, so long as the Church is governed on its real principles. The Church is the medium by which the despised and degraded classes assert the native equality of man, and vindicate the rights and power of intellect. It made, in the darkest hour of Norman rule, the son of a Saxon pedlar Primate of England, and placed Nicholas Breakspear, a Hertfordshire peasant, on the throne of the Caesars. It would do as ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... child, do not get into the habit of throwing the responsibility of your actions upon others. Certainly we are not responsible for events, but we can almost always choose the way to meet them. Only, some flatter their passions and refuse to assert themselves against them! This weakness opens the door to all other concessions, and then it becomes difficult to make a loyal examination of ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... those who had the happiness not to be overtaken by an army so dreadful, on account of the cruelties it perpetrated, should save their lives by flying from their native land, to become wandering strangers in another. Now if we assert that the Gipsies were of the Suder cast of Asiatic Indians, and that they found their way from Hindostan into other and remote countries when Timur Beg spread around him terrors so dreadful, it is natural to ask, why did not some of ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... genuine a regard for the little old inventor to state publicly what they really thought of the strings, the nails, the spools, the wires, and the pulleys, in private they did not hesitate to denounce derisively the scientist's contrivances and assert that some fine day the house on the bluff would ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert—this you know is between us— That she's in a state of absolute nudity, Like Powers's Greek Slave, or the Medici Venus; But I do mean to say I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... workmanship, too, having that wonderful freedom of handling which moderns find so impassable a barrier to success with their "imitations of the antique!" Lost in admiration for some minutes, the connoisseur's critical faculties after a while begin to assert themselves, and he is on the look out for flaws or defects that may mar the completeness of the whole; it might be a little more this or that with advantage, not quite so fine in one respect, although perhaps better in another than the one owned by his friend Smith; ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... longitude, and people who are closely knit together in an association and who form a true social organism, a true rural community, where the general will can find expression and society is malleable to the general will. I will assert that there never can be any progress in rural districts or any real prosperity without such farmers' organizations or guilds. Wherever rural prosperity is reported in any country inquire into it, and it will be found that it depends on rural organization. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... with pure linen and set with real china and cut-glass. The experience was like a dream to the visitor. Temporarily, as in a dream, the evening would pass without conscious volition upon the latter's part; and not until later, when he was at home, would the full significance of the experience assert itself, and his wonder and admiration find vent in words. Then indeed would the fame of Scotty Baker, his wife, and little daughter, be heard in ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... admission of new associates, without previous authority, is so pregnant with obvious dangers and evils! Again, it is settled as a principle of morality, among writers on public law, that no person can be obliged, beyond his intent at the time of contract. Now who believes, who dare assert, that it was the intention of the people, when they adopted this Constitution, to assign, eventually, to New Orleans and Louisiana, a portion of their political power; and to invest all the people those extensive regions might hereafter contain, with an ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... class. At any rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral determinism. Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class assert, painfully open. The student repeated the question, and poor McTeague fell ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... they surrendered, they could scarcely even speak to assert their own innocence of such a wicked job. They submitted to be bound, and cast down into their boat, imploring only that it might be there—that they might not be taken to the other boat and laid near the corpse ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... in Diderot's mind, than this pathetic ejaculation. He left it to the next generation, to Condorcet and others, to attack the problem practically; effectively to assert the true theory that we must look to social emancipation in women, and moral discipline in men, to redress the physical disadvantages. Meanwhile Diderot deserves credit for treating the position and character of women in a civilised society with a sense of reality; and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... entirely too well for her own comfort. Except as a pastime, Victor Dorn did not fit into her scheme of life. If she continued to see him, to yield to the delight of his magnetic voice, of his fresh and original mind, of his energetic and dominating personality, might he not become aroused—begin to assert power over her, compel her to—to—she could not imagine what; only, it was foolish to deny that he was a dangerous man. "If I've got good sense," decided she, "I'll let him alone. I've nothing to gain and ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... smaller States of Northern Germany. The downfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of central Europe. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was no government but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no race which did not assert its claim to a more or less complete independence. Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of the Napoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815, no pressure of absolute ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... ring; how he'd become possessed of all the marvels of this world, but didn't know what to do with them. So he sent tidings east and west of the great Nothing he'd helped to fashion from the empty universe. I wouldn't assert you were the man, unless I believed it so firmly I could take my oath on it. Once I asked you whether you knew who I was, and you said it didn't interest you. In return I offered you my friendship, but you refused it rudely. However, I'm ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... read by the clerk, to declare that it was not his verdict, but it is not strange, perhaps, that an ordinary juror, with no time to consider, or to consult with his fellows, and probably ignorant of his rights, and in awe of the Court, should have failed to assert ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... gratitude the capitalist felt lingered in his voice when he said good night. It was both gentle and husky with emotion and the lad fell asleep marvelling that the men employed at the mills should assert that the Fernalds ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... is, a very real and a very significant contrast. 'I come and smite the earth with a curse' sounds strangely unlike 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' And, of course, in this generation there is a strong tendency to dwell upon that contrast and to exaggerate it, and to assert that the more recent has antiquated the more ancient, and that now the day when we have to think of and to dread the curse that smites the earth is past, 'because the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and weak. Never in any country had a class so weak and uninfluential essayed the role of the ruling class. To believe that a class which at the most did not exceed six per cent. of the population could assert and maintain its rule over a nation of one hundred and eighty millions of people, when these had been stirred by years of revolutionary agitation, was at ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... is, true. It is quite possible, and more than probable. But we also maintain that it is a great mistake to come down upon it with a sweeping denunciation, and, in Quaker fashion, avow it to be all vanity, and assert that it must be trodden out of thought and eye. Even the Quakers themselves, who affect such supercilious contempt for dress, are very particular about the cut of their headgear, about the shade of their greys and their drabs and their browns, and, in their scrupulous ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... said Act And deprive the said Compl't[3] together with said Norton and Crew of their Right and due as Abovesaid, Contrary to the mind of One Jeremiah Harman who was on purpose left in said Briganteen to Proceed therein and Assert their Right that Surprized and Retook her, Yet the said Thomas instead of Proceeding to Newport as intended Came in said Vessell and with the Aforesaid Cargo to this Port of Boston, Where they Arrived in Safety in said Briganteen and with the Aforesaid Cargo ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... it is here to be observed, that the constitutions of Magna Charta are by no means a renewal of the Laws of St. Edward, or the ancient Saxon laws, as our historians and law-writers generally, though very groundlessly, assert. They bear no resemblance in any particular to the Laws of St. Edward, or to any other collection of these ancient institutions. Indeed, how should they? The object of Magna Charta is the correction of the feudal policy, which was first introduced, at least ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is not mine. Perhaps that is the best division of all. Thine eye is necessarily, fatally, irrevocably evil, because mine is essentially, predestinately, and unchangeably good. If I secretly adopt your idea, I openly assert that it was never yours at all, but mine from the beginning, by the prerogatives of greater age, wider experience, and immeasurably superior wisdom. If you have an idea upon any subject, I will utterly annihilate it to my own most profound satisfaction; if you have none ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... action. If a man has lost a leg, it may be perfectly right for him to wear a wooden one which is so perfectly made as to deceive people—and even to wear it, too, with the intent to deceive people by leading them to suppose that both his legs are genuine—while it would be wrong; for him to assert in words that this limb was not an artificial one. It is right to put a chalk egg in a hen's nest to deceive the hen, when, if the hen could understand language, and if we were to suppose hens "to have any rights that we are bound to respect," it would be wrong to tell her ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... would have said almost anything that Evelyn wanted him to say, but to assert that he believed in the immortality of the soul was not in his power. He sat silent, more deeply wrinkled than usual, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... power of honey-like persuasiveness! And thou, JOHN NEAL! arrayed in the drapery of the softer sex, gracefully to maintain the lofty eminence whereon thou standest, assist me with the glorious power of thy overwhelming eloquence, while I assert the high prerogative of Woman! Yet when I dwell on the brilliant efforts accomplished by thy mighty genius in our behalf, the pen falls powerless from my despairing hand, and I can merely point to thee as the potent champion of our ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... obtaining real and substantial economic liberty and material equality; religion does not affect us at all, and certainly does not help to solve the practical problems of human life." Differing from both, the Anti-Revolutionists assert, "Whosoever leaves the firm ground of God's Word, the Holy Scriptures, as the only true basis for public and private action, can have neither sound politics nor sound economics." The Roman Catholics also put religion on the first plane, but ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... not going to destruction, Lady Augusta to the contrary, and the family luck must assert itself some time, since it has kept itself so long in the background. And in the mean time—well," with a little parting wave of her ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of gardening was really copied from the Chinese, or originated with ourselves, I leave for vanity to assert, and idleness to discuss. A discovery which is the result of good sense and reflexion may equally occur to the most distant nations, without either borrowing from the other. There is certainly a great analogy between our gardening and the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... his sudden laugh. "Not as a tribe, I admit. I can't stand any man who makes an ass of himself, whatever his profession. But of course I don't mean to assert that all parsons answer to that description. I've met ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... for them. The housekeeper, the ancient authority of the place, in every motion and tone expressing herself wronged by their intrusion, conducted them. Every spot they passed was plainly far more hers than theirs; only law was a tyrant, and she dared not assert her rights! But she had allotted their rooms well, and they ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... pipe, and for nearly half-an-hour smoked in silence. What Mary's thoughts were I cannot positively assert; but I imagined that, like myself, she was thinking about her mother's conduct and her own. I certainly was making the comparison, and we neither of us ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and mature in a sense, was in reality little more than a child. When Pete chose to assert himself, he had much the stronger will. She felt that all pleading would be useless. "You have the reata?" she queried, and turning led him past the corral and along the fence until they came to the stream. A few hundred yards down the stream she turned, and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... nothing of them, or are unable to prevent their occurrence. The natives are bound to secrecy by those who administer the ordeal, which generally causes the death of the victim. A person, when accused of witchcraft, will often travel from distant districts in order to assert her innocency and brave the test. They come to a river on the Cassange called Dua, drink the infusion of a ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... who happened to be with his father in the court-house, was snatched up by a negro woman, who, at the risk of her own life, carried him to a place of safety. But admitting the worst charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the restraints of self-control and the law are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... subdued to prostration by wonder. In England this was carried to such lengths, that the panegyrists of young Betty seemed to vie with each other in fanatical admiration of that truly extraordinary boy. One, in a public print, went so far as to assert, that Mr. Fox (who, as well as Mr. Pitt, was at young Betty's benefit when he played Hamlet) declared the performance was little, if at all, inferior to that of his deceased friend Garrick. With the very same breath in which we read the paragraph ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... hopeless absurdity at last, Dr. Royce found it infinitely easier to deceive his uninformed readers by a bold assertion that I myself am an idealist at bottom. This assertion, swallowed without suspicion of its absolute untruth, would render it plausible and quite credible to assert, next, that I had actually "appropriated" my philosophy from a ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... as before, determined to assert her supposed sovereignty of the narrow seas, and to compel other nations to acknowledge her claims. While cruising in the chops of the channel the Winchester, Captain Hughes, chased a strange sail, on coming up with which he discovered her ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the people. Never in the world will they reach the promised land of equal rights, except through a red sea of blood. Let Great Britain declare war, and I fervently hope that the British people, at least the Irish, will seize the occasion to rise and assert their independence.... I again repeat, that I abhor that government; I abhor that purse-proud and pampered aristocracy, with its bloated pension-list, which for centuries past has wrung its being from the toil, the sweat, and the blood of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... to ask us to believe in a succession of beings that was thus infinitely earlier than any of the beings themselves which composed the succession. And Bentley, more perversely ingenious still, could assert, that as each of the individuals in an infinite series must have consisted of many parts,—that as each man in such a series, for instance, must have had ten fingers and ten toes,—it was palpably absurd to ask us to believe in an infinity ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... case, surely our country, if no other, is bound to recognize the present government so long as it can sustain itself. This position is that to which we have a right: being such, it is no matter how it is viewed by others. But I dare assert it is the only respectable one for our country, in the eyes of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... history-tank; no, they know how to develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of fact, and make him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if—but never mind about that, ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Eddy, who passed away in the Murphy cabin on the seventh of February, was the only wife and mother called by death, in either camp, before the arrival of the First Relief. Both Patrick Breen's diary and William G. Murphy, then a lad of eleven years, assert that Mrs. Eddy and little Margaret, her only daughter, were buried in the snow near the Murphy cabin on the ninth of February. Furthermore, the Breen Diary and the death-list of the Donner Party show that not a husband or father died at the Lake Camp during ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... anything should happen to him, and fortune begin to favor us (for she has always cared for us more kindly than we for ourselves); you know that by being nearer to them you could assert your power over all these disordered possessions, and could dictate what terms you might choose; but as you now act, if some chance should give you Amphipolis, you could not take it, so lacking are you in your preparations ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... not be supposed that we are in a condition to assert that sugar is really produced in the manner here shown, the illustration being given merely for the purpose of pointing out how it may be supposed to occur, and on a similar principle it is possible to explain the formation of most other vegetable compounds; and this subject ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... parasites, and organs manifestly modified to suit a parasitical mode of life, yet compelled and able to exist free, feeding, perhaps, on vegetable juices, or, like the ephemerae, on nothing at all. For it must be borne in mind that I do not assert that these "occasional" or "accidental" parasites, as some one calls them, explaining nothing, do not feed on such juices. I do not know what they feed on. I only know that the joyful alacrity with which gnats and stinging flies of all kinds abandon the leaves, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... be unchristian, but it is natural—nature is of God and will assert herself. No mawkish pretension, no hypocritical cant, can repress the natural feelings of the heart: its loves and resentments are its strongest passions, and the love that we bore for our children and kindred kindles to greater vigor in the hatred we ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... confined by a dark bandeau, such as was worn in a nation farther north by virgins only, over which a few curls strayed, in a manner that showed the will of their mistress alone restrained their luxuriance. Her light complexion had lost much of its brilliancy, but enough still remained to assert its original beauty and clearness. To this description might be added, fine, mellow, blue eyes; beautifully white, though large teeth; a regular set of features, and a person that was clad in a dark lead- colored ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... If it be conveyed to us by our senses, I ask, which of them; and after what manner? If it be perceived by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the palate, a taste; and so of the other senses. But I believe none will assert, that substance is either a colour, or sound, or a taste. The idea, of substance must therefore be derived from an impression of reflection, if it really exist. But the impressions of reflection resolve themselves into our passions and emotions: ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Now, we dare assert that a large, portion of the excitement which the question has caused has arisen from personal suffering, consequent upon that wretched state of jail provisions which exists in South Carolina, and which, to say the least, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... of real intimacy than two animals feeding at the same manger, under the same roof, in a luxurious stable. His longing was appeased and became a habit; and she had her desire—the desire to get away from under the paternal roof, to assert her individuality, to move in her own set (so much smarter than the parental one); to have a home of her own, and her own share of the world's respect, envy, and applause. They understood each other warily, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... others again have made him out a cynic who sneered at the life he depicted; again others have laid the weight on the note found in 'Drink out thy glass,' and have seen only the underlying sad pathos of his songs. His contemporaries agree that he was a man of great consideration for form, and assert that if there are coarse passages in his songs it is because they only could express what he depicted. All coarseness was foreign to his nature; he was reserved and somewhat shy, and only in the company of his chosen few did he open ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... appeared a brave effort to bear up under continued hardship—insufficient rest and sharp riding—and the jester reproached himself for thus taxing her strength; but often, when he suggested a pause, she would shake her head wilfully, assert she was not tired, and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... immovable in his resolutions for good. They tried every means again to entice him into evil ways, but without success. As a last resort, they tried the effect of ridicule, but they learned now, that he had allowed his better nature to assert its power, for he possessed a spirit far above the influence of ridicule; and when they found they could by no means induce him to mingle with them, they were forced to give him up, and allow him to go his way in peace. When Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey found that the change in Earnest ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... beginning to reveal themselves in the camp at Nanking. After its capture Tien Wang himself retired into the interior of his palace and never afterwards appeared in public. All his time was passed in the harem, and the opportunity was thus given his more ambitious lieutenants to assert themselves. Tung Wang, the "Eastern King," became principal Minister. He, too, claimed to have communion with Heaven, and on celestial advice he began to get rid of those of his comrades who opposed his schemes. He even summoned Tien Wang to his presence and reproved him for his proceedings. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... been a hundred thousand in the making." He thought darkly. "But I am drawing near the fastness. This puma of mine—" After a silence, "And they revert. As soon as my hand is taken from them the beast begins to creep back, begins to assert itself again." Another ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... other dear. Each chair is fill'd—we're all at home; To-night let no cold stranger come: It is not often thus around Our old familiar hearth we're found: Bless, then, the meeting and the spot; For once be every care forgot; Let gentle Peace assert her power, And kind Affection rule ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... We go further. We assert that agriculture is in the same position: those who cultivate the soil, like the manufacturers, already could increase their production, not only fourfold but tenfold, and they can put it into practice as soon as they feel the need of it,—as soon as a socialist organization ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... to go to any of the houses, often quite unexpectedly, I can assert truthfully that I never, in a single instance, saw dirt or squalor in one of them. The floors were clean, the beds comfortable, with white and wonderfully clean blankets. Everything, though very homely, with clumsy benches and tables, looked white and ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... steadily between the eyes, I mean; sought to impress it with your mental dominance? Disease is a coward, we are told, a coward who leaves us, when it knows we feel no fear of it. If you just once would assert your manliness, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... where is the evidence which would justify any one in making a positive assertion on the subject? What competent palaeontologist will affirm, at this present moment, that he knows anything about the period at which life originated, or will assert more than the extreme probability that such origin was a long way antecedent to any traces of life at present known? What physical geologist will affirm that he knows when dry land began to exist, or will say more than that it was probably very ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... collecting all the parts of the human body from the grave at the last day, they say, 'This is a work of omnipotence;' and when they name omnipotence and faith, reason is banished; and I am free to assert, that in such case sound reason is not appreciated, and by some is regarded as a spectre; yea, they can say to sound reason, 'Thou art unsound.'" On hearing these things, the Grecian sages said, "Surely such paradoxes vanish and disperse of themselves, as being full of ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... still, looking at me for a moment or two, and I beg to assert that I looked as fully at him. There was, at any rate, no cause why I should tremble before him. I was not his nephew, nor was I responsible for his nephew's doings towards him. Two of his servants were behind him, and on my side there stood a boy and girl belonging to the ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... insisted the submarine boy, in a low, chill voice, though he swung both his arms in an effort to assert himself. "M not goin' t' stay here. Lemme up, I say! 'M goin' back ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... compatible with the picturesque though uncomfortable reasons for variety in more ancient foundations, his remark amounts to a truism. For his implied comparison with European cities to have any point, he should be able to assert that the recent architecture of the different cities of Europe is more varied than the contemporary architecture of the United States. This seems to me emphatically not the case. Modern Paris resembles modern Rome more closely than any two of the above-named cities resemble each other; ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... man, you have not entered on this important—I may say, this awful service, without some evidence of your fitness for the task! Some commission by which you can assert an authority to proceed, or by which you may claim an affinity and a communion with your fellow-workers in the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not assert any right to ask them. On the contrary, I have explained their object. I shall not press them, if you think that an answer will in any way ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... poor man owns that he was frightened at his brother—that he wished to do what is right—that he feared his brother would not let him—that your father was very kind to him—and so he came off at once to me; and I was very luckily at home to assure him that the heir was alive, and prepared to assert his rights. Now then, Mr. Beaufort, we have the witness, but will that suffice us? I fear not. Will the jury believe him with no other testimony at his back? Consider!—When he was gone I put myself in communication with some officers at Bow Street ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the other managers of the Irish National Theatre Society. And Mr. Yeats, it may be, wrote the play not only to symbolize his contention that the poet is as important to society as is the man of action, but also to assert that poetry cultivated for its own sake, the sake of art, is as necessary to a nation, to Ireland, as what Ireland calls patriotism. By the way, he illustrated the fact that that kind of patriotism that assumes the King can do no wrong,—that is, that the Irish people can do no wrong,—and ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of the knowledge and ability necessary to formulate the plan. Let us at least be candid; let us not say grandiloquently that the sexual urge can be indefinitely repressed without harm to the average individual. We may safely assert that there are people, men and women both, to whom the sex impulses are vague and of little force, but to the great majority, at least of men, sex desire is almost a hunger, and unsatisfied it brings about a restlessness and dissatisfaction that enters into all the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... looked upon the wreath of marsh myrtle given to us on the part of so many communities in Ontario last December, as a fit emblem and just expression of that steady, firm, and faithful support which our Queen will ever find wherever a citizen of Ontario lives to assert his rights and freedom in upholding the honour, the dignity, and the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... scheme of resistance. A few wild and tumultuous risings, suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark conspiracies in which only a small number of desperate men engaged, such were the utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most sacred of human rights, attacked by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... local in its character, the creature of State law, a relation of society that was to be regulated like any other municipal institution. It is not to be presumed that the authors of our government would, in the Declaration of Independence, assert the natural rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then contradict this cardinal principle of the revolution in the Constitution. They found slavery existing in the Southern States; they simply left it as it was before the Revolution, with the idea that in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... and soul of all the parties at which he was present. He was a constant courtier of the Countess Braun, the reigning beauty, and everyone believed his love had been crowned with success, though no one could assert ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to assert their corporate rights, and having, for this purpose, recently commenced a suit against their late Secretary and Treasurer, in the issue of which it is expected the question between them and their competitors will be finally settled, the undersigned, being united with them ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... evolution theory, accused me, in one of its hostile articles, of a virulent and undignified attack on Virchow. In contradiction of this misrepresentation in the Augsburg paper—which was copied by other journals—I must expressly assert that not Virchow but I myself am the person attacked, and that, therefore, the matter in question is not an unjustifiable attack by me on a formerly revered friend, but a defence to which I am compelled by repeated and sharp attacks ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... seven, and our visitors were hardly in a condition to give us fair play, even if we did come to blows. But our wrath had been gradually approaching boiling-point, and now the time seemed to have come to brave all consequences and assert ourselves. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Irish-Americans) five-eighths are Celts who number 32,500,000, and one-eighth Saxon, or 7,000,000, and the residue being filled with other races. Thus we see that in numbers the nation is Celtic or nearly so. Let not national vanity or prejudice of race assert itself too strongly, for here came all to obtain their just and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... Moscow, from which it was said that we were only twenty days' march distant. Among those who opposed most vehemently this immediate march on Moscow, I heard the names cited of the Duke of Vicenza and the Count of Lobau; but what I can assert of my own knowledge, and which I learned in a manner to leave no room for doubt, is that the grand marshal of the palace tried on numerous occasions to dissuade the Emperor from this project. But all these endeavors were of no avail ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant |
