"Self-deception" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corresponding to the conditions on mobilization should be employed, and that men and horses should be fed from their contents; otherwise we would only too easily drop into habits of under-estimating the difficulties with which in real War we shall have to contend. But to guard against this self-deception should be the end and object of all ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... of his frank pleasure in seeing me I was ashamed to analyze the nature of the change; but presently our talk began to flag—fancy a talk with Merrick flagging!—and self-deception became impossible as I watched myself handing out platitudes with the gesture of the salesman offering something to a purchaser "equally good." The worst of it was that Merrick—Merrick, who had once felt everything!—didn't seem to feel the lack of spontaneity in my remarks, but hung on' ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... morning? For you and I are unhappy and ill at ease; and you and I are talking at cross purposes, groping, evading, fencing with words. If there is nothing significant in the friendship we gave each other from the hour we met—it is not worth the self-deception you ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Dinky-Dunk said. I have been trying to see things from his standpoint. By a sort of mental ju-jutsu I've even been trying to justify what I can't quite understand in him. But it's no use. There's one bald, hard fact I can't escape, no matter how I dig my old ostrich-beak of instinct under the sands of self-deception. There's one cold-blooded truth that will have to be faced. My husband is no longer in love with me. Whatever else may have happened, I have lost my heart-hold on Duncan Argyll McKail. I am still his wife, in the eyes of the law, and the mother of his children. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... inquisitive eye, first one object, and then another by turns. The novelty of the whole scene appeared for an instant to engross her attention. Every part of the furniture was unlike that of a shepherd's cot; and completely singular and unprecedented by any thing that her memory could suggest. But this self-deception, this abstraction from her feelings and her situation was of a continuance the shortest that can be conceived. All seemed changed with her in a moment. Her eye, which, from a state of languor and unexpressiveness, had assumed an air of intent and restless curiosity, was now full of ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
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