"Self-examination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman of the Yellow Canyon had forgotten what she had thought and felt at sixteen. And, after all, he did not want again to see life through Inez' eyes. Long after the rest of the family slept, Douglas pursued his weary and futile self-examination, coming to a blind ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... check oppression and expose superstition, while others followed to lay the foundation of excellence and greatness in the examination and cultivation of its true source—the mind. Heivetius sought to direct men's attention to self-examination, and to show how many disputes might be avoided if each person understood what he was disputing about. "Helvetius on the Mind" is a work that ought to be read widely, and studied attentively, especially by "rising young men," as it is one of those Secular ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... the two suppliants are like each other; both alike look into their own hearts and lives; and both permit the judgment thus formed to determine the form and matter of their prayer. Both addressed themselves to the work of self-examination, and the prayers that follow are ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... are the masters of life, and who are likewise the strength-givers and the helpers of others. There are multitudes in the world today, there are readers of this volume, who could add a dozen or a score of years—teeming, healthy years—to their lives by a process of self-examination, a mental housecleaning, and a reconstructed, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... he was away from the influence of Adrea's passionately beautiful face and pleading eyes. He had an inward sense of great disappointment in himself, and he was anxious to see how far this was justified. He was prepared for a rigid self-examination, and he was impatient to begin upon it. But, while he was still upon the threshold of his meditations, his companion's voice ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... friend and preserver. Her heart beat a little faster than usual—that was the result of her long walk and disappointment at not meeting Le Gardeur on her arrival yesterday. But she feared to explore her thoughts: a rigid self-examination might discover what she instinctively felt was deeply ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... your matrimonial fortunes, as you claim in what appears to be intended for the flower of your letter; and in your next, if you would please me, I advise you to display less wit and more evidence of honest self-examination. To that—which is the beginning of repentance—you do not appear to have attained. Yet it would teach you that your troubles, if you have any, flow from your own sin, and that for any inconveniences you may find ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said the Saint, "is severe and almost terrible in his preaching. He proclaims the judgments of God like the very trump of doom. In his special devotions, too, he speaks of nothing but mortifications, austerities, constant self-examination and such like exercises. Thus, by the wholesome fears with which he fills the minds of his penitents, he leads them to an exact observance of God's law, and to an anxious solicitude for their own salvation. He does not harass them with scruples, and ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... as a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic. For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. Deeper self-examination, completer abstraction, than I can attain even here, are what I crave for. I long—forgive me, my friend—but I long more and more, daily, for the solitary life. This earth is accursed by man's sin: the less we see of it, it seems ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... your brother and yourself. Ah! you think that no answer. Will you have a medical simile? Self-examination notes the symptoms and combats them; self-contemplation does as I did when I was unstrung by that illness at Poonshedagore, and was always feeling my own pulse. It dwells on them, and perpetually deplores itself. Oh, dear! this is no better—what a wretch I am. It is ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... place, where what he does actively or passively is hourly determined for him in advance—attendance at chapel or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest—in short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations and overcome him with spiritual impressions; immediately around him, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... well said, my child," replied Father Mathias; "but the Almighty is not only to be worshipped in his works, but in the closet, with meditation, self-examination and faith. Hast thou followed up the precepts which thou hast been taught?—hast thou reverenced the sublime mysteries which ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... manifested a respect so marked that the older man saw in it an effort to atone for his momentary disloyalty; in his work he was devoted and exact to a degree beyond anything he had previously demonstrated; inwardly he was the investigator. Never had he put himself through so merciless a self-examination. He felt keenly Alice's misunderstanding of his dislike of business; he blamed himself for having spoken so freely to Mr. Gorham before he had fully satisfied himself that the doubts he expressed at that time were based on anything beyond inexperience and a ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... within the next couple of hours. And she felt that everybody was right. The universe was full of mysteries for Audrey. As regards her answer to any proposal, she foresaw—another mystery—that it would not depend upon self-examination or upon reason, or upon anything that could be defined. It would depend upon an instinct over which her mind—nay, even her heart—had no control. She was quite certainly aware that this instinct would instruct her brain to instruct her lips to say "Yes." The idea of saying ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Was it possible that the least shadow of jealousy had influenced her treatment of Sylvia? She was given to uncompromising self-examination, and she knew that it had been a surprise to her to discover in the past days that she was not John's chief interest. She accused herself now of a snobbish inclination toward Sylvia, entirely aside from the perplexity and disapproval the girl had caused her. Edna knew herself to be accustomed ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... out of date in a lounging age, although I have myself known several who have continued the practice with pleasure and utility.[102] One of our old writers quaintly observes, that "the ancients used to take their stomach-pill of self-examination every night. Some used little books, or tablets, which they tied at their girdles, in which they kept a memorial of what they did, against their night-reckoning." We know that Titus, the delight of mankind, as he has been called, kept a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... was that she had no aptitude for literature. She did not like phrases. She had even some natural antipathy to that process of self-examination, that perpetual effort to understand one's own feeling, and express it beautifully, fitly, or energetically in language, which constituted so great a part of her mother's existence. She was, on the contrary, inclined to be silent; she shrank from ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... argument of his, the effect of which would be to promote self-examination. The listener must needs be brought to ask himself, "Of what worth am I to my friends?" It happened thus. One of those who were with him was neglectful, as he noted, of a friend who was at the pinch of poverty (Antisthenes). (1) Accordingly, in the presence of the negligent person and of several ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Plato, "is not worth living." Similar advice was given by Marcus Aurelius. The practice of self-examination, therefore, is not distinctive of Christianity: it is an obvious dictate of wisdom, wherever life and conduct are regarded seriously, that a man should from time to time take stock of himself in the light of his ideals and learn to know and recognize in detail where and how he has ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... first her whole nature rose in arms against the charge: but, after a while, coming as it did from so revered a person, it forced her to serious self-examination. The poor girl said to herself, "Mamma is a shrewd woman. Am I after all deceiving myself? Would she be happy, and am I standing in the way?" In the morning she begged her sister to walk with her in the park, so that they ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... tedium of life. Here is the grand secret. Man fears to be alone; and when left to his own solitary reflections, he dreads the result of self-examination. He flies for relief to his pipe, his cigar, his quid, or his bottle, with the vain hope of escaping from himself. To accomplish an object so desirable, he hesitates not to stupify those noble faculties which he cannot hope to extinguish, ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... Self-examination, then, when joined with a distinct recognition of the Divine character, and a conscious sense of God's scrutiny, paradoxical as it may appear, is the surest means of producing a firm conviction in a guilty mind that God is merciful, and is the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... present day, on the threshold of Socialism. If we were to follow the difficulties, theories, doubts, resolves, and conclusions of each of these characters, we should find two very distinct threads of self-examination running through the two lives. And the essence of the difference was this: the modern Socialist is saying, "What will society do?" while his prototype, as we read, said, "What shall I do?" Properly considered, this latter sentence contains the whole essence ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... apart a day of fasting and prayer, you ought to have in view some definite and particular objects. The day should be spent in self-examination, meditation, reading the Scriptures, confession of sin, prayer for the particular objects which bear upon your mind, and thanksgiving for mercies received. Your self-examination should be as practical as possible; particularly looking into the motives of your prayers ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... had been seen for a long time; who had always passed his days in the most luxurious idleness and who was the most incapable by nature of all serious application, of all serious reading, and of all self-examination. He was afraid of the devil; and he remembered that his former confessor had resigned for similar reasons as this new one was actuated by. He was forced now, therefore, to look a little into himself, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... refused to be comforted. And he was right about that. A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... vain pursuit. Upon no subject has it been so easy to deceive the world as upon this. In every breast the curiosity exists in a greater or less degree, and can only be conquered by a long course of self-examination, and a firm reliance that the future would not be hidden from our sight, if it were right that we should ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... some little fresh ballast on board and to rearrange what he at present had. He was able to stow away some of his useless tackle and bale out some of the water he had shipped in the last few rapids. Altogether, though Dick was not exactly a boy given to self-examination, or self- dedication, and although he would have scouted the notion that he was going in for being a reformed character, his little cruise in calm water did him good, and steadied him for his next venture on the tide, when the time ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... of little worth. This thought should make us tremble. In our self-examination we may experience at times a certain satisfaction in noticing the little virtues we may possess, above all, those that render us pleasing in ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... offer Himself to them in Holy Communion? through the commands and sanctions of the Law. First, we are warned against secret sin, and called to self-examination; a week's preparation follows, then, when the time of celebration is come, we hear the Commandments read, we are solemnly exhorted to put off every thing which may offend God; we confess our sins and our deep sorrow for them; lastly, after being admitted to the Sacrament, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... good in the world the evil is shallow may also be expressed in the statement that God is Lord of Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action; ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... rush of consciousness, there came a difference. There always is a difference between night and day thoughts. Fresh from its wonder-journey, the soul is braver in the morning, the brain is calmer, the spirit more hopeful. After a half-hour's self-examination with her face in the pillow Esther began to wonder if she had not been foolishly apprehensive and whether it were not possible that half her fears were bogies. The weight began to lighten, she breathed more freely. Looking over the rim of the sheltering pillow ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... it is the bent of my nature. I have a tendency to self-examination, accompanied by ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... present technique. Yet, for all that, he had already lost something of his former purity of style. And now, for six long months, he worked at nothing but studies of the same subject; knowing only the criticisms of Irina herself. The days of honest labor and study, the earnest self-criticism and self-examination, were gone. For the moment he might believe himself to be of the elect few. But the period was brief; and, with the coming of the first cloud, the whole horizon suddenly ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... we can get a conception of him and of his existence from his creatures only. The second section is therefore devoted to an examination of creation. Then follow in order sections treating of the service of God, trust in God, action for the sake of God alone, submission to God, repentance, self-examination, separation from the pleasures of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... across the tapestry, and glancing from the blessed symbol, he saw before him, kneeling on the rug, the figure of a woman. For her it was an inauspicious interruption. With almost a frown, Charles, recalled from an absorbing period of oblation and self-examination, surveyed the young girl. The reflection of dark colors from the hangings and tapestries softened the pallor of her face; her hair hung about her in disorder; her figure, though meanly garbed, was replete with youth and grace. Silent ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,—darkly ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... two other occasions Benham had shown courage of the same rather screwed-up sort. He showed it not only in physical but in mental things. A boy named Prothero set a fashion of religious discussion in the school, and Benham, after some self-examination, professed an atheistical republicanism rather in the manner of Shelley. This brought him into open conflict with Roddles, the History Master. Roddles had discovered these theological controversies in some mysterious way, and he took upon himself to talk at Benham and Prothero. He treated them ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... with his horror of self-examination, is apt to forget the immediate end of existence in the means. And so much so, that when the first distant end—that of a secure old age—approaches achievement, he is incapable of admitting it to be achieved, ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... an inspiration, and the result of self-examination. I am well; I have learned something of life; I am only seventeen, and in the course of two months I have become rich by honest means. I am all happy, and yet I owe my happiness to the greatest error a maiden can commit. Thus I humble myself before the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... through his pious mother, Rose de la Salle, allied to the venerable John Baptist de la Salle, the founder of the institute known as the Brothers of the Christian Schools. At the age of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus, and after two years of study and self-examination had passed away, he was, as is usual with the young Jesuits, employed in teaching, which position he held for twelve years. No sooner had he been invested with the priesthood, than his desire to become in all things an imitator ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... he took up again the self-examination, "that I am to blame for a good deal that I've found fault with in others. I mean that I'm a different variety of animal, and, naturally, no judge of the kinds of holes they live in or the way their ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Victoria had used, power, had touched him on the quick. What had she meant by it? Had she been his wife and not his daughter, he would have flown into a rage. Augustus Flint was not a man given to the psychological amusement of self-examination; he had never analyzed his motives. He had had little to do with women, except Victoria. The Rose of Sharon knew him as the fountainhead from which authority and money flowed, but Victoria, since her childhood, had been his refuge from care, and in the haven of her companionship he had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... decision: in the mind itself. With greater intellects more remote the lad had not yet been put in touch; he had therefore grown reflective, and for nearly a week had been spending the best powers of his unaided thought in self-examination. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... who were under his pastoral care. First of all, we find, therefore, tables of duties and sins, reminding us of the lists of cardinal sins and cardinal virtues in which Roman Catholic books abound. The main effort here is to promote the most searching self-examination and the most complete enumeration of the details of sins, since, from the Medieval standpoint, the completeness of the absolution is proportioned to the exhaustiveness of the confession. Although the first of these briefer tracts closes with its note of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the deliberate wisdom which is in most men the result only of the experience of years, he employed the first days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing his future plans, and impartially calculating his chances of success. This self-examination completed, he devoted himself at once and for ever to his life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing discouraged, nothing impeded him. Outward events passed by him unnoticed; the city's afflictions and the city's triumphs ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the effect of the levity, but of the matured judgement* of the age, which refuses to be any longer entertained with illusory knowledge, It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks—that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... as novel. "Of course I'm manager for this expedition," he said, after an interval of self-examination. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... self-examination is hardly characteristic of the people as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of the historic American. He has been an opportunist rather than a dealer in general ideas. Destiny set him in a current which bore him swiftly along through ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... only after the consideration of many months, and after much self-examination as to my motives, and after much earnest prayer, that I came to the conclusion to write this work. I have not taken one single step in the Lord's service concerning which I have prayed so much. My great dislike to increasing ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... dominated by the stronger will, he glances apprehensively, now and again, toward the door, hoping that it may open and bring relief, but himself sits and does nothing. Meanwhile, insistent and remorseless at self-examination, the Ex-President continues ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... 1816 was spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his young comrades, in this ceaseless self-examination, and in the perpetual battle which he waged with the desire for death that pursued him; every day he had deeper doubts of himself; and on the 1st of January, 1817, he wrote ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... eye over the design and order of a new book,' says Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... end, by leaps and starts, with an increasing consciousness of how he aged and altered, which did but feed his black melancholy. It was borne upon him, perhaps, a little brutally, and not by direct self-examination, when there came another photograph from England. A beautiful face still, but certainly the face of a woman, who had passed from the grace of girlhood (seven years now separated her from it), to ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... at this, and think me too severe on her sex. I am only telling that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who reads this, shall find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, let her take the hint, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... pleasures which had been gaining on me for months past, to the undefined longing which that weariness implied for newer interests and fresher hopes than any that had possessed me yet. I attempted no such sober self-examination as this: I believed in destiny then, I believe in destiny now. It was enough for me to know—as I did know—that the first sense I had ever felt of something better in my nature than my animal self was roused by that girl's face looking at me from her picture as no woman's face had ever looked ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... to say honestly that he had arrived at his conclusions after earnest thought and conscientious inquiry, and that his conviction was the result of many lonely hours of self-examination. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two sorts of men. The one, those ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... religion and moral duty, of critical investigations, and allegorical and oriental tales, that no mind can be thought very deficient that has, by constant study and meditation, assimilated to itself all that may be found there. No. 7, written in Passion-week on abstraction and self-examination[640], and No. 110, on penitence and the placability of the Divine Nature, cannot be too often read. No. 54, on the effect which the death of a friend should have upon us, though rather too dispiriting, may be occasionally very medicinal to the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... you," said Vivian, "to undertake such an office; for it is one which you yourself are alone capable of fulfilling. The only person that can ever satirize your Excellency is yourself; and I think even then that, in spite of your candour, your self-examination must please us with ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... go hand in hand. There are persons who are formally careful in regard to the truth, and yet live in perpetual delusion. Wasson recognized this danger and protected himself against it by a constant and severe self-examination. He knew himself at least better than most, and if he erred anywhere it was in too moderate an opinion of his own value. He had visually a clear consciousness of what he was about, in spite of ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... a great point with the Stoic to be conscious of 'advance' or improvement.[11] By self-examination, he kept himself constantly acquainted with his moral state, and it was both his duty and his satisfaction to be approaching to the ideal of the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... receive it only on his own terms. He profoundly appeals to writers endowed with "the artistic conscience" as "the martyr of literary style." In morals something of a libertine, in matters of art he exhibited the intolerance of weakness in others and the remorseless self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the arts of popularity, he rebuffed with deliberate insult. He developed an ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... "June 30.—Self-examination. Why is a missionary life so often an object of my thoughts? Is it simply for the love I bear to souls? Then, why do I not show it more where I am? Souls are as precious here as in Burmah. Does the romance of the business not weigh anything with me?—the interest and esteem ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... classes to receive at her own house, to afford advice to all who ask it, to call on the sick and to administer medicine, and to visit often from house to house. She must correspond with friends at home; she has her private devotions, and must take time for reading and self-examination, or she will find that she can ill perform her other duties. I do not believe that I have overstated the amount of work I have known my sister-in-law and other missionaries' wives perform. Indeed, my own wife was in the habit ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... paradise; but for ourselves, standing at the precipice, petrified, as it were, rock on rock, the great world might well be running back in stone-and-grassy dreams to the hour when God had given him as yet but two daughters, the crag and the clover. We were breaking into the sacred closet of Nature's self-examination. What if, on considering herself, she should of a sudden, and us-ward unawares, determine to begin the throes of a new cycle,—spout up remorseful lavas from her long-hardened conscience, and hurl us all skyward in a hot concrete with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... urge that, even in my own thoughts, my route is any more the result of a settled conviction of its high necessity than it may be in yours, and the confession which I shame to make, is perhaps of itself, a beginning of that very kind of self-examination which we seek the church ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... enough to take no credit for the clean change in his life—no other life was possible; but he was learning the practical value and mental comfort of straight living as he had never learned them before. And he was not so prone to metaphysics and morbid self-examination as he once was, and he shook off a mood of that kind when it came—impatiently—as he shook it off now. He was a soldier now, and his province was action and no more thought than his superiors allowed him. And, standing thus, at sunrise, on the plunging bow of the ship, with his eager, sensitive ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... self-examination with retrospect to this year, he seems to have been much dejected; for he says, January 1, 1774, 'This year has passed with so little improvement, that I doubt whether I have not rather impaired than increased my learning'; and yet we have ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kept him from going. The gathering darkness, the whining wind, the sound of restless water lapping and sucking around the keel, suggested superstitious forebodings and called up dismal images. To every mood there is a season; this was Wilkinson's hour of self-examination. He looked backward on his deeds and inward on his motives. He mistrusted the future. If he were sure that Burr's rainbow dipped its gorgeous ends in gold, no accusing ghost of the past would deter him from ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered." Or else according to a gloss, that we should recognize the unhappy condition of human nature, and humbly cover and purify the stains of a puffed-up and proud spirit in the deep furrow of self-examination. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... otherwise the sins are not forgiven him and he is damned. The English, despite the fact that they are in the doctrine of faith alone, nevertheless in the exhortation to the Holy Communion openly teach self-examination, acknowledgment, confession of sins, penitence and renewal of life, and warn those who do not do these things with the words that otherwise the devil will enter into them as he did into Judas, fill them with all iniquity, and destroy both body and soul. Germans, Swedes and Danes, who are also ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Gibbon, "over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal until I had finished the task of self-examination; till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some particular chapter: I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... continually to know the direction of our life, whether it is to God or from him; whether it is upward or downward; whether we are following truth, and justice, and love, or following our own selfish desires and will. In this sense self-examination is ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... with the restlessness of the intellect there had always gone the imperious and prevailing claim of temperament. Beside Huxley and Clifford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia,' and a little High Church manual of self-examination. And on the wall above the book-table hung a memorandum-slate on which were a number of addresses and dates—the addresses of some forty boys whom the minister taught on Sunday in one of the Unitarian Sunday schools of Manchester, and visited in the week. The care and training of street ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... any of these sayings, but admiring them and emulating them and being enthusiastic about them, we ought to try and test ourselves in smaller matters with a view to greater, not avoiding or rejecting that self-examination, nor sheltering ourselves under the remark, "Perhaps nothing will be more difficult." For inertia[759] and softness are generated by that self-indulgence which ever occupies itself only with the easiest tasks, and flees from ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a nature that lent itself readily to introspection, but he was putting himself now through a searching self-examination which was revealing all kinds of unsuspected flaws in his character. He had been having too good a time for years past to have leisure to realise that he possessed any responsibilities. He had lived each day as it came in the spirit ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in chapter one that at the close of nearly every paragraph questions are thrown in. They are inserted to help you cultivate in yourself the very valuable habit of rigid self-examination. We are all liable to assume too soon that we have the thought. Not to mar the look of the page, the questions are thenceforward placed only at the ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... Whatever is perceptible by the senses, is called vyakta (knowable or comprehensible) and whatever is beyond the reach of the senses and can only be perceived by guesses, is known to be avyakta (not vyakta). When a person engages in the discipline of self-examination, after having subdued the senses which have of their own proper objective play in the external conditions of sound, form, &c, then he beholds his own spirit pervading the universe, and the universe reflected in itself. He who is wedded to his previous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these invectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the Populace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they are addressed, or awaken any thought or self-examination in them. Again, when Sir Thomas Bateson describes the Philistines and the Populace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating the aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and excited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does not ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... the women who naturally analyze their own feelings toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the "Journal Intime" which it is impossible to read without blushing that one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, leaves small chance for self-unconsciousness. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the better way. The hermit who forsakes the world and renounces the social ties and burdens which most men count of value is bent on the purification of his own soul. Monasticism—with all its faults—recognized the essential need of self-examination and self-discipline. It bade us cleanse our souls, conquer our own temptations, by a rigid system of religious exercise. Our modern reformer is not always conscious of any need for self-reform. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... revolution would first have to be worked in society. We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms and schools of art, and to discover instead our genuine needs, the forms of our possible happiness. To call for such self-examination seems revolutionary only because we start from a sophisticated system, a system resting on traditional fashions and superstitions, by which the will of the living generation is misinterpreted and betrayed. To shake off that system would not subvert order but rather institute order for the first ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... are under supervision. This innovation was made necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty women on their counsel. Where will morality stop short? Such precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for self-examination, where pure imaginations are defiled by meditating on unknown and monstrous depravity. In this parlor, too, parents and friends may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners, whether on ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the secret of her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her loving thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon philosophical and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the discontented retrospection winch goes with the multitude by the name of self-examination. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... order that we may punish ourselves and feel that we have made amends. The capacity for self-hate and self-disgust depends largely upon the development of these ideals and principles of conscience, of expectation of the self. Frequently there is an overrigidity, a ceaseless self-examination that now and then produces miracles of character and achievement but more often brings the breakdown of health. This is the seeker of perfection in himself, who will not compromise with his instincts and his human flesh. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... between acknowledged lovers; less disposed to analyze her mind's emotion with any critical severity, or speculate whether this or that feeling had, or had not, passed the line between friendship and love; more ready, at times, to surrender the struggle and self-examination, confess herself vanquished, and yield up her whole heart to my keeping. But ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... they can never become science in the ordinary sense of the word, are a real part of knowledge and may be of great value in education. We may be able to add a good deal to them from our own experience, and we may verify them by it. Self-examination is one of those studies which a man can pursue alone, by attention to himself and the processes of his individual mind. He may learn much about his own character and about the character of others, if he will 'make his mind sit down' and look at itself in the glass. The great, ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... house solely out of kindness, at some momentary inconvenience to himself; and yet it looked as though he were taking advantage of his friend's weakness. Abram Van Riper was a man who cultivated a clear conscience, of a plain, old-fashioned sort, and the necessity for self-examination was novel ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... ones Self in Secrecy and Silence, and do what is laudable without Noise, or Ostentation. I would, however, recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This Kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of our own. It is not so here. Here in this world, man knows himself but "in part." Even when he endeavors to look within, prejudice and passion often affect his judgment; but more often, the fear of what he shall discover in the secret places of his soul deters him from making the attempt at self-examination. For it is a surprising truth that the transgressor dares not bring out into the light that which is most truly his own, that which he himself has originated, and which he loves and cherishes with all his strength and might. He is afraid of his own heart! Even when God ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish,' he said, his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively, 'and of the other hours I maundered away in services and self-examination! Thank Heaven, however, the germ of revolt and sanity was always there. And when once I got to it, I ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But his heart was soft, and his nature most kind, and remarkably regardful of the feelings of others. To wound them, however unintentionally, would occasion him painful disturbance. Though naturally rapid in the perception of character, his inexperience of life, and the self-examination in which he was so frequently absorbed, tended to blunt a little his observation of others. With a generous failing, which is not uncommon, he was prepared to give those whom he loved credit for the virtues which he himself ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... and directed to pursue methodically the painful work of self-examination, which had oppressed him even before he entered the convent, and to use all the means of grace here offered to him. But the more he searched into his life and thoughts, the more transgressions of God's will he found, and the more grievously did they afflict his conscience. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... man to be always poking in his own feelings and emotions. I know also that, in a former generation, there was far too much introspection, instead of looking to Jesus Christ and forgetting self. I do not believe that self-examination, directed to the discovery of reasons for trusting the sincerity of my own faith, is a good thing. But I do believe that, without the practice of careful weighing of ourselves, there will be very little growth in anything that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Christian Adoption Christ our life Union with Christ Life of faith Divine love improved Holy living Opportunities improved Good works Self-denial Obedience in little things Motives to holy living Obedience rewarded Self-examination Watchfulness Constitution-sins The Christian professor admonished Failings and sins of Christians ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... a very practical question for our consideration and answering. "Is there anything in my life"—so the question comes to us in our self-examination—"which could be so described? any influence, spreading from my conduct, of which men might truly say that it also is helping to debase the moral currency? Is there to be seen in it anything that tends towards the lowering of common standards? any misuse of things sacred ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... community idea, and as communities become so organized that they have some mechanism for self-examination and self-expression, more study will be given to the physical structure of the community as essential for economy and utility, and more pride will be taken in making it beautiful and satisfying. Community planning is essential ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... this phase of the subject, the student should give himself a thorough, honest, self-examination and mental analysis. He should write down a chart of his strong points and his weak ones. He should check off the traits which should be developed, and those which should be restrained. He should determine whether ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... days past I have been altogether engaged in writing a controversial pamphlet, and have attended little to the duty of self-examination. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Her spirit was most deeply impressed and overawed by the sacredness of the ceremony. During several weeks previous to her reception of this solemn ordinance, by solitude, self-examination, and prayer, she endeavored to prepare herself for that sacred engagement, which she deemed the pledge of her union to God, and of her eternal felicity. When the hour arrived, her feelings were so intensely excited that she wept convulsively, and she was entirely incapable of walking to the altar. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott |
