"Self-absorbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the open of the lawn he saw a gentleman standing somewhat listlessly, self-absorbed, as though he were not a party to the incessant turmoil of the others, who were ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... tears to learn to tie a double bow knot with my shoestring, as my master insisted upon my doing, and this was the only thing during my apprenticeship that he took pains to teach me—to tie a shoestring. He was a silent, self-absorbed man with a stern manner, a square set jaw, wide mouth and ponderous ears. He was very fond of his two little girls, three and four years old; but he never had a kind word for me. However, he was not peculiar ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... for several minutes. Then he spoke: "I loved you from the first, I believe. Only I never appreciated you. I was so self-absorbed. And you—you fed my vanity, never ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... was faring. His reply was only half satisfactory. He reported the young man as doing very well, and being well; he was growing fat, and that did not improve his looks; and he was getting more and more taciturn and self-absorbed. "Why was he taciturn?" Olive asked herself. "Was he brooding and melancholy?" She did not know anything about the fat, and what might be its primal cause; but her mind was not set at ease ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... proceeded to narrate to Rienzi the adventure of the morning; but though he seemed outwardly to listen, his gaze was on vacancy, and he was evidently abstracted and self-absorbed. At length, as she concluded, he said, "Well, Nina, you have acted as ever, kindly and nobly. Let us to other themes. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... themselves that they imagine their presence necessary to all about them, when they learn that their disappearance from the world sent a thrill of relief through the hearts of those nearest them! To learn how little they were prized, will one day prove a strong medicine for souls self-absorbed. ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... cannot exactly say why this lazy, dreamy, self-absorbed, sky-filled state of mind seems to me the more desirable. I feel no whit inferior to the busiest men of the world as I lie here in my jolly-boat. Rather, had I girded up my loins to be strenuous, I might have seemed ever so feeble compared ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... face, and Tommy had her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees. And in addition to an air of intimacy they had an air of mystery. It was surprising, and perhaps a little annoying, to Audrey that those two should have gone on living to themselves, in their own self-absorbed way, while such singular events had been happening to herself in Flank Hall. She put several fingers in her mouth and produced a piercing long-distance whistle which effectively reached ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Woodberry in his excellent Life of Poe, "and the mother who cared for him, no one touched his heart in the years of his manhood, and at no time was love so strong in him as to rule his life; as he was self-indulgent, he was self-absorbed, and outside of his family no kind act, no noble affection, no generous sacrifice is recorded ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... mistresses; the lap-dog was restless; and upon the hearthrug a drowsy spaniel lay with his nose between his paws, and whined fitfully in a dog's day-dream; whilst the females, at length altogether ceasing to eat, sat self-absorbed. On the face of the elder was an expression of sorrow tempered with patience, but on that of the younger, an air of melancholy was mingled with resentment, that heightened almost into majesty a form and countenance ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... disinterestedness and devotion. Friendship in its accepted sense is not the highest of the different grades in that relationship, but it has its place in the kingdom of love, and through it we bring ourselves into training for a still larger love. The natural man may be self-absorbed and self-centred, but in a truer sense it is natural for him to give up self and link his life on to others. Hence the joy with which he makes the great discovery, that he is something to another and another is everything to him. It is the higher-natural for which he has ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... the impression of being much further removed from the physical, and correspondingly less material. Men who inhabit these levels lose sight of the earth and its belongings; they are usually deeply self-absorbed, and to a large extent create their own surroundings, though these are sufficiently objective to be perceptible to other men of their level, and ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... gave a terrible scream; she had caught sight of the figure on horseback. The horse shied violently and stood still. George persuaded him back into the track and rode on, guessing that already he had become a genuine phantom for the self-absorbed group awakened out of its ecstasy by the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... vacation, but a poor substitute for the society of good men and women.' It's beautiful up at the mill, but I want some one to enjoy it with, and there is no one to turn to, except Landon, and he's rather sad and self-absorbed—you know why. If I were here—in the valley—you and I could ride together now and then, and you could show me all the trails. Why not let me come here and board? I'm going to ask your mother, if ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... as a statue; Mr. Wedron seems quite self-absorbed, and Mr. O'Meara, glances around nervously, as if ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a solitary instance of the quiet power of the girl which already compelled even elderly gentlemen much overworked and self-absorbed, to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Self-absorbed, both went mechanically on with the unappetising meal. Upstairs Toby walked once more into his own room; and then came running heavily down the stairs and past their door and then right down to the street. Sally's heart was in a flutter, and her eyes flew once ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... are a hundred, all ready to bring her to the place where her presence is now required. The network is fastened to the branches by a host of lines, all of them very easy to cross. Well, the Epeira embarks upon none of them, but remains moveless and self-absorbed. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... little tiff that had taken place between the two girls. Chrissie seemed to have changed lately. She was moody and self-absorbed, and ready to fire up on very slight provocation. Her devotion to Marjorie seemed to have somewhat waned. She scarcely ever made her presents now or wrote her notes. She was chatty enough in the dormitory, but saw little of her in recreation hours. Marjorie set this ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... of the strange hour; I did not care that the night was gliding on towards dawn. I was self-absorbed. ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... other studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any attractions for me, and I lived alone in London, avoiding my fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed and unsympathetic. So long as I could gratify my desire of knowledge of a peculiar kind, knowledge of which the very existence is a profound secret to most men, I was intensely happy, and I have often spent ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... Louise concealed something in a drawer, and turned the key on it. But Maurice was too self-absorbed to heed her action, or consciously to hear her exclamation at his haggard appearance. He shut the door, crossed to where she was standing, and, without speaking, pulled her nearer to the lamp. By its light, he scanned her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... spoke presently, fearing he must seem too self-absorbed, but Clement had little to say. Yet a chance meeting twisted the conversation round to its former topic as they neared home. Upon Chagford Bridge appeared Miller Lyddon and Mr. Blee. The latter had been whitewashing ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the thin air with what is called, at lower altitudes, a frosty brilliance, he seemed to see her before him more plainly than he had ever done in the old days when they had stood face to face. He had been too self-absorbed, too blinded and bewildered with the urgency of his own case, to see her as she really was. He remembered now,—something that he had never thought about before,—the little toss of her hair, up from her forehead, which was different from the way ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... business, was absent from home for long periods; irritable after some of these home-comings; boisterously high-spirited following other trips. Now growling about household expenses and unpaid bills; now urging the purchase of some almost prohibitive luxury. Any one but a nagging, self-absorbed, and vain woman such as Flora would have marked these unmistakable signs. But Flora was a taker, not a giver. She thought herself affectionate because she craved affection unduly. She thought herself a fond mother because she insisted on having her children with her, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... abundantly appeared, was but a poor author. His stiff, turgid style makes his works in many places most difficult to understand, as the present translators have found to their cost, and he was therefore practically unreadable to the general public. In his usual self-absorbed fashion, he did not perceive these deficiencies of his, nor could he be got to see the folly of private publication. Indeed, on the contrary, he dreamed of fabulous sums which one day he was to realise by the sale of his works. It is needless to ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... thought: 'I must give him a good lesson. He really is too self-absorbed'; and she did not move, conveying by the posture of her shoulders how ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from the Marquise's welcome it was plain that she had looked ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... telling me, speaking of herself in the third person, of her own feelings—as if I were listening to a woman's confidences, the recital of her doubts, scruples, and agonies about a living lover. For Mrs. Oke, who seemed the most self-absorbed of creatures in all other matters, and utterly incapable of understanding or sympathising with the feelings of other persons, entered completely and passionately into the feelings of this woman, this Alice, who, at some moments, seemed to be ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... events, however, that startled the British provinces out of the self-absorbed contemplation of their own little affairs, the Civil War in the United States exerted the most immediate influence. It not only brought close the menace of a war between Great Britain and the Republic, with Canada as the ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... the Plymouth missions among the poor been so energetic and effective. He said recently, "The worst that can befall a man is to stop thinking of God and begin to think of himself; if trials make us self-absorbed, they hurt us." Well, dear, pardon me for this outpour. I loved you—I love you—and therefore wanted you to know just what I felt. Now, dear, this is over, don't think you must reply to it or me. I know how much you have to do,—yes, I know ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... perhaps a little readier than before to talk of indifferent topics, to laugh at indifferent wit. Those who have ears to hear and eyes wherewith to see learn to distrust the laugh that is too ready, the sympathy that flows in too broad a stream. Happiness is self-absorbed. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... morbid and he found himself thinking during those long days of the sail of what he should do after the war was over. His desire to get killed was gone, and it was slowly being forced on him that he had been priggish, pompous, self-absorbed, hair-splitting, lazy, good-for-nothing, when there was no need for him to be other than what he meant to be when he got back. And as for Judith, he felt the bitterness of gall for himself when he thought ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... found her only diversion in occasional week-ends at other people's country houses, or in long flights by evening in Dick's motor. Her husband was self-absorbed and often silent, another person, as she frequently and querulously rubbed into him, from the ardent creature ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... dined with them, and she greeted any opportunity of seeing him on other days as a great pleasure. This week, for example, would be marked with a white stone. She would have seen him twice. For half an hour Marien had been enduring the bore of the reception, standing silent and self-absorbed in the midst of the gay talk, which did not interest him. He wished to escape, but was always kept from doing so by some word or sign from Madame de Nailles. Jacqueline had been thinking: "Oh! if he would only come and talk ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... indeed, was Mr. Jack walking, and so self-absorbed was he, that he did not see the carriage until it was almost upon him; then he stepped aside to let it pass. What he saw as he gravely raised his hat was a handsome span of black horses, a liveried coachman, and a pair of startled ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... fifteen thousand Templars belonging to the order, but the charges brought against them are too monstrous for belief. The call which they had responded to so nobly, however, had long ceased. They were wealthy, proud and self-absorbed. Sooner or later they must infallibly have gone the way of all organisations which have outlived their use and purpose. It is the infamy of their violent destruction for which pope and king must answer at ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... intoxicated with vanity, selfish and self-absorbed, frivolous and shallow; yet of all women, when they love, they sacrifice their personal feelings to their passion; they rise but so much the higher for all the pettiness overcome in their nature, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... as physically, there were moments, at this period of their lives, when even her own father hardly recognized his daughter of former days. She had lost her childish vivacity—her sweet, equable flow of good humor. Silent and self-absorbed, she went through the daily routine of her duties enduringly. The hope of meeting me again had sunk to a dead hope in her by this time. She made no complaint. The bodily strength that she had gained in these later days had its sympathetic influence ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... the service in St. Peter's we all set forth in one carriage, Reverdy riding on the box, and Isabel, Uncle Tom, and I in the seat. I noticed that Uncle Tom was more than usually self-absorbed. Isabel patted his hand or held it, and talked to him of the objects of interest along ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... gangway and came back immediately with his head wetted and his hair parted down the middle. "Ach, you fool, why don't you leave well alone!" cried Marie, ruffling his head. A fight ensued. Peter sat in a corner, self-absorbed, staring gloomily out ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the least heartless or brutal attempt of a rather absent and very much self-centered recluse absorbed in one subject, to get his interlocutor as well as himself out of painful and useless dwelling on sorrowful matters. Self-centered and self-absorbed Balzac no doubt was; he could not have lived his life or produced his work if he had been anything else. And it must be remembered that he owed extremely little to others; that he had the independence as well as the isolation of the self-centered; that he never sponged ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... servants' hall were also in her father's thoughts. From them, however, he won no consolation, though he stood convinced. But the fact that Septimus May should have failed, and paid for his failure with his life, now assumed its true significance for Sir Walter. He was self-absorbed, prostrate, and desperate. In such a condition one is not master of oneself, and may say and do anything. The old man's armor was off, and in the course of his next few speeches, by a selfish forgetfulness ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... self-culture in its zeal for world-embracing charities. Even the religious affections, when they assume the character of passions, either, on the one hand, are kindled into wild fanaticism, or, on the other, lapse into a self-absorbed quietism, which forgets outside duties in the luxury of devout contemplation; and though either of these is to be immeasurably preferred to indifference, they both are as immeasurably inferior to that piety, equally fervent and rational, which neglects neither man for God, nor God for man, and ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... play was finished and the author brought it and laid it in the hands of the actress as if it were a new-born child, and her heart leaped with joy. He was no longer the stern and self-absorbed writer. His voice was tender as he said, "I give this to you in the hope that it may regain for you ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... The night, so far as he knew, passed quietly. The next morning he breakfasted early, determining to wait in the restaurant for the appearance of the Countess. She came in and ordered her breakfast quietly, looking dull and worn and self-absorbed, as she had looked when he last saw her. He hastened to her table, and asked if anything had happened ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... like one in a dream; and was so self-absorbed, that he did not see Mrs. Gaunt coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... enough to get, at any rate once and again, a view of the proportions of life and of the stage and plot of its action. We speak often with amusement, sometimes with distaste and uneasiness, of men who "have no sense of humor," who take themselves too seriously, who are intense, self-absorbed, over-confident in matters of opinion, or else go plumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, enjoying, appreciating, thinking of nothing so much as themselves. These are men who have not suffered that ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... concentrated itself for the creation of a dramatic work; and in truth they do not bear on their forehead the red fever spot of aspiration groping in the dark, which does not find what it seeks and therefore clasps in its arms the object over which it stumbles; they breathe that smiling, lovely, self-absorbed contentment, without which there may be intoxication, but no joy, no life. It is true that through the songs as well as through the ballads, the dramatic genius which was later to produce Duke Ernest and Louis the Bavarian already treads softly like a sleep-walker; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... laid—must be upon her mother when she, knowing Ingram's story of miserable marriage and separation, allowed the man to continue a friend of the house, be much with her girl, and unfold himself under her clear young eyes. What she was about—that masterful, self-absorbed woman—there's no saying. It was always supposed that, with five beautiful daughters to market, she had pushed Welbore Percival—Thomas Welbore Percival, East India merchant of The Poultry—into lavish ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... only in the infinite pettinesses of her life. Herself and God, her confessor and the weekly wash, her preserves and the church services, and her uncle to care for, absorbed her feeble intellect. To her the atoms of life were magnified by an optic peculiar to persons who are selfish by nature or self-absorbed by some accident. Her perfect health gave alarming meaning to the least little derangement of her digestive organs. She lived under the iron rod of the medical science of our forefathers, and took yearly four precautionary doses, strong enough to have killed Penelope, though they seemed to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... evening in the declining autumn of 1758; some public ceremony had occurred during the day, and the crowd, which it had assembled was only now gradually lessening, as the shadows darkened along the streets. Through this crowd, self-absorbed as usual—with them—not one of them—Eugene Aram slowly wound his uncompanioned way. What an incalculable field of dread and sombre contemplation is opened to every man who, with his heart disengaged from himself, and his eyes accustomed to the sharp observance of his tribe, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with anger at her own simplicity in fancying that he had been "taken" by her—that she could ever really count among these happy self-absorbed people! They all had their friends, their ties, their delightful crowding obligations: why should they make room for an intruder in a circle so ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the distance. They were quite alone. The major sat down on a boulder, and pointed to another. The man, however, remained sullenly standing where he was, as if to accent as strongly as possible the enforced companionship. Either the major was too self-absorbed to notice it, or accepted it as a satisfactory characteristic of the half-breed's race. He ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and self-absorbed character of mind, he had no understanding of human nature, no insight into character with its marvelous complexities and contradictions. With these limitations Poe, as might be expected, had a very defective sense of humor, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... other ways in which his lack of sensibility manifests itself in an unpleasant fashion. He is so self-absorbed that he appears to be wholly unaware of those who minister to his comfort. Of his servants he never knows the least detail, not even their names, and even a devoted secretary who has served him faithfully for many years ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... we need to do with ourselves occasionally. We need to take a journey from our self-absorbed centre, and see ourselves with a fresh eye and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the serene knowledge that a better wisdom directs their fulfilment. Neither passers-by nor other vehicles, neither houses nor streets caught the entranced attention of these young lovers. The delight of being purely self-absorbed is very great and intoxicating to those who are constantly—either by desire or the force of circumstances—unselfish. A faint flush swept into Brigit's face under the effect of an experience so novel. Their twofold ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... represent, as Dr. Wickhoff suggests, Venus exhorting Medea to listen to the love-suit of Jason; but the subject is not forced upon us, and we are more occupied with the contrast between the two beautiful personalities, so harmoniously related to each other, yet so opposed in type. The gracious, self-absorbed lady, with her softly dressed hair, her loose glove, her silvery satin dress, is a contrast in look and spirit to the goddess whose free, simple attitude and outward gaze embody the nobler ideal. The sinuous and enchanting line of Venus's figure ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... about it, we'll see about it," he grunted; but his wife felt more hopeful, and was even unusually solicitous of his wants in the way of coffee and marmalade and cream. Josiah was shrewd if he did happen to be deeply self-absorbed in his health, and he noticed that Theodora's eyes were brighter and her ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... hurry from his place was John Chilcote, member for East Wark. He passed out of the House quickly, with the half-furtive quickness that marks a self-absorbed man; and as he passed the policeman standing stolidly under the arched door-way of the big court-yard he swerved a little, as if startled out of his thoughts. He realized his swerve almost before it was accomplished, and pulled ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... no attention; she seemed self-absorbed, thinking only of herself and the anomalous position into which her infirmity had tricked her. When she did speak, her words ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... desert, of such birds as we saw, and so forth. As to other and more important matters a kind of truce seemed to prevail. Still, I observed that they were always studying us, and especially Lord Ragnall, who rode on day after day, self-absorbed and staring straight in front of him as though he looked at something we ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... influenced by what she said and did, if he knew who she was. For the hundredth time Betty questioned, did Eleanor deserve the consideration that was being asked for her? Was it fair to set aside the gay, self-absorbed Eleanor of to-day in favor of the clinging, repentant Eleanor of the week before? Why, yes, she thought, it must be fair to judge a person at her best, if you wanted her to be her best. She sighed over the perplexities of life, and then she sighed again, because of her tiresome desk and ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... neurosis is nonconstructive use of one's surplus steam. The trouble with a nervous person is that his love-force is turned in on himself instead of out into the world of reality. This is what his friends mean when they say that he is self-absorbed; and this is what the psychologists mean when they say that a neurotic is introverted. A person, in so far as he is nervous, does not see other people at all—that is, he does not see them as real persons, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... riddle of our being. What can it do for us? If we would really know ourselves, we want a depth of self-analysis; not a pitiful search for motives, not the superficial probings of a moralist, not the boundless, limitless, self-absorbed speculations on the nature of self of the philosopher, not the sympathetic noting of each emotion that crosses the horizon of the soul—the introspection of the Poet; these will never teach us the reason why we think and feel on ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne |
