"Self-distrust" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the way back to Southwark. Now that he had taken her into his life at last, he seemed to have unburdened himself of some overwhelming weight. Margaret knew everything at last, understood everything, and loved him through all. His self-distrust had made him keep himself hidden from the Medhursts, but she had helped him to find and know his own strength. She was right. He was strong enough to accept ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... whether he had any objection to my looking it over before he read it. My proposal rather pleased him, I thought, for, as was observed on a former occasion, he has in connection with a belief in himself another side,—a curious self-distrust. I have no question that he has an obscure sense of some mental deficiency. Thus you may expect from him first a dogma, and presently a doubt. If you fight his dogma, he will do battle for it stoutly; if you let him alone, he will very probably explain its extravagances, if it has ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dejection, therefore, or rather agitation (for it impressed by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his dreams, which lasted for years after the cause had ceased to operate) was perfectly natural under the explanation we have given, but not otherwise. And how did he surmount this unhappy self-distrust? Paradoxical as it may sound, we will venture to say, that, with the innumerable aids for interpreting Homer which even then existed, a man sufficiently acquainted with Latin might make a translation even critically ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... its contrast with her black wrapper made the whole scene, linked as it was with a dead man's dream, so ghostly that he shuddered, and was inclined to believe it to be the creation of his overwrought senses. In self-distrust he looked around. Other objects were clear in the faint moonlight. He was perfectly conscious of the dull ache of his wound. Had the phantom crouched before the fire vanished? No; but now the silver hair was thrown back, ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... make an art of forwardness, and to school herself in the endurance of brutality. She was constantly blushing in the most unfeigned way at his neatly-turned little compliments, and, when she spoke, did so with a pretty air of self-distrust which sat quite charmingly on her. Fain, fain would O'Gree have proposed to journey back to London by the same train, but good taste and good sense prevailed with him. At the ticket-barrier there ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... it is extremely important—that if in the past you have lacked confidence in yourself, this self-distrust will gradually disappear. You will have confidence in yourself; I repeat, you will have confidence. Your confidence will be based on the knowledge of the immense power which is within you, by which you can accomplish any task ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... such fare, and were still fastidious. Wherever she came there was laughter among the ladies, of the high hysteric bacchante kind, not true mirth, but a loud laxity, into which they were beguiled for the moment, and which was the cause of self-distrust, disgust, and regret, upon reflection, to the better kind. If the question of motive is to be taken into account in considering the words and deeds of people, it may be confidently asserted that the Guthrie Brimstons never said a good-natured thing nor did a kind one. "I ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... leave for ever all that I know and love." And few know the feeling which comes upon all men after it is done,—the feeling of isolation, almost of terror, at having gone so far out of the bounds of ordinary life; the feeling of self-distrust and cowardice at being alone and friendless in the world, like ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... take for salvation. The only thing that unites men to Jesus Christ is faith. You must trust Him, you must trust the power of His sacrifice, you must trust the might of His living love. You must trust Him with a trust which is self-distrust. You must trust Him out and out. The people with whom Paul is fighting, in this chapter, were quite willing to admit that faith was the thing that made Christians, but they wanted to tack on something besides. They wanted to tack on the rites of Judaism and obedience ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... a feeble resolution by the aid of other infirmities, such as shame or the very servility and cowardice of deference to public opinion, becomes prudent and laudable in the service of so great a cause. Nay, sometimes to make public profession of self-distrust by assuming the coercion of public pledges, may become an expression of frank courage, or even of noble principle, not fearing the shame of confession when it can aid the powers of victorious resistance. Yet still, so far ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... duty of woman. To you the poverty and distress are not displayed. Obtaining her means to live by washing and occasional tasks, yet the wife is discarded. The sum total of the sunshine transforms the flowers; invisible their change. Regardless of self-distrust of the past is put aside. But you act with cruel motive; a grudge as lasting as a night without moonlight. From the clouds the drizzle falls on bamboo and on village. And between the intervals of rain there is naught ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Science Mind- healing never originated in pride, rivalry, or the deification 9 of self. The Discoverer of this Science could tell you of timidity, of self-distrust, of friendlessness, toil, agonies, and victories under which she needed miraculous vision to 12 sustain her, when taking the ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker G. Eddy
... rest of Ireland. "Hearty," that is what they are; it is the good side of their self-content. No people that is in revolution can be hearty—least of all when revolution has dragged on through more than a generation. Distrust of your comrades—distrust of your leaders—self-distrust—these are the characteristic vices of revolution (look at Russia), and they sow a bitter seed. Protestant Ulster has never known revolution; for it yesterday and to-day have been happily, naturally, continuous. Political change it has known, normal and beneficent; land purchase came ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... had several strong likings, and had found out (before it was too late) that a strong liking is only a distant cousin to love. For the first time in her life she was beginning to feel that terrible self-distrust which is love's cruel companion. And it is a painful moment for a woman when she learns that the sound of one voice can set her heart throbbing and drive the colour out of ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... whom Pambo sent up from the deserts dared to offer himself as champion of the faith against Hypatia. He actually proposed to go into her lecture-room and argue with her to her face. What think you of that for a specimen of youthful modesty and self-distrust?' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the members of the committee who have concurred in that report a profound respect, it has been with a feeling of unaffected diffidence and self-distrust that I have ventured to express my sentiments on this occasion. But as I must act on my own convictions of duty, which are in harmony with those of my associates from Connecticut, so far as in the brief period ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... have all open to the light, and would let my boughs be pruned, when they grow rank and unfruitful, even if I felt the knife to the quick of my being. Very fain would I have a rational modesty, without self-distrust; and may the knowledge of my failures leaven my soul, and check its intemperance. If you saw me wholly, you would not, I think, feel as you do; for you would recognize the force, that regulates my life and tempers the ardor ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... if you will think for a moment, you will see that the faith which the New Testament, in conformity with all wise knowledge of one's self, preaches as the one secret of power, has for its obverse—its other side—diffidence and self-distrust. No man trusts God as God ought to be trusted, who does not distrust himself as himself ought to be distrusted. To level a mountain is the only way to carry the water across where it stood. You can, by mechanism and locks, take a canal up to the top of a hill, but you cannot take a river ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... William, hard and unyielding, was always perfectly certain of being in the right. It was therefore to be expected that his opinions should generally rule, and that he should construe her readiness to yield and her self-distrust, as proofs that he was not mistaken. Rock-ribbed infallibility could hardly be expected to comprehend the doubts that ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... bring forth, impressed itself on the baby soul. There was English fortitude and courage, the endurance born of faith, and the higher evolution from English obstinacy, but there was for all of them, deep self-distrust and abasement; a sense of worthlessness that intensified with each generation; and a perpetual, unhealthy questioning of every thought and motive. The progress was slow but certain, rising first among the more sensitive natures ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Leaping to break the ice. Oh! once, was aye That laughed at frosty May like spring's return. Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt. You like me; you might love me; but to dare, Tasks more than courage. Veneration, friends, Self-worship, which is often self-distrust, Bar the good way to you, and make a dream A fortress and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... utility which excludes such a character from its list of useful things; for the great interest of every nation is, to cherish and value whatever tends to prevent its forces of intelligence and conscience from being weakened by idleness or withheld by timidity and self-distrust; and certainly the example of Dr. Kane will exert this wholesome influence, by the unmistakable directness with which it gives the lie to that lazy or cowardly skepticism of the powers of the will, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... certain exquisiteness of feeling. But they explain why, of the two contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in most men's conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a fleeting ghost. And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well as his exquisiteness. He is indeed "well-languaged Daniel," "sweet honey-dropping Daniel," "Rosamund's trumpeter, sweet as the nightingale," revered and admired by all his compeers. But the note of apprehension was also sounded, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nevertheless, be ready to act. But is not this a mere compromise? Certainly. All life is a compromise; and in the present instance it means only that we should keep our eyes open to the light, whatever its source, and yet should nourish that wholesome self-distrust that prevents a man from being an erratic and revolutionary creature, unmindful of his own limitations. Prudent men in all walks in life make this compromise, and the world is ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... support had suddenly been taken away from her. Larssen's mere presence, even if he remained silent, gave her a fictitious sense of her own power, which now was crumbling away and leaving her with a feeling of insecurity and self-distrust. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg |
