"Self-examination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... condemnation. Ignorance gives disparagement a louder tongue than knowledge does. Wise men had rather know, than tell. Frequent dispraises are but the faults of uncharitable wit: and it is from where there is no judgment, that the heaviest judgment comes; for self-examination would make all judgments charitable. If we even do know vices in men, we can scarce show ourselves in a nobler virtue than in the charity of concealing them: if that be not a flattery persuading to continuance. And it is the basest office man can ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... watch ourselves always, and see whither we are going. We need 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 ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... another 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 ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... self-examination finds himself compelled to fight a duel, and whose conscience is clear of sentiments of hatred and of vengeance, may do so in the conviction that he is in no wise acting contrary to the Word of God, to the obligations of honor, or to the accepted customs of society. As in battle, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... above all, the confidant of his most private and intimate thoughts; a means whereby the thinker became conscious of his own inner life; a safe shelter wherein his questionings of fate and the future, the voice of grief, of self-examination and confession, the soul's cry for inward peace, might make ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assumption of data, if not in the process of inference, that there is a ground for fearing that the fault may be one of will, not of intellect, even though undetected by the sceptic himself. And a conscientious mind will learn the practical lesson of exercising the most careful self-examination in reference to its doubts, and especially will use the utmost caution not to communicate them needlessly to others. The Hebrew Psalmist, instead of telling his painful misgivings, harboured them in God's presence until he found the solution.(88) The delicacy exhibited ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was none of these. Young Fledgeby had a peachy cheek, or a cheek compounded of the peach and the red red red wall on which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding slim (his enemies would have said lanky), and prone to self-examination in the articles of whisker and moustache. While feeling for the whisker that he anxiously expected, Fledgeby underwent remarkable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along the whole scale from confidence to despair. There were times when he started, as exclaiming ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... thought as I pleased. The result was that within six months I found myself writing with a facility which hitherto had obtained only during elation. At first I was suspicious of this new-found and apparently permanent ease of expression—so suspicious that I set about diagnosing my symptoms. My self-examination convinced me that I was, in fact, quite normal. I had no irresistible desire to write, nor was there any suggestion of that exalted, or (technically speaking) euphoric, light-heartedness which characterizes elation. Further, after ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... self-love, my friend," answered the old man, "that gives to most of us our greatest energy in life. We work ardently, taxing all our powers, in the accomplishment of some end. A close self-examination will, in most cases, show us that self is the main-spring of all this activity. Now, I hold, that in just so far as this is the case, our ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Manresa proved eminently fruitful for the future method of Ignatius. It was here that he began to regard self-discipline and self-examination as the needful prelude to a consecrated life. It was here that he learned to condemn the ascetism of anchorites as pernicious or unprofitable to a militant Christian. It was here that, while studying the manual of devotion written by ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... rosecolored taper, and proceed slowly, to the soft accompaniment of your trailing skirt, rustling across the carpet, to your dressing-room, that perfumed sanctuary in which your beauty, knowing itself to be alone, raises its veils, indulges in self-examination, revels in itself and reckons up its treasures as a ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... 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
... his followers—for which he is not in the least chargeable—and of the many extravagances scattered through his twenty-eight treatises. But that he intended well, served his church and his Master, led thousands to self-examination, taught his nation that controversy was not the path to success or immortality, his whole career ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... never done so without advantage, and I commend it to you." Says Gibbon [Footnote: Dr. Smith's Gibbon, p. 64.], "After glancing my eye 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 resolved, 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 ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... in 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 ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Annunciation, Tersanctus, Trisagion. psalm, psalmody; hymn, plain song, chant, chaunt, response, anthem, motet; antiphon[obs3], antiphony. oblation, sacrifice, incense, libation; burnt offering, heave offering, votive offering; offertory. discipline; self-discipline, self-examination, self-denial; fasting. divine service, office, duty; exercises; morning prayer; mass, matins, evensong, vespers; undernsong[obs3], tierce[obs3]; holyday &c. (rites) 998. worshipper, congregation, communicant, celebrant. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... towards the better things. Confirmation and First Communion sometimes sensibly and even suddenly transfigure a character; but even apart from such choice instances the gradual work of the Sacraments brings Catholic children under a discipline in which the habit of self-examination, the constant necessity for effort, the truthful avowal of being in the wrong, the acceptance of penance as a due, the necessary submissions and self-renunciations of obedience to the Church, give a training ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... everybody expected him to propose to her quite soon—indeed 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 ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... midst of her self-examination, the emotion and excitement that she had felt of late in her long conversations with Cliffe returned upon her, filling her at once with poignant memory and a keen expectation to which she yielded herself as a wild sea-bird to the rocking ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thus far was only an earnest of the great work he was capable of, but to achieve it meant a surrender of nearly all the ties that bound him to life. The human qualities in him rebelled at the prospect. With the clairvoyance superinduced by much self-examination, he was able to forecast the vast scope of his powers, and the task that was set him. The whole future of the unapproachable artist that he was destined to become, was mirrored out to him almost at the beginning of his career, but ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... 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 number of religious books would, in itself, have been ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... But no one, not the dullest, not the weakest, not the laziest and lustfullest, not the most indifferent to ideas or the most tolerant of platitudes and paradoxes, can pass him by without being arrested, quickened, stung, purged, stirred to uneasy self-examination by so strange a personality expressed in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... plain man, 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, and goes on worrying ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... Setting Apart Deaconesses," the "Rules for Self-Examination," and the "Rules of Discipline" in the order of deaconesses in Maryland are largely patterned after the Kaiserswerth rules. In truth, the general questions for self-examination in regard to external duties, spiritual duties ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... mention these circumstances, and to describe them so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early habit of introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early separation from companionship with other men. Soon after the birth of her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting "thou" in speaking to me, and began ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... in the home harbour, to take 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 ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... application to their daily lives of the religious faith which I have concisely stated, Father Rapp taught humility, simplicity in living, self-sacrifice, love to your neighbor, regular and persevering industry, prayer and self-examination. ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... 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 ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up into altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. Therefore we have all to feel that after all self-examination there lie awful depths within us which we have not fathomed; and after all our knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ourselves. When a philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result of introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have contributed nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious self-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical self-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those who care for thought for thought's sake—the so-called Hamlets of the world, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... Ps. 31:1: "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
... 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 ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... meal in this atmosphere surcharged with domestic electricity, he got the notion—he could hardly tell how—that all this lowering of the sky had something to do with him. What had he done? Nothing. His closest self-examination told him that he had done no wrong. But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience condemned him for some unknown crime that had brought about all this disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very good, the cabbage he could not eat, the corn-dodger choked ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... letters of January and February, 1860, as they contain nothing on scientific matters, or on the subject of Australia, although interesting in other respects. They mark the habitual tone of his feelings and principles, his constant habit of self-examination, his study of his fellow-men, and how strongly he was impressed with the truth ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... deep mortification. Used to have the least hint of dawning seriousness thankfully cherished and fostered, it was a rude shock, when most in need of epanchement du coeur after her dreary day, to be thrown back on that incomprehensible process of self-examination; and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see," 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 ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not understand himself, did not know whither his steps might have tended had not the brutality of the Marchesino roused him abruptly to this self-examination, this self-consideration. He did not fully understand himself, and he wondered very much how Hermione and the Sicilian had understood ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... was turned into pitiful love. When a contrite man approached Him He raised him up with both arms, encouraged him, taught him to be kind, showed him the joy of life, and how to penetrate the sacred recesses of his own being—self-examination. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... 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
... high-minded youth, can only be obtained with certainty at the same price by which every thing great and good is obtained, namely, steady dependence upon voluntary and self-originating effort, and upon the practice of self-examination, sincerely aimed at and rigorously enforced. But how is this to be expected from youth? Is it not to demand the fruit when the blossom is barely put forth, and is hourly at the mercy of frosts and winds? To expect from youth these virtues ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... such a painstaking self-examination as to ensure our making a good confession? "If we confess our sins" (separate, detailed sins, not our sinfulness in general terms), "He is faithful and just ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... "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 Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... 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 he needs development along physical, mental, and spiritual lines, and in ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... public, common prayer can well do this? And meantime the Book does, especially in the service of the Communion, and particularly in that too often omitted part of it, the "longer Exhortation," beginning Dearly beloved in the Lord, throw the worshipper back upon himself for self-examination. This is just the method of St Paul in his addresses to the Christian community. He writes to all as "saints," "faithful," "elect," "sanctified." What does he mean? Does he mean that those glorious terms ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... for self-examination," he said, and his clear, quiet tones fell into the ears of the people with penetrating power. "And self-examination is a wise and profitable exercise. It is an exercise of the soul designed to yield a discovery of sin in the heart and life, and to ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Eustace, pleasure or business to prevent the solemn duties of self-examination and prayer. These are spiritual antidotes, which preserve an endangered soul from the contamination of evil customs and loose society. When leisure permits, add religious reading, and above all the study of the Holy ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... people are in great domestic sorrow, self-examination is a superfluous advice. She listened a moment to his departing footsteps, shivering as she stood in the darkness, for a norther had sprung up, and the cold was severe. She only glanced into the pleasant parlor where ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... nightfall, but the inertia of despondency 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 chasing the yellow temptation over mountains or through bogs. He was not given to brooding ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Mr. Fearing Encouragement for the doubting 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 ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... himself the master of the wife and the money; as a duty, too, in which some amount of self-sacrifice would be necessary. He would have to give up his friendship with the signora, his resistance to Mr Harding, his antipathy—no, he found on mature self-examination, that he could not bring himself to give up his antipathy to Dr Grantly. He would marry the lady as the enemy of her brother-in-law, if such an arrangement suited her; if not, she must look ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... proportion as she was shut out from the pleasures of conversation, she seemed to find an increasing delight in secret devotion. "Let us call those our golden hours," she says in a letter to a friend, "that are spent with God. May we be found much in that excellent duty of self-examination." And at a subsequent date she writes in her diary, "My hearing is in some measure restored; of which I can give no account from natural causes or medicinal art. O Lord, my healer, thou canst do every thing. O the riches of immortal grace! If I outlive ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... understood that this was to be an important epoch in her life, upon which all the future must depend, and that, since she had asked time for consideration, Matilde would not intrude upon her solitude. Knowing that she had as many hours before her as she pleased to take, she began the arduous task of self-examination by greedily reading a novel which Bosio had given her two days earlier, and which she had not opened. Somehow, she fancied that while she was reading her mind would decide itself. The immediate question was not really whether ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Dr. Carr, with an odd sigh, which set Katy to wondering. What should papa sigh for? Had she done any thing wrong? She began to rack her brains and memory as to whether it could be this or that; or, if not, what could it be? Such needless self-examination does no good. Katy looked more ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... Lyth held himself in good esteem; as every honest man is bound to do, or surely the rogues will devour him. Modesty kept him silent as to his merits very often; but the exercise of self-examination made them manifest to himself. As the Yorkshireman said to his minister, when pressed to make daily introspection, "I dare na do it, sir; it sets me up so, and leaveth no chance for my neighbors;" so the great free-trader, in charity for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... which is at all to the point is, "why has God not made me better?" The problem of God's dealing with the world is, in essence, the problem of God's dealing with me. If He has not reformed me, if I do not, in my self-examination, find that I am responding to the ideals of God, as far as I know them, there is small point in declamations about the state of society. Society that is godless, is just a mass of godless individuals; and I can understand why God does not reform ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... instead of being concentrated in intense and eager spasms. An old philosopher—a Descartes, suppose—fancied that out of primitive truths, which he could by ardent excogitation know, he might by pure deduction evolve the entire universe. Intense self-examination, and intense reason would, he thought, make out everything. The soul "itself by itself," could tell all it wanted if it would be true to its sublimer isolation. The greatest enjoyment possible to man was that which this ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... itself challenged by them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to make the message of the Church far less vital than it ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... 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 ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... 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 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of Archbishop Leighton's to a lady under a similar distemperature of the imagination. [4] In fact, it can scarcely not happen under any weakness and consequent irritability of the nerves to persons continually occupied with spiritual self-examination. No part of the pastoral duties requires more discretion, a greater practical psychological science. In this, as in ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... convent, she, for the first time, partook of 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 ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... have her bring Willoughby and her father face to face, and be witness of their interview—herself the theme. What alternative was there?—obedience to the word she had pledged. He talked of patience, of self-examination and patience. But all of her—she was all marked urgent. This house was a cage, and the world—her brain was a cage, until she could obtain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a morning at my books," answered John. His wife took the answer as a hint to go away, and presently left the room, feeling that her mind had been unnecessarily troubled by her sister. But in her honest self-examination, when she had returned to her own room and to the perusal of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, she acknowledged to herself that she had a liking for Paul Patoff, and that she could not understand why both ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... takes place for the remission of sins, he has claimed as his due from all future disciples what was a matter of course so long as he sojourned with them, but what might fade away after he was parted from them. He who in his preaching of the kingdom of God raised the strictest self-examination and humility to a law, and exhibited them to his followers in his own life, has described with clear consciousness his life crowned by death as the imperishable service by which men in all ages will be cleansed from their sin and made joyful in their God. By so doing he put himself far above all ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... young sailor whom she had rejected at Bellagio. Had she not been most explicit—even eagerly explicit? Had she not experienced an extraordinary sense of relief when he was well away from the place, and when she could prove to herself in close self-examination that she was in no way to blame for what had occurred? She was a little sorry for him, it is true; but she could not believe that it was a very serious matter. He would soon forget that idle dream in the brisk realities of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... look after, adult 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, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... me,' cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which of course ensued: though why these pauses SHOULD come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? 'I am a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover's ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... 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. ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... show up well in the first real crisis which life had forced upon him. That must be admitted. Later, when it was over, and he had leisure for self-examination, he admitted it to himself. But even then he excused himself by asking Space in a blustering manner what else he could ha' done. And if the question did not bring much balm to his soul at the first time of asking, it proved wonderfully ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... there God has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except humility. For this he is tried: and we are shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... slip off your shoulders. We are all self-righteous in spots, and none of us is so very wise that he cannot by self-examination and readjustment ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... 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 ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... which the impartial spectator is free, for the pleasure of the moment seems to him no more desirable than pleasure to come, and one person is just the same to him as another. Through comparison of like cases in the exercise of self-examination certain rules or principles are formed concerning what is right and good. Reverence for these general rules of living is called the sense of duty. The last step in the process consists in our enhancement of the binding authority of moral rules by looking on them as commands ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... love, does not reason and count the consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her reproach him with detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he remembered that unconsciously he had made those very calculations. With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within, and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair he longed to fling himself from the window. The egoism ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... negation is the Spectre, the reasoning power in man: This is a false body, an incrustation over my immortal Spirit, a selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway. To cleanse the face of my spirit by self-examination, To bathe in the waters of life, to wash off the not human, I come in self-annihilation and the grandeur of inspiration; To cast off rational demonstration by faith in the Saviour, To cast off the rotten rags of memory by inspiration, To cast off Bacon, Locke, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... League orators inveigh against 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 much set the Philistines ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... that would tame her; but there was that force, and Diane knew that she had submitted to its domination. From weeks of tortuous self-examination she emerged into this knowledge, as one comes out of a labyrinthine cavern into sunshine. Even here in the open, however, was a problem still to solve. Could she marry the man who had never told her that he loved her, even though she herself loved him? Had ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Self-examination should always precede confession. Those who arrive at this degree should expose themselves to God, who will not fail to enlighten them, and to make known to them the nature of their faults. This examination must be conducted in peace and tranquillity, expecting more ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... and consecrated by the homage of an innocent heart, are not grateful to her whose purity they typify! Yet there was a lurking family pride in Margaret's heart that she could not entirely eradicate, and a sleeping antipathy to the house of Hers that at times betrayed itself to her watchful self-examination. The reader must not imagine that, when she told the missionary at Gilbert's bedside that had the youth fallen in battle she perhaps would rejoice, she actually desired such an event. She spoke to one who knew her better. She felt this antipathy, but did not know its extent; and, with ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... p. 5, a passage which I reproduce here on account of its agreement with my position. I must state at the outset that according to Furtmueller, psychoanalysis is peculiarly qualified to arouse suspicion against the banal conscience, which leads self-examination into the realm of the conscious only, with neglect of the unconscious impulses, which are quite as important for the performance of actions. The passage of interest to us here reads: "There is no lack of intimation that these fundamental facts which place the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... partly the consciousness of this change in herself that made her want to be alone. The solitude of her inner life had given her the habit of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed her morning plunge ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... mention is that of one of the curates of the church in which I was asked to preach. At this time he was preparing for confession, and his self-examination had brought him to see and feel that he was a sinner. Under this course of preparation, the preaching of the Gospel had much effect upon him, and he came to tell me of his state. I was able to show him from the Word of God that he ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... serving religion do not lie in the path of a periodical which addresses a general audience. The appliances of the spiritual life belong to a more retired sphere—that of the priesthood, of the sacraments, of religious offices; that of prayer, meditation, and self-examination. They are profaned by exposure, and choked by the distractions of public affairs. The world cannot be taken into the confidence of our inner life, nor can the discussion of ascetic morality be complicated with the secular questions ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Cinerum, i.e., "Day of Ashes," from the custom of placing ashes on the head of penitents who presented themselves before the Bishop on this day. Ash Wednesday is a day of deep devotion, of prayer, fasting, self-examination and confession of sin. The public services are most solemn; the Proper Lessons, and Proper Psalms, the Collect, Epistle and Gospel, together with the Penitential Office to be especially used on this day, all mark it as a ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... 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, positive, commanding ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... with its purifying power; that it is prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation, and, to the Lord's supper, in which the members of the church, by the use of bread and wine, are to commemorate together the dying love of Christ,—preceded always by solemn self-examination. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... perhaps, be accused, by those Freudians who are in the habit of resorting to this charge as their own method of self-justification and self-rationalization, as the path of least resistance and as a loophole through which they can escape from meeting the situation presented to them by a frank self-examination and acknowledgment of error or by a fair and satisfactory response—I could be accused, I repeat, of showing, by the very fact of my criticism, that all that Dr. Coriat stated concerning the origin and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... public man. Notwithstanding her beauty, however, their union took place not to gratify his love, but his ambition. Jane Sinclair, in point of fact, had never been displaced from his affection, for as she was in his eye the most beautiful, so was she in the moments of self-examination, the best beloved. This, however, availed the unhappy girl but little, with a man in whose character ambition was the predominant impulse. To find himself beloved by a young and beautiful woman of wealth and fashion was too ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow: God is there, accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a microscopic self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever uppermost: my character gone; the greatness of my sin; the forfeiture of my salvation. The thought of God absorbs all that. I believe the feeling of true penitence would express itself in such words as these:—There ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... veritable reality. This philosophy is realistic and empirical to an extent entirely determined by its belief concerning being. But while naturalism is only secondarily epistemological, subjectivism and absolute idealism have their very source in the self-examination and the self-criticism of thought. Subjectivism signifies the conviction that the knower cannot escape himself. If reality is to be kept within the range of possible knowledge, it must be defined in terms of the processes or states of selves. Absolute idealism arises from a ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... One day, while I was ill in bed, and Georgy by me, I told her how kind it was of God to send illness upon us at times, as warnings to repent of past faults and prepare for death. Upon which she said: "But, Mama, you can't have done anything to be sorry for." No self-examination, no sermon, could have made me feel more humble than these words of a ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... another, and so they reacted upon each other, and the result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace. But they had themselves no idea of the real state of things; they did not trouble themselves with marking their progress by self-examination; if Mr Benson did sometimes, in hours of sick incapacity for exertion, turn inwards, it was to cry aloud with almost morbid despair, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" But he strove to leave his life in the hands of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... long counsel with herself over the fire: the general position of her affairs; what she desired; what other people intended; her will, and the chances, of getting it. Her thoughts dealt with these various problems in a skilled and business-like way. To a particular form of self-examination Letty was well accustomed, and it had become by now a strong agent in the development of individuality, as self-examination of another sort is said to be by other ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 to ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... 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. He lustily attacks the misdoings of others and remains happily ignorant of the Socratic ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... whether thy zeal had no worldly views and whether thou didst believe all the nonsense of the sect, at the head of which thou wast pleased to become a legislator.—Adieu. Self-examination ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... cannot find out for him. Nor has he, alas! as a Protestant, much likelihood of finding out for himself. In our holy church he would have been compelled to discriminate his faults by methodic self-examination, and lay them one by one before his priest for advice and pardon, and so start a new and ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... ground for encouragement, it is not a time for boastfulness. It is rather a time for self-examination, for an inquiry into our preparedness for new ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... happy hour in self-examination, reading and prayer, and was singing to herself in a low tone her ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... of the 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 for the highest type ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... colours, are outlines more than pictures: the few features we discover in them are drawn with elaborate minuteness; but the rest are wanting. Every thing indicates the condition of a keen and powerful intellect, which had studied men in books only; had, by self-examination and the perusal of history, detected and strongly seized some of the leading peculiarities of human nature; but was yet ignorant of all the minute and more complex principles which regulate men's conduct in actual life, and which only ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... priggish: "It is almost impossible for us to see our own faults, even when others are kind enough to point them out, for they are right ugly things and unpleasant to look upon. But lacking those outside monitors, one must all the more cultivate the habit of constant inlooking and self-examination. If we are only brave enough to confront our faults and look them in the face, ugly as they are, we shall be sure to overcome the worst of them. A striving toward good will achieve at least a part ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... launched into all the dissipation possible here, only to feel keener anguish when alone with my child." There was a change for the better, however, in her mental state, for though her grief was not completely cured, she at least voluntarily sought to recover her emotional equilibrium. Self-examination showed her where her weakness lay, and she resolved to conquer it. With but too ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Interrupting this self-examination the mighty but unwieldy form of Morton Crocker loomed in the white dust crescent, and his premature panama swiftly followed the curve of the low grey wall towards her gate. As his steps were heard, her mind flew to the forbidding St. Michael on his gold background in her den ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... others seriously to interfere with the calm, temperate life of an individual, and that when a fellow being did anything to us that seemed unjust he was acting in ignorance, and that instead of stirring up anger within us it should stir our pity for him. Oftentimes by careful self-examination we should find that the fault was more our own than that of our fellow, and our sufferings were rather from our own opinions than from anything real. The circle of man's knowledge is very limited, and the ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... been Peter's hero and leader till a lion got him in the Blaauwberg. Peter preferred Valiant-for-Truth to Mr Greatheart, I think, because of his superior truculence, for, being very gentle himself, he loved a bold speaker. After that he dropped into a vein of self-examination. He regretted that he fell far short of any of the three. He thought that he might with luck resemble Mr Standfast, for like him he had not much trouble in keeping wakeful, and was also as 'poor as a howler', and didn't care for women. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... not be supposed that any thing we have now said in any way bears against the most important duty of self-examination. Many causes there are existing, both in the best and the worst parts of our nature, which must render nugatory and deceitful any continued diary of what passes through the human soul; and no such confessions could, we humbly conceive, be of use either to ourselves ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... over ourselves as the fixity of external nature is necessary for our dominion over the world around us. The fixity of a large part of our nature—nay, of all but the whole of it—is a moral and spiritual necessity. For it requires but a superficial self-examination to discern the indications of what the profoundest research still leaves a mystery—that we are not perfect creatures of our own kind—that our nature does not spontaneously conform to the Supreme Moral Law—that our ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... 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, impressions of the same kind followed by the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... averred, however, that 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
... give it to the other sex, then there is nothing left to do but to follow his instinct. He reflects long with himself whether he was right in so doing,—all of which is a deliberate jest at the hesitation with reference to trivial acts, the self-examination with regard to the minutiae of past conduct, which was copied by Sterne's imitators from numerous instances in the works of Yorick. Satirical also is his vision in Chapter VII, in which he beholds the temple of stupidity where lofty stupidity sits on a paper throne; and ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... met Lady Sunderbund to better advantage at Mrs. Garstein Fellows' or whether his memory had overrated her or whether anything had happened to his standard of taste, but his feeling now was decidedly one of disappointment, and all the talk and self-examination he had promised himself seemed to wither and hide away within him. For a time he talked of her view, and then admired her room and its arrangement, which he thought really were quite unbecomingly flippant and undignified for a room. Then ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.' 'In withstanding of the passions standeth very peace of heart.' 'Let us set the axe to the root, that we being purged of our passions may have a peaceable mind.' To this end there must be continual self-examination. 'If thou may not continually gather thyself together, namely sometimes do it, at least once a day, the morning or the evening. In the morning purpose, in the evening discuss the manner, what thou hast been this day, in word, work, and thought.' But ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... persons that choose. And we ought not to despair or disbelieve 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 ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the writing, but there was a method in this self-examination. I believed that I was fated to engage in strange ventures, and I wanted to equip myself for the future. The pressing business was that of self-defence, and I turned first to a gentleman's proper weapon, the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... last court of inquiry and 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
... of this devout Christian that never, during her life, whether in prosperity or adversity, did she omit that daily self-communion and self-examination, and those private devotional exercises, which would best prepare her for the self-control and self denial by which she was, for more than half a century, so eminently distinguished. It was her habit to retire to her own apartment every morning after breakfast, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Mother, God. Continue in His love. Bring forth fruit—"signs following"—that your prayers be not hindered. Pray without ceasing. [25] Watch diligently; never desert the post of spiritual ob- servation and self-examination. Strive for self-abnega- tion, justice, meekness, mercy, purity, love. Let your light reflect Light. Have no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness. Forget not ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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 wall ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... a witness to my salvation. In it are accurately portrayed the true characteristics of the children of God; and as I study it prayerfully, and find these characteristics in my heart and life, I again infer that I am saved. This is true self-examination, and ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... described is but an ultimate analysis of a whole drift of thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask himself whether he means "How can I help them?" or "How can I use them?"—what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Gazette tremendously. It wouldn't of course materially alter the methods or policy of the paper but it would make them all feel nobler, and Blenker was of that finer clay that does honestly want to feel nobler. He hated pessimism and all that criticism and self-examination that makes weak men pessimistic, he wanted to help weak men and be helped himself, he was all for that school of optimism that would have each dunghill was a well-upholstered throne, and his nervous, starry contributions to the talk were like patches of water ranunculuses trying ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... could live, and his words would be intelligible to all, because in it that deeper consciousness which was released in his imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and stale ideas.... But now the cataclysm had come within himself, and he was brought to doubt and self-examination. Had he not denied too much? Had he not carried abnegation too far? Had he not thwarted powers in himself which were essential even to his impersonal purpose? Was it paradoxically true that a man must be a person before he can be impersonal? His empty room, his ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... devil; and that 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, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... 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 possessed, and the sentiments which he himself ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... other point 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 fruits of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... God, "One of them," 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 ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus |
