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More "Introspection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was nevertheless ever keen and alert concerning them. Then the winter of 1797 appears to have been very severe. His enforced confinement to home probably gave rise to an introspection, and a slight disappointment in matters which had formerly given him pleasure. For example, he puzzled over the fact that on his second visit to Philadelphia, Mr. Adams was present but once ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... proper moment, and the money, like ripe, golden fruit, had fallen into it, a gift from benign heaven, surely a cause for happiness! And yet—he did not feel so jolly! He was surprised, he was even a little hurt, to discover by introspection that monetary gain was not necessarily accompanied by felicity. Nevertheless, this very successful man of the world of the Five Towns, having been born on the 27th of May 1867, had reached the age of forty-three and a ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... many pleasant meetings with Miss Taft—perhaps because of them—I had my moments of gloomy introspection wherein I cast up accounts in order to determine what I had gained by my six months' vacation in the wilderness. First of all I had become a master trailer—so much was assured, but this acquirement did not promise to be ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... reforms are not reforms at all, rather the same things dressed up in other clothes. Values are set up on false standards. Women in trying to become emancipated are likely to become slaves; the fear of the past is given over to a too delicate introspection of the probable vices and virtues of generations ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of the ipse dixit, is an invasion of historicity into the domains of science and philosophy which has raged in the schools. This substitutes for introspection and philosophical analyses, this or that evidence, document, or authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense. But Logic, the science of thought and of intellectual knowledge, has suffered the most grave and destructive disturbances ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... and Auntie Hamps, and Maggie, and Clara, and the rest of the Three Towns company, as after an enormous interval. They themselves however have changed in nothing, except perhaps that the habit of introspection and their phenomenal capacity for self-astonishment have become more pronounced. "He thought, 'I am I; this wife is my wife; and if I put one foot before the other I shall go inevitably forward.' And it seemed to him stupendous." I do not say that this is a quotation, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... just now the fashion to call realistic, that is, a language conversant with great facts rather than with phases of feeling and moods of mind; which after all is only another way of saying that it is a Book of Common Prayer and not a manual for the furtherance of spiritual introspection. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... working life with a magnifying glass in his eye, peering into the mechanism of watches, adjusting the delicate pivots and springs on which their lives moved. His occupation had perhaps encouraged in him a habit of introspection. Perhaps he found the human machine as worthy of interest as the works of watches and clocks. Anyhow, in his leisure moments, which were few, he would discuss curiously with Mary the hidden springs that ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... may there not be a more or less vague and evanescent sense of tension, and some psychic fact which may be regarded as the shadowy forerunner of the consciousness of the release of tension which, on a higher plane, reveals itself as the consciousness of will? There may be: introspection is not capable of answering the question, and one is forced to fall back upon an argument from analogy. Blindly impulsive action and action in which will indubitably and consciously plays a part are not wholly unlike, but they differ by a very wide interval. The interval is not an empty gap, however, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... she evade me and turn altogether to the priest at her right? Had I been of an analytical turn of mind, I might, perhaps, have made a very careful study of an emotion commonly called jealousy; but, when one's heart beats fast, one's thoughts throng too swiftly for introspection. Was I a part of the new happiness? I did not understand human nature then as I understand it now, else would I have known that fair eyes turn away to hide what they dare not reveal. I prided myself that I was now well in hand. I should take the first opportunity ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... 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 others, forbore to examine himself too much. But without doing that, he was conscious of being as good as Master Anerley; and intended, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... toward some striking result. As a dramatist, Arnold achieved no great success. Again the fundamental qualities of his mind stood in the way. An author so subjective, so absorbed in self-scrutiny and introspection as he, is seldom able to project himself into the minds of others to any considerable extent. His dramas are brilliant with beautiful phrases, his pictures of landscapes and of nature in her various aspects ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... introspection of maiden youth, she suddenly asked herself whether by any possibility she were different from other girls and whether she had not some strange defect, physical or mental, of which the existence had been most carefully concealed from her all her life. In the quick ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... in the eighteenth century. Mysticism is often mere delusion. In the last resort man has no other guide than his reason. It is his own reason that convinces him of the limitations of his reason. But those limitations are not to be overpassed by a visionary self-introspection, unless this, too, is subjected to rational criticism. Mysticism does its true part when it applies this criticism also to the current forms, conventions, and institutions. Conventions, forms, and institutions, ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... walls of his neurotic soul he peered and saw its strange perturbations, divined their origins in the very roots of his being, and recorded—as did Poe, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche—the fluctuations of his sick will. With this Russian, his Hamlet-like introspection becomes vertigo, and life itself fades into a dream compounded of febrile melancholy or blood lust. It was not without warrant that he allows Rogoszin, in The Idiot, to murder Nastasia Philipovna, because of her physical charms. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... there is found, upon introspection, to be no chronic disease, how shall there be any trouble? how shall there be ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Bellman Henthorne, her daughter, hail from Winfield. They write both prose and verse and Mrs. Henthorne was a reporter for years. Mrs. Bellman, when a girl, lived five years on a cattle ranch and to those five lonely years she credits her habit of introspection, meditation and writing. Much of her poetry and short stories are used ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... thoughts,—pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh harmonies like those the legends tell of beneath the waves, which fascinate the divers. They made themselves known to one another by an interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs, in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to accept the life of anguish and renunciation ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... they abandon themselves, at times, to quite impossible and romantic dreams, I should be wise to stand aside. I felt that, after all, Miss Fraenkel's crystal-clear bromidity would be a delightful change after so much intense living and introspection. For that evening, after dinner, as I listened to the music of the Steersman's Song from the Flying Dutchman, it seemed only too likely that even after all these years, so deathless is passion in some hearts, the skilled hand ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the railway station by a large and distinguished company. My mother was at Artenberg, where I was to join her that evening, but Hammerfeldt awaited me, and some of the gentlemen attached to the Court. I was too much given to introspection and self-appraisement not to be aware that my experiences had given me a lift toward manhood; my shyness was smothered, though not killed, by a kind of mechanical ease born of practice. After greeting Hammerfeldt I received the welcome of the company with a composed courtesy of which ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... only. The old process which says 'I think, therefore I am,' has its fallacy in the statement, 'I think.' It assumes that that assertion is axiomatic and basic, when in reality it is the conclusion derived from a long process of mental introspection. It is a theory rather ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... great microscope. I had passed many happy hours here in the oblivion of mental concentration, always a delight with me, now grown almost a necessity if I were to escape the worst of all habits, that of introspection and self-pity. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... his thoughts reverted to their exotic phase of his awakening, drifting into such introspection as he seldom indulged, and led him far from the immediate riddle, by strange ways to a revelation altogether unpresaged and a resolve ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... is worth bearing in mind in dealing with insomnia. Classical scholars will not forget that the singing of birds was tried as a remedy to overcome the insomnia of Maecenas. Music is certainly a good antidote to the pernicious habit of introspection and self-analysis, which is often a curse both of the hysteric and of the highly cultured. It would seem obviously preferable to have recourse to music of a lively ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... serving coffee and cordials. Mallow was right; beautiful was the word. A vague regret came to him, as it comes to all men outside the pale, that such a woman could never be his. He poured out for himself a stiff peg and drank it with very little soda. Craig always fled, as it were, from introspection. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... was growth—undoubted growth. The questioning and severely moral element mainly due to the Shorter Catechism—the tendency to casuistry, and to problems, and wistful introspection—which had so coloured Stevenson's art up to the date of The Master of Ballantrae, and made him a great essayist, was passing in the satisfaction of assured insight into life itself. The art would gradually have been transformed also. The problem, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... then that he missed the happy company of the girls. He did not distinguish Helen from Bo in his slow introspection. When he sought his bed he did not at once fall to sleep. Always, after a few moments of wakefulness, while the silence settled down or the wind moaned through the pines, he had fallen asleep. This night he found different. Though he was tired, sleep would not soon come. The wilderness, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... careful introspection of the processes in my own case, I came to the conclusion that it is certainly a combination of these two illusions that causes the overestimation of the short filled distances. In the case of the long distances, the underestimation of the filled space ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... never been heard by Mrs. Hutchinson, but the thing itself she knew. She sought to relieve the people of gloom, to stop introspection and self-analyzation. They quarreled, strife was imminent; and when, with the dread of Winter, came the added fear of a Pequot uprising, the whole place was treading the border-land of insanity. It is doubtful whether Anne Hutchinson knew that insanity was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... his eye-brows highly arched; his nose large; beard covered the upper lip and chin; and so far as an opinion could be formed, from his sitting posture, he was tall and well-made. The expression of his countenance was gentle, and there was an air of introspection and abstraction about it as if he were much in the habit of communing with his own thoughts. The upper part of his person, which only was visible, the rest being hid by the table and depending cloth, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions so impenetrable and vast that to attempt to personalize it in the sneaking figure of Hypocrisy would be as absurd as to try to enlarge the significance of an ivory chessman by setting ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... and makes money because of the undoubted influence of mind in causing and in removing those ailments that originate in fear, imagination, or morbid introspection. A few years ago a little out-of-the-way town in southern Minnesota was visited by train loads of the sick and crippled from miles around. Miraculous cures were heralded broadcast. Life-long cripples left wagon loads of crutches and braces to decorate ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... late years defined the abuse of their science as the morphology of common opinion. Contemporary investigators, they say, have been too much occupied with introspection; their labors have become merely physiologico-biographical, and they have greatly neglected the study of averages. For, says La Rochefoucauld, Il est plus ais de connotre lhomme en gnral que de connotre un homme en particulier; and on so wide a subject all views must ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... God to do his part if we do ours. He will give us his Holy Spirit; he will give us a new heart; he will put his peace and strength into our souls. It is not necessary to be anxious, or to be inspecting our feelings to see if we are feeling right. All such introspection is unnecessary if we have faith in God and his promises. We are Christians just as long as we are obeying God and following Christ. When we find ourselves disobedient, selfish, going wrong, then the one thing needful is ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... to 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 ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... pass into actual destruction of it. * * * * * What such patients need to learn is, not the indulgence but a forgetfulness of their feelings, not the observation but the renunciation of self, not introspection but useful action." (The italics are ours.)—Maudsley, Body and Mind, 2d Edition, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... soft golden hair which had fallen a little over her face, brightening its sorrow. Every feature quivered under the invisible cutting hand of cruel experience. In those last sharp moments of introspection she had gained such a knowledge of suffering that a fire seemed to have consumed her vision of life, reducing it to a frightful desert of eternal woe and unavailing sacrifice. Partially stunned, and partially blinded by misery, she felt the awful helplessness and pain of what is sometimes ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... to stay anyhow; I feel in sympathy with everybody,' she said, and so dismissed vain introspection, keeping the simple happiness and peace. That was her strength, as it was also Jinny's. A re-formation ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... character we here claim for it, and is not the mere ordinary result of a morbid and aimless introspection, is plainly shown by the speedy cessation of excessive self-analysis on Father Hecker's part, after he had actually reached the goal to which he was at this period alternately sweetly led and violently driven. But it is also ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... express Marmion's defiance of Douglas, and the ballad of Lochinvar, which is alive with the movements of tireless youth. These poems have an interesting story to tell, not of the thoughts, but of the deeds, of the characters. Scott is strangely free from nineteenth century introspection. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... without—pugnacity; and that is certainly a great virtue, especially in the present age. But he has not the tenacity of conviction which goes with the fighting spirit in a man like Bernard Shaw. His weakness of introspection and selfishness in all their glory cannot prevent him fighting; but they will ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... essential truth of Christianity from the accidental abuse of it shown in the lives of its professors, we can imagine so much the more clearly, how great was the danger to these doubters themselves of omitting the introspection of their own characters necessary for detecting the prejudice which actually seemed to have conscience on its side; and can realize more vividly from these instances the secrecy and intense subtlety of the influence of the feelings in the formation of doubt, and infer the necessity ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of intellect and wit which the French call ESPRIT. They had also, in superlative measure, the social gifts which women of genius reared in the library or apart from the world, are apt to lack. The close study of books leads to a knowledge of man rather than of men. It tends toward habits of introspection which are fatal to the clear and swift vision required for successful leadership of any sort. Social talent is distinct, and implies a happy poise of character and intellect; the delicate blending of many gifts, not the supremacy ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... is to that growth into a larger spiritual life which is a normal phase of adolescence in every class of human beings. The age is the same, falling usually between fourteen and seventeen. The symptoms are the same,—sense of incompleteness and imperfection; brooding, depression, morbid introspection, and sense of sin; anxiety about the hereafter; distress over doubts, and the like. And the result is the same—a happy relief and objectivity, as the confidence in self gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to the wider outlook. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... men, and could never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions? In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"—he said to himself—"should one on that account separate oneself from the instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO—one must follow the instincts, but at the same time persuade ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... examination to the University. Mr. Collins continued to assist him with counsel and deed; and his hospitable house in Bredgade became a second home to Andersen. There he met, for the first time, people of refinement and culture on equal terms; and his morbid self-introspection was in a measure cured by kindly association, tempered by wholesome fun and friendly criticism. He now resolved to abandon his University studies and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference—Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, religious indignation—Christendom. Insisting that God is inside man, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Hamlet seems meant to show how vain it is to be merely a philosopher in this world. Hamlet is always pondering, thinking of the abstract rights and wrongs of the case. In the result, though he does eventually avenge his father's murder, his introspection and vacillation have led to the death of himself and no fewer than three other innocent persons—Ophelia, Polonius and Laertes. Yet Hamlet was at least twice as brainy as the rest of them, and he was also ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... of battle was not now burning very brightly in this warrior's soul. From inaction had come introspection. He sought rather to analyze his feelings than distinguish himself by courage and devotion. The result was profoundly disappointing. He covered his face with his ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Nature, for he could see nothing of her; it cut him off from man, for he could not have seen even a legion of soldiers had they surrounded him. This removal of outside influences threw him back upon himself, and delivered him to introspection; he began for the hundredth time to weigh his position, to consider whether the momentous step that he was taking was necessary to his ease of mind, was right, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... that the Populists advocated and that many young Republicans had taken up. The interest in tariff legislation drove everything else from the national organization, while returning prosperity destroyed the mental attitude in which reforms had flourished. Political introspection was less easy in 1897 and 1898 than it had been in the years of confusion and enforced economy since 1890. The civil service and ballot reforms had been started on the upward course, but party machines continued in control of each ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... this religious reticence, in these devout good souls, be perhaps a merit, and sign of health in them? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such religious men, have as yet nothing of 'Methodism;' no Doubt or even root of Doubt. Religion is not a diseased self-introspection, an agonising inquiry: their duties are clear to them, the way of supreme good plain, indisputable, and they are travelling on it. Religion lies over them like an all-embracing heavenly canopy, like an atmosphere and life-element, which is not spoken of, which in all things is presupposed ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... accustomed, he found himself in a town filled with troops—British and French. Instead of living alone or with one companion, he occupied quarters in a big yamen full of officers and men—a change which probably benefited a character too given to seriousness and introspection. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... necessarily from my fundamental beliefs that the Believer will tend to be and want to be and seek to be friendly to, and interested in, all sorts of people, and truthful and helpful and hating concealment. To be that with any approach to perfection demands an intricate and difficult effort, introspection to the hilt of one's power, a saving natural gift; one has to avoid pedantry, aggression, brutality, amiable tiresomeness—there are pitfalls on every side. The more one thinks about other people the more interesting and pleasing they are; I am all for kindly gossip and knowing things about ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Nature which dwelt on her quiet charms for their own sake, as in Theocritus, and, like the modern, rose to greater intensity in the presence of the amorous passion, as we see in Kallimachos and the Anthology. It was the outcome of Hellenism, of which sentimental introspection, the freeing of the ego from the bonds of race and position, and the discovery of the individual in all directions of human existence, were marks. And this feeling developing from Homer to Longos, from unreflecting to conscious and then to sentimental pleasure in Nature, was expressed not only ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected. Thus although it may not be possible for any introspection to discover whether we have genius or effective power, it is quite possible to know whether we are trading upon borrowed capital, and whether the eagle's feathers have been picked up by us, or grow from our own wings. I hear ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... have confined my statements of theory as to method, to those which reflect my own experience; my "rules" were drawn from introspection and retrospection, at the urging of others, long after the instinctive method ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... a curious inconsistency in the mind of Ida Locke which had prompted her to write in that red-covered note-book just what she had written. No one would have guessed the secret strain of introspection in her, nor guessed the impulse which led her to put into writing her hidden life. Unless, indeed, that introspection and that impulse are always part of the intuitions of love—yielded to or not, as may be. The entries were scattered—as if put down when ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... all this, however, was to invest Reuben with an interest and importance that consorted curiously with his youth. With a certain consciousness of superiority, born of his taste for out-of-the-way reading, and dreaming, and introspection, the boy accepted the subtle tribute easily, and was little affected by it. He had the rare fortune not to differ in essentials from his neighbors, but only to intensify and give visible expression to the characteristics latent in ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... life-talking in the distance. It came with its strange excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous memories, by one long vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall. This moment of passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a boy unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais, while the thunder of his new life came rolling in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had asked him whether he actually hated it, he would have answered no. I suppose people almost always want something external to themselves, to reveal to them their own likes and dislikes. Our most assured likings have for the most part been arrived at neither by introspection nor by any process of conscious reasoning, but by the bounding forth of the heart to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by another. We hear some say that such and such a thing is thus or thus, and in a moment the train that has been laid within us, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... But with introspection, this exultancy grew suddenly dim. How about himself? Yes. Here was a question that would bear some close inspection. Was it really the wish to capture a supposable burglar? He made short work of this analysis. He never lied to others—not even in his work, which every one knows ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... all forms of pessimism, the metaphysical form was, for a historian, the least enticing. Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection, and the more, because — as Mephistopheles said of Marguerite — he was not the first. Nearly all the highest intelligence known to history had drowned itself in the reflection of its own thought, and the bovine survivors had rudely told the truth about it, without affecting the intelligent. One's ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... livable without him. Mr. Starkweather was swept by an emotion which took him wholly by surprise and almost overcame him; he sat up, and began to wonder where he could find some occupation which would chink up the crevices in his thoughts, and prevent him from introspection. Eventually he hit upon it, and with a conscious effort, he pulled himself out of his chair, and went over to Masonic Hall to meet ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... chance of passing him in his chair and scrutinising again the features that masked such depravity. For that they masked it cannot be denied. A physiognomist looking at him would have conceded a certain gloom, a trend towards introspection, possibly a hypertrophied love of self, but no more. Physiognomists, however, can retire from the case, for they are as often wrong as hand-writing experts. And if any Lavater had been on board and had advanced such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... green and unripe," said Kent, his railing mood changing to one of sad introspection, "than to prematurely fall, from a worm ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... she opened her napkin that evening the rush and emotional strain of the day brought a certain flash of introspection. It came first when she lifted her eyes and caught sight of herself in the mirror—dewy eyed, fresh, a pink rose in her hair, a pink ribbon at her throat. What was she, so young, so feminine, doing there, supping alone in state? She remembered the invitation of Lars Wark in Munich; he and his ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... mood was contagious, she said to herself. In Hannah's kitchen she found Mrs. Alec and little David, a roly-poly youngster of three who demanded too much attention for just one mother. Priscilla, seeing in David a sure antidote for introspection, offered to play the part of the necessary other mother, and took him out-of-doors, much to the relief of tired Mrs. Alec. She had no more time to think of family mottoes or coats-of-arms. David clamored for attention, begged to be shown ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... And the Bhagavad Gita furnishes one of its very best illustrations. Of its eighteen chapters, fifteen are devoted to "Eight Knowledge." And by knowledge is meant abstract speculation. It is a reaching after oneness with the deity by introspection ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... personal appearance at all. Hitherto she had thought very little of herself. The world without had been, and always would be, much more to her than the world within. She was not to be one of those narrow, self-centred, morbid beings whose days are spent in introspection, and whose powers are wasted in futile efforts to set their own little peculiarities forth in such a way as to make them seem of consequence. She never at any time studied her own nature, except as a part of human nature, and in the hope of finding in herself some clue which ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... doctrine of the supremacy of the individual to himself, of his originality and, as regards his own character, unique quality, must have had a great charm for people living in a society in which introspection, thanks to the want of other entertainment, played almost the part of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... conducive either to domestic felicity or peace of mind. How Shakespeare occupied himself during these years we may never know, though it is very probable that he worked in the capacity of assistant to his father. That these were years of introspection and remorse to one of his spirit, however, there can be little doubt; there can be still less doubt that they were also years of formative growth, and that in this interval the irresponsible youth, who had given hostages to fortune by marrying at the age of eighteen, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... unable to pin himself down to any definite plan. He could not evolve a clear idea of what to do, nor even of what he wanted to do. And in the interim he did little save sit about his cabin, deep in introspection, chop firewood as needed and cook his plain fare—that was gradually growing plainer, more restricted. Sometimes he varied this by long solitary tramps through the woods along the brushy ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Madeleine indulged in no introspection. She had suffered too much in the past not to quaff eagerly of the goblet when it was full and ask for nothing more. If she paused to realize how dependent she had become on the constant society of Langdon Masters and that literature was now ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... way out, that's all. For myself, I must find a way out. The life I lead now is stifling me—and I can't see where it will ever be any different, any better. I've become cursed with the twin devils of analysis and introspection. I don't love Jim; I tolerate him. One can't go through life merely tolerating one's husband, and the sort of friends and the sort of existence that appeals to one's husband, unless one is utterly ox-like—and I'm not. Women have lived with ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of earnest introspection, when one would "swear off" this or that, would reduce one's smoking, would adopt the principle of "do it now," and so on—at those times an excellent New Year's resolution, or birthday resolution, or first day of the month resolution, would be to re-learn ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... all play, nor is it all sorrow. But sorrow often does much to develop the musician's character, to make him look into himself and discover his more serious purposes. This might also be accomplished by some such means of self-introspection as "Christian Science." Although I am not a "Christian Scientist," I am a great believer ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... in her eyes. Her thoughts were soon faraway on the misty trail they had worn for themselves in the many years they had traversed the wilderness in search of what it held, and the eyes between the narrowed lids became blank with introspection. And as she sat thus, a little way withdrawn from the scurrying activity of the scene, there came a step on the soft green sod and a slim form ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... enwrapped them during these days of imprisonment; the gloom-shrouded church; the awed hush that lay upon them in the presence of the dead Lazaro, stimulated the feeble and sensitive spirit of the priest to an unwonted degree of introspection, and he sat for hours gazing blankly into the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... emotion of which he was ignorant—this compelling impulse that entered into a man driving him beyond the power of endurance? It was past his comprehension. And he wondered suddenly for the first time why he had been made so different to the generality of men. But introspection was foreign to him, he had not been in the habit of dissecting his own personality and his thoughts turned quickly with greater interest to the man who sat near him plunged like himself into silent reverie. And as he looked he scowled with angry irritation. The Frenchman ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... yesterday had, he flattered himself, terminated in his favour; chiefly, because of his attitude of entire frankness, a compliment to the girl. That he had been, in the strict sense of the word, open-hearted, it did not occur to him to doubt. Dyce Lashmar's introspection stopped at a certain point. He was still a very young man, and circumstance had never yet ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... to introspection and analysis; daring the past two months more especially he had been far too busy to be perpetually asking "Why? why?"—the vice of indolence. It was enough that, in the cold and the wet, there was a fire in his heart that kept him glad with thinking of the fair days to come; ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Fatigue should be regarded as a twofold thing—a state of mind, designated its subjective aspect, and a condition of various parts of the body, designated its objective aspect. The former is observable by introspection, the latter by analysis of bodily secretions and by measurement of the diminution of work, entirely without reference to the way the mind regards the work. Fatigue subjectively, or fatigue as we feel it, is not at all the same as fatigue as manifested in the body. If we were to make two curves, ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... realized in the fruition of the divine presence. For increase of years she made but little allowance, so that, whilst her love to God and heavenly meekness became increasingly apparent to others, her diminished energy was sometimes to herself the occasion of painful conflict and introspection."] Before I awoke I thought a letter was put into my hands, the contents of which were 'Through much tribulation ye shall enter the kingdom." The Lord giving me power, I will fight my passage through.—Through the intensity ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... been both unjust and absurd, so she set herself resolutely to overcome that feeling of oppression. She was too well-balanced to drift unwittingly along this perilous road of thought. She schooled herself to endure and to fight off introspection. She had absorbed enough of her husband's sturdy philosophy of life to try and make the best of a bad job. After all, she frequently assured herself, the badness of the job was mostly a state of mind. And ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... life-span of the individual as he sees it himself (enough cases (355) were given to make a reasonable allowance for individual variations); (2) they indicate the general prevalence of the emotion during childhood; (3) they reinforce observation in the same way that introspection always reinforces the objective method of study. In estimating the value of these confessions one must be mindful of the common defect of most auto-biographical statements, viz., that they are influenced by the almost irresistible tendency to write about ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... then twenty-two, but she was very small, and looked no more than sixteen. She had the dreams and questioning wonder of extreme youth in her face, and something beyond that even, which was more like the wide-eye brooding and introspection ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... note given away with the programme Mr. LOUIS N. PARKER, describes L'Aiglon as "the Hamlet of the nineteenth century." Certainly they had in common the habits of introspection, and indecision; but the egoism of Hamlet was at least tempered by a knowledge of the world; he was a student; he had travelled and seen men and things outside the bounds of Elsinore; and he was capable of throwing off some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... from that disturbing introspection, because invariably it led her to vague dreaming of a future which she told herself—sometimes wistfully—could never be realized. She had shut the door on many things, it seemed to her now. But she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Dexter if she would like a fire put in the wood stove that stood on a square of zinc in the middle of the room. It came as a relief from the nervous broodings that were settling down on her mind occupied in introspection neither healthy nor cheerful, and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... her starting-point? Her introspection was not very reassuring. She felt that perhaps the most hopeful indication was her strong rebound from what she at last recognized as mean and unworthy. She also had a little natural curiosity and vanity to see if her face was changing with changing motives. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... his age and his society. He was born of Cynicism and of Introspection. It would have interested him quite as much to find out himself as to find out any other person. While he was moving along in the darkness it occurred to him to remember that he did not know in the least whither, to what rescue, to what danger, he was steering. He might, for aught ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... hers were what he needed to win him, to cheer him, to charm him, to guide him. He longed so to please her, to ingratiate himself with her, that he attempted to be light like her in his talk, but lapsed into abysmal absences and gloomy recesses of introspection. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Too much introspection and concern for self is often the cause of nervous conditions that produce worry and ill-health. The best cure is the cultivation of complete unselfishness. To be interested in the happiness of others is the surest road to happiness for one's self;—if you get feeling tired of yourself make a visit ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... dear ones enjoy to the full their lives down here. But the motive determines the propriety of such requests. Where the whole purpose of one's life is for Him these things may be asked for freely as His gracious Spirit within guides. And there need be no bondage of morbid introspection, no continual internal rakings. He knows if the purpose of the heart ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... necklace fell with a thud on the floor; but he was old and wise, and soon fell again to his meal. I sat drumming my heels against the corn bin. Evening was falling fast, and everything was very still. No man ever had a more favorable hour for reflection and introspection. I employed it to the full. Then I rose, and crossing the stable, pulled the long ears of my friend who was ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... Fasts, feasts, flowers, sweetmeats, lights, candles, little journeys, visits, calls, dances, prayers, responses, wails, cries of exultation, shouts of triumph—"Rejoicing of the Law"—these prevented monotony, stagnation and introspection. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... nature is to be corrected and authenticated." Tennyson was equally careful for scientific accuracy in regard to all the phenomena of nature. Byron had not scientific accuracy, but with his objectivity Goethe sympathized more than with the reflection and introspection ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... he to introspection or the matter of his own appearance. With one quick gesture he swept away the shrouding tangle of webs, spiders, and dead flies that obscured the window. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... hopeless consciousness that if truth be visible to any human mind it was hidden from his. The possession of an ample fortune and the lack of family ties and active interests in life had fostered his tendency toward introspection till it became morbid. Now, at the age of thirty, he had no positive beliefs or aims, and felt the despairing self-contempt which inspired Hamlet's cry, "What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... work is done alone, and at the time her husband comes home and wants to stay there, she would like to get out. Work that is in the main lonely, and work that on the whole leaves the mind free, leads almost inevitably to daydreaming and introspection. These are essentials, in the ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the other birds in a sort of potpourri; or perhaps he will be scolding or arguing with an imaginary foe, then dropping his voice and talking confidentially to himself. Suddenly he bursts into a charming, simple little song, as if the introspection had given him reason for real joy. All these vocal accomplishments suggest the chat at once; but the minute your intrusion is discovered the sharp scolding, that is fairly screamed at you from an enraged little throat, leaves no possible ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... sharply, rose the roofs of several ranch buildings—his father's ranch, the Lazy Y. Upon the buildings Calumet's army of memories descended and he forgot the desert, the long ride, the bleak days of his exile, as he yielded to solemn introspection. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the A.I.F. indulged in a little introspection. Considering the size to which the Force had grown it was inevitable that some proportion of undesirables must exist in its ranks. Nor is this to be wondered at when it is remembered that in certain cities in Australia magistrates released well known ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... truth is in every person, and it therefore admits of easy investigation by systematic introspection and self-analysis. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance. ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... sorry subject for over-much meditation, don't you think? And introspection is very bad for invalids," Katherine ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... each one of us in the times in which we fall: the supersession of narrow and selfish and egotistical "private-mindedness" by a vital passion for the winning of a Kingdom of righteousness consonant with the revealed will of God; the lifting of souls from nervous introspection to a height where they become indeed "public souls"; the accomplishing of the Kingdom not by great engines of mechanical power but by the daily offices of every individual; the substitution in place of current ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... indignantly. "I'm not loafing. I'm putting in a half summer course in Introspection. That's why I'm here. I get credit for two majors for ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... gradually swelling prelude. There is defiant power in the first theme, and the constant reference to it betrays the composer's exasperated mental condition. This tendency to return upon himself, a tormenting introspection, certainly signifies a grave state. But consider the musical weight of the work, the recklessly bold outpourings of a mind almost distraught! There is no greater test for the poet-pianist than the F sharp minor Polonaise. It is profoundly ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... With not much more introspection than his uncle, but with a keener conscience and quicker observation, Richard had early remarked that, notwithstanding her assiduity in church-going, his mother did not seem the happier for her religion: there was a cloud, or seeming cloud, on her forehead—a ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... we are seeking to make. In a little while they are young men and women, and then men and women, save for a fresher vigour, like ourselves. For us it comes at last to fellowship and resignation. For them it comes at last to responsibility, to freedom, and to introspection and the searching of hearts. We must if we would be men-makers, as the first and immediate part of the business, correct and finish ourselves. The good New Republican must needs ask and ask repeatedly: What have I done and what am I doing with myself while I tamper with ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... morbidly self-conscious creature, who is so much at home in the Valley of Humiliation that he kneels down and kisses the flowers in its grass. He is a man who can never get rid of himself for a moment, and who bores all the company with his illimitable and anxious introspection. Yet, in Vanity Fair, when practical facts have to be faced instead of morbid fancies and inflamed conscience, he is the most valiant of men, whom they can hardly keep from getting himself killed, and for that matter all the rest of them. Here, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... enough to engross him in the pauses of his professional work, and for over two months he had little time to look himself in the face. Not unnaturally—for he was as yet unskilled in the subtleties of introspection—he mistook his temporary insensibility for a gradual ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... to another point that must not be overlooked. It needs no subtle introspection to assure us that we, the audience, do our own little bit of acting, and instinctively place ourselves at the point of view of a spectator before whose eyes the drama is unrolling itself for the first time. If the play has any richness of texture, we have many sensations that he cannot ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... them ample room and congenial employment, whether profitable to the State or not, and the labor should be induced, not enforced, and always timed and suited to their malady. A variety of interesting occupations tends to divert from delusional introspection. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... audience, as we have seen, loved action, and in these Senecan tragedies the action took place "off." But they had a strong and abiding influence on the popular stage; they gave it its ghosts, its supernatural warnings, its conception of nemesis and revenge, they gave it its love of introspection and the long passages in which introspection, description or reflection, either in soliloquy or dialogue, holds up the action; contradictorily enough they gave it something at least of its melodrama. Perhaps they helped to enforce the lesson of the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... had deprived him of that rounded knowledge of actual life which alone, it would appear, teaches how to guide these forces into the more useful channels. Then as to capacity, he had the fine sensibilities of a poet, the facile introspection of the philosophical cast of mind, without the mental power to write good verse or to be a philosopher. He had, at least in youth, the conscience of a saint without the courage and endurance which appear necessary to heroism. In mockery the quality of ambition was bestowed upon him ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... any length of time to have risen above or sunk below a certain level of excellence. Andre, extolled by her latest critics as "a delicious eclogue of the fields," was contemporary with the bombastic, false Byronism of Jacques; the feeble narrative of La Mare au Diable with the passion-introspection of Lucrezia Floriani. The ever-popular Consuelo immediately succeeded the feeble Compagnon du Tour de France. La Marquise, written in the first year of her literary life, shows a power of projection out of herself, and of delicate analysis, hardly to be surpassed; ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... versus Morbid Introspection." It helps wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective, impersonal way. We are likely to be overcome by emotion, or swept by vague longings which seem to have no meaning and which, just because they are bound up so closely ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... head in the cushions and shed a silent tear. Cornelia was laughing at her, and she could not bear it. Her mind, trained to habits of introspection, began at once to wonder if she were really pretending, as the other seemed to think; if the agitation which she felt was not so much the result of the accident, as caused by the excitement of seeing Geoffrey ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... psychologist, on the other hand, will investigate the laws of conscious life according to the inductive method, and will hence, as much as the physicist, make the existence of fixed laws his initial assumption. If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only remains for him to make one assumption more, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... towards perfection is the cultivation of the person,—which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by no means follows, however, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... one attempt with that view; and it was only on the terrace in the early morn, a spot whence he could be observed from the villa, and which did not easily communicate with the precipitous and surrounding scenery, that Lothair would indulge that habit of introspection which he had pursued through many a long ride, and which to him was a never-failing source of interest ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... who find ecstasy in vertigo when thought, turning on itself, exhausted by the stress of introspection, tired of vain effort, recoils in fright; thus it would seem that man must be a void and that by dint of delving within himself, he reaches the last turn of a spiral. There, as on the summits of mountains ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... clear that the movement sinks deep into the Slavonic nature where it would but have skimmed the surface of other nations.—But why am I talking like this? Whither am I tending? It is indeed shameful that an author who long ago reached man's estate, and was brought up to a course of severe introspection and sober, solitary self-enlightenment, should give way to such jejune wandering from the point. To everything its proper time and place and turn. As I was saying, it does not lie in me to take a virtuous character for my hero: and I will tell you why. It is because it is high time ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... statement of the impression made on the reader who studies his three books in chronological order. A Boy's Will, as befits a youth who has lived more in himself than in the world, is more introspective than either North of Boston or Mountain Interval; but this habit of introspection gave him both the method and the insight necessary for the accurate study of nature and neighbours. He discovered what other people were like, simply by looking into his own heart. And in A Boy's Will we find that same penetrating examination ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... saw certain truths in Greco's handling of portraiture, and accepted them. Throughout his life he made a steady improvement in the quality of the work done, but the changes came through introspection rather than ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... accompanied by morose introspection, the result is certain to be unpleasant, and Donald's thoughts were in dismal grays and browns, which ill-matched the radiant colors of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... others. Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge, but the science has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which we obtain knowledge of the outer world in relation to 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. ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... animation quite unsuitable to a conscientious valet. He gave the impression of a man who does not depend on idle rumour for his facts. His eye gleamed unprofessionally for a moment before resuming its habitual expression of quiet introspection. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... naturally and inevitably seeks to hand us over to the menace of nothingness; in the first place of nothingness "within" us, and in the second place of nothingness "without" us. That the logic of the pure reason quickly becomes the slave of the emotion of malice may be proved by both introspection and observation. For we note, both in ourselves and others, a peculiar glow of malicious satisfaction when such logic strikes its deadliest blows at what it would persuade us to regard ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Benvenuto Cellini, any more than that of Pius II, founded on introspection. And yet it describes the whole man— not always willingly—with marvelous truth and completeness. It is no small matter that Benvenuto, whose most important works have perished half finished, and who, as an artist, is perfect only in his little decorative speciality, but in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the exhaustion, dissipate the fear. The fear—"And thy right hand shall show thee terrible things"—He was more often than once in situations in which he knew he was afraid and held fear away only because, with his old habit of introspection, he knew it for fear,—a horrible thing that sought mastery of him and by sheer force of mental detachment must be held away where it could be looked at and known for the vile thing it was. In such ordeals, in Flanders, he got the habit of saying to himself between his teeth, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... outward appearance of the fiery eyes and short breath, we have simultaneously the inward feeling of anger. Thus body is mind observed outwardly in its relation to the senses; mind is body inwardly experienced in its relation to introspection. Who can draw a strict line of demarcation between mind and body? We should admit, so far as our present knowledge is concerned, that mind, the intangible, has been formed to don a garment of matter in order to become an intelligible existence at all; matter, the solid, has faded under ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... melancholy introspection a violent blow in the solar plexus is the most immediate. If Mr Corbett had any abstract worries that day at Carson City, I fancy they ceased to occupy his mind from the moment when Mr Fitzsimmons administered that historic left jab. In my case the cure was instantaneous. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... before, never for five minutes. And this illness had driven me to a strange introspection. There had been time to think. I smiled at Captain Blaise's amateurish rhymings on the veranda of the manor-house. I had condemned him in my own mind for this death or that death of his irregular career; on that last night on the veranda I had even allowed him to read my thoughts of ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... myself I sometimes turn My gaze, with introspection stern, Three persons there I seem to see, "I" and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... shut up within the blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies knowledge, and knowledge ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the world attends the motive-power of any action. Infinite perspectives of mental mirrors reflect the whys of all doing. An adult with long practice in analytic introspection soon becomes bewildered when he strives to evolve the primary and fundamental reasons for his deeds; a child so striving would be lost in unexpected depths; but a child never strives. A child obeys unquestioningly and absolutely its own spiritual impellings ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... as a matter of fact, almost entirely mental, the pacing up and down merely an unconscious physical accompaniment. Albert Speranza was indulging in introspection. He was reviewing and assorting his thoughts and his impulses and trying to determine just what they were and why they were and whither they were tending. It was a mental and spiritual picking to pieces and the result was humiliating and in ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... high a value to introspection as to observation in psychology, and said that whatever place is assigned to the one in scientific method must be assigned to the other. He therefore accorded a high value to imagination and intuition, and to all ideal constructions of life and ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... long solitary walks. His habit of morbid introspection had grown and become a fixed feature of his life. Even while occupied with business his secret self stood invisible at his elbow whispering, ever whispering things alien from material holdings or profit—matters unrelated to speculative ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... my patient had become so childish-looking, and her mind, enfeebled by delirium, was in so childish a condition, that it seemed to me I little more than tending some young girl whose age was far below my own. I did not trouble myself, moreover, with any exact introspection. There was an under-current of satisfaction and happiness running through the hours which I was not inclined to fathom. The winds continued against me, and I had nothing to do but to devote myself to mam'zelle, as I called her in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... at the end is scarcely after the manner of the folk, and various touches throughout indicate a transmission through minds tainted with culture and introspection. ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... of a darning- needle. In the end MRS. FRED REYNOLDS tells us that "the day dawned. The whole earth sang and sparkled in the glad light of it," which is her way of saying that Margaret had found happiness. But all the same I fancy that introspection had become such a habit of this heroine that she is still likely to have days when the dawn is grey ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... action; a process which all, as rational beings, are bound to engage in and carry out. I know this part of the system requires unpleasant work. Most are willing to feel, but they would feel without principle; and if they act, they would act only from the impulse of the moment. They shrink from introspection; from working on their own hearts through the laborious operations of the intellect, so that the affections may be at once both right and rational. But if we would see the gorgeous palace towering in symmetry and grandeur, unpleasant work must be done; the rubbish must be removed, the soil ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... full vigor of growth, of expansion, of increase, and we shared insensibly from being connected with that growth. In retrospect now, and giving due recognition to this crescent spirit, I recall that, in spite of it, Omar Khayyam was the favorite poet of many of us, that introspection, which sometimes deepened into pessimism, was in vogue, and that a spiritual or philosophic languorous disenchantment sicklied o'er the somewhat mottled cast of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the heart grow colder in cases like the one under discussion, and the sea is a great place for a fellow to do some quiet, sane, uninterrupted thinking. The sea, at night particularly, is productive of much introspection and speculation on the various aspects of life, and in order to make Joey forget this vampire in a hurry all that is necessary is to have a real woman round him for a while. The first thing he knows he'll be making comparisons and the contrast will ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... off green and unripe," said Kent, his railing mood changing to one of sad introspection, "than to prematurely fall, from a worm gnawing ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... though nothing in the least unusual had occurred? Did she notice nothing in my manner that appeared to be unusual? True, she addressed to me no term of endearment, which was singular; but so engrossed was I in my introspection and in my own misery that I scarcely noticed this. Indeed, had she spoken to me fondly, her doing so just then would but have increased the feeling of bitterness ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... liked or even intended in order to have a chance of passing him in his chair and scrutinising again the features that masked such depravity. For that they masked it cannot be denied. A physiognomist looking at him would have conceded a certain gloom, a trend towards introspection, possibly a hypertrophied love of self, but no more. Physiognomists, however, can retire from the case, for they are as often wrong as hand-writing experts. And if any Lavater had been on board and had advanced such a theory he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... added, "Where there is found, upon introspection, to be no chronic disease, how shall there be any trouble? how shall there be ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... became a necessity and almost a pleasure. When few stirring events diverted thought from the petty and the personal, when pent-up emotion found little outlet in the graces or amusements of social intercourse, observation and introspection fastened upon the minutiae of life and every eccentricity of speech and conduct was weighed and assessed. Close espionage on conduct was matched by the careful scrutiny accorded every novel opinion. When the weekly sermon was the universal topic of conversation, the refinements of belief ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... his biography that one night while lying awake he fell into practising a little introspection, an unusual thing for him to do, and the conclusion he came to was that he was not a very good young man. I was having a somewhat similar experience that night when in the midst of my unflattering thoughts about myself, a profound sigh from Paquita made ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... hand, will investigate the laws of conscious life according to the inductive method, and will hence, as much as the physicist, make the existence of fixed laws his initial assumption. If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only remains for him to make one assumption more, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... now nearly every afternoon in his life, but as he lacked introspection he projected the associated discomfort upon the world. Every afternoon he discovered afresh that life as a whole and every aspect of life that presented itself was "beastly." And this afternoon, lured by the delusive blueness of a sky that was blue because the wind was ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... on deck became so lively that he was no longer able to indulge in introspection, he got up and indifferently joined the moving throng. The warning had sounded for those going ashore, and the numerous gangways were crowded. Passengers lined the promenade-deck, shouting and waving to the crowd on the wharf below. From the bridge-deck ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... therefore, only with difficulty that I can make up my mind to leave my room early in the morning, and if ever I force myself to do so without sufficient cause, nothing remains to me for the rest of the day but the choice between idle distraction and morbid introspection. Thus it happened that I put off for several days my visit to the old man, which I had agreed to pay in the morning. At last I could not master my impatience any longer, and went. I had no difficulty in finding Gardener's Lane, nor the house. This time also I heard the tones of the violin, but ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... memory of Rice's words came flooding back to him. Whatever else was true, this man's sufferings were real indeed. To him she had never been anything but a most charming benefactor. In a momentary fit of introspection he told himself, then, that her sex had ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... illusion. This is one of the many cases in which men do not really believe, but rather believe they believe. It is not that they can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken place, but that they think they can do so. Careful introspection will show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation of even one species. If they have formed a definite conception of the process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... never would forget her. In moments of introspection, in times of deepest thought, all his life through, he ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... already have, but only to remind us of what we really knew all along, but had rather lost contact with and misinterpreted because of our preoccupation with describing and explaining it. Bergson's criticism of our intellectual methods turns simply upon a question of fact, to be settled by direct introspection. If, when we have freed ourselves from the preconceptions created by our normal common sense intellectual point of view, we find that what we know directly is a non-logical process of becoming, then we must admit that intellectual thinking is ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... which. He knew nothing except that there was no stopping the flood of the current which had its source in streams already flowing before he was born. When the last question had been asked his future would be clear. Relief was ahead, and after relief would come the end of introspection and the beginning of his ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of the ranch household. From feeling that she never would be equal to the task of caring for so many people, Mrs. Purnell came to find her health greatly improved by her duties, which left her no opportunity for morbid introspection. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... compensations. Through this fissure in the walls of his neurotic soul he peered and saw its strange perturbations, divined their origins in the very roots of his being, and recorded—as did Poe, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche—the fluctuations of his sick will. With this Russian, his Hamlet-like introspection becomes vertigo, and life itself fades into a dream compounded of febrile melancholy or blood lust. It was not without warrant that he allows Rogoszin, in The Idiot, to murder Nastasia Philipovna, because of her physical charms. The aura ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... did—of a surplusage of merits of some sort, when registering the barometer and the thermometer of their religious experience were the most unrelenting self-accusers. It is safe to say, as a general thing, that those who in that introspection, in the measurement of their heats and chills of piety, grieved most deeply and found the most ingenious causes for self-infliction were either the most calculating hypocrites or the most truly godly. To which of the two classes any one particular individual might belong could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... proceeds in his internal life from epoch to epoch, and renews himself in his most internal nature, nor can we deny that moments like those mentioned are especially favorable in man to an effort towards self-transformation because they invite introspection; but it is not to be endured that the youth, while looking forward to such a moment, should consciously persist in his evil-doing. If he does, we shall have as consequences that when the solemn moment which he has set at last arrives, at the stirring of the first emotion he perceives ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... genuine comfort. Miss Earle has summarized with briefness and force the results of such training: "A frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children; but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her father sadly wrote, 'God has delivered her now ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... on the terrace in the early morn, a spot whence he could be observed from the villa, and which did not easily communicate with the precipitous and surrounding scenery, that Lothair would indulge that habit of introspection which he had pursued through many a long ride, and which to him was a never-failing source of interest and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... him in bed and unmistakably asleep when she went into the bedroom. Man-like, having got his way, he was not troubled by doubts or introspection. It was done. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blow Samuel put in several weeks at conscientious introspection. The blow years before at Andover had landed on his personal unpleasantness; the workman of his college days had jarred the snobbishness out of his system, and Marjorie's husband had given a severe jolt to his ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast, and a mustache as delicate as that of a page in a romance. He resembled his sister not in feature, but in the expression of his clear, bright eye, completely void of introspection, and in the way he smiled. The great point in his face was that it was intensely alive—frankly, ardently, gallantly alive. The look of it was like a bell, of which the handle might have been in the young man's soul: at a touch of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound. There was something ...
— The American • Henry James
... emotion during the life-span of the individual as he sees it himself (enough cases (355) were given to make a reasonable allowance for individual variations); (2) they indicate the general prevalence of the emotion during childhood; (3) they reinforce observation in the same way that introspection always reinforces the objective method of study. In estimating the value of these confessions one must be mindful of the common defect of most auto-biographical statements, viz., that they are influenced by ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... The dread introspection pictured after the sin is in the highest degree tragic, and affects one like remorse in its relentlessness, although less remorse than fear of discovery. The sickness of the following condition, with its yearnings, longings, dizziness, is very nobly done, and delicate as is the theme, and demanding ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... greater perfection. As his countrymen have frequently pointed out, these firstfruits of Goethe's genius mark a new departure in lyrical poetry. In them we have the direct simplicity of the best lyrics of the past, but combined with this simplicity a depth of introspection and a fusion of nature with human feeling which is a new content in the imaginative presentation of human experience. In connection with Goethe's Leipzig period we gave a specimen of the best work he was then ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... has been supposed to rule in selective attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards pigmentation. The fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to the fair. Again, it must be said that this common assumption is not confirmed either by introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... recognized the danger of my post; but my patient had become so childish-looking, and her mind, enfeebled by delirium, was in so childish a condition, that it seemed to me I little more than tending some young girl whose age was far below my own. I did not trouble myself, moreover, with any exact introspection. There was an under-current of satisfaction and happiness running through the hours which I was not inclined to fathom. The winds continued against me, and I had nothing to do but to devote myself to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... (as they were quaintly called in those days,) had taken a somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales had inclined to be restful after the revels of his youth. The prolonged seclusion of Queen Victoria, who was then engaged upon that superb work of introspection and self-analysis, More Leaves from the Highlands, had begun to tell upon the social system. Balls and other festivities, both at Court and in the houses of the nobles, were notably fewer. The vogue of the Opera was passing. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... procedure. He is able to investigate the mind in two ways, which are of such general application that anybody of sufficient training to make scientific observations at all can repeat them and so confirm the results. One of these is what is called Introspection. It consists in taking note of one's own mind, as all sorts of changes are produced in it, such as emotions, memories, associations of events now gone, etc., and describing everything that takes place. Other persons can repeat the observations with their own minds, and see ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... we muse on these withholden glories, as we drive rapidly homeward. Umbrellas shut off the scenery where the mists do not, and we are forced to introspection. We resort for comfort to praising each other for bearing the disappointment so well. We laud each other's ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... particularly to the employment of the method of hypnosis, especially as practiced by Prince, or to Freud's so-called free association (which is frequently really forced association) or Jung's word association methods. I am speaking only of analysis of the dream by ordinary conversation and introspection, in the normal waking state. Of course, were the latter method supplemented by these other methods, the results would be so much the more complete and far-reaching. I may mention, specifically, that the employment of Freud's free association method would be helpful here in gathering ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... My curse of introspection left me, and descending through the town to the pier, amid the breezy blue skirts and bonnet-strings, we watched the packet-boat approaching. There was in advance one of the famous swift island wherries. Something went wrong with it, for it was overtaken, and the steamer came in first. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... by my abstinence.... If I cannot work, at least I need not lie." The doctrine of the supremacy of the individual to himself, of his originality and, as regards his own character, unique quality, must have had a great charm for people living in a society in which introspection, thanks to the want of other entertainment, played almost the part of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... things through keyholes, and his backgrounds are real works of art. As for the second condition, we have had Browning, and Meredith is with us. But there is still much to be done in the sphere of introspection. People sometimes say that fiction is getting too morbid. As far as psychology is concerned, it has never been morbid enough. We have merely touched the surface of the soul, that is all. In one single ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... young men and women, and then men and women, save for a fresher vigour, like ourselves. For us it comes at last to fellowship and resignation. For them it comes at last to responsibility, to freedom, and to introspection and the searching of hearts. We must if we would be men-makers, as the first and immediate part of the business, correct and finish ourselves. The good New Republican must needs ask and ask repeatedly: What have ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... no pain or misery. The kundalini sleeps above the kanda. [The kanda, for which we can hardly find a corresponding organ, is to be found between the penis and the navel.] It gives mukti to the yogis and bondage to the fools. [See later the results of introspection.] He who knows her, knows yoga. The kundalini is described as being coiled like a serpent. He who causes that sakti [probably, power] to move ... is freed without doubt. Between the Ganges and the Yamuna [two rivers of India, which are frequently ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... is the cultivation of the person,—which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... three weeks for introspection—for introspection beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black shadows. It was not a good situation for a girl. She began thinking about love, she who had never before considered ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... the Believer will tend to be and want to be and seek to be friendly to, and interested in, all sorts of people, and truthful and helpful and hating concealment. To be that with any approach to perfection demands an intricate and difficult effort, introspection to the hilt of one's power, a saving natural gift; one has to avoid pedantry, aggression, brutality, amiable tiresomeness—there are pitfalls on every side. The more one thinks about other people the more interesting and pleasing they ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... enjoyment.] Introspection is the only bar to such an honourable endeavour, [BLACKBOROUGH gapes.] You don't suffer from that ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... Market Bumpstead, had taken on an animation quite unsuitable to a conscientious valet. He gave the impression of a man who does not depend on idle rumour for his facts. His eye gleamed unprofessionally for a moment before resuming its habitual expression of quiet introspection. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 others, forbore to examine himself too much. But without doing that, he was conscious ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... again—and then Peter stops. He too is puzzled vaguely. However, bother introspection, the concert proceeds, both artists doing their level best. Now one of them pauses, now the other, and at length serious doubts begin to creep in. There is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... forth an order, and she saw five or six guerrillas rise out of the cacti and spring toward her. But the constant shadow of self-introspection haunted her even then. In her despair, and worse, in her disgust, feeling already those filthy hands upon her, she yet appraised this jewel among ecstatic shudders, and she knew in her heart that she would not ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... they can not seem to get light enough to decide nor courage enough to attempt to remove the obstacle. They know that hesitation is fatal to enterprise, fatal to progress, fatal to success. Yet somehow they seem fated with a morbid introspection which ever holds them in suspense. They have just energy enough to weigh motives, but nothing left for the momentum of action. They analyze and analyze, deliberate, weigh, consider, ponder, but never act. How many a man ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... waters! But these rocks and waters are actualities; the stuff whereof man is made. A landscape so luminous, so resolutely scornful of accessories, hints at brave and simple forms of expression; it brings us to the ground, where we belong; it medicines to the disease of introspection and stimulates a capacity which we are in danger of unlearning amid our morbid hyperborean gloom—the capacity for honest contempt: contempt of that scarecrow of a theory which would have us neglect what is earthly, tangible. What is life well lived but a blithe discarding ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... constant introspection which is found in Cecil Forester's nervous hero, "Captain Horatio Hornblower." That man doubtless would have died of stomach ulcers before winning his second stripe. It is not a matter of, "How do I look to someone else?" but of, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... I sometimes turn My gaze, with introspection stern, Three persons there I seem to see, "I" and "Myself," ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... both pursue the same method, and the method of Rousseau is the method of Mr. Carlyle. With each of them thought is an aspiration, and justice a sentiment, and society a retrogression. Each bids us look within our own bosoms for truth and right, postpones reason, to feeling, and refers to introspection and a factitious something styled Nature, questions only to be truly solved by external observation and history. In connection with each of them has been exemplified the cruelty inherent in sentimentalism, when circumstances ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... well content with himself that they went the whole distance to the Peace Monument before she disturbed his placid introspection. There was a pleasure to her in simply walking beside him in silence; it was a sensation which she had never attempted to analyze, but its existence had become a part of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... man of deep religious and spiritual nature, and seemed inspired for the performance of some extraordinary work. He was austere in life and manner, not given to society, but devoted his spare moments to introspection and consecration. He thought often of what he had heard said of him as to the great work he was to perform. He eventually became seized with this idea as a frenzy. To use his own language he saw many visions. "I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... of the nightingale is pregnant with music, and throbbing with an exquisite nervous sensibility, perhaps languishing under some vague and occult disease, of which you are only conscious in moments of intense introspection, this mode of approaching the diagnosis is apt to give your ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection. We look into our own bosoms, observe attentively every thing that passes there, anatomise our motives, trace step by step the operations of thought, and diligently remark the effects of external impulses upon our feelings and conduct. Philosophers, ever since the time ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... of the so-called great men were rather neurotic—but I thought, Madison, that introspection was pretty much of a thing ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... communications corrupt good manners." What kind of life is that which must always be checked and stunted in this fashion? What kind of salvation can there be that can only be purchased by the sacrifice of so much that is noble and inspiring? True life consists in experience, not in introspection; in going out from self into the world, not in retiring from the world inwards. Let us therefore live our life without fear, lose ourselves in humanity, forget self in experience, and leave the rest ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... and French. Instead of living alone or with one companion, he occupied quarters in a big yamen full of officers and men—a change which probably benefited a character too given to seriousness and introspection. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... severest study he had until breakfast, and then worked with the boys, or alone, the most of the forenoon, at whatever on the farm, or about the house, seemed most to want his hand; the afternoons and evenings were given to unremitting study or reading. His tone of mind and new habit of introspection induced him to take long walks in the woods and secluded places, and after his work for the day was done; he imposed upon himself a regular and systematic course, and compelled himself to adhere to it. He saw few, went nowhere; ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... of introspection is afforded by the study of after-images. Look for an instant at the glowing electric bulb, and then turn your eyes upon a dark background, and observe whether the glowing filament appears there; this would be the "positive after-image". This simple type of introspection is used by physiology ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... made him shrink from her presence as a man with weak eyes shrinks from the light, was the outward sign of a secret violence in his soul, yet she ministered helplessly to each passing explosion of temper as if it were the cause instead of the result of his suffering. Introspection, which had lain under a moral ban in a society that assumed the existence of an unholy alliance between the secret and the evil, could not help her because she had never indulged in it. Partly because of the ingenuous candour of the Pendleton nature, and partly owing to the mildness ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... chords in the critic's mind—the young love of Romeo and Juliet or the voluptuous abandonment of Antony and Cleopatra, the intellect of Iago irresistibly impelled to malignant activity or Hamlet entangled in the coils of a fatal introspection. To the sheer poetry of Shakespeare he is also acutely sensitive, to the soft moonlit atmosphere of the "Midsummernight's Dream," to the tender gloom of "Cymbeline," to the "philosophic poetry" of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... be much given to introspection, she had never asked herself whither the last few months had been leading her. But now, an hour ago, the touch of Eliot's lips against her hand and the sudden, passionate demand in his voice had torn aside the veil and shown ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... in their wadded arm-chairs; several yawned; some folded their hands over their ample stomachs. The June atmosphere was pleasantly conducive to the sort of after-luncheon introspection which is easily soothed by monotones of ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the gate of doom—the gate of Belarab's stockade. A cigarette soothed, it gave an attitude. Was this the fitting occasion for one of the remaining two? D'Alcacer, a true Latin, was not afraid of a little introspection. In the pause he descended into the innermost depths of his being, then glanced up at the night sky. Sportsman, traveller, he had often looked up at the stars before to see how time went. It was going very slowly. He took out a cigarette, snapped-to the case, bent down to the embers. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of suicide in time of war may be found, perhaps, in the power that any strong excitement has to change the current of thought and substitute one emotion for another. Suicide, among civilized peoples, is largely due to morbid introspection and long brooding over real or imaginary trouble; and anything that takes a man's mind away from his own unhappiness, and gives him a keen interest in things or events about him, weakens his suicidal impulse. An unhappy man might ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature—all have been subject to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its presence. It has permeated ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... Descartes, and many others. Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge, but the science has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which we obtain knowledge of the outer world in relation to 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 ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... all centering about Valerie, came crowding in upon his brain, till in the end a great burst of laughter—the laughter of a madman almost, eerie and terrific as it rang upon the silent night broke from his parted lips. That brief moment of introspection had revealed him to himself, and the revelation had fetched that peal of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... I wore an air Of pensive introspection, And then I curled down anywhere. They whispered of infection, And hoist me on two sticks as though I bore the leper's label, And took me where, all in a row Of tiny beds, two score or so ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... advocated and that many young Republicans had taken up. The interest in tariff legislation drove everything else from the national organization, while returning prosperity destroyed the mental attitude in which reforms had flourished. Political introspection was less easy in 1897 and 1898 than it had been in the years of confusion and enforced economy since 1890. The civil service and ballot reforms had been started on the upward course, but party machines continued in ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... is a shade subtler. The Russian novelist or dramatist takes to psychology as some of his fellow-countrymen take to drink; in doing this he achieves fame by showing us what we already know, and at the same time he kills his own creative power. Chekhov just escaped the tragedy of suicide by introspection, and was only enabled to do this by the possession of a sense of humour. That is why we should not regard "The Bear," "The Wedding," or "The Anniversary" as the work of a merely humorous young man, but as the saving graces which made ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... her trust in God, and kept on her way, though uncheered for a time by the joyous emotions with which she had so long been favoured. It was well that her mind, which had been overtaxed and strained by the intensity of her religious fervour, and by its unbroken continuity of introspection, should be brought into a more healthful state by this bitter tonic ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Dock there was certainly no time for remorse, introspection, repentance, or any phenomena of inner life either for the captive ships or for their officers. From six in the morning till six at night the hard labour of the prison-house, which rewards the valiance of ships that win the harbour ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... asked him whether he actually hated it, he would have answered no. I suppose people almost always want something external to themselves, to reveal to them their own likes and dislikes. Our most assured likings have for the most part been arrived at neither by introspection nor by any process of conscious reasoning, but by the bounding forth of the heart to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by another. We hear some say that such and such a thing is thus or thus, and in a moment the train that has been laid within us, but whose presence we knew ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... objective fatigue in the organs of the body. Fatigue should be regarded as a twofold thing—a state of mind, designated its subjective aspect, and a condition of various parts of the body, designated its objective aspect. The former is observable by introspection, the latter by analysis of bodily secretions and by measurement of the diminution of work, entirely without reference to the way the mind regards the work. Fatigue subjectively, or fatigue as we feel it, is not at all the same as fatigue as manifested in the body. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... of close inspection of one's own character and conduct. I know very well that it is not a wholesome thing for a man to be always poking in his own feelings and emotions. I know also that, in a former generation, there was far too much introspection, instead of looking to Jesus Christ and forgetting self. I do not believe that self-examination, directed to the discovery of reasons for trusting the sincerity of my own faith, is a good thing. But I do believe that, without the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but have skimmed the surface of other nations.—But why am I talking like this? Whither am I tending? It is indeed shameful that an author who long ago reached man's estate, and was brought up to a course of severe introspection and sober, solitary self-enlightenment, should give way to such jejune wandering from the point. To everything its proper time and place and turn. As I was saying, it does not lie in me to take a virtuous character ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... specially on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference—Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, religious indignation—Christendom. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... control as it rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions so impenetrable and vast that to attempt to personalize it in the sneaking figure of Hypocrisy would be as absurd as to try to enlarge ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... mind has (in one aspect, at any rate) a physical basis—that is, that no thought, imagination, or combination of thought, is known to us apart from change and expenditure of energy in the brain. Nor can we, by any process of introspection or observation of other subjects, separate the mind from the brain and ascertain the existence of "pure mind," or soul, experimentally. But still, there is no possibility of getting the operations of mind out of ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... safe. We can trust God to do his part if we do ours. He will give us his Holy Spirit; he will give us a new heart; he will put his peace and strength into our souls. It is not necessary to be anxious, or to be inspecting our feelings to see if we are feeling right. All such introspection is unnecessary if we have faith in God and his promises. We are Christians just as long as we are obeying God and following Christ. When we find ourselves disobedient, selfish, going wrong, then the one thing needful is to repent and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... rather liked him, and, and—time slips by"—(it had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on my part to ignore the past and ask ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... belief with the youth himself, she became an influence in his life for Home time, but one day a young comrade asked him to luncheon at a cafe, and for the first time Strindberg partook of schnaps and ale with a hearty meal. This little luncheon was the event which broke up the melancholy introspection of his youth and stirred him ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... austere face, as seen in the numerous prints: the square, massive head, with the forest of rough hair; the strong features, so furrowed with the marks of passion and sadness; the eyes, with their look of introspection and insight; the whole expression of the countenance as of an ancient prophet. Such was the impression made by Beethoven on all who saw him, except in his moods of fierce wrath, which toward the last were not uncommon, though short-lived. A sorely tried, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... as vivid colors as possible, in the hope that I may do something to defend the weak from the strong. People never dream of all that is going on in the little heads of the young, for few adults are given to introspection, and those who are incapable of recalling their own feelings under restraint and disappointment can have no appreciation of the sufferings of children who can neither describe nor analyze what they feel. In defending themselves ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Here was a puzzle that irritated him the more because he could not solve it, yet always seemed just on the point of a solution. However, he may have lost nothing cheerful by remaining in the dark upon the matter; for if he had been a little sharper in this introspection he might have concluded that the squalor of the night-light, in its seeming effort to show against the forerunning of the sun itself, had stimulated some half-buried perception within him to sketch the painful little synopsis ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... England fiber, and classing as morbid all forms of introspection, she always so dreaded to have the conversation drift into a reflective channel that whenever she found Willie indulging in reveries she was wont to rout him out of them, tartly reproaching herself for having even indirectly been the cause of ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... of obsessives is peculiarly apt: "over-scrupulous, disquieted over trifles, indecisive in action, and anxious about their affairs. They are given early to morbid introspection, and are easily worried about their own indispositions or the illnesses of their friends. They are often timorous and apprehensive, and prone to pedantism. The moral sentiments are pronounced in most cases, and if they are, as a rule, somewhat ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... life society offered her. The change had been so gradual that it was permanent before she realized it. For a while an active outdoor life—golf, tennis, yachting—kept this realization from becoming morbid introspection. There came a time when even these lost charm for her, and then she believed she was indeed ill in mind. Travel ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... with a thud on the floor; but he was old and wise, and soon fell again to his meal. I sat drumming my heels against the corn bin. Evening was falling fast, and everything was very still. No man ever had a more favorable hour for reflection and introspection. I employed it to the full. Then I rose, and crossing the stable, pulled the long ears of my friend ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... not the unfettered liberty of a godless layman. He is restrained by his austere temperament, by his monk's habit, by Christian doctrine. Nevertheless he moves with easy grace and dignity on planes so far apart as those of patriotism, of devotion, of human sympathy, of introspection. His patriotism finds powerful expression, as already noted, in the Profecia del Tajo, besprinkled with sonorous place-names, these growing fewer as the movement is accelerated, and Father Tagus describes with a mixture of picturesque mediaeval ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... resistance must be unconscious. Usually, it will be necessary to work through this unconscious resistance before the subject responds. If the subject is conditioning himself, this will involve a great deal of introspection, and even then it is an extremely difficult job. One doesn't usually have proper insight into one's own emotional make-up. The end result is that one can only ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
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