"Self-consciousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enabled to seize the female, like the curious pincers described by you in some of the lower Crustaceans. But what I want to know is, how low in the scale sexual differences occur which require some degree of self-consciousness in the males, as weapons by which they fight for the female, or ornaments which attract the opposite sex. Any differences between males and females which follow different habits of life would have to be excluded. I think you ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... no potentiality for creation, or self-consciousness, in a pure Spirit on this our plane, unless its too homogeneous, perfect, because Divine, nature is, so to say, mixed with, and strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower line of the Triangle—representing the first triad that emanates from the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... devoted to finance, he came home in the evenings high-spirited and determined to enjoy himself. His voice was firm and his eye steady when he spoke to his wife; there was no trace of self-consciousness in his demeanour. She admired the masculinity of the brain that could forget by an effort of will. She felt that he trusted her to forget also; that he relied on her common-sense, her characteristic ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... mostly think of, sir. Every man has his own habit of mind, hasn't he? I agree with the great prophet Thomas Carlyle when he says"—he brought out the words with a mild pomposity—"when he says that a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells in us which only our works can render articulate. He speaks of the folly of the precept 'Know thyself' till we've made it 'Know what thou canst work at.' I can work at this, Dr. Thor; I couldn't work at anything else. I know that making both ends meet is an important ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... two hours later, and turned on the light in their bedroom, she was in the bed, apparently asleep. He stood staring with theatric self-consciousness at himself in the glass for several minutes, then sat down before the bureau and pulled out the third drawer—where he kept collars, ties, handkerchiefs, gloves and a pistol concealed under the handkerchiefs. With the awful ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... reassurance, that she was going to manage this new venture. After a few moments, however, and his low-spoken command to let herself be guided, her natural-born instinct to dance asserted itself, the self-consciousness wore away, and she was one-stepping with the best of any on ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... paragraph—say, the case of a man passing a house in process of erection, and being killed on the spot by a piece of falling timber. He is left as a material form; he is decidedly not left as a person. Something has disappeared in that fatal moment that no one had ever seen or handled—his self-consciousness, his intelligence, his will, his affections, his moral sense: with these he was a person; without them, he is a corpse. If, then, it is these unseen, intangible qualities, and not flesh and bones, muscle and "nerve structure," that constitute human personality, is it not rather childish ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... reassurances persistently iterated by Mrs. Standish, the news from New York troubled her profoundly—preoccupation largely counteracted self-consciousness through those first few dreaded moments of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... warn you against believing those who tell you that such minute analysis of motives, such scrutiny into the smallest details of daily conduct, has a tendency to produce an unhealthy self-consciousness. This might, indeed, be true, if the original state of your nature, before the examination began, were a healthy one. "If Adam had always remained in Paradise, there would have been no anatomy and no metaphysics:" as it is not so, we require both. Sin has entered the world, and death by ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... tempestuously frothy fashion, "I've heard that creature actually discussing with another American what sort of air a man should assume in entering a drawing-room! Can you conceive of such a thing? Where did all that alarmed self-consciousness of the modern American come from—that unceasing self-consciousness that makes the American young man spend five sixths of his waking time in asking himself if he is a gentleman? Not from the splendid assurance, the belief in ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... hell as to which comfortable churchmen were getting silent, he painted in such lurid colors that reaction and ultimate revolt were necessities of human nature. The life of holiness and love—in himself a most genuine reality—he defined in such terms of introspection and self-consciousness, that there opened a wide gulf between the forms of religion and the most sturdy and natural ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... one part of his being is of the dust and to the dust it returns; the other part is a mystery; it is known only by what it does. Man thinks, loves, chooses, and is conscious of himself as thinking, loving, choosing. The unity of this being who thinks, loves, chooses in a single self-consciousness constitutes him a spirit, or personality; and that is what the word soul signifies in its popular usage. There is another technical definition which may be true or false but which is of no importance ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... trace of self-consciousness she looked at her friends—they were all her friends—with that sweet confidence and understanding of the true artist. The dainty loose gown covered any angle that might have proved unlovely, and Joan was at one ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... is so completely wrought into the mind and memory, that most of us can at once recall the incidents which chequer the pilgrim's way, and realize their meaning; the Slough of Despond, in which the man convinced of his guilt and fleeing from the wrath to come, in his agonizing self-consciousness is in danger of being swallowed up in despair; the Wicket Gate, by which he enters on the strait and narrow way of holiness; the Interpreter's House, with his visions and acted parables; the Wayside Cross, at the sight of which the burden of guilt falls from ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... had his disciples, although as yet he had done no mighty works. They followed him for himself and for his mighty words. With his mother they accompanied him to a merry-making at a wedding. With no retiring regard, with no introverted look of self-consciousness or self-withdrawal, but more human than any of the company, he regarded their rejoicings with perfect sympathy, for, whatever suffering might follow, none knew so ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... Diderot's encouragement he undertook his indictment of civilisation; in 1750 the Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts was crowned. In accordance with his theory he proceeded to simplify his own life, intensifying his self-consciousness by singularities of assumed austerity, and playing the part (not wholly a fictitious one) of a moral reformer. Famous as author of the Discours and the opera Le Devin de Village, presented before the King, he returned to his native Switzerland, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... In the latter of these figures he is shown stretching his mouth, apparently yawning but actually preparing for an attack on another monkey behind the wire screen. Figure 7 of this plate indicates Skirrl in an interesting attitude of attention and with an obvious lack of self-consciousness. The same monkey is represented again in figures 8 and 9 of plate II, this time in the act of using ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... step in her awakening was to a kind of self-consciousness. She was lying on her nurse's lap out of doors, looking up at the sky, and some one was saying, "Oh, you pretty thing!" But it was long years before she connected the phrase with herself, although she smiled in response to the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the self-consciousness and impertinence which detract so much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... already told how my first qualms of morbid self-consciousness at knowing that my mind was an open book to all around me disappeared as I learned that the very completeness of the disclosure of my thoughts and motives was a guarantee that I would be judged with a fairness ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... dusty, and bulging with books. When he speaks, it is in a strident peacock voice, and there is an abrupt clumsiness in his gestures, especially in drawing-rooms, where he is ill at ease, liable to trip in the carpet and upset furniture. Complete absence of self-consciousness, perfect disinterestedness, are evident in every tone; it is clear that he is an aristocrat, but it is also clear that he ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... will be good for you in another way. You must learn to get over your self-consciousness. You must not imagine the eyes of every one are on you. You must try to forget all about yourself. Remember that every one there has a lot else to think about, and that you are only one little person amongst a number." Cousin Charlotte laid her hand on Angela's to take away ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the Jewess; 'his mother is my niece. He can sing like the heavenly seraphim, and great beauty of body is his as well.' She whispered the last statement in that fatal whisper wherewith the aged often give conceited self-consciousness ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to these the continual imitations, sometimes sinning against the rules of scholarship, [25] which make them, with all their beauties, by far the least original of Virgil's works, the artificial character of the whole composition; and the absence of that lofty self-consciousness on the poet's part [26] which lends so much fire to his after works: and it may seem surprising that the Eclogues have been so much admired. But the fact is, their irresistible charm outweighs all the exceptions of criticism. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... gorgeous display of all is to be found among the birds, the peacock leading in conspicuousness and self-consciousness. What a contrast to the dull earthy-hued little hen, for whose slightest favour he neglects food to raise his Argus-eyed fan, clattering his quill castanets and screaming challenges to his rivals! He will even fight bloody ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... our opinion. We think not. The average Japanese man has not come to that self-consciousness, that searching of heart, that self-seeing of sin in the light of a Holy God's countenance which the gospel compels. Yet this is exactly what the Japanese need. Only Christ's ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... reference to females—consciousness of prowess for its own sake, and the display of it in order to intimidate the enemy, arise. Into this motive of war there enter all the antagonisms that come from self-consciousness, the whole force of the diathesis of developing sexuality, with its jealousy and cruelty, and tendencies to perversion. The force of this motive of prowess must at some period of development have become very great. It extends out into a love of combat for its own sake, reenforces other motives, ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... on his return almost humorously, prepared, with a self-consciousness that was unusual in him, for all the worst things, and it is true enough that they were as bad as they could be. Bobby Galleon shared in it all, of course, but he had never been a popular person and he did not miss anything so long as there was Peter. Once he said, as Cards ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... speaking was peculiar. It was difficult to understand whether she were hiding her arrogant pride by an assumption of humility or whether she truly felt that her calls would not be looked upon with favor. Her manner was not easy at any time. It was marked by a self-consciousness that gave her companions the impression that the little courtesies from well-bred people ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... with her annoying celerity that afternoon in the garden. It was all the more annoying because he was conscious that Ruth amused and interested him in no slight degree. She had the rare quality of being genuine. She stood for what she was, without effort or self-consciousness. Whether playful or serious, she was always real. Beneath a reserved and rather quiet manner there lurked a piquant unconventionality. The mixture of earnestness and humor, which were so closely interwoven in her nature that he could never tell which would come ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... a sapper's, and a face as colorless and immovable as Contenson's, kept his spirit to himself, and rejoiced in a sort of drum-major appearance which disarmed suspicion. A fugitive from Poissy or Melun has no such serious self-consciousness and belief in his own merit. As Giafar to the Haroun el Rasheed of the hulks, he served him with the friendly admiration which ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... contemptuous present of information which I had never sought, but tacitly rebuked poor Bob for his gratuitous attempt at concealment. Clearly, they had nothing to conceal; and the hotel talk was neither more nor less than hotel talk. There was, nevertheless, a certain self-consciousness in the attitude of either (unless I grossly misread them both) which of itself afforded some excuse for the gossips in ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... ring of truth, and above all the absolute lack of self-consciousness in the girl's answer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... much. She took things too seriously, and seldom found the effort of entertaining compensated by the gain' (iii. 335). There is the outpouring of ardent feeling for her friends, sobering down, as life goes on, into a crooning kindliness, affectionate and honest, but often tinged with considerable self-consciousness. It was said of some one that his epigrams did honour to his heart; in the reverse direction we occasionally feel that George Eliot's effusive playfulness does honour to her head. It lacks simplicity and verve. Even in ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... The self-consciousness which in the presence of man produces that kind of shyness which was Borrow’s characteristic left him at once when he was with Nature alone or in the company of an intimate friend. At her, no man’s gaze was more frank and childlike than his. Hence the charm of ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... with a silence, save for the music, between us, we heard a door open on the floor above and the sound of light footsteps on the stair. She came to the doorway, looked in to see if we were alone, and then, with neither shyness nor self-consciousness, came in to ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We ate and presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor since have I been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I have had this very experience I could never have believed that, a quarter of a million of miles out of our proper world, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... mind leaders who shall have that moral and intellectual fitness which produces reverence, earnestness and humility, leaders who can draw their people away from their foolishness, weakness and self-consciousness into the larger life that is possible for them. Without a {97} doubt, what is needed is true leaders, and I wish to show where ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... re-entered the parlour, she found him sitting near a table, with his head resting upon his hand, and his whole manner indicating a state of painful self-consciousness. With the instinctive perception of a woman, she saw the truth; and going at once up to him, she laid her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, Stafford read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance at the food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an occasional glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the sheets, stepped across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small fire—for, late September as it was, a sudden ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was already old England; which if she could ever cease to be, she might be Jerusalem, or Paradise, but would not be England at all. What Shakespeare and his fellows of the sixteenth century gave her was a new self-consciousness and a new self-confidence. They foraged in the past; they recognized themselves in their ancestors; they found feudal England, which had existed for many hundreds of years, a dumb thing; and when she did not know her own meaning, they endowed her purposes ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... they are few. No prophet is honoured in his own country, but the individual personalities of whom I am speaking play an unnoticed part in society, they are not domineering, but their work can be seen; anyway, science is advancing and advancing, social self-consciousness is growing, moral questions begin to take an uneasy character, and so on, and so on-and all this is being done in spite of the prosecutors, the engineers, and the tutors, in spite of the intellectual class en masse ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... which is a mighty tragedy, enacted by a few leading characters, Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon. He loved to emphasize the superiority of history over fiction as dramatic material. The third of the three essays mentioned was a Jeremiad on the morbid self-consciousness of the age, which shows itself in religion and philosophy, as skepticism and introspective metaphysics; and in literature, as sentimentalism, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... something compounded of the two, or something different from either. What the daguerreotype and photograph do is to give the features and one particular look, the very look which kills all expression, that of self-consciousness. The artist throws you off your guard, watches you in movement and in repose, puts your face through its exercises, observes its transitions, and so gets the whole range of its expression. Out of all this he forms an ideal portrait, which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time or to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this Cardillac—but obsessed by a self-conscious conviction that the world was looking at him; the world never looks for more than an instant at self-consciousness, but it dearly loves self-forgetfulness, for that ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... what is called "an awkward age"; an age more awkward with some girls than with others. I wish grown-up ladies, who mean to be kind to their friends' daughters, would try to remember the awkwardness of it, and not increase a naturally uncomfortable self-consciousness by personal remarks which might disturb the composure of older, prettier, and better-dressed people. It is bad enough to be quite well aware that the size of one's hands and feet prematurely foreshadow ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a natural dignity Untaught self-consciousness by harm, Sustained her with his manly arm, And smiled ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... or later, must fall upon my axe-helve. Oh, I worked out my designs! Presently he saw the helve, picked it up at once and turned it over in his hands. I had a suffocating, not unhumorous, sense of self-consciousness. I know how a poet must feel at hearing his first poem read aloud by some other person who does not know its authorship. I suffer and thrill with the novelist who sees a stranger purchase his book in a book-shop. I felt as though ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... done with indecency). "This fellow Wagner" ... distinction was one of the words to use naturally, though, from looking at him, one would have found it difficult to say which seat in the opera house was his, stalls, gallery, or dress circle. A writer? He lacked self-consciousness. A painter? There was something in the shape of his hands (he was descended on his mother's side from a family of the greatest antiquity and deepest obscurity) which indicated taste. Then his mouth—but surely, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... or self-consciousness in most of these people gives them a peculiar charm, and when this young and beautiful woman leaned across my knees to look nearer at some photograph that pleased her, I felt more than ever the strange simplicity of ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... all too few, because John Crewys also had monopolized a share of Miss Sarah's attention. Peter did not dislike his guardian, whose composed courtesy and absolute freedom from self-consciousness, or any form of affectation, made it difficult indeed not to like him. His remarks made Peter smile in spite of himself, though he could not keep the ball of conversation rolling like Miss Sarah, who was not at all afraid of the great counsel, but matched his pleasant wit, with a most engaging ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... his inspiration. He is above all things impersonal. His human figures are devoid of all individuality; yet they have inimitable merit as types embodying the characteristics of a class: the childish curiosity of the peasant, the shyness of the maiden, the fascination of the joro the self-consciousness of the samurai, the funny, placid prettiness of the child, the resigned gentleness of age. Travel and observation were the influences which developed this art; it was ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... found that it was Miss White who spoke. How was it that this girl, who was only a girl, seemed to do things so easily, and gently, and naturally, without any trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness? He followed her, and knew not which to admire the more, the careless simplicity of her manner, or the singular symmetry of her tall and slender figure. He had never seen any statue or any picture in any book to be compared ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... stage is a necessary one. We begin with ignorance and the imagination, the material of the pose novel. Later come self-knowledge, disappointments and self-consciousness, and the prodigals of fiction stay themselves upon the husks of epigram and cynicism, and in the place of artless aspiration are indeed in plain black and white very desperate characters. It is after all only another pose—the pose of not posing. We, the common clay ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... sources from whence the early history of a nation may be safely derived: the first internal—the self-consciousness of the individual; the second external—the knowledge of its existence by others—the ego sum and the tu es; and our acceptance of the statements of each on matters of fact, should depend ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... said, and Lindsay took one. He had a demon of self-consciousness that possessed him often, here he felt dumb. Nor did he in the very least expect Mr. Harris. He crossed his legs in greater discomfort than he had dreamed possible, looking at Laura, who sat down like a third stranger, curiously detached from any ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Of Mayr he said: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability of Josef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend us by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether. For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... although neither was aware of it. Lily, being on the whole a very normal little girl, and not disposed to even a full estimate of herself as compared with others of her own sex, did not dream of Amelia's adoration, and Amelia, being rarely destitute of self-consciousness, did not understand the whole scope of her own sentiments. It was quite sufficient that she was seated close to this wonderful Lily, and agreeing with her ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... shaken, my muscles and wind were in good order, and not even the most morbid self-consciousness could find fault with the time spent on the journey. Luck favoured me, too, to this extent, that almost as I got on to the road, or, rather, track, about a mile from the inn, I met, driving a buggy, and bound for Los Angeles, a man whose acquaintance we had made a few days before, and ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... company, and her disfigurement made her care for it less. She could not help feeling that everybody noticed it, and most people in truth noticed nothing else. She was 'the girl with a scar.' As time went on, this self-consciousness, or rather consciousness of herself as the scar, diminished, but her indifference remained, other reasons for it being added. She never had a lover; and, indeed, what man could be expected to take to himself as wife even the wisest ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... his suave manner of taking everything for granted seemed to make them know each other almost too quickly, and gave her an odd sort of self-consciousness. She turned to Captain ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... religion and state law; to such persons Shakespeare's creations are inaccessible. They are comprehensible and accessible only to the educated, from whom one can expect that they should acquire the healthy tact of life and self-consciousness by means of which the innate guiding powers of conscience and reason, uniting with the will, lead us to the definite attainment of worthy aims in life. But even for such educated people, Shakespeare's teaching is ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... he delighted, like his own British admirals, to do things with a certain air. He observed himself, I used to think, as he observed others, and "saw himself" in every part he played. There was nothing of the cabotin in this self-consciousness; it was the unextinguished childish passion for "playing at things" which remained with him. I have a theory that all children possess genius, and that it dies out in the generality of mortals, abiding only with people whose ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... from which they sprang. On the accession of Richard II, two London citizens were appointed controllers of the war-subsidies granted to the Crown; and in the Parliament of 1382 a committee of fourteen merchants refused to entertain the question of a merchants' loan to the king. The importance and self-consciousness of the smaller tradesmen and handicraftsmen increased with that of the great merchants. When in 1393 King Richard II marked the termination of his quarrel with the City of London by a stately procession through ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... "doeskin" trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom a hat meant only that rigid, tall silk thing known to impudence as a "stove-pipe." In town and country these men would wear no other hat, and, without self-consciousness, they ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... three at her service: it was the most natural thing in the world for people to think as they did. Yet not a human being ever accused Hetty of flirting; her manner was always as open, friendly, and cordial as an honest boy's, and with no more trace of self-seeking or self-consciousness about it. She was as full of fun and mischief, too, as any boy could be. She had slid down hill with the wildest of them, till even her father ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... who have made this choice and are following the higher leader in their work for the human race, which is the only satisfactory way of working for themselves. But this leader—spiritual perception—cannot put the soul in possession of its promised land—a higher state of existence or quality of self-consciousness. It sees the higher and leads in its direction; but understanding of fundamental, therefore unvarying and always applicable, principles is necessary for that realization which Is the attainment of the higher, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... self-consciousness, the old man's voice trailed to an uncertain pause; and Varney comforted him with a burst of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence as I have heard him characterized in precisely these words by members of the English bar. Every motion, every attitude, indicates an intense self-consciousness. The Earl of Chatham had not a greater passion for theatrical effect, nor has a more consummate and finished actor ever graced the stage. If the performance had been less perfect, it would have been ludicrous in the extreme; for it did not overlook the minutest details. He could not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... carry the reader on for scores of pages without an instant's drop in interest. Only the supreme masters in creative art can accomplish these things. And the wonder of it is that Scott did all these things without effort and without any self-consciousness. We can not imagine Scott bragging about any of his books or his characters, as Balzac did about Eugenie Grandet and others of his French types. He was too big a man for any small vanities. But he was as human as Shakespeare in his love of money, his desire to gather his friends about him ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Patty certainly was, in a sweet, wholesome, girlish way, and not the least of her charms was her naturalness of manner and her entire lack of self-consciousness. ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... shapely arm round his neck, while with the other she rifled his pockets for ammunition. Ste. Marie grinned, and the public, loud in its acclaims, began to pelt the two with serpentines until they were hung with many-colored ribbons like a Christmas-tree. Even Richard Hartley was so far moved out of the self-consciousness with which his race is cursed as to buy a handful of the common missiles, and the lady in the blue hat returned his attention ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... particular was self-conscious. He hated intensely to be self-conscious, and his feeling towards every witness of his self-consciousness partook always of the homicidal. Were it not that civilization has the means to protect itself, Julian might have murdered defenceless aged ladies and innocent young girls for the simple offence of ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... He came late and reluctantly into the close-smelling dining-saloon, and found her already seated at the long table. Her place was nearly opposite his, and as he sat down she looked up with a quick, interested look which had girlish curiosity in it, and a complete lack of self-consciousness that was perhaps characteristic. Evidently, as he had separated her in his mind from the rabble, wondering about her, so she had separated him and wondered also. She was too far away for Max to speak, even if he had dared; but a moment later a big man who squeezed himself in between table and revolving ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... expression. I sat down at my desk and wrote a full reply to it. Safe in the belief that the mysterious friend to whom it was written would never see it, I wrote with a perfect freedom and a total lack of self-consciousness that I could never have attained otherwise. The writing of that letter gave me a pleasure second only to that which the reading of his brought. For the first time I discovered the delight of revealing my thought unhindered by the conventions. Also, I understood better why the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brown eyes took him in from head to foot in a quick comprehending flash. The fame of his personal appearance was more than justified. He was the most strikingly good-looking man she had ever seen, and to her surprise there was not the slightest trace of self-consciousness or conceit about him. His high intellectual forehead, thick black hair inclined to curl at the ends and straight heavy eyebrows suggested at once a man of brains and power. He looked older than he was—at least thirty, though he had just turned twenty-six. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... French Revolution shows to what an extent assemblies are capable of losing their self-consciousness, and of obeying suggestions most contrary to their interests. It was an enormous sacrifice for the nobility to renounce its privileges, yet it did so without hesitation on a famous night during the sittings of the Constituant Assembly. By renouncing their inviolability the men of the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... proud self-consciousness, rather Sophomoric). I play six hours a day, two hours scales with both hands together, and four hours Etudes. I have already gone through the first book of Clementi and four books of Cramer. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... point out that it was this absence of the rite of confession that made people in Protestant countries so conspicuously more self-conscious than the inhabitants of Catholic countries. For nothing leads to self-consciousness more certainly than the attempt constantly ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... was the need of the times. The Caesars of the world are few, and most of them have been unfaithful to their trust, but no one doubted the integrity and patriotism of Washington. Rival generals may have disliked his austere dignity and proud self-consciousness, but the people and the soldiers adored him; and while his general policy was, and had to be, a defensive one, everybody knew that he would fight if he had any hope of success. No one in the army was braver than he, as proved not only by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Veil being a well-known ship both for swift passages and for equipment, almost every berth was taken, and when the weather was calm, quite a large assembly sat down to dinner. Among these, of course, were some ill-bred people, and my youth and reserve and self-consciousness, and so on, made my reluctant face the mark for many a long and searching gaze. My own wish had been not to dine thus in public; but hearing that my absence would only afford fresh grounds for curiosity, I took my ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries was one of intense political life, of advanced national self-consciousness, of rich, highly-organized society. It was moreover a period of common ideas, movements, and tendencies over all Europe. Several factors enter ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... yet Italy distinguished herself clearly from the rest of Europe, not merely as a geographical fact, but also as a people intellectually and spiritually one. The rapid rise of humanism had aided in producing this national self-consciousness. Every State and every city was absorbed in the recovery of culture and in the development of art and literature. Far in advance of the other European nations, the Italians regarded the rest of the world as barbarous, priding themselves ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... if she had been stung. She turned from the window, she covered her face with her hands, and escaping swiftly, she fled to her own room, and throwing herself on the bed, buried her face in the pillow, to wrestle through her poor little tragedy of love, and self-consciousness, and despair. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... human significance, which, I think, is the source of the delight we take in them. The song of the bobolink to me expresses hilarity; the song sparrow's, faith; the bluebird's, love; the catbird's, pride; the white-eyed flycatcher's, self-consciousness; that of the hermit thrush spiritual serenity: while there is something military in the call ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... before she saw now to be but the shadows cast by the first kindling of the other light. Now, as it blazed higher and more triumphantly, the shadows vanished. And though her consciousness of this was so vivid and alert, self-consciousness was almost altogether banished. She no longer made plans for herself in the future, as she had always done till now, seeing herself as the mistress of a great house, and filling that position, as, indeed, she was fitted to do, so well, or seeing herself always kind, always pleasant, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... well-clad countryman, smoking his pipe, stood within a few feet of my friend and me and gazed at us with the simple, blank curiosity of a child. There was not the slightest gleam of intelligent interest, or self-consciousness in his face; it was the frank stare of a five-year-old boy. He belongs to a type one often sees in the mountain districts of the South—good human stuff, valiant as soldiers, and industrious as farmers, but so unacquainted with the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... pinned a great bunch of crimson roses, so that, altogether, Beatrice in her pretty green boat made a beautiful picture. She would have made this in any case, for her pose was so good, and her figure fine, but when, in addition, there was a sweet intelligent face without one scrap of self-consciousness about it, and two gray eyes full of a tender and sympathetic light, and when the rosy lips only opened to make the pleasantest and most appropriate speeches, and only to give utterance to words of tact and kindness, Mrs. ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... elbow, Scott followed each inflection of the persuasive voice, his lean face glowing with appreciation at every point his idol scored. For the time being, awkwardness was lost and all self-consciousness. Why think about himself, when he could have the chance to watch Reed Opdyke and to listen to him? Scott's nature thrilled in answer to the alien touch, unconsciously as that touch was given. It never once would ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the priestly vocation; he drew a picture of the joys of mortification and self-denial, which impressed Hugh, partly because of its intensity, and partly also from an uneasy sense of strain and self-consciousness which it gave him. Maitland's idea seemed to be that all impulses, except the religious impulse in its narrowest sense, needed to be sternly repressed; that the highest life was a severe detachment from all earthly things; that the Christian pilgrim marched along a very narrow way, bristling ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... there this seemed a very childish suggestion, but not to wise Seth Winters. The very fact that shy Molly Martin had so far forgotten her own self-consciousness as to offer her bit of entertainment argued well for the success of Dorothy's House Party with its oddly assorted members. But he surprised Helena's lifted eyebrows and the glance she exchanged with the other Molly, so hastened to ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... feet, the attendant rubbing him energetically with hands outside it for several minutes till he is all aglow. In cases where great oppression is felt at the epigastrium—that corded sensation so much complained of by opium-eaters during their earlier period of abandonment, and that peculiar self-consciousness of the stomach which follows in the track of awakening organic vitality—the greatest relief may be expected from "hot fomentations," This is the well-known "hot and wet external application" of the regular practice, and consists of a many-folded ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... concluding volumes of his great work, has summarized his survey of London, with the picture presented by Chadwick and Gavin half a century earlier. Ugly and painful as are many of the features of this modern London, the vision which is, on the whole, evoked is that of a community which has attained self-consciousness, which is growing into some faint degree of harmony with its environment, and is seeking to gain the full amount of the satisfaction which an organized urban life can yield. Booth, who appears to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the contrary, not merely the highly specialized structure of the human brain, but even that of nervous matter in general, may only be one of a thousand possible ways in which the material and dynamical conditions required for the apparition of self-consciousness can be secured. To imagine that the human brain of necessity exhausts these possibilities is in the last degree absurd. Therefore, we may suggest the following presentation of Clifford's case as one that is less obviously inadequate:—if any resemblance ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... even unconsciously. A girl brought up in this way will defend herself instinctively against the wiles of a seducer. But only by such an education, by one which is not confined to the mere imparting of information, can we produce in the girl greater powers of self-protection and a more enduring self-consciousness, and so save her from the far too common fate of behaving like a stupid unripe creature, and believing all the asseverations of the first man who makes love to her—asseverations which the man himself, in the moment of passion, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... with increasing fervour and lack of self-consciousness. "I could not tear myself from the telescope. I longed for a perpetual night and found the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... bearing, and he walked with long, well-balanced steps, swiftly, but without haste, as the Arab walks barefooted in the sand, not even suspecting that weariness can ever come upon him; erect, proud, without self-consciousness, elastic; collected and ever ready, in his easy and effortless movement, for sudden and violent action. He was not pale, as dark Italians are, but his skin had the colour and look of fresh light bronze, just chiselled, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... may be assumed to have practised his own preachings; the Meditations reflect mood by mood the mind of him who wrote them. In their intimacy and frankness lies their great charm. These notes are not sermons; they are not even confessions. There is always an air of self-consciousness in confessions; in such revelations there is always a danger of unctuousness or of vulgarity for the best of men. St. Augus-tine is not always clear of offence, and John Bunyan himself exaggerates venial peccadilloes into heinous sins. But Marcus Aurelius is neither vulgar nor unctuous; ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... such a race had somehow achieved self-consciousness and reason, would they have been able therewith to rule their instincts, or to stop work long enough to examine themselves, or the universe, or to dream of any noble development? Probably not. Reason ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... Lincoln loads on his shoulders all kinds of responsibilities, more so than even Jackson would have dared to take. Admirable if generated by the boldness of self-consciousness, of faith, and of convictions. True men measure the danger—and the means in their grasp to meet the emergency; others play unconsciously with events, as do children with explosive and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... her boy's hand within her own, and his father smiled at him so often that Tom began to feel fussed. But Mr. Dalken laughed at his apparent self-consciousness. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... exaggerates the false portraiture of Mr. Palgrave. The writer's admission that, "Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf," clearly shows us the man we have to deal with and the "depths of his self-consciousness." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... other's arms and fast asleep. As the latter passed close to the curb, I drew into the embrasure of the door as far as possible so as to avoid being seen by the cabman—as if it made the least difference whether he saw me or not; but such is the all-absorbing self-consciousness and vanity of girlhood. It was then that I noticed for the first time the glaring sign that had been staring at me during all these ineffectual attempts ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... realize she had been ignorant of it when she set out. She was a deceitful, scheming little thing. Angry with herself, she averted her gaze from the eyes that hungered for her, though they were yet unlit by self-consciousness; she loosed her hand from his, and as if the cessation of the contact restored her self-respect, some of her ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... hospitals. 'Yes, they are,' was her reply. 'Why should it be so?' 'I think it is because with them it is a work of self-abnegation, and of duty to God, and they are so quiet and self-forgetful in its exercise that they do it better, while many other women show such self-consciousness and are so fussy!" ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and politics of the country were affected by the appearance of a new group of equal states; while Babcock's "Rise of American Nationality" carries the influence of those states into a broader national life. Professor Turner takes up the west as an integral part of the Union, with a self-consciousness as lively as that of the east or south, with its own aims and prejudices, but a partner in the councils and the benefits of the national government which, as a whole, it is the aim of this ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he struck me as a remarkable illustration of ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... and the confusion of chaos, than any other passage the most impressive in my life. If I even slumbered for a moment, as at intervals I did sometimes, though never sitting down, but standing or pacing about throughout the night, and if in this way I attained a momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation as rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the momentary trance—this fugitive ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the Elizabethan drama, an endeavour which attained a fair measure of success a little later in the superb classic tragedies of Grillparzer. Still, noble as were its achievements in this direction, the German nation had higher aims. As it gained in self-consciousness and conceived its own artistic ideals it could not but feel itself worthy to bring forth an art characteristically its own. Till now the only indigenous German art had been instrumental music, and the stupendous achievements of a Bach, a Haydn, a Beethoven must have helped to bring home ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... connected with the difference of social life and organization as between the animals and man. The animals probably do not have a highly organized sense of Self as man does; and the reason doubtless is that such a Self-consciousness is the outcome of life and experience in the very complex social relations in which the human child is brought up, and which he alone is fitted by his ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... of them that new and strange self-consciousness that each had been secretly dreading all day. Julia fought it as she might have fought the oncoming of a physical ill, yet inexorably it arrived. Supper was an ordeal, she found speech difficult, she could hardly raise ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Macgregor—and Thomson saw themselves for the first time in the glory of the kilt. Their dismay would doubtless have been overwhelming had they been alone in that glory; even with numerous comrades in similar distress they displayed much awkwardness and self-consciousness. During drill Willie received several cautions against standing in a semi-sitting attitude, and Macgregor, in his anxiety to avoid his friend's error, made himself ridiculous by standing on his toes, with outstretched neck and fixed, ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... finite consciousness ceases to be finite there will be no distinction whatever between ours and God's. The distinction between finite and infinite is not eternal. The being of God is a complex unity, containing within itself and harmonising every form of self-consciousness that can possibly exist. No one need be afraid that in believing this he is assenting to the final obliteration of his own personality; if such obliteration were possible, our present personality could possess no permanent value ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... scarcely needed embodiment in words. How silent he was! leaning his forehead on his hand, now and then, and again looking steadily and gravely at the backs of the two men at the next table, with so little self-consciousness that she could almost watch his mind placing one thought solidly upon the top of another; she thought that she could feel him thinking, through the shade of her fingers, and she could anticipate the exact moment when he would ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the chief characteristics of which are a lack of control over one's emotions and acts, the imitation of the symptoms of various diseases, and an exaggerated self-consciousness. The patient may have extreme pain in the region of the head, ovaries, spine; in some parts of the skin there is extreme hypersensitiveness (hyperesthesia), so that the least touch causes great pain; in others, there is complete anesthesia—that is, absence of sensation—so that when ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... up early that Sabbath morning and was early to breakfast. I felt a perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at the passengers at a time when they should be free from self-consciousness —which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in the lives of human beings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... movement in favor of Canadian independence. To many independence from England seemed the logical sequel to Confederation; and the rapid expansion of Canadian territory over half a continent stimulated national pride and national self-consciousness Opinion in England regarding Canadian independence was still more outspoken. There imperialism was at its lowest ebb. With scarcely an exception, English politicians, from Bright to Disraeli, were hostile or indifferent ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... [Transcriber's note: sic] has to ... pourtray the first period of the world's development from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in man attained self-consciousness. 42. The mathematical monad is eternal. 43. The eternal is one and the same ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... which Virginia had dreaded, yet sought for, had come. All self-consciousness left her. She went to meet the other in an ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... to make use of his physical organs of perception, is not able to connect both occurrences with himself, as the same individual. Therefore, in order to recognize himself also as a permanent ego, man must first be equipped with outer organs of perception. Only when he has acquired the faculty of self-consciousness without the aid of such organs will the permanent ego also become perceptible to him outside his physical body. Clairvoyant consciousness has to acquire this faculty, and the method of doing so will be treated in detail later in ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... first time in her life Patty felt shy about singing. Usually she had no trace of self-consciousness, but to-night she experienced a feeling of embarrassment she had never known before. She realized this, and scolded herself roundly for it. "You idiot!" she observed, mentally, to her own soul; "if you want to make a good impression, you'd better stop feeling ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... in England where they had sung hymns with mother and sisters in the days before the war. England and that little church were a long way off now, perhaps all eternity away. I saw one boy standing quite motionless, with wet eyes, without self-consciousness. This music, this place of thoughtfulness, had made something break in his heart... Some of our young officers, but not many, knelt on the cane chairs and prayed, face in hands. French officers crossed themselves and ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... is: "When Shakespeare said, 'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' he enumerates what has become a scientific fact. The 'stuff' is in all cases the same—vibratory motions of nerve particles." [36] Thus knowledge, self-consciousness, free-choice, is as much a function of matter as fermentation, or crystallisation—a mode of motion, not dissimilar from ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... whom the world has ever seen; and because the Bible is supernatural, it is natural as no other book which was ever written; its divinity lifts it above those faults of style which are the fruits of self-consciousness and ambition. Whether we read the Old Testament story of Abraham's servant seeking a bride for Isaac, or the New Testament narrative of the walk of the risen Christ with his disciples to Emmaus, the inimitable simplicity of the diction ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... do? What should she do? The more she thought of it the more unendurable her position appeared. In her vivid self-consciousness the old relations could not continue. Heretofore his caresses had been a matter of course, of habit. They could be so no longer. She shrank from them with inexpressible fear, knowing they would bring what little ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... know not what the substance of an infinite mind is, nor how such substances as have no parts or extension can touch each other, or be thus externally united; but we know the unity of a mind or spirit reaches as far as its self-consciousness does, for that is one spirit, which knows and feels itself, and its own thoughts and motions, and if we mean this by 'circum-incession', three persons thus intimate to each other ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... him quickly and went out of the summer-house upon the lawn. The escape, this time, presented no difficulties. For the last syllable had hardly died on the young man's lip before self-consciousness appeared to return upon him, staggering him, it may be, at the words of his mouth. He turned, abruptly, and fled ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was conscious of a wish not to offend, to be courteous to this clear-eyed young woman who looked at him with frank interest. He wondered why he should be of any interest to her. MacRae had never been shy. Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness. Being free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl's sight. Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... enlarged sphere and the multifold application of faculties common to man and brute animals;—even this being in great measure a transfusion from the former, namely, from the superiority in kind;—for only by its co-existence with reason, free will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which Heraclitus, the senior, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... out making afternoon calls," said she. Her face was flushed with excitement and self-consciousness. "Will you please put a chair here so ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... lovers of their own choosing, men of delicacy and wisdom, that thirty years from now there would be that poise and sweetness in the world that dreamers descry in far future ages. And here and there would be a beyond-man, indeed; and here and there cosmic, instead of mere self-consciousness. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... but he condescended to review in some detail the actual phenomena. He conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's consciousness of its own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is virtually equivalent to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines Universal History as the description of the process by which Spirit or God comes to the consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment to develop in a different ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... famous discourses to the German Nation which he delivered at the University of Berlin during the Winter of 1807 and 1808, had one object: to arouse the German Nation by kindling its self-consciousness, that is to say, its pure Germanic essence, Deutschheit, in order to realize that essence when possible beyond its borders and to make it dominate the world. The general idea which must guide Germany in the accomplishment of this double task is: Germany ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... together, with fierce glances, and quick, jerky motions of the head. Now and then one, tired of inaction, raised a deliberate claw, bowed its head, scratched with incredible rapidity, shook its tumbled feathers, and looked round with angry self-consciousness, as though to say: "I will ask any one to think me absurd at his peril." Now and then one of them kicked diligently at the soil, and then, turning round, scrutinised the place intently, and picked delicately at some minute object. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... self-conscious, suffering deeply from his inability to express himself through his art, Henry Irving in 1867 was a very different person from the Henry Irving who called on me at Longridge Road in 1878. In ten years he had found himself, and so lost himself—lost, I mean, much of that stiff, ugly self-consciousness which had encased him as the shell encases the lobster. His forehead had become more massive, and the very outline of his features had altered. He was a man of the world, whose strenuous fighting now was to be done as a general—not, as hitherto, in the ranks. His manner was very ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... great day dawned, he descended to breakfast with that mingled anticipation and self-consciousness that always overwhelmed him on such occasions. He was wont to feel very foolish and vividly aware of his hands and feet when he made his annual advent into ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... upon the girl, generally so ready to talk in utter absence of self-consciousness. She served the porridge into the black bowls, and shyly pushed Gethin's towards him, cutting him a slice of the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... that hint of intimacy that his words portended, and she awaited the dance he had solicited in a state of mind very nearly allied to apprehension. Lady Bassett's suggestions had done for her what no self-consciousness would ever have accomplished unaided. They had implanted within her a deep-rooted misgiving before which all ease of ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... was yet subject to the frailties of her sex. Her self-consciousness was inordinate. She sent for Barak (75) to come to her instead of going to him, (76) and in her song she spoke more of herself than was seemly. The result was that the prophetical spirit departed from her for a time while she ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the preceding dialogues, the Statesman seems to approximate in thought and language to the Laws. There is the same decline and tendency to monotony in style, the same self-consciousness, awkwardness, and over-civility; and in the Laws is contained the pattern of that second best form of government, which, after all, is admitted to be the only attainable one in this world. The 'gentle violence,' the marriage of dissimilar natures, the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... this gives us the victory over all the darkness and plagues of earth. It speaks in living tones in the innocent child. To children, said Christ, belongs the kingdom of heaven. With growing years, with the birth of self-consciousness guilt comes to life, earlier in this one, later in that one, but once to all. It is the inheritance of earth. The nursery, the school, personal experience, the history of ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... with its horrors, its losses, its overwhelming sacrifice, its vast and eternal issues, was the single fact that filled his mind. It was this that delivered him from that nervous self-consciousness, the preacher's curse, that paralyses the mental activities, chills the passions, and cloggs the imagination, so that his sermon becomes a lifeless repetition of words, previously prepared, correct, even beautiful, it may be in form, logical in argument, sound ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... dogs, the women devoted their attentions to the men. They were anxious to have the visit prolonged, and every inducement was held out even to offering them wives, temporary, if they would remain; but after taking a few pictures, for which they posed easily and without sign of self-consciousness, I bade them farewell and we returned to the canoes. They did not accompany us ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... little exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her little mobile face,—an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness, as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various |
