"Self-examination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the young sailor whom she had rejected at Bellagio. Had she not been most explicit—even eagerly explicit? Had she not experienced an extraordinary sense of relief when he was well away from the place, and when she could prove to herself in close self-examination that she was in no way to blame for what had occurred? She was a little sorry for him, it is true; but she could not believe that it was a very serious matter. He would soon forget that idle dream in the brisk ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... last few pages, seemed to be gathering new strength every day in spite of my utmost endeavours to dissipate them, and that, too, without the occurrence of anything fresh to confirm them. I accordingly took myself severely to task; subjected myself to a rigid self-examination, looking the matter square in the face; and the conclusions to which I came were—first, that I had allowed myself to be deluded into the belief that the Vestale herself was the craft which had committed ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... was able, in the home harbour, to take some little fresh ballast on board and to rearrange what he at present had. He was able to stow away some of his useless tackle and bale out some of the water he had shipped in the last few rapids. Altogether, though Dick was not exactly a boy given to self-examination, or self- dedication, and although he would have scouted the notion that he was going in for being a reformed character, his little cruise in calm water did him good, and steadied him for his next venture on the tide, when ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Deaconesses," the "Rules for Self-Examination," and the "Rules of Discipline" in the order of deaconesses in Maryland are largely patterned after the Kaiserswerth rules. In truth, the general questions for self-examination in regard to external duties, spiritual duties to the sick, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up into altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. Therefore we have all to feel that after all self-examination there lie awful depths within us which we have not fathomed; and after all our knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... one other point the two suppliants are like each other; both alike look into their own hearts and lives; and both permit the judgment thus formed to determine the form and matter of their prayer. Both addressed themselves to the work of self-examination, and the prayers that follow are the fruits of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... listening to another argument of his, the effect of which would be to promote self-examination. The listener must needs be brought to ask himself, "Of what worth am I to my friends?" It happened thus. One of those who were with him was neglectful, as he noted, of a friend who was at the pinch of poverty (Antisthenes). ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... condition of boyish self-inquisition in which I then found myself, this acquaintance was a fresh element of fermentation, and the strongest to which my self-examination had hitherto been subjected. I instinctively desired to engage her fancy; but my attitude was from myself through her to myself. I wanted less to please than to dominate her, and as it was only my head ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... was none of these. Young Fledgeby had a peachy cheek, or a cheek compounded of the peach and the red red red wall on which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding slim (his enemies would have said lanky), and prone to self-examination in the articles of whisker and moustache. While feeling for the whisker that he anxiously expected, Fledgeby underwent remarkable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along the whole scale from confidence to despair. There were times when he started, as exclaiming 'By Jupiter here it is at ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... phase of the subject, the student should give himself a thorough, honest, self-examination and mental analysis. He should write down a chart of his strong points and his weak ones. He should check off the traits which should be developed, and those which should be restrained. He should determine whether he needs development along physical, mental, and spiritual lines, and in what degree. ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... But he felt sure that the woman of the Yellow Canyon had forgotten what she had thought and felt at sixteen. And, after all, he did not want again to see life through Inez' eyes. Long after the rest of the family slept, Douglas pursued his weary and futile self-examination, coming to a ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... master of the wife and the money; as a duty, too, in which some amount of self-sacrifice would be necessary. He would have to give up his friendship with the signora, his resistance to Mr Harding, his antipathy—no, he found on mature self-examination, that he could not bring himself to give up his antipathy to Dr Grantly. He would marry the lady as the enemy of her brother-in-law, if such an arrangement suited her; if not, she must look elsewhere ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... innovation was made necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty women on their counsel. Where will morality stop short? Such precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for self-examination, where pure imaginations are defiled by meditating on unknown and monstrous depravity. In this parlor, too, parents and friends may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners, whether on remand or awaiting ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Christian doubting Indwelling sin Mr. Fearing Encouragement for the doubting Christian Adoption Christ our life Union with Christ Life of faith Divine love improved Holy living Opportunities improved Good works Self-denial Obedience in little things Motives to holy living Obedience rewarded Self-examination Watchfulness Constitution-sins The Christian professor admonished Failings and sins of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... out that for us, annual self-examination is made a definite necessity by the fact that we now live in a divided world of uneasy equilibrium, with our side committed to its own protection and against ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... walls had brought Eva to Schweinau. The experiences of the past few days had swept through the peace of her young soul like a tempest, overthrowing firmly built structures and fanning glimmering sparks to flames. Since her quiet self-examination in the room of the city clerk, she had known what she lacked and what duty required her to become. The bond which united her to her saint and the Saviour still remained, but she knew what was commanded by him from whom St. Clare's mission also ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pleasure or business to prevent the solemn duties of self-examination and prayer. These are spiritual antidotes, which preserve an endangered soul from the contamination of evil customs and loose society. When leisure permits, add religious reading, and above all the study of the Holy Scriptures. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and decision: in the mind itself. With greater intellects more remote the lad had not yet been put in touch; he had therefore grown reflective, and for nearly a week had been spending the best powers of his unaided thought in self-examination. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... followers—for which he is not in the least chargeable—and of the many extravagances scattered through his twenty-eight treatises. But that he intended well, served his church and his Master, led thousands to self-examination, taught his nation that controversy was not the path to success or immortality, his whole ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... end, a man retires to a suitable place, where what he does actively or passively is hourly determined for him in advance—attendance at chapel or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest—in short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations and overcome him with spiritual ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... punish ourselves and feel that we have made amends. The capacity for self-hate and self-disgust depends largely upon the development of these ideals and principles of conscience, of expectation of the self. Frequently there is an overrigidity, a ceaseless self-examination that now and then produces miracles of character and achievement but more often brings the breakdown of health. This is the seeker of perfection in himself, who will not compromise with his instincts and his human flesh. There seekers of perfection ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... nature that lent itself readily to introspection, but he was putting himself now through a searching self-examination which was revealing all kinds of unsuspected flaws in his character. He had been having too good a time for years past to have leisure to realise that he possessed any responsibilities. He had lived each day as it came in the spirit of the Monks of Thelema. But his father's reception of the news ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... self-examination," he said, and his clear, quiet tones fell into the ears of the people with penetrating power. "And self-examination is a wise and profitable exercise. It is an exercise of the soul designed to yield a discovery of sin in the heart and life, and to induce penitence and contrition ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... and thanksgiving after Communion, the irregularity of your attendances; the habit of Self-Examination, or of Confession, ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... recorded of this devout Christian that never, during her life, whether in prosperity or adversity, did she omit that daily self-communion and self-examination, and those private devotional exercises, which would best prepare her for the self-control and self denial by which she was, for more than half a century, so eminently distinguished. It was her habit to retire to her own apartment every morning after breakfast, there to devote an ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... served to call out higher excellences in another, and so they reacted upon each other, and the result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace. But they had themselves no idea of the real state of things; they did not trouble themselves with marking their progress by self-examination; if Mr Benson did sometimes, in hours of sick incapacity for exertion, turn inwards, it was to cry aloud with almost morbid despair, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" But he strove to leave his life in the hands of God, and ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... across the tapestry, and glancing from the blessed symbol, he saw before him, kneeling on the rug, the figure of a woman. For her it was an inauspicious interruption. With almost a frown, Charles, recalled from an absorbing period of oblation and self-examination, surveyed the young girl. The reflection of dark colors from the hangings and tapestries softened the pallor of her face; her hair hung about her in disorder; her figure, though meanly garbed, was replete with youth and grace. Silent she continued in the posture ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... to have the least hint of dawning seriousness thankfully cherished and fostered, it was a rude shock, when most in need of epanchement du coeur after her dreary day, to be thrown back on that incomprehensible process of self-examination; and by Robert, too! ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and immobile world is composed. Whatever is perceptible by the senses, is called vyakta (knowable or comprehensible) and whatever is beyond the reach of the senses and can only be perceived by guesses, is known to be avyakta (not vyakta). When a person engages in the discipline of self-examination, after having subdued the senses which have of their own proper objective play in the external conditions of sound, form, &c, then he beholds his own spirit pervading the universe, and the universe ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and not down, forward and not back, out and not in," this religious experience might have gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in the gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible at that time, when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive mind well-nigh distracted. First, even her sister Catherine was afraid that there might be something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the fold without being first chased all over the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... letters of January and February, 1860, as they contain nothing on scientific matters, or on the subject of Australia, although interesting in other respects. They mark the habitual tone of his feelings and principles, his constant habit of self-examination, his study of his fellow-men, and how strongly he was impressed with the truth of Pope's ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... me too severe on her sex. I am only saying, I am only telling the women, that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who shall read this, find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, there is plenty of time for ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... for our dominion over ourselves as the fixity of external nature is necessary for our dominion over the world around us. The fixity of a large part of our nature—nay, of all but the whole of it—is a moral and spiritual necessity. For it requires but a superficial self-examination to discern the indications of what the profoundest research still leaves a mystery—that we are not perfect creatures of our own kind—that our nature does not spontaneously conform to the Supreme Moral ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... much use to her. Besides, if He hated naughty children, why did He make them naughty? At a moderate estimate quite half Joan's wickedness, so it seemed to Joan, came to her unbidden. Take for example that self-examination before the cheval glass. The idea had come into her mind. It had never occurred to her that it was wicked. If, as Mrs. Munday explained, it was the Devil that had whispered it to her, then what ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... of devotion. Apart from other trash, these contained confessional and communion prayers instructions on Repentance, Confession, and the Sacrament of the Altar; above all, however, a mirror of sins, intended as a guide for self-examination, on the basis of various lists of sins and catalogs of virtues, which supplanting the Decalog were to be memorized. Self-evidently, all this was not intended as a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ and to faith in the free grace of God, but merely to serve the interest ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... some of the great heathen moralists, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then has urged the question how far we who profess to be the disciples of a loftier faith are true even to these ancient heathen ideals.[38] Perhaps, however, this is not a method of self-examination which is open to us all. But this, at least, we can do: we can test ourselves by that moral law, which God gave to the Jews by Moses, and which Christ reinterpreted in the Sermon on the Mount. "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery"—all ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... that she had no aptitude for literature. She did not like phrases. She had even some natural antipathy to that process of self-examination, that perpetual effort to understand one's own feeling, and express it beautifully, fitly, or energetically in language, which constituted so great a part of her mother's existence. She was, on the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... of date in a lounging age, although I have myself known several who have continued the practice with pleasure and utility.[102] One of our old writers quaintly observes, that "the ancients used to take their stomach-pill of self-examination every night. Some used little books, or tablets, which they tied at their girdles, in which they kept a memorial of what they did, against their night-reckoning." We know that Titus, the delight of mankind, as he has been called, kept a diary of all his actions, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... think me too severe on her sex. I am only telling that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who reads this, shall find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, let her take the hint, and ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Interrupting this self-examination the mighty but unwieldy form of Morton Crocker loomed in the white dust crescent, and his premature panama swiftly followed the curve of the low grey wall towards her gate. As his steps were heard, her mind flew to the forbidding St. Michael on his gold ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... entitled "Psychoanalyse und Ethik," and find there, p. 5, a passage which I reproduce here on account of its agreement with my position. I must state at the outset that according to Furtmueller, psychoanalysis is peculiarly qualified to arouse suspicion against the banal conscience, which leads self-examination into the realm of the conscious only, with neglect of the unconscious impulses, which are quite as important for the performance of actions. The passage of interest to us here reads: "There is no lack of intimation that these fundamental facts which ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... themselves; for the wide breach between the ideal good and the poor accomplishment holds as much that can disappoint the heart as the mean little ditch between thought and deed, wherein so many weak good men lie stuck in the mud of self-examination. He who stands at the edge of the limit, with a lifetime of good struggles behind him, may be as sad and hopeless as he who sits down and weeps before the mountain of untried beginnings. The joy of the earthly future is for ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... 1816 was spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his young comrades, in this ceaseless self-examination, and in the perpetual battle which he waged with the desire for death that pursued him; every day he had deeper doubts of himself; and on the 1st of January, 1817, he wrote this prayer in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... worked in society. We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms and schools of art, and to discover instead our genuine needs, the forms of our possible happiness. To call for such self-examination seems revolutionary only because we start from a sophisticated system, a system resting on traditional fashions and superstitions, by which the will of the living generation is misinterpreted and betrayed. To shake off that system would not ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... are the masters of life, and who are likewise the strength-givers and the helpers of others. There are multitudes in the world today, there are readers of this volume, who could add a dozen or a score of years—teeming, healthy years—to their lives by a process of self-examination, a mental housecleaning, and a reconstructed, positive, commanding ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... which now opened out before Sir Richmond of talking about history and suchlike topics with a charming companion for perhaps two whole days instead of going on with this tiresome, shamefaced, egotistical business of self-examination was so attractive to him that it took immediate possession of his mind, to the entire exclusion and disregard of Dr. Martineau's possible objections to any such modification of their original programme. When they arrived in Salisbury, the doctor ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... all people are unconscious. The desired action in moral growth is universally spontaneous. The most sober and intellectual of men must be caught off his guard and must be lured into voluntary actions before any moral habits can be formed in him. Mere analysis of truth or self-examination makes no man good. But men become good by doing things first, and thinking of them afterward. They can be just as good if they never think about them, though thinking about ethical matters renders a service to the community ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... only our own consciences to deal with. Neither do the two always go hand in hand. There are persons who are formally careful in regard to the truth, and yet live in perpetual delusion. Wasson recognized this danger and protected himself against it by a constant and severe self-examination. He knew himself at least better than most, and if he erred anywhere it was in too moderate an opinion of his own value. He had visually a clear consciousness of what he was about, in spite of his ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... do these things point? In particular, to this, that despite all of the help which may be provided by outside agencies, finding the straight thoroughfare in work is mainly a problem of searching self-examination and personal decision. The impression which any other person may have of our talents and possibilities is largely formed by what we say, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... been Peter's hero and leader till a lion got him in the Blaauwberg. Peter preferred Valiant-for-Truth to Mr Greatheart, I think, because of his superior truculence, for, being very gentle himself, he loved a bold speaker. After that he dropped into a vein of self-examination. He regretted that he fell far short of any of the three. He thought that he might with luck resemble Mr Standfast, for like him he had not much trouble in keeping wakeful, and was also as 'poor as a howler', and didn't care for women. He only hoped that he could imitate him in making ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... was a memorable one for him. He made in some sort a survey of his conscience. After a close scrutiny, after hesitation and self-examination, his honor at any rate came out scatheless from this sharp and terrible ordeal, like a bar of iron tested in the English fashion. He remembered Father Goriot's confidences of the evening before; he recollected the rooms ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... pious mother, Rose de la Salle, allied to the venerable John Baptist de la Salle, the founder of the institute known as the Brothers of the Christian Schools. At the age of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus, and after two years of study and self-examination had passed away, he was, as is usual with the young Jesuits, employed in teaching, which position he held for twelve years. No sooner had he been invested with the priesthood, than his desire to become in all things an imitator of his chosen patron, St. Francis Xavier, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... sciences and systems without number, employing his whole life in the vain pursuit. Upon no subject has it been so easy to deceive the world as upon this. In every breast the curiosity exists in a greater or less degree, and can only be conquered by a long course of self-examination, and a firm reliance that the future would not be hidden from our sight, if it were right that we should be ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... heart was soft, and his nature most kind, and remarkably regardful of the feelings of others. To wound them, however unintentionally, would occasion him painful disturbance. Though naturally rapid in the perception of character, his inexperience of life, and the self-examination in which he was so frequently absorbed, tended to blunt a little his observation of others. With a generous failing, which is not uncommon, he was prepared to give those whom he loved credit for the virtues which he himself possessed, and the sentiments which ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... should be so much puzzled. He saw at once that the marked change was in the eyes. In their depths (he had before remarked them, that day, as indicating a nature a little weak, purposeless and not prone to self-examination)—in their depths, clear enough now, there lay a dark, sombre, but not unpleasing shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that have been turned inward. We usually say of a man whose eyes show the same expression: "That man has studied much," or, "he has suffered much," ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Notwithstanding her beauty, however, their union took place not to gratify his love, but his ambition. Jane Sinclair, in point of fact, had never been displaced from his affection, for as she was in his eye the most beautiful, so was she in the moments of self-examination, the best beloved. This, however, availed the unhappy girl but little, with a man in whose character ambition was the predominant impulse. To find himself beloved by a young and beautiful woman of wealth and fashion was too much for one who possessed but little firmness and an insatiable thirst ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... for the first time, partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Her spirit was most deeply impressed and overawed by the sacredness of the ceremony. During several weeks previous to her reception of this solemn ordinance, by solitude, self-examination, and prayer, she endeavored to prepare herself for that sacred engagement, which she deemed the pledge of her union to God, and of her eternal felicity. When the hour arrived, her feelings were so intensely excited that she wept convulsively, and she ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... at some momentary inconvenience to himself; and yet it looked as though he were taking advantage of his friend's weakness. Abram Van Riper was a man who cultivated a clear conscience, of a plain, old-fashioned sort, and the necessity for self-examination was novel and disagreeable ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... about our neighbours, as whetstones of our moral discrimination; as if they were conscience-blocks which we used in our apprenticeship, in order not to waste such precious materials as our own consciences in the trimming and shaping of ourselves by self-examination:— ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... coincidence of circumstances, and of which they have deeply and almost immediately repented—a situation which cannot but excite our pity, as well as our disapprobation; but this was a transaction which it is impossible either to extenuate or justify. Let it be improved as a motive for self-examination, and a beacon to warn us from similar misconduct. "O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in thee. Let INTEGRITY and UPRIGHTNESS preserve me, for ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... glance through my pages just to see if I agree with him, or to begin in the middle, or to read without a constantly alert attention. If you are not already a little interested and open-minded with regard to social and political questions, and a little exercised in self-examination, you will find neither interest nor pleasure here. If your mind is "made up" upon such issues your time will be wasted on these pages. And even if you are a willing reader you may require a little patience for the peculiar method I have this ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... days past I have been altogether engaged in writing a controversial pamphlet, and have attended little to the duty of self-examination. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... a very practical question for our consideration and answering. "Is there anything in my life"—so the question comes to us in our self-examination—"which could be so described? any influence, spreading from my conduct, of which men might truly say that it also is helping to debase the moral currency? Is there to be seen in it anything that tends towards the lowering of common ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... is that of one of the curates of the church in which I was asked to preach. At this time he was preparing for confession, and his self-examination had brought him to see and feel that he was a sinner. Under this course of preparation, the preaching of the Gospel had much effect upon him, and he came to tell me of his state. I was able to show him from the Word of God that he was in a worse condition than he ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... is for a person thoroughly to know him or her self, unless he or she be morbidly addicted to incessant self-examination! Audrey thought that it was mere neighbourliness that induced her to call on the Blakes that afternoon; she had no idea that a strong curiosity made her wish ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... think of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish,' he said, his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively, 'and of the other hours I maundered away in services and self-examination! Thank Heaven, however, the germ of revolt and sanity was always there. And when once I got to it, I ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... just any young nephew. And I know of no means of persuading people that this is a rather unjustifiable assumption, and of creating an intelligent controlling criticism of officials and of assisting conscientious officials to an effective self-examination, and generally of keeping the atmosphere of official life sweet and healthy, except the novel. Yet so far the novel has scarcely begun its attack upon this particular field of human life, and all the attractive varied play of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... and intolerance were rampant throughout Europe, France furnished men to check oppression and expose superstition, while others followed to lay the foundation of excellence and greatness in the examination and cultivation of its true source—the mind. Heivetius sought to direct men's attention to self-examination, and to show how many disputes might be avoided if each person understood what he was disputing about. "Helvetius on the Mind" is a work that ought to be read widely, and studied attentively, especially by "rising young men," ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... beautiful things are; and finally, through other varieties of aesthetic experience, days upon which only shortcomings and absurdities have laid hold of his attention. In the course of such aesthetical self-examination and confession, the Reader might also become acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never sufficiently repeated distinction between contemplating Shapes and thinking about Things; or, in ordinary aesthetic ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... which we are richest. The struggle of good and evil is serious, and really painful, only in the case of a man who has been brought up in a position where actions, deeds and thoughts have had the power of self-examination." ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... 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 practice of careful weighing of ourselves, there will be very little growth in anything that is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... attention and reflection. It is plainly not the effect of the levity, but of the matured judgement* of the age, which refuses to be any longer entertained with illusory knowledge, It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks—that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... observed, ground the main part of their objection on the supposed repugnance of the doctrine in question to our consciousness, seem to me to mistake the fact which consciousness testifies against. What is really in contradiction to consciousness, they would, I think, on strict self-examination, find to be, the application to human actions and volitions of the ideas involved in the common use of the term Necessity; which I agree with them in objecting to. But if they would consider that by saying that a person's actions necessarily follow from his character, all that is ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... it, to call on the sick and to administer medicine, and to visit often from house to house. She must correspond with friends at home; she has her private devotions, and must take time for reading and self-examination, or she will find that she can ill perform her other duties. I do not believe that I have overstated the amount of work I have known my sister-in-law and other missionaries' wives perform. Indeed, my own wife ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... subject of Mr Layard; this has not had the effect of altering her opinion as to the disqualifications of that gentleman for the particular office for which Lord Palmerston proposes him. This appointment would, in the Queen's opinion, be a serious evil. If Lord Palmerston on sincere self-examination should consider that without it the difficulty of carrying on his Government was such as to endanger the continuance of its success, the Queen will, of course, have to admit an evil for the country in order to avert a greater. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... species of self-examination on the part of the great war-ship, through the medium of its mind—the captain. Here was the father of a tremendously large family going the rounds on Sunday morning to observe whether his moral precepts and personal ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... This attitude of self-examination is hardly characteristic of the people as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of the historic American. He has been an opportunist rather than a dealer in general ideas. Destiny set him in a current which bore him swiftly along through such a wealth of opportunity ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... 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 for thought's sake—the so-called Hamlets of the world, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... judge? It is dangerous for young men to be too good. They are so sweeping in their condemnations, so sublime in their conceptions of excellence, and the most finished Puritan cannot out-do their demands upon frail humanity. Evan's momentary self-examination saved him from this, and he told the Countess, with a sort of cold compassion, that he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... friend," answered the old man, "that gives to most of us our greatest energy in life. We work ardently, taxing all our powers, in the accomplishment of some end. A close self-examination will, in most cases, show us that self is the main-spring of all this activity. Now, I hold, that in just so far as this is the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged with domestic electricity, he got the notion—he could hardly tell how—that all this lowering of the sky had something to do with him. What had he done? Nothing. His closest self-examination told him that he had done no wrong. But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience condemned him for some unknown crime that had brought about all this disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very good, the cabbage he could not eat, the corn-dodger choked him, he ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic. For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. Deeper self-examination, completer abstraction, than I can attain even here, are what I crave for. I long—forgive me, my friend—but I long more and more, daily, for the solitary life. This earth is accursed by man's sin: the less we see of it, it seems to me, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... mention these circumstances, and to describe them so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early habit of introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early separation from companionship with other men. Soon after the birth of her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting "thou" ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... and count the consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her reproach him with detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he remembered that unconsciously he had made those very calculations. With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within, and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair he longed to fling himself from the window. The egoism of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... first, and insensibly; but towards the end, by leaps and starts, with an increasing consciousness of how he aged and altered, which did but feed his black melancholy. It was borne upon him, perhaps, a little brutally, and not by direct self-examination, when there came another photograph from England. A beautiful face still, but certainly the face of a woman, who had passed from the grace of girlhood (seven years now separated her from it), to a dignity touched with sadness: a face, upon which life had already ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... with his horror of self-examination, is apt to forget the immediate end of existence in the means. And so much so, that when the first distant end—that of a secure old age—approaches achievement, he is incapable of admitting it to ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... a deep self-examination, and was severely exercised with fear and apprehension, whether I was myself a real partaker of those divine influences which I could so evidently discover in her. Sin appeared to me just then to be more than ever "exceeding sinful." Inward ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... search for the inner significance of every fragment of life, one of the greatest and most balanced contemplatives of the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale, reached out when she exclaimed in an hour of self-examination, "I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... the same end, i.e. perfection, produced a different effect upon me. The positive precepts presented to my mind an idea of the high degree of holiness at which that man would arrive who could keep them without a single violation. The negative precepts, by leading me to a close self-examination, impressed me with a deep sense of my corruption, and convinced me that the authors of them must have possessed a profound knowledge of the human heart in general, and of my ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... thy zeal had no worldly views and whether thou didst believe all the nonsense of the sect, at the head of which thou wast pleased to become a legislator.—Adieu. Self-examination requires retirement. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... occasions Benham had shown courage of the same rather screwed-up sort. He showed it not only in physical but in mental things. A boy named Prothero set a fashion of religious discussion in the school, and Benham, after some self-examination, professed an atheistical republicanism rather in the manner of Shelley. This brought him into open conflict with Roddles, the History Master. Roddles had discovered these theological controversies in some mysterious way, and he took upon himself to talk at Benham and Prothero. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... note lying, one might say, by the very roadside, and it would save a family from privation. Abstractly, it was wrong; yes, it was wrong; but would abstract right feed him and pay his rent for the year to come? Hood had reached this stage in his self-examination; he strengthened himself by protest against the order of things. His headache nursed the tendency to an active discontent, to which, as a rule, his temperament ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... upset your plans and irritate you needlessly; but is not the secret really that you resent interference, and want to have your own way? Now, before blaming your circumstances, I suggest you have a thorough self-examination, for it may be that the inward trouble is due to unbelief, selfishness, ambition, pride, or some other form of heart sin, and that evil must be dealt with before perfect ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... settled purposes of his heart. Inspired by his determination with the deliberate wisdom which is in most men the result only of the experience of years, he employed the first days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing his future plans, and impartially calculating his chances of success. This self-examination completed, he devoted himself at once and for ever to his life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing discouraged, nothing impeded him. Outward events passed by him unnoticed; the city's afflictions and the city's triumphs ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... consideration of many months, and after much self-examination as to my motives, and after much earnest prayer, that I came to the conclusion to write this work. I have not taken one single step in the Lord's service concerning which I have prayed so much. My great dislike to increasing the number of religious ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... fluttered with the diversity of passions produced by his mischance, that he mistook for equanimity that which was no other than intoxication; and two whole days elapsed before he attained a due sense of his misfortune. Then, indeed, he underwent a woeful self-examination; every circumstance of the inquiry added fresh pangs to his reflection; and the result of the whole was a discovery, that his fortune was totally consumed, and himself reduced to a state of the most deplorable dependence. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... better things. Confirmation and First Communion sometimes sensibly and even suddenly transfigure a character; but even apart from such choice instances the gradual work of the Sacraments brings Catholic children under a discipline in which the habit of self-examination, the constant necessity for effort, the truthful avowal of being in the wrong, the acceptance of penance as a due, the necessary submissions and self-renunciations of obedience to the Church, give a training of their own. So a practicing Catholic child is ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... not understand himself, did not know whither his steps might have tended had not the brutality of the Marchesino roused him abruptly to this self-examination, this self-consideration. He did not fully understand himself, and he wondered very much how Hermione and the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... over the design and order of a new book,' says Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... the key to it all! Nearly every night when I am alone with my own Ego I go into the Silences for a little period of Spiritual Self-Examination and I always ask myself: "Have I Concentrated today? Really Concentrated? Or have ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.' 'In withstanding of the passions standeth very peace of heart.' 'Let us set the axe to the root, that we being purged of our passions may have a peaceable mind.' To this end there must be continual self-examination. 'If thou may not continually gather thyself together, namely sometimes do it, at least once a day, the morning or the evening. In the morning purpose, in the evening discuss the manner, what thou hast been this day, in word, work, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arguments, and heartening of members, there was originated a second measure which—after the defeat of the first bill, 104 to 49—was introduced, by way of a very complicated path, through the judiciary committee. It was passed; and Governor Archer, after heavy hours of contemplation and self-examination, signed it. A little man mentally, he failed to estimate an aroused popular fury at its true import to him. At his elbow was Cowperwood in the clear light of day, snapping his fingers in the face of his enemies, showing by the hard, cheerful glint in his eye that he was still master of the situation, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... put one's self into a truthful and candid frame of mind. Those leave frivolous ideas behind who enter here. The 'modiste' will tell the philosopher that it is now the fashion to be severe; in a word, it is 'fesch'. Nothing can go beyond that. And it symbolizes the whole life, its self-examination, earnestness, utmost candor in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with a facility which hitherto had obtained only during elation. At first I was suspicious of this new-found and apparently permanent ease of expression—so suspicious that I set about diagnosing my symptoms. My self-examination convinced me that I was, in fact, quite normal. I had no irresistible desire to write, nor was there any suggestion of that exalted, or (technically speaking) euphoric, light-heartedness which characterizes elation. Further, after a prolonged period of composition, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the restlessness of the intellect there had always gone the imperious and prevailing claim of temperament. Beside Huxley and Clifford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia,' and a little High Church manual of self-examination. And on the wall above the book-table hung a memorandum-slate on which were a number of addresses and dates—the addresses of some forty boys whom the minister taught on Sunday in one of the Unitarian Sunday schools of Manchester, and visited in the week. The care and training of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... To this particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two sorts of men. The one, those who have been attached to the cause from the beginning; ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... I say, that never was his, only by them is supposed his—when they might sleep in peace with the living Lord in their hearts. Instead of so knowing Christ that they have him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins—the way to madness of the brain, and despair of the heart. Some even ponder the imponderable— ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... most attached to life that had been seen for a long time; who had always passed his days in the most luxurious idleness and who was the most incapable by nature of all serious application, of all serious reading, and of all self-examination. He was afraid of the devil; and he remembered that his former confessor had resigned for similar reasons as this new one was actuated by. He was forced now, therefore, to look a little into himself, and to live in a manner that, for him, might be considered rigid. From time to time he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... we are intended to be caught by the book of Job; for there God has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except humility. For this he is tried: and we are shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, when the Deity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Father and Mother, God. Continue in His love. Bring forth fruit—"signs following"—that your prayers be not hindered. Pray without ceasing. [25] Watch diligently; never desert the post of spiritual ob- servation and self-examination. Strive for self-abnega- tion, justice, meekness, mercy, purity, love. Let your light reflect Light. Have no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness. Forget not for ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... say honestly that he had arrived at his conclusions after earnest thought and conscientious inquiry, and that his conviction was the result of many lonely hours of self-examination. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... knowledge, her own character, which formerly she fancied that she thoroughly understood, became the first in rank among the terrae incognitae, the pathless wilds of a country that had no chart. Erringly and strangely she began the task of self-examination with self-condemnation. And then again she became aware of her own excellencies, and began to balance with juster scales the shades of good and evil. I, who longed beyond words, to restore her to the happiness it was still ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing out of the darkness like the light of a ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... discipline of self-examination was greatly assisted by the progress of events. England was now subjected to the personal rule of Disraeli. In 1868 he had been for ten months Prime Minister on sufferance, but now for the first time in his life he was in power. His colleagues were serfs or cyphers. He had acquired an influence ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... consciousness of this change in herself that made her want to be alone. The solitude of her inner life had given her the habit of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed her morning plunge ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... discover in them are drawn with elaborate minuteness; but the rest are wanting. Every thing indicates the condition of a keen and powerful intellect, which had studied men in books only; had, by self-examination and the perusal of history, detected and strongly seized some of the leading peculiarities of human nature; but was yet ignorant of all the minute and more complex principles which regulate men's conduct in actual life, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double, there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... imperative reason, is still a strong one, surely, but because the thing is good, and reasonable, and right in itself. Because, as they found in their own case, and as you may find in yours, if you will but think, the hurry and bustle of business is daily putting repentance and self-examination out of our heads. A man may think much, and pray much, thank God, in the very midst of his busiest work, but he is apt to be hurried; he has not set his thoughts especially on the matters of his soul, and so the soul's work is not ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to see," he took up again the self-examination, "that I am to blame for a good deal that I've found fault with in others. I mean that I'm a different variety of animal, and, naturally, no judge of the kinds of holes they live in or the way ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... armchair, take off your bracelets, light your rosecolored taper, and proceed slowly, to the soft accompaniment of your trailing skirt, rustling across the carpet, to your dressing-room, that perfumed sanctuary in which your beauty, knowing itself to be alone, raises its veils, indulges in self-examination, revels in itself and reckons up its treasures as a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "is severe and almost terrible in his preaching. He proclaims the judgments of God like the very trump of doom. In his special devotions, too, he speaks of nothing but mortifications, austerities, constant self-examination and such like exercises. Thus, by the wholesome fears with which he fills the minds of his penitents, he leads them to an exact observance of God's law, and to an anxious solicitude for their own salvation. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... future disciples what was a matter of course so long as he sojourned with them, but what might fade away after he was parted from them. He who in his preaching of the kingdom of God raised the strictest self-examination and humility to a law, and exhibited them to his followers in his own life, has described with clear consciousness his life crowned by death as the imperishable service by which men in all ages will be cleansed from their sin and made joyful in their God. By so doing ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... of examination. Days of humiliation ought to be days of self-examination. Let us therefore upon such a day as this, examine, whether we be not amongst the number of those that make the times perilous, whether we be not covenant-breakers? Here I will speak of three covenants; 1. Of the covenant we have made with God in our baptism. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... growth of the community idea, and as communities become so organized that they have some mechanism for self-examination and self-expression, more study will be given to the physical structure of the community as essential for economy and utility, and more pride will be taken in making it beautiful and satisfying. Community planning is essential for the highest ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,—darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... you are right. I'm not intending to try to dissuade you from—from the best there is in you. All I mean is that caution, self-examination, self-doubt, calm consideration of the other side—these are as necessary to success as energy and resolute action. All I suggest is that its splendour does not redeem a splendid folly. Its folly ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... and infantile trust, which will allow all the innate principles within—all God-bestowed graces which have been bruised and bowed by the tempest, to blossom gently upwards again, in "the clear shining after rain"—a breathing time in life—not too much retrospection or self-examination—keep that for the healthy and vigorous hours of the mind—but a silent basking in the light of God's presence—a time for faith, more than for labour; for general and unexpressed, more than ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... style. And now, for six long months, he worked at nothing but studies of the same subject; knowing only the criticisms of Irina herself. The days of honest labor and study, the earnest self-criticism and self-examination, were gone. For the moment he might believe himself to be of the elect few. But the period was brief; and, with the coming of the first cloud, the whole ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... conduct rather than the statements of the subject. There is also physiological experiment, by vivisection (I regret to say) and post-mortem dissection. But non-experimental psychology reposes on the self-examination of the student, and on the statements of psychological experiences made to him by persons whom he thinks he can trust. The psychologist, however, if he be, as Mr. Galton says, 'unimaginative in the strict but unusual sense of that ambiguous ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... had unexpectedly defended his son. The word Victoria had used, power, had touched him on the quick. What had she meant by it? Had she been his wife and not his daughter, he would have flown into a rage. Augustus Flint was not a man given to the psychological amusement of self-examination; he had never analyzed his motives. He had had little to do with women, except Victoria. The Rose of Sharon knew him as the fountainhead from which authority and money flowed, but Victoria, since her childhood, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the Gospels and place beside him the rich young man of the present day, on the threshold of Socialism. If we were to follow the difficulties, theories, doubts, resolves, and conclusions of each of these characters, we should find two very distinct threads of self-examination running through the two lives. And the essence of the difference was this: the modern Socialist is saying, "What will society do?" while his prototype, as we read, said, "What shall I do?" Properly considered, this latter ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... yielded in some directions to their contentions. If it feels itself challenged by them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... are within the power of all persons that choose. And we ought not to despair or disbelieve any of these sayings, but admiring them and emulating them and being enthusiastic about them, we ought to try and test ourselves in smaller matters with a view to greater, not avoiding or rejecting that self-examination, nor sheltering ourselves under the remark, "Perhaps nothing will be more difficult." For inertia[759] and softness are generated by that self-indulgence which ever occupies itself only with the easiest tasks, and flees from the disagreeable to what is most ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... that way of studying, and guiding attention; I have never done so without advantage, and I commend it to you." Says Gibbon [Footnote: Dr. Smith's Gibbon, p. 64.], "After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal until I had finished the task of self-examination; till I had resolved, in a solitary walk, all that I knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... a great point with the Stoic to be conscious of 'advance' or improvement.[11] By self-examination, he kept himself constantly acquainted with his moral state, and it was both his duty and his satisfaction to be approaching to the ideal of the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... she was in the last degree uncertain as to the state of her own heart. To what extent she was insensibly influenced by Hardyman's commanding position in believing herself to be sincerely attached to him, it was beyond her power of self-examination to discover. He doubly dazzled her by his birth and by his celebrity. Not in England only, but throughout Europe, he was a recognized authority on his own subject. How could she—how could any woman—resist the influence of his steady ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... printing. His comedy is one of those productions which are accounted dangerous, from developing the spirit of intrigue and gallantry with more gaiety than objection; and they would be more unanimously so, if the good humour and self-examination to which they excite did not suggest a spirit of charity and inquiry ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... above all earthly desire or dislike, that soul is freed from the attraction of earth-life, and is prepared to go on higher at once, or else wait in realms of bliss until the race is ready to pass on, according to the various theories held by the various advocates of the doctrine. A little self-examination will show one whether he is free from all desire to "come back," or not. But, after all, if there is Ultimate Justice in the plan, working ever and ever for our good and advancements, as the Reincarnationists claim—then it ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which of course ensued: though why these pauses SHOULD come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? 'I am a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover's state of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... hymn, plain song, chant, chaunt, response, anthem, motet; antiphon^, antiphony. oblation, sacrifice, incense, libation; burnt offering, heave offering, votive offering; offertory. discipline; self-discipline, self-examination, self-denial; fasting. divine service, office, duty; exercises; morning prayer; mass, matins, evensong, vespers; undernsong^, tierce^; holyday &c (rites) 998. worshipper, congregation, communicant, celebrant. V. worship, lift up the heart, aspire; revere &c 928; adore, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pitiful love. When a contrite man approached Him He raised him up with both arms, encouraged him, taught him to be kind, showed him the joy of life, and how to penetrate the sacred recesses of his own being—self-examination. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... most all else, hath its uses and abuses: its uses, as developed in modesty and domestic virtue, in religious meditation, self-examination, and prayer, and in prudence in the affairs of life: its abuses, in prudery, asceticism, superstitious awe, undue veneration of power, and when used as a cloud to conceal crime so hideous that nothing but the truth of God, vindicated by human laws founded ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... eminently fruitful for the future method of Ignatius. It was here that he began to regard self-discipline and self-examination as the needful prelude to a consecrated life. It was here that he learned to condemn the ascetism of anchorites as pernicious or unprofitable to a militant Christian. It was here that, while studying the manual of devotion ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... They have no objection to being saved provided that the process is quick, easy, and costs them nothing. They turn away from the thought of self-denial, of keeping under the body, of fasting and prayer, of watchfulness and self-examination. They must be made good all at once, and be admitted into the front rank of saints, without having fought and suffered in a lower place. My brethren, beware of this mushroom religion, which grows up suddenly, and as suddenly vanishes away. The best fruit is ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... as the first element of a dependent compound may keep the accusative ending, to indicate its construction: "sinlauxdo", self-praise. "sinekzameno", self-examination. ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... it appeared that the French and Spanish admirals felt far less confident. Her anxieties and hopes are vividly set forth in a letter which, in the course of the summer, she wrote to her mother, which is also singularly interesting from its self-examination, and from the substantial proof it supplies of the correctness of those anticipations which were based on the salutary effect which her novel position as a mother might be expected to ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... ship was covered with waves, and all on board were reeling to and fro, and staggering like a drunken man. Towards evening it blew a hurricane; the heavens were black with tempest, and all around us appeared awfully dangerous. Self-examination is at all times profitable and incumbent on the Christian, but when dangers press around him in a tumultuous scene of waters, it is peculiarly consolatory for him to find upon examination, that the sheet anchor of his hope is well grounded; and that he has laboured in the cause of his divine Lord ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... on rock, the great world might well be running back in stone-and-grassy dreams to the hour when God had given him as yet but two daughters, the crag and the clover. We were breaking into the sacred closet of Nature's self-examination. What if, on considering herself, she should of a sudden, and us-ward unawares, determine to begin the throes of a new cycle,—spout up remorseful lavas from her long-hardened conscience, and hurl us all skyward in a hot concrete with her unbosomed sins? Earth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... is the Spectre, the reasoning power in man: This is a false body, an incrustation over my immortal Spirit, a selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway. To cleanse the face of my spirit by self-examination, To bathe in the waters of life, to wash off the not human, I come in self-annihilation and the grandeur of inspiration; To cast off rational demonstration by faith in the Saviour, To cast off the rotten rags of memory by inspiration, To cast off Bacon, Locke, and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... would, however, recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This Kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
