"Self-absorption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abundantly possessed, more profoundly applied, by others, we believe that it would be difficult to cite an instance in which they have been so entirely combined or so continuously exercised. M. Sainte-Beuve is pre-eminently an artist in criticism. He has exhibited that self-absorption which it is easy to imagine, easy to find examples of, in poetry, in painting, and in music, but which in criticism had hitherto been hardly conceivable. "There is in him," wrote Gustave Planche in 1834,—and the force of the eulogy is in no degree ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... has accomplished, and he has done great things, has been the labour of his own hand and brain. He is an artist in invention; working out his own conceptions in silence and retirement, with the artist's love and self-absorption. This is but saying that he is a true inventor; for a mere manufacturer of inventions, who employs others to assist him in the work, is not an inventor in the old ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the next day she was pacing backwards and forwards at the junction where the train from the West was to be met. She paid no attention to her few fellow-travellers, in whom, however, her self-absorption added to the interest and curiosity she aroused as she swept by them in her restless walk to and fro, with her long white fur cloak thrown back over her shoulders, and her loose hair and floating veil tangled ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... world seemed a groping thing beside the insight of innocence. BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD—even the hidden god in their neighbour's breast! Selden was in the state of impassioned self-absorption that the first surrender to love produces. His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... should discourage his inspiration. Beethoven, another of the chief objects of George Eliot's veneration, bore all the rough stress of an active and troublesome calling, though of the musician, if of any, we may say, that his is the art of self-absorption. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... half-alive languid person. Pauline felt what she said, and acted it in every gesture. Her precious promptitude of expression made her invaluable as a companion to her father. He was English all over and all through; hypochondriacal, with a strong tendency to self-involution and self-absorption. She was only half English, or rather altogether French, and when he came home in the evening he often felt as if some heavy obstruction in his brain and about his heart were suddenly dissolved. She and her mother were like Hercules in the house of Admetus. Before Hercules has ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... just that visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in spite of his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was his memory of passing events. In the petulance ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse |
