"Self-deception" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some absurd and monstrous statement is made, while the first sensation of a deliberate break with truth causes a real excitement which is often the birth pang of the imagination. More commonly this is seen in childish play, which owes a part of its charm to self-deception. Children make believe they are animals, doctors, ogres, play school, that they are dead, mimic all they see and hear. Idealising temperaments sometimes prompt children of three or four suddenly to assert that ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and experience. Instead of taking one's own unsupported conjectures or the opinions of others as a guide, the secret of the search for truth is to become independent and of age, to think for one's self; and the only remedy against the dangers of self-deception and the ease of repetition is to be found in doubting everything hitherto considered true. This is the meaning of the Cartesian doubt, which is more comprehensive and more thorough than the Baconian. Descartes disputed only the certitude of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to do, then he was a scoundrel, and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... wisest of them, meant by "imputed righteousness." I do not mean that all who have written or spoken on the subject had this conception of it, but I believe they who thought truly meant this; they did not suppose that in imputing righteousness there was a kind of figment, a self-deception in the mind of God; they did not mean that by an act of will He chose to consider that every act which Christ did was done by us; that He imputed or reckoned to us the baptism in Jordan and the victory in the wilderness, and the agony in the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... I've had ten of 'em." It is, perhaps, in this sense that it is most true that little worries are most wearing. In its vaguer significance the phrase, though it contains a truth, contains also some possibilities of self-deception and error. People who have both small troubles and big ones have the right to say that they find the small ones the most bitter; and it is undoubtedly true that the back which is bowed under loads incredible can feel ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... the 'Nocturnes' and some of the 'Arrangements,' are defended only by a generous self-deception, when it is urged for them that they will be famous to-morrow because ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... the more unbearable in real life she is likely to become. Mr. Hardy's labour in this particular is a direct incentive to the study of hysteria as a fine art amongst such women as are natively prone to it. One of the gravest dangers which beset women is that of hysterical self-deception. The common-sense fashion of dealing with them when they suffer in that way is kindly and gently to ignore their symptoms until the reign of common-sense returns. To make them believe that their emotions are worthy of the scrutiny of a great analyst of the human heart ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... finds it—is it not better for a man that he engage in some straightforward comparatively harmless cheating, than if he risk his mental integrity in some ambiguous position and fall at last into self-deception and self-righteousness? That is the essential danger. That is the thing I always guard against. Heed that! It is ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell back again of its own ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... did he take my sister Sasha and Dr. Makowicki with him? He could not but know that in their company he would be just as well provided with all the necessaries of life as he would have been at Yasnaya Polyana. It would have been the most palpable self-deception. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... Self-deception is a very easy thing in matters of this sort; it is seldom difficult to find arguments in favour of that which the heart is set upon. The one that knows the Lord, will pray until the other is brought to him; neither ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... most blameworthy among us allowed himself to be offered as a sacrifice to appease the celestial wrath? By so doing he might secure our recovery. History tells us that this course is usually pursued in such cases as ours. Let us look into our consciences without self-deception or condoning. For my own part, I freely admit that in order to satisfy my gluttony I have devoured an appalling number of sheep; and yet what had they done to me to deserve such a fate? Nothing that could be called an offence. Sometimes, indeed, I have gone ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... more need of secrets from himself; now, turning his gaze inward, he looked upon all with which he had chosen to deceive himself. And there was nothing left for self-deception. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of these latter later aspects it was that I came at last to those subtler problems of tacit self-deception, of imperfect and unwilling apprehension, of innocently assumed advantages, of wilfully disregarded unfairness; and also to all those other problems of motive, those forgotten questions of why we make others work for us long after our personal needs are satisfied, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... exhibition of himself through verbal quarrels with women witnesses. The judge may be thoroughly convinced that his success with the woman may help the case, but such success is very rare, and when he thinks he has it, it is only apparent and momentary, or is merely naive self-deception. For women do like, for the sake of a momentary advantage, to please men and to appear convinced, but the judge for whom a woman does this is in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in order to retain them around them at home. Certainly matches are now and then projected which it is the duty of a parent to oppose; but there are two kinds of opposition, a conscientious and sorrowful opposition, and an egotistical and captious opposition, and men and women, in their self-deception, may sometimes mistake the one for the other. 'Marry your daughters lest they marry themselves, and run off with the ploughman or the groom' is an axiom of worldly wisdom. Marry your daughters, if you can do so satisfactorily, that ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... to please others, against my own inclination, against my own conscience, must be weakness indeed—self-deception; for if my friends wish my happiness, and I make myself miserable, how can that please them? Any sacrifice I could make, except that of principle, I would; but that I never will make, nor will my friends, nor do they, desire it—Forgive me, dear ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the grapes may be sour, and I enjoy the want of luxuries only because I cannot get them; but if my self-deception be useful to ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... autobiographical romance. The sombre colours of the last six Books throw out the livelier lights and shades of the preceding Books. While often falsifying facts and dates, Rousseau writes with all the sincerity of one who was capable of boundless self-deception. He will reserve no record of shame and vice and humiliation, confident that in the end he must appear the most virtuous of men. As the utterance of a soul touched and thrilled by all the influences of nature and of human life, the Confessions affects the reader ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... might be saved from desecration—and, although their insatiable hatred may have made them suggest clubbing as the mode by which His death should be hastened, we need not question that their scruples were genuine. It is an extraordinary instance of the game of self-deception which the human conscience can play. Here were people fresh from the greatest crime ever committed—their hands still reeking, one might say, with the blood of the Innocent—and their consciences, while utterly untouched ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... slaves, had of course no existence. Equally false, as will be seen later, was the whole suggestion that any peace could have been had with the South except on the terms of separation. Vallandigham, a demagogue of real vigour, had perhaps so much honesty as is compatible with self-deception; at any rate, upon his subsequent visit to the South his intercourse with Southern leaders was conducted on the footing that the Union should be restored. But his character inspired no respect. Burnside, now commanding the troops in Ohio, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... system of terrorism and an organised display of force on the one hand and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation of self-defence on the other have emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation. This awful habit has added to the ignorance and the self-deception of the administrators. Section 124-A under which I am happily charged is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection cannot be manufactured ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... See deeper than we think, and hide within Those leathern hulls unfathomable truths, Which we amid thought's glittering mazes lose. They grind among the iron facts of life, And have no time for self-deception. ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... a little difficult to do so?" This was a probe that went even deeper than the questioner knew. Mr. Lyon hesitated, seeing again as in a vision the astonishment of his family. He was conscious of an attempt at self-deception when he replied: ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... another formed a judgment diametrically different; each has his separate sense of the train of causation that culminated in the act; the accused himself would disagree with all the witnesses, if indeed he were capable of looking on the facts without conscious or unconscious self-deception; and we may be certain that an infallible omniscient mind, cognizant of all the hidden motives, would see the matter differently still. The task of the jury is, in the main, to induce from all these tragic inconsistencies an absolute outlook ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Feeling shame at such self-deception as this, he was about to throw the wood from him before he re-entered the place, when another idea ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... this question he clearly exempts himself from the common fault and guilt of the race. In the mouth of any other man, this question would at once betray either the height of hypocrisy, or a degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, and would overthrow the very foundation of all human goodness; while from the mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as the triumphant self-vindication of one who stood far above the possibility of successful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... coming towards the drawing-room in her best black silk dress, and in what might have been called a fluster of excitement at the thought of a visitor, if such a word had been applicable to her placid life of self-deception. Juanita made some small jest and laughed rather eagerly at it as she passed the pattern ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... my Gabriel? Was she a thief? Was she really a man in disguise? Was she some malicious old hag who had seen that I was afraid of her? Was she a spectre conjured up by my very cowardice? Was she a mocking phantasm of human self-deception? ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... who carefully studied on the spot all the conditions of the experiment and the documents relating to the investigation. He pointed out that the results were so indefinite and the number of persons under control so small that "one case of self-deception or of forgetfulness only would throw into absolute uncertainty the solution of the whole question''; that no lasting injury to health was found in spite of transient disturbances attributed by Dr Liebreich to other causes, and that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and, in default of proof to the contrary, we are compelled to assume that he practised the generosity which he so earnestly and sedulously praised. At least it will be advisable for the moment to assume that he pictured himself as generous Antonio, without difficulty or conscious self-deception. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... would recollect himself and seek for evidence that he was awake. "Can such things be?" he would say to himself; "for this people has turned all things upside down. Their happiness is misery, their wisdom is bewilderment, their truth is self-deception, their speech is a disguise, their science is the parent of error, their life is a process of suicide, their god is the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. What is believed is not professed, and what ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life. Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my question," said the youth, testily, "Henry, plead with me no longer," said Gascoyne, in a deep, stern tone. "My mind is made up. I have spent many years in dishonesty and self-deception. It is perhaps possible that by a life devoted to doing good, I might in the long run benefit men more than I have damaged them. This is just possible, I say, though I doubt it; but I have promised to give myself up whenever this cruise ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... reassurance. She is made happier by a nod of assent from Miss Sally. "Awfully reasonable!" is the verdict of the latter. Whatever there is lacking seriousness in the judge's face is too slight to call for notice—a mere twinkle to be ignored. Very little self-deception is necessary, and in this department success ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... If a man cannot see the difference at once, I almost despair of making him perceive why poetry refuses just now even more obstinately than trade (if that be possible) to 'follow the flag.' It will not follow, because you are waving the flag over self-deception. You may be as blithe as Plato in casting out the poets from your commonwealth—though for other reasons than his. You may be as blithe as Dogberry in determining, of reading and writing, that they may appear when there is no need of such ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... abandon Paris and bury myself in some rural retreat, where lonely meditation may fill my sorrowing heart with the balm of oblivion; but in charity to myself I wish to avoid the absurdity of this self-deception. Nothing is more hurtful than trying a useless remedy, for it destroys your confidence in all other remedies, and fills your soul with despair. Then, again, Paris is peculiarly fitted for curing these nameless maladies—'tis the modern ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... with compassion for the multitudes of my country-folk who yearly undergo the same misery. I hope they do not all know how miserable they are, and fancy that they enjoy themselves; but with many the suffering is too great for self-deception, and they come home to look back upon those long halls, filled with the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, as mere torture-chambers, whence nothing is brought away but backache, headache, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... His pallid cheek and sunken eye told of a mind but ill at ease. No art, no charm could restore the bloom and freshness which remorse for the past and fear for the future had long ago dispelled, never to return. And yet, with that sweet self-deception which all are so disposed to practise, he sought to banish reflection and beguile alarm in the pursuit of all kinds of frivolous amusements unworthy of his rank or station, and fancied he had succeeded in chasing care if for a moment he ceased ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... this key did not weigh much at any time with Phillida. A thin veil of religious sentiment served a purpose of self-deception with Mrs. Frankland, but such disguises could not conceal from Phillida's utterly sincere spirit the thoroughly worldly standpoint of Mrs. Frankland's suggestions. The effect of this line of talk upon her mind was very marked, nevertheless. It produced ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... of her, warm and alive, that had shattered for ever that flimsy structure of friendship which I had fancied so strong. I had said to Love, 'Thus far, and no farther', and Love had swept over me, the more powerful for being checked. The time of self-deception was ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... possible, in his ignorance of women, that a woman should really love him. She, whom he had first loved so hopelessly, had given him all she had to give, which was herself, frankly and freely. And after she had come to him, she loved him for a time, beyond even self-deception. But when she no longer loved him, she hid her secret and kept it long and well; for she feared him. He was not like Reanda. He would not strike only; he would kill and make an end ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... morning? For you and I are unhappy and ill at ease; and you and I are talking at cross purposes, groping, evading, fencing with words. If there is nothing significant in the friendship we gave each other from the hour we met—it is not worth the self-deception you ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... shining about them like the prismatic rays in a vase of polished crystal! To Niphrata, Sah-luma remained as a sort of splendid divinity, for whom no devotion was too vast, too high, or too complete, . . better, oh surely far better that she should die in her beautiful self-deception, than live to see her elected idol descend to his true level, and openly display all the weaknesses of his volatile, flippant, godless, sensual, yet, alas! most fascinating and genius-gifted nature, . ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... than self-deception in this matter. A patient is suddenly taken with syncope, or nervous weakness, from which abundant experience has shown that a speedy recovery would take place by simple rest and fresh air. But in the alarm of patient and friends something must be done. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Faust-like in you; you would fain grasp the highest and the deepest; and 'reel from desire to enjoyment, and in enjoyment languish for desire.' When a momentary change of feeling comes over you, you think the change permanent, and thus live in constant self-deception." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... modesty, and enhances her admiration. She is oftener to blame for the disillusion than he. With the perverseness of feminine nature she construes strength into coarseness of fibre, slowness into brutal indifference. Until women get at the truth in this matter of self-deception, disappointment surely awaits upon awakening from ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... assurance of their own sincerity the confusion that results is endless. The wisest of men are some times misled in this way. When we try to deceive others we have before us the danger of public exposure, while in self-deception we have 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. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... she said, smiling mournfully, "forgive me, I don't believe you: you are not going away, but I will ask you one more favour. Call this"—she pointed to her papers—"self-deception, feminine logic, a mistake, as you like; but do not hinder me. It's all that is left me in life." She turned away and paused. "Before this I had nothing. I have wasted my youth in fighting with you. Now I have caught at this and am living; ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... supposed, to gratify his own superior, masculine intelligence, by noting the aberrations and arriving at the rationale of her thought. From which it may be suspected that even Ludovic Quayle had his hours of innocent self-deception. Be that, however, as it may, certain it is that in pursuit of this pastime he one day presented to her the peculiar case of Richard Calmady for discussion, and that, not ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... clearness of judgment is apt to be the blessed hand- maid of uncommon truth of character; the mind that knows not what it is to play tricks upon its neighbours is rewarded by a comparative freedom from self-deception. Guy could not sit down upon his estates and lead an insect-life like that recommended by Rossitur. His energies wanted room to expend themselves. But the world offered no sphere that would satisfy him; even had his circumstances ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... is the bud, not the flower, and never is it of value until it expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment; every act of devotion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is worse than useless; it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers to self-deception and tends to lower the line of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... self is revealed in her epistolary style, finesse, good-humor, and sprightliness were characterised in this note. Zibeline's finesse had divined Henri's self-deception; her good-humor sought to dissipate it; and her sprightliness was evidenced by her allusions to M. Desvanneaux and the loss of ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... praiseworthy principles; and sage maxims are not infrequently put in the mouth of stupidity, to show how easily such commonplace truisms may be acquired. Nobody ever painted so truthfully as he has done the facility of self-deception, the half self-conscious hypocrisy toward ourselves, with which even noble minds attempt to disguise the almost inevitable influence of selfish motives in human nature. This secret irony of the characterization commands admiration as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and responsibilities that played so fine a part in his talk. His was essentially the nature of an artistic appreciator; he could find interest and beauty in endless aspects of things that I marked as evil, or at least as not negotiable; and the impulse I had towards self-deception, to sustained and consistent self-devotion, disturbed and detached and pointless as it was at that time, he had indeed a sort of admiration for but no sympathy. Like many fantastic and ample talkers he was at bottom secretive, and he gave me a series of little shocks of discovery ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... well suppose that, as I can that they should talk to themselves for half an hour; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on, unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity, the choruses of the ancients. Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of self-deception; we must lend ourselves a little to the delusion; and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and hamlets had been illuminated by its radiance, had turned away, choosing darkness rather than light. They had put from them the heavenly gift, when it was offered them. They had called evil good, and good evil, till they had fallen victims to their wilful self-deception. Now, though they might actually believe that they were doing God service in persecuting His people, yet their sincerity did not render them guiltless. The light that would have saved them from deception, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... shame has prevented them from asking the advice of the physician. They have been afraid lest he should regard the child as intellectually or morally deficient, or as the offspring of a degenerate family. In addition, we have to take into account self-deception on the part of the parents, who, indeed, often deceive themselves willingly, saying to themselves that the matter is of no importance, and that ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to the protection of Augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. And as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of shame, for him; of regret, for ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... sobriquet bestowed upon them when they were out of hearing. Lady Wicketts had once been a reigning 'beauty,' and she lived on the reputation of that glorious past. Miss Fosby aided and abetted her in this harmless self-deception. Lady Wicketts had been painted by all the famous artists of her era, from the time of her seventeeth birthday to her thirtieth. She had been represented as a 'Shepherdess,' a 'Madonna,' a 'Girl with Lilies,' a 'Lady with a Greyhound,' a 'Nymph Sleeping,' and more briefly ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... are always in extremes. As they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of men than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience. Enthusiasm is good material for the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... preconceived opinion of the people in his favour, that only the irresistible proofs furnished by the man's own actions could gradually shake this opinion. It required the full force and obstinacy of this strange self-deception in Wellington, it required the full measure of his activity and iron persistency, in order at last, by a perpetual reiteration of errors and mistakes, to create in the people the firm conviction that the Duke of Wellington was one of the least adroit and most mischievous ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the malady of the time than that of shutting our eyes as firmly as possible. It is true, our intentions have been of the best; but since we have at length discovered how to attain what we wished for, we should at once throw off the fatal self-deception that political freedom would suffice to make men truly free and happy. Political freedom is an indispensable, but not the sole, condition of progress; whoever refuses to recognise this condemns mankind afresh to the night of reaction. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... worst of all kinds of deception is self-deception. Don't, let me, beg of you, attempt to deceive yourself in a matter so important. I am sure you have experienced this reluctance to resuming work after a day of pleasure. It is a universal experience. And now that we are on this subject, I will add, that I have observed ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... afraid to say it now with full certainty, but it seems to me that all their life of this so-called freedom is a continuous self-deception and falsehood. The life of each of these people, whom I have seen during these days, is moving in a strictly defined circle, which is just as solid as the corridors of our prison, just as closed as the dial of the watches which they, in the innocence of their mind, lift every minute ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... a cruel thing to say to the unlearned and the multitude, 'Believe, and you are at once saved; do not wait for fruits, rejoice at once,' and neither to accompany this announcement by any clear description of what faith is, nor to secure them by previous religious training against self-deception!" ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... late for breakfast. He would find out if any crocodiles had been seen about here lately, and if they had not, he would bring out his gun and . . . suddenly Mark was turned inside out by terror, for not twenty yards away there was without any possibility of self-deception a wild beast something between an ant-eater and a laughing hyena that with nose to the ground was evidently pursuing him, and what was worse was between him and home. There flashed through Mark's mind the memories of what other hunters had done in such situations, what ruses they had ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... himself for feeling them at all, and felt thankful that Helen Minorkey had those higher qualities which would up-lift—he had read some German, and compounded his words—up-lift a man to a higher level. Perhaps every loyal-hearted lover plays these little tricks of self-deception on himself. Every lover except the one whose "object" is indeed perfect. You know who that is. So do I. Indeed, life would be a very poor affair if it were not for these—what shall I call them? If Brown knew how much ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... this object is criticism in hand-to-hand fighting, and in hand-to-hand fighting, it is not a question of whether the opponent is a noble opponent, of equal birth, or an interesting opponent; it is a question of meeting him. It is thus imperative that the Germans should have no opportunity for self-deception and resignation. The real pressure must be made more oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace more ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... terror at this self-deception. The last few nights I have hardly slept at all. A traveller must feel the same who sails across the sea ignorant of the country to which he journeys. Vaguely he pictures it as resembling his native land, and lands ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... liberty, and this cold-pulsed Heloise would fly forever. She must be left to her day dreams and to the work of a sweet self-deception," he artfully mused. They were interrupted but a moment, when Ram Lal Singh glided to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the rest of existence even if she knew in advance that the experiment would fail. Life was emptier than ever now that this dream was over. Yet the worst was not in that disappointment, but in the discovery of her own weakness and self-deception. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... wrought excitement, which, while it subdued, and even effaced, the trivial faults of that early age, exercised on my character an influence far from beneficial to my future happiness. One of the subjects on which Mrs. Middleton would often speak to me with eagerness and eloquence, was the self-deception with which most people persuade themselves that their affections flow in their most natural channels, without proving their own feelings by the stern test of reality. Fully aware of her partiality to me; aware, too, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... sound of horses' hoofs from the road behind him. "Already?" was his first thought. He leaned over the side of the carriage to look backwards. All was clear. The carriage had driven past a farm, and the sound he had heard had been the echo of his own horse's hoofs. The discovery of this momentary self-deception quieted his apprehensions for a time, so that it seemed to him the danger was over. He could now see the towers of Mantua. "Drive on, man, drive on," he said under his breath, for he did not really wish the coachman to hear. The coachman, nearing the goal, had given ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... perseverance in willful self-deception Elizabeth would make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew; determined, if he persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father, whose negative ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... educated British and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side and self-deception ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... lucky"—meaning less fraudulent, or more skilful—"with the hidden wealth of Simancas than he has been with regard to materials which are more generally accessible. I trust it may prove so." If Freeman thought that he meant that, he must have had singular powers of self-deception. "I have been twitted by men of thought and learning"—whom he does not name—"for letting Mr. Froude off too easily, and I am inclined to plead guilty to the charge. I do not suppose that Mr. Froude wilfully misrepresents anything; the fault seems to be inherent and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rose to her chair again and seated herself to watch it almost awed, it did not fade—the smile. It settled into a still radiance and stayed. And, fearful of the self-deception of longing as she was, Dowie could have sworn as the minutes passed that the mist of colour had been real and remained also and even made the whiteness a less deathly thing. And there was such a naturalness in the strange smiling ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with these rags of devil-may-care good spirits. The genial cynicism of Ogniben is excellent of its kind, and pleases the palate like an olive amid wines; but this man of universal intellectual sympathies is at heart the satirist of moral illusions, the unmasker of self-deception, who with long experience of human infirmities, has come to chuckle gently over his own skill in dealing with them; and has he not—we may ask—wound around his own spirit some of the incurable illusions ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... unique book and the unique fragment. Of course to term a volume or production unique is a perilous business; the bookseller and the auctioneer may do so ex officio; an inexperienced amateur may resort to the term as a pleasant and harmless self-deception; but no responsible writer or critic dares to pronounce anything whatever unique without an emphatic caveat. We have personally known cases where a publication by one of the early printers was first introduced to notice, and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... power in the persecution of heresy, burning above two hundred persons; and he also related how Can Signorio della Scala on his death-bed, after giving a pious charge to his children, ordered the murder of his brother—examples of the boundless possibility of self-deception. One of these children killed the other, and was himself driven from the throne, so ending the dynasty of the Scalas. Referring to his illustrations, Mr. Ruskin pointed out the expressions of hope, in the conquest of death, and the rewards of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and suddenly. The problem was subtler than he had thought. Weakness was at the core of it, weakness revealed in self-deception and self-accusation alike, the weakness of the finical dreamer, the man with the unrobust conscience. But the weakness which Lewis arraigned himself on was the very obvious failing of the diffident and the irresolute. Wratislaw tried the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... boating. Emilia's was held as a great blunder, for she was said to have an eye devoted to temporal advantages, also volatile, yet of great determination, triumphing over every obstacle, and in much danger of self-deception. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wilful blight of her affections, she found them valueless as means: they had been the end to which she had immolated all her affections, and were now the only end that remained to her. She did not confess this to herself as a principle of action, but it operated through the medium of unconscious self-deception, and terminated in inveterate avarice. She laid on external things the blame of her mind's internal disorder, and thus became by degrees an accomplished scold. She often went her daily rounds through a series of deserted apartments, ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... of the co-operators met in the kitchen at Ashness and for a time talked about the weather and the price of sheep. Askew let them talk and Kit was too preoccupied to give them a lead. He had been thoughtful since he met Janet Bell, for she had banished the self-deception he had unconsciously used and thrown a new and disturbing light on his friendship with Grace. Ridiculous as it was in many ways, he was falling in love with Grace Osborn. Moreover, he had met her an hour since and she had talked with a friendly confidence ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... element both of self-deception and deliberate masquerade in Blougram's defence. He made him "say right things and call them by wrong names." The intellectual athlete in him went out to the intellectual athlete in the other, and rejoiced in every equation he seemed to establish. He played, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... itself, pierced to the centre of Bertha's momentary self-deception. "I have no right to think of him. He belongs to Alice Heath!" But the feeling that she herself belonged to Marshall Haney was gone. That she owed him service was true, but since the night of his drunkenness she had definitely ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... progress slow; no doubts of her deserving, no fears of opposition of taste, no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity of temper. Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits wanted no half-concealment, no self-deception on the present, no reliance on future improvement. Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny's mental superiority. What must be his sense of it now, therefore? She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody minds having what is too good for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... true!" I said to him in somber anger. "I proposed to put before her the fact of my own weakness, of my own self-deception, which also was deception of her. I propose to ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... tell the doctor just how much value he placed on that life. But to what purpose? Doctors lived in their own peculiar atmosphere of conceit and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a new-laid egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to the miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It would be a waste of words, for Norris would never understand. Would Marion? Cold terror seized him at the thought of the coming, the inevitable scene with ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and that those which are attributed to him were the product of self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture, then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. John was an empty chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that those apparent miracles were essential to Christ's success, and ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... brother to say nothing of her escape on the previous day, for she was too unnerved to go over the scene again that night, and meet her father's questioning eyes. She wanted to be alone first and face the truth; and this she had done in no spirit of weak self-deception. The shadow of the unknown had fallen upon her, and in its cold gray light the glitter and tinsel of the world had faded, but unselfish human love had grown more luminous. The imminence of death had kindled rather than quenched it. It was seen to be something intrinsically precious, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... life passed in order before his mental gaze (he had himself lately reached his fifty-second year), and not one found grace in his eyes. Everywhere the same ever-lasting pouring of water into a sieve, the ever-lasting beating of the air, everywhere the same self-deception—half in good faith, half conscious—any toy to amuse the child, so long as it keeps him from crying. And then, all of a sudden, old age drops down like snow on the head, and with it the ever-growing, ever-gnawing, and devouring dread of death ... and the plunge into the abyss! Lucky indeed if ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Christians while destitute of love. He cites several facts as evidence that where love is lacking, necessarily faith and deliverance from death are absent, likewise. Thus no opportunity is given for self-deception or a frivolous excuse based upon wordy boasting of one's faith. The reality of the inner life is known by the presence of love, which in turn attests the presence ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... time when mental vision is so clear, when the mind is so sane, as when death has come very near to us. There is a light which he brings with him, which he holds before the eyes of the dying, the stern light, seldom seen, of reality, before which self-deception and meanness, and that which maketh a lie, cower in their native deformity and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... hall. Oh, my dear, I am so very grateful to you for these precious jewels, and more than all for the friendship and kindness that prompted the gift," said Rose; and perhaps she really did believe that she prized the giver more than the gift; for such self-deception would have been in keeping ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Aeschylus examination he began to read up the general information on the subject, and he intended to do it quite as if he were unaware of what the actual questions were to be. But it was the merest self-deception. Each question was branded in fiery letters on his recollection, and he found that, as he read, he was skipping involuntarily every topic which he knew had not been touched ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... ENGLAND.—He began with the accession of the Stuarts, in 1603, the period when the popular element, so long kept tranquil by the power and sex of Queen Elizabeth, was ready first to break out into open assertion. Hume's self-deception must have been rudely discovered to him; for he tells us, in an autobiography fortunately preserved, that he expected so dispassionately to steer clear of all existent parties, or, rather, to be so just to all, that he should gain universal approbation. "Miserable," he adds, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... difficulty be passed this summer, and next year he might write himself Bachelor of Arts. A return to the studies of boyhood probably accounted in some measure for the frequent gaiety which he attributed to improving health and revived hopes. Everything he undertook was easy to him, and by a pleasant self-deception he made the passing of a school task his augury of success ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... guessed that once she began to thaw he would forthwith whirl her into July. She must be prepared to accept that, however—repellent though the thought was—she assured herself it was most repellent. She prided herself on her skill at catching and checking herself in self-deception; but it somehow did not occur to her to contrast her rather listless previous planning with the energy and interest she at once put into this project for supreme ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... we are actually predicating a probability that the editor of the Chicago Inter-Ocean is a reincarnation of Balaam's ass. I am not prepared to assert that Spiritualism is all brazen charlantry or foolish self-deception. It may be that the "inspiration" of which Beecher speaks as an emanation from God himself, is but a higher wisdom taught the longing heart by those it has loved and lost. The souls of the dead scratch no messages on greasy slates for stupid ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the tension and concentration of mind which he brought to bear upon his labours, as compared with that which men in general bestow on whatever business they may have in hand; and, to-wards the close of life, this honourable self-deception no doubt led him to draw far too largely upon his failing strength, under the impression that there was nothing unduly severe in the efforts to which he continued to brace himself with ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... sexual chivalry was all rot; it might be as rotten as manure—and also as fertile. It is vain to call first love a fiction; it may be as fictitious as the ink of the cuttle or the doubling of the hare; as fictitious, as efficient, and as indispensable. It is vain to call it a self-deception; Schopenhauer said that all existence was a self-deception; and Shaw's only further comment seems to be that it is right to be deceived. To Man and Superman, as to all his plays, the author attaches a most fascinating preface at the beginning. But I really think that he ought also to attach ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... ideal, by lamentations over deceived hopes and unfulfilled aspirations, by painful realization of the imperfection and perishability of all earthly things, and the insignificance and transitoriness of life, in a word, by Weltschmerz, in its purest, ideal form, not merely self-deception and irony turned against one's own soul life, but a profoundly solemn emotion, springing from sublime pity for the misery of the world read by the light of personal trials and sorrows. He sang not of a mistress' blue eyes, nor sighed forth melancholy love-notes—the object of his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... judgment, to fall in with the received idea, and, with biassed minds, unconsciously to follow in the wake of public opinion, while professing to lead it. To the best of my belief half the dogmatism of those we daily meet is in consequence of the unwitting practices of this self-deception. Simply let us not talk about what we do not understand, save as learners, and we shall not by ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... Zephyr's carrying out his scheme of having his mysterious disappearance reported, he was fully satisfied that it would not deceive Pierre for an instant. Firmstone, however, was deceived in another way. It was a case of harmless self-deception, the factors of which were wholly beyond his control. His reason assured him unmistakably that Hartwell would start at once for Colorado on learning of the loss of the bullion, and that the manager would be a hindrance in working out his ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... much boasting among us of our present or our past, as we sat together in the little room at the great hotel. A certain amount of self-deception is quite possible at threescore years and ten, but at three score years and twenty Nature has shown most of those who live to that age that she is earnest, and means to dismantle and have done with them in a very little while. As for boasting of our past, the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was in the position of an immoral man, a betrayer, an adulterer, with a vulgar secret, which he must support by lying and share with servants. And what was the outlook? What would be the end? Here was a situation from which there was no escape. Let there be no false glamour, no disguise, no self-deception. On the eve of his promotion to the dignities and responsibilities of a Judge, he was taking the first step down on the course of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the corridors below and that unknown danger which iron doors shut down. I had been a clearer-headed man that morning if I could have put away from me my doubt of what the depths were hiding from us. But I hid it from her always. A truce of self-deception shut out the question as one we neither cared to hear ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... at first, but I was never angry. What of it, if, with a sort of sweet absurdity, she talked in great agitation of the depravity of hearts, of the sin of light-mindedness, of the self-deception which leads men astray—a confused but purposeful jumble, in which occasional allusions to the errors of Rome, and to the want of seriousness in the upper classes, put in a last ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... upon a journey which we all must take, and I entreat you to consider that, if we have faith in a future life, we must believe also that we carry hence not only the record of our acts, whether good or evil, but the memory of them; and that memory, undimmed by falsehood or self-deception, will create for us Heaven or Hell. I do not say—God forbid!—that you should desire death because you are still young, and, comparatively speaking, unspotted from the world; but I say I would sooner see any of you struck down in the flower of his youth ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of nothing but France. Now they realized that the best way to help France was by going on with their work at home. Paris was trying to be normal, but no Parisian was making the bluff that Paris was normal. The Gallic lucidity of mind prevented such self-deception. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... nature could endure no more and I tottered back against the further wall, beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a young girl's exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen years, and made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my reason inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it was comprehensible, as ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... delightful feeling where a handsome woman is concerned. The judgment is not warped by passion or clouded by emotion; you see the woman as she is, not as you wish to see her, and if she disappoint it does not matter. You are not left to choose between systematic self-deception and a humiliating admission of your mistake. The lady has not been placed upon an impossible pedestal, and she has not toppled down. In this case the lady started at the most advantageous disadvantage; every admirable quality, her candour, her courage, her ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... roving world-citizenry and hidebound mono-patriotism. It is probable that their attitude will change as soon as it is generally realized that personal devotion and loyalty to two causes are not psychologically a self-deception, and that the serving of two masters is not a moral anomaly unless, as in the original adage, one of the masters ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... that was in him. In spite of his sorrow, his heart beat in lively, sturdy rhythm: wild songs leaped forth in mad, intoxicated strains: everything in him hymned life and even sadness took on a festival shape. Christophe was too frank to persist in self-deception: and he despised himself. But life swept him headlong: and in his sadness, with death in his heart, and life in all his limbs, he abandoned himself to the forces newborn in him, to the absurd, delicious joy of living, which grief, pity, despair, the aching wound of an irreparable loss, all ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... judgments she had always hitherto despised. This was an easy task. She was yet to find that it was not the only task. Her thoughts are those of many, in like situations, and it is for this reason that we dwell upon them. Our purpose is, to show the usual processes of self-deception. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... religionists did to creeds, nor allow the mind, which ever strives to insulate itself and its acquisitions, to forget the nature of the process by which it substituted scientific for common notions, and so with one as with the other lay the basis of self-deception by a pedantic and superstitious employment ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the other, and we can say "that morality in Smith's sense, just as Feuerbach taught later, is only reflected self-interest, although Smith himself was quite unwilling to look at sympathy as an egotistic principle. By means of a process that we can almost call a kind of self-deception of the imagination, we must look at ourselves with the eyes of others, a very sensible precaution of nature, which thus has created a balance for impulses that otherwise must have operated detrimentally. [Bear in mind what I have said above ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... the same principle of ascendency and interference as the government of Ireland under Poynings's Act, it is difficult to know which to admire most, Mr. Redmond's assurance, or his cynical appreciation of the ignorance or capacity for deliberate self-deception of those with whom he has to deal. The third confusion is that between Imperial functions and national or Dominion functions, due to the fact that the two are combined in the United Kingdom Parliament, which is also, under present conditions, the Imperial Parliament, and to the consequent ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... contained stipulations requiring the vessels to be capable of carrying an armament, in addition to the requirements of speed and punctuality. The same thing was done in this country in 1846-7; and one of the principal means of carrying the Collins bill through Congress was the self-deception of making the steamers equivalent to vessels of war. It was a plea to which statesmen and enterprising business men resorted, and was used as a means of securing those commercial facilities which constitutional quibblers would not vote for directly, ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... years noted for his remarkable discoveries in the conditions of matter in highly-exhausted vacuum-tubes. In 1870 he undertook the investigation of Spiritualism, with the full expectation of exposing it as a compound of trickery on the one side and of credulity and self-deception on the other. In January, 1874, he published, in the "Quarterly Journal of Science," a brief compend of the notes of his investigations during the four years preceding. Some of the phenomena here recorded are so extraordinary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Arthur Fenton as well as any woman can understand a man who is her friend. Her friendship softened the harshness of her judgments, but she could not be blind to his vanity, his constant efforts at self-deception, and so far as she was in possession of the facts, she reasoned correctly in regard to his ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... ever and anon stopping to listen, with a puzzled face, to a continuous squeaking overhead. It sounded like several pairs of new boots all squeaking at once, but Mr. Vickers, who was a reasonable man and past the age of self-deception, sought for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... not speaking of the lies of social life, but of self-deception. He goes on to class under that head "vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would." These things are the sweetness of "the lie that sinketh in." Many a man has a kind of mental kaleidoscope, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tropical Malays do not order their lives as did the people of the Spanish village where he may have been reared, no selfish laments of ingratitude over blessings unasked and only imperfectly understood by the natives, no fatuous self-deception as to the real conditions, but a patient consideration of the difficulties encountered, the good accomplished, and the unavoidable evils incident to any human work. The country and the people, too, are described with the charming simplicity of the eyes that see clearly, the brain that ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a Miss L. S., developed the power of automatic writing. Of all forms of mediumship, this seems to me to be the one which should be tested most rigidly, as it lends itself very easily not so much to deception as to self-deception, which is a more subtle and dangerous thing. Is the lady herself writing, or is there, as she avers, a power that controls her, even as the chronicler of the Jews in the Bible averred that he was controlled? In ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sincere, is one who has abandoned his intellect and turned the bark of reason rudderless, adrift. This is entirely apart from the very common reinforcement of usual psychic powers with fraud, which, beginning in self-deception, puts out from port without papers and sails the sea with forged ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... when it makes a man try to be or to appear at his best: but when a man lives a thoroughly unreal life, taking a high line in theory and never troubling about practice, then it's incredible to what lengths self-deception can go. Dr. Johnson said that he looked upon himself as a polite man! It is quite easy to get to believe yourself impeccable in certain points: and as one gets older, and less assailable, and less liable ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the face, in the motion of the lips, in the indefinable tones of voice, in the air and manner, there comes out constantly in all characters an atmosphere of the truth, which the words spoken, whether intended or not intended, do not convey. Even unintentional feigning fails here, and even self-deception is belied. The truth of a character will make itself felt and influential, for good or evil, through all disguises. So it was, that though the words of Mr. Rhys might have been said by anybody, the impression they produced belonged to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... favoured with seasons of great comfort, to counterbalance their dejections, yet they never hear or read of those who 'have drawn back to perdition,' but they are terrified with the idea that they shall shortly resemble them; so that every warning given against hypocrisy or self-deception seems to point them out by name, and every new discovery of any fault or mistake in their views, temper, or conduct, seems to decide their doom. At the same time, they are often remarkably melted into humble, admiring gratitude, by contemplating ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the place after a long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day, and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... and mortal have now reached the stage of mutual recognition, and thrown off their mutual disguise, which was a false relation, though it often exists. Does not the man at times conceal himself to the God, by self-deception, self-excuse, by lying to his higher nature? In such case is not the God also hidden, in fact compelled to assume a mask? Thus the poet brings before us the wonderful interplay between the human and divine, till they ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... in pure gold and precious stones, and keep nothing more diligently before the eyes of the heart, that faith be exercised thereby. Let another pray, fast, go to confession, prepare himself for mass and the sacrament as he will. Do thou the same, but know that all that is pure fool's-work and self-deception, if you do not set before you the words of the testament and arouse yourself to believe and desire them. A long time would you have to polish your shoes, pick the lint[7] off your clothes, and deck yourself out to get an inheritance, if you ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther |
