"Introspective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In reciting this page from the book of his life he had lost thought of his surroundings, but now he remembered, and seemed startled at having talked so much. He retired within himself, his eyes taking on an introspective look as though, as one of the boys expressed it, "he was ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... is not the self-tormenting strife of introspective and self-conscious aspiration, but rather an unrelaxed, diligent intention, a steady acquiescence, a simple and loyal surrender to the great currents of life, a holding on to results achieved in your best moments, that shall do it for you: a surrender ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... red-headed and long-nosed, even from the beginning—a shy, introspective, self-conscious little boy, made peculiarly familiar with his personal defects by constant remarks that his hair was red and that his nose was long. At school, for years, he was known familiarly as "Rufus," "Red-Head," "Carrot-Top," or "Nosey," ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... colour. A marvellous poet, a precise sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him like Millet, and, like Millet, very near to the soil; a natural man, yet crossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of a sensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and as introspective as Heine; a visionary and a lover of life, very close to the periphery of things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's alter ego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionate fling at nature; withal a sculptor, always profound ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... success in "The Gamekeeper at Home," 1878; other books display a very accurate faculty of observation and description, a reverence for nature, for rural scenes and people; "The Story of my Heart," 1883, is an introspective and somewhat morbid autobiography; he died after six years' illness at Goring, Sussex; Prof. Saintsbury pronounces him "the greatest minute describer of English country life since ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... monument of intelligent and conscientious labor—deals with every phase and aspect of state and political activity, public and private, in the Fatherland.... Teems with entertaining anecdotes and introspective ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... characters, Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon. He loved to emphasize the superiority of history over fiction as dramatic material. The third of the three essays mentioned was a Jeremiad on the morbid self-consciousness of the age, which shows itself in religion and philosophy, as skepticism and introspective metaphysics; and in literature, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... cock-crow, and though he looked quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective that one couldn't get in a word ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... much alone, had led such an introspective life, that she had hardly realised and understood all that was going on around her. At the time when the inner vitality of France first asserted itself and then swept away all that hindered its mad progress, she was tied to the invalid chair of her half-demented ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... his birth, and both on his father's and his mother's side, Hopeful was, to begin with, a youth of an unusually shallow and silly mind. In the jargon of our day he was a man of a peculiarly optimistic temperament. No one ever blamed him for being too subjective and introspective. It took many sharp trials and many bitter disappointments to take the inborn frivolity and superficiality out of this young man's heart. He was far on in his life, he was far on even in his religious life, before you would have ever thought ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure of breast and back. There is no expression of immodesty. The woman of the Philippines is sad as she is swarthy, and her melancholy eyes are almost always introspective, or glancing far away, and revising the disappointed dreams of long ago. Profounder grief than is read in the faces of bronze and copper no mourning artist has wrought nor gloomy poet written. Below the jacket, the everlasting blazer, is a liberal width of cloth tightly drawn about ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... life that is a presage of immortality. It is evident, indeed, that Arnold wrote Balder Dead in his most fortunate hour, and that Merope is his one serious mistake in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and introspective drama—the presentation of character through action—is impossible; to a method thus reticent and severe drama—the expression of emotion in action—is improper. 'Not here, O Apollo!' It is written ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... letters to Emmy, her only convent friend, contained little of idle gossip and of things that had happened. They had no continuity. They were introspective, and took the form of a diary taken up at odd moments and left again to be continued, sometimes the following day, sometimes after a week. They revealed intellectual development far in advance of her years, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... explained that I was a stranger within their gates, wafted thither by circumstances extraordinarily auspicious, and had satisfied them concerning my parentage, birthplace, prospects and pursuits, with introspective anecdotal references to various deceased members of my family tree. I did not tell them the truth—that I was a pilgrim from a far country, footsore and travel-soiled, that I had been well-nigh poisoned by their bad cooking and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Classic and Romantic schools, and it may be said that in him many of the leading ideas of both parties were reconciled. His literary form was as severe and sculpturesque as that of Alfieri himself, whilst the most subjective and introspective of the Romantic poets did not so much color the world with his own mental and spiritual hue as Leopardi. It is not plain whether he ever declared himself for one theory or the other. He was a contributor to the literary journal which the partisans ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... is one of the many introspective passages in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the introspective mood in which a man pays no attention to his listener as he cons over his secret thoughts, I remained silent, and, seating myself upon the bed, continued to watch his ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... would undoubtedly have been had he not had his early environment of egotism, mystery and clap-trap—had he, also, not developed through his childhood and youth his passionate devotion to his father. The religious ceremonies of his young days had made him self-conscious and introspective and, although during his years abroad he had felt on many occasions that he was completely freed from his early bondage, scenes, thoughts and longings would recur and remind him that he was celebrating his liberty ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... he called them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... a while for this fact to be communicated to Mr. Heatherbloom. Though she shifted her figure often, as if to call attention to the pale profile of her face against a leaden sky, his thoughts remained introspective. Only the sky-line seemed to interest him. But one day something white came dancing in the breeze to his feet. Absorbed in deep neutral tones afar, he did not see it; his four-footed charges, however, were quick to perceive ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... became intense, and fever set in. Dr. Kendrick was summoned; and, though the case was severe, it had no alarming symptoms at first. Jack went to and fro with his merry whistle; speculative he might be, but he was not introspective or morbid: wife ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... cramped and contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and distrust of almost all enjoyment. When, at another time, he had to examine on "Locke on the Human Understanding," the metaphysical study acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and anguish that he could hardly endure. It is pleasant, however, to find him in another mood, writing, "Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... if it was the kind of coldness that would ever be removed; if Steel believed her guilty, it never would. Langholm would not have admitted it, was not even aware of it in his own introspective mind, but he almost hoped that Steel was not thoroughly convinced of his ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... respects a man among men. He appealed to the artist in her by a natural dignity and distinction of person and character, by a suggestion of volcanic forces warring with the ascetic strain in him yet steadfastly controlled; and above all, by a superb simplicity and unconsciousness of self, that draws introspective temperaments as infallibly as the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... not an introspective man. His life, the life of a rich man's son, had left little room for self-examination of mood and purpose and character. He had done well enough during his four years in the university, not because he was ambitious, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... ridiculous I was. Perhaps I am not so impulsive—you see, I am years older now—perhaps I am more selfish. I don't know which it is and—I can't express my feelings, but I have had sufficient time since you went away to think and to look into my own soul. Really I have become quite introspective. Of course, my feeling for you is just the same as it was, dear, but I—I can't—" She waved a graceful hand to indicate her surroundings. "Well, this is my world, and I am a part of it. You understand, don't you? The thought of giving it up makes me really ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... hurrying on to Rome, and I have no time to write a georgic. But, oh! my little friends of the north; my struggling, strenuous, introspective, self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant friends, who spout the 'Hue! Pater, oh! Lenae!' without a ghost of an idea what you are talking about, do you know what is meant by the god? Bacchus is everywhere, but if ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the stronger under the presuppositions of time and place; it would be unfair, furthermore, to deny the appeal that he makes to our sympathy. But, on the other hand, he is not free from suggestions of artifice; his characters are abnormally introspective and self-explanatory, and they reveal a talent for logical exposition which belongs rather to Friedrich Hebbel than to men of like passions with ourselves. In the unsought, accidental, ingenuous details which ingratiate themselves in spite, or perhaps because of their insignificance, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... eyes were losing the starlike clearness of their delight in all things novel or beautiful. They looked mistily introspective, as if they were studying some combination going on in the brain behind them; and when she could not talk about roulette she relapsed at once into absent-mindedness. But even her absorbed interest in the new pursuit was not ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sick and gave her a bad headache the next morning, but still she must drink it, drink it unceasingly. It was the only way she could deaden that terrible, accusing conscience which persistently demanded an accounting. With her knowledge of her own guilt and her tendency to introspective brooding, it was only natural that her sensitive nature suffered atrociously. All day and all night her conscience tortured her. Incessantly it put the agonizing question: Have you been true, true to yourself and to the man to whom you gave your word? And always ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... between his teeth, he deposited it in the grate, where a sickly fire burned; then, tearing the wrapper from a fresh slip, he resumed his chewing and stood looking about him with unseeing eyes. Fierce they were as ever, but introspective ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... and him the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren enough of sensation to reason about it. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... When I do a thing, I want to do it better than any one else. From the very first I have always been ambitious. It is my strongest trait. Now," he went on, turning to Page, "your strongest trait is your thoughtfulness. You are what they call introspective." ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the context that he accepted this confessional and introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life—of the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its sentiment is warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and whose own sexual disturbances have led them to devour omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this true of the women of this type whose introspective morbidity has led them to diagnose their own functional disturbances as the direct result of "over-sexuality" and restraint from normal sexual expression—a diagnosis that is probably wrong nine times in ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... hard as a stone," he went on in the same introspective voice, and looking as if his heart were lying as heavy as a stone in that unwarmed breast of which he spoke. "No, not so hard. But how to prove what you give me credit for—ah! that's another question. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... puzzled, but deciding that Alec needed to have his mind turned from introspective subjects, she took him up at once. "I agree with you. He's a ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... as our materials enable us to judge no other prophet was more introspective or concerned about himself; and though it might be said that he carried this concern to a fault, yet fault or none, the fact is that no prophet started so deeply from himself as Jeremiah did. His circumstances flung him in upon his feelings and convictions; he was ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... hat and come. I am going through the city first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... character which lauded itself, indeed he was never introspective nor thought of himself at all. He was just strong and living and breathing, his actions governed by an inherited sense of the fitness of things for a gentleman's code, which, unless it was swamped, as on one occasion it had been by violent passion, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... on some doing of the day, a skit on some accepted belief or a parody of some pretentious solemnity, a winged word on a new book or a new author, and when everyone was smiling with amused enjoyment, the fine eyes would become introspective, the beautiful voice would take on a grave music and Oscar would begin a story, a story with symbolic second meaning or a glimpse of new thought, and when all were listening enthralled, of a sudden the eyes would dance, the smile break forth again like sunshine and some ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the less, Kent had felt drawn toward him from the first; partly because Marston was a good man in bad company, and partly because there was something remindful of the elder Kent in the strong face, the slow smile and the introspective eye of the old man from ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... long wavy masses of brown hair falling beneath the martial cap; the mouth, a feature seldom beautiful in men, blending sweetness and firmness in rare degree, now compressed and almost colorless; but the eyes! the "empty, melancholy eyes"! what strange, glassy, introspective fixedness! what inexplicable fascination, as if they were riveted on some object unseen by other mortals! A glance sufficed to show to myself, at least, that he was in a state of tense nervous excitation, similar to that of a subject of mesmerism. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Shan-se made no reply, being, indeed, undecided in his mind whether such a course was expected of him. On several previous occasions the somewhat introspective Emperor had addressed himself to persons in what they judged to be the form of a question, as one might say, 'How blue is the unapproachable air canopy, and how delicately imagined the colour of the clouds!' yet when they had expressed their deliberate ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... and riches rubbing shoulders—noisy self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,—many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... offspring clamber Up your broad and beetling sides; Ne'er again, when eventide's Coming turns the skies to amber And the fluting blackbirds call, Poised above a bale of fodder In your well-appointed stall Will you muse upon it all, Patient introspective plodder. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... a little, and so did Miss Fraley after a moment's hesitation. She seemed to be in a somewhat sentimental and introspective mood as she looked out of the window in the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... people early made a revelation of the beautiful. The Hebrews were introspective. At once ardent and thoughtful, passionate and spiritual, their vigorous natures were charged with fiery materials for inward conflicts. Out of the secret chambers of troubled souls their poets and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... been born and spent his days in the centre of New York. With the life-long friend of M. Degas—Gustave Moreau—Solomon had much in common, but the colour of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art. For ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... it seems to me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done harm. The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature, and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses—celibate saints who ought to have been married, morbidly introspective saints who needed hard secular work, those were the people who did not dare to trust the sense of proportion, and were suspicious of the call of life. Look at St. Augustine in the wonderful passage about light, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... interested in outward events. The phlegmatic type is impassive, unemotional, slow to anger, but not of great kindness, persistent in pursuing his purposes. The sanguine type is optimistic, impressionable, enthusiastic, but unsteady. The melancholic type is pessimistic, introspective, moody, suspicious of the motives of others. Most pupils belong to more than one class. Perhaps the two most prominent types represented in school are (1) that variety of the sanguine temperament which leads the individual to think himself, his possessions, and his work superior to all ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... very well now. His clothes were substantial and fitted him well. His year's immunity from hard work had left his large hands supple and delicate of touch, and his face had attained refinement and mobility. His eyes had become more introspective and had lost entirely the ox-like roll of the country-born man. He was a handsome and dignified young man. His bearing on the street was noticeably manly ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour. The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher. He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in the course of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the conclusion that she was right, so far, at any rate, as my outer conduct was concerned. The state of mind I was in, however, kept me from making any acknowledgment of it—the real cause of my keeping so much to myself and of being so distrait. And so I went on, torturing myself as before with introspective questioning; and she, with her mind set on my actions, and endeavouring to find a cause for them, continued and expounded her beliefs ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... changed as she gave an uncontrollable shudder. It was in that chair her father had been found on that fateful morning, about a week ago, clad still in the dinner-clothes of the previous evening, a faint, introspective smile upon his keen, inscrutable face; his eyes wide, with a politely inquiring stare, as if he had looked upon things which until then had been withheld from his vision. She walked over to the chair, and laid her hand where ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... for a different answer—one which might throw some light upon the situation—but the girl was again quiet and introspective, without affording the slightest clew to her thoughts. How did it happen that he had proved so entirely satisfactory? Perhaps, then, after all, the original Henley was not so important a personage ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... of that attribute. It means that he could contract or expand at will and momentarily, his own personality, so that it coincided exactly, now with a self-indulgent humorist like Falstaff, now with an introspective student like Hamlet, now with a cynical criminal like Iago, now with a high-spirited girl like Rosalind, now with an ambitious woman like Lady Macbeth, and then with a hundred more characters hardly less distinctive ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... succeeded in looking almost exactly like a German student. Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh. Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... home from school hilariously eager for the trail service. But the silent plains made men thoughtful and introspective. Days of endless level landscapes under wide-arching skies, and nights in the open beneath the everlasting silent stars, give a man time to get close to himself, to relive his childhood, to measure human values, to hear the voice in the storm-cloud and the song of low-purring ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... in front, with red brick walls, against which the plum trees were nailed. At the back another garden was separated from the fields by a tall old hedge. It was very pretty. Miriam had not much to do, so she found time for her beloved reading, and for writing little introspective pieces ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... lived at this day, she would probably have spent her time between her promise and its fulfilment in self-analysis and introspective reasoning with her own conscience. But the women of a century ago were not tossed about with winds of various opinions, or made foolishly subtile by arguments about principles which ought never to be associated with dissent. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... the turf, silent-footed as an Indian. In his right hand he had a bread-knife, held butt to thumb, dagger-wise. Where he had come by the rust-bitten thing no one knows, least of all himself. In the broken light his eyes shone with a curious luminosity of their own, absorbed, introspective. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... middle height, Mr. Fenshawe had to raise his hand as high as his own forehead to reach Dick's back. His eyes were shrewd and keen, with the introspective look of the student. Though it was more than probable that he was very wealthy, judging from the meager details within Royson's ken, he had the semblance of a university professor rather ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... with a cheap tie-clip showing underneath his waistcoat, a bulging mass of sock descending over the top of his boot, rolling a cigarette with yellow-stained, objectionable fingers, still involved him in introspective speculation as ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deliberately extended his out-thrust tongue towards the inspired precepts. Then taking from an inner sleeve the base coin he flung it at the inscribed characters and observed with satisfaction that it struck the verse beginning, "The Rewards of a Quiescent and Mentally-introspective Life are Unbounded—" ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... quality called fudoshin, or immobility of heart. That this existed in practice from an early era cannot be doubted, but its cultivation by a recognized system of training dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the introspective tenet (kwanshin-ho) of the Zen sect of Buddhism taught believers to divest themselves wholly of passion and emotion and to educate a mind unmoved by its environment, so that, in the storm and stress of battle, the bushi remains as calm and as self-possessed as in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... might have been its sub-title, for the events in Sarah Eden's life were those of mind rather than body. There are two main divisions of the story: in the first we watch Sarah from her beginnings as a quiet introspective child in her Devon home, and through the short course of her unsatisfactory married life. With considerable skill the author has here shown the various forces that were at work building up the heroine's character, and that strange blending of a practical and commanding efficiency with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... of his great arm-chair. But after a moment her calm attention broke down. Something there was about this man that stirred her emotions—whether of curiosity, pity, indignation, or a slight defensive fear she was not introspective enough to care to inquire. And yet the sensation was not altogether unpleasant, and, as at the guns that afternoon, a certain portion of her consciousness remained in sympathy with whatever it was of mysterious attraction he represented to her. In him she felt the dominant, ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... conscience sways a human life. The man who sways a nation's conscience controls that nation's life. To rule conscience, a man must himself be unprejudiced and well informed. He must strive, not to keep up an unhealthy excitement which shall make conscience introspective and morbid, but to preserve a sane moral outlook, to encourage freedom of thought and judgment, and to develop a normal conscience which reacts promptly against wrong. Conscience measures our inner recoil from evil. The power ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... to give my reasons for these variations at length. They depend upon certain differences between the English and the French public, which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which I have left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective side of the Journal, already so full—to overweight it, at any rate, for English readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relate to local names and books, more or less unfamiliar to the general public, yet seemed ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sense of sight; (2) the sense of hearing; (3) the sense of smell; (4) the sense of taste; (5) the sense of touch; (6) Mano-vijnyana (lit., mind-knowledge), or the perceptive faculty; (7) Klista-mano-vijnyana (lit., soiled-mind-knowledge), or an introspective faculty; (8) Alaya-vijnyana (lit., ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... question which is born not of the brain, but the heart, and which is the basis of all religions—where shall I be then? His mind was not of an introspective nature, and the question just strayed across it and was gone. And still the wonder of the thing held him. He was for the first time in his life in a reverie; the corpse that had shocked and terrified him five years ago had cast seeds ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... hired-men of the Midland town; and the introspective horses they curried and brushed and whacked and amiably cursed—those good old horses switch their tails at flies no more. For all their seeming permanence they might as well have been buffaloes—or the buffalo laprobes ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... impossible, indeed, that he should give it the same constant thought as a woman might—or a man of another and more emotional type. At this moment, perhaps, he had literally no time for the subtleties of introspective feeling, even had his temperament inclined him to them, which was, in truth, not the case. He knew that Kitty had suddenly and resolutely ceased to talk about the boy, had thrown herself with the old energy ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... temperament so different from my own. I wrote to young Holsteig and asked him to come and lunch with me. He thanked me, but could not, of course, being confined to a five-mile radius. Really anxious to see him, I motorbiked down to their house. I found a very changed youth; moody and introspective, thoroughly forced in upon himself, and growing bitter. He had been destined for his father's business, and, marooned as he was by his nationality, had nothing to do but raise vegetables in their garden and read poetry and philosophy—not occupations to take a young man out of himself. ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... of old, unexacting friends—ladies who looked on and smiled, content to give him tea on rainy days, and call him by his Christian name, with perhaps the privilege of a tapping finger on his shoulder, and an occasional order about a rickshaw. Mrs. Violet was not an introspective person, or she might have discovered here that the most stable part of her self-respect was her ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... not used to introspective analysis, and the efforts to grapple with the subtleties of his own subconscious memories brought a tendency to his mind to lose the clear-cut edge of a fact in a blur of misty vision. No longer did the memory of Nora Burke irritate him. Had he associated her with Kitty the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... These introspective reflections brought back irresistibly the feelings with which she had read Flint's letter, little dreaming that it was his,—the letter so full of wise and friendly counsel. She remembered how, as she read, she had ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... our lives: the youth period or prospective period, the adult or introspective period, and the ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... efface the terrible scars. One cheek was wrinkled and crimson, while one eye and the mouth were drawn down pathetically. The accident might have changed the disposition of any child, but Lyddy chanced to be a sensitive, introspective bit of feminine humanity, in whose memory the burning flame was never quenched. Her mother, partly to conceal her own wounded vanity, and partly to shield the timid, morbid child, kept her out of sight as much as possible; so that at sixteen, when she was left an orphan, she had lived ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that only the rich and the leisurely have what is called religious experiences and shadowed souls. The finest developments, doubtless, of the religious sense require time and money. That leisurely groping after tendencies, that introspective analysis of the sins of omission and commission, that delightful perception of the falling away from righteousness of your brethren and sisters—all these choice sweets are, if they are to be adequately enjoyed, compatible only with a minimum of L300 a year. The religious sense ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... deal for Power's own sake that Walter had ventured to ask it. Power's great fault was his over-refinement; the fastidiousness which marred his proper influence, made him unpopular with many boys, and shut him up in a reserved and introspective habit of mind. By a kind of instinct, Walter felt that it would be good to disturb this epicurean indifference to the general interests of the school, and the kind of intellectualism which weakened the character of this attractive and affectionate, yet shy and self-involved boy. "Ah, I see," said ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... viewscope. Some galaxy or other spun its giant pinwheel outward toward some destiny of its own. The high noon of the endlessness had been unfamiliar for years. He checked the ship's instruments. The Crew in the big tank simmered and throbbed in its introspective bliss, utterly ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton
... complex, delightfully unexplored. I rushed impetuously out of the cage of my provincialism and looked eagerly about the brilliant universe. My question was, What have we here?—not, What does this mean? That query came much later. When I now become retrospectively introspective, I fall into the predicament of the centipede in the rhyme, who got along very smoothly until he was asked which leg came after which, whereupon he became so rattled that he couldn't take a step. I know I have come ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... this essay served no other purpose than to show the development of that natural power, it would be of value. But as a matter of fact, it has a far greater value; for while repeating his purpose to practise writing—"to acquire facility and elegance in the expression" of his thought—it gives an introspective glimpse into the naturally secretive mind, revealing an intense desire, if not for the "flesh pots of Egypt," at least for such creature and intellectual comforts as would enable him and those close to him "to bask themselves in the warm sunshine ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... conception is worked out in a manner as strong as it is subtle; and, indeed, almost every character in the play seems to suggest some new psychological problem. The mere handling of the verse is essentially characteristic of our modern introspective method, as it presents to us, not thought in its perfected form, but the involutions of thought seeking for expression. We seem to witness the very workings of the mind, and to watch the passion struggling for utterance. In plays of this kind (plays that are meant to be read, not ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of seer exercises an introspective vision, searching inwardly towards the soul-world whence the revelations proceed. Of what nature these revelations are will appear in the following pages. The passive type of seer, on the contrary, remains in statu quo, open to ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... to find one who is what is popularly known as a drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it? Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only the oyster fascinated by the pearl that ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... many friends that you and me mightn't cotton to," said her husband. "This man is Jack Hamlin." As his wife's remote and introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been right in that long ago time? It seemed ages to her, so much had happened since, and she thought she could not live without the child, but after all the girl was not of her kind. What if she had done her a great wrong! She had never been an introspective woman, her life was mostly on the surface, with commonplace aims ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... difference between Corneille and the long line of his followers, those rhetorical poets whose mania it was to present nothing but sublime and ridiculous cases of conscience. And Racine he confounded with his offspring of pretentiously introspective Parisian psychologists. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... of his appeal to the universal sentiments of comedy and pathos. Scott's influence, somewhat checked during the growth of these reputations and the succession of fertile and accomplished writers on both sides of the Atlantic,—including the introspective analysts of the past fifteen years,—has within a decade been rising again, and has lately burst forth in a new group of historical romancers who seem to have "harked back" from the subjective fad of our day to Scott's healthy, adventurous objectivity. Not only so, but new editions of the Waverley ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Introspective observation of pre-criminal states of mind by so-called normal persons reveals that in many of them there is an impairment of reason and will power, in others an exaltation amounting almost to hysteria. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... sound in the views of life they present ought to be within the reach of children; these stories ought to be well constructed and well written; they ought to be largely objective stories; they ought not to be introspective, morbid or abnormal in any way. Goody-good and professionally "pious" stories, sentimental or unreal stories, ought to be rigorously excluded. A great deal of fiction specially written for children ought to be left severely alone; it is cheap, shallow and stamped with unreality ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... mission have perhaps received less attention than they deserve. The tacit assumption of the majority of critics seems to be that the poet, like the criminal, is the last man who should pass judgment upon his own case. Yet it is by no means certain that this view is correct. Introspective analysis on the part of the poet might reasonably be expected to be as productive of aesthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the poet's self-exposition ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... whether the preceding view be too introspective for Homer, who is usually declared to be the unconscious poet, quite unaware of his purpose or process. No one can carefully read the Third Book without feeling its religious purport; an atmosphere ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... introspective questions or hair-splittings; he loved with his whole heart, and he had tried to say so without very much success. Just then he would have given anything he possessed to be endowed with a little more eloquence, though deep down in his heart he had a lingering ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... his scorn of the insinuation that he proposed to live on Joanna's money. He verily believed himself capable of reattaining fame and fortune. It was only the nuisance of having to do so that, at introspective times, disconcerted him. He knew that to break away from a thirteen-year-old habit of idleness would need considerable effort. But he was ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... insensibility, spring was having her way with him, as she was having it with the grass and the flowers and the bloom on the trees. It was one of those moments of awakening, of ecstatic vision, which come only to introspective and imaginative minds—to minds that have known darkness as well as light. In that instant of realization, he knew, beyond all doubt, that he stood not for the past, but for the future, that he stood not for philosophy, but for adventure—for the will to be and to dare. He would ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Bertram Chester expanded. The Judge took him in hand at once; led him on into twenty channels of introspective talk. Presently, they were speaking direct to one another, the gulf that separates youth from age, employer from employed, bridged by interest on one side and supreme confidence on the other. This grouping left Mrs. Tiffany free to study Heath. It ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... apprehend them, not according to the portraiture of mediaeval pictures, but in a language perhaps not more true and adequate in itself but less boisterous and more comprehensible to our self-conscious and introspective moods. Father Faber's treatment of these last things, hell and heaven, would furnish matter for instruction not beyond the understanding of those in their last years at school, and of a kind which if understood ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... intense emotion, and melancholy refinement. In Hamlet, Richelieu, Othello, Iago, Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,—that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,—was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was complete. It was that which made him the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... This is followed by omelette or fish. Of the two evils you choose the less, and cry "Omelette!" When the omelette is thrown in front of you it at once makes its presence felt. It recalls Bill Nye's beautiful story about an introspective egg laid by a morbid hen. However, if you smother the omelette in salt, red pepper, and mustard, you will be able to deal with it. I fear I cannot say as much for the fish. Then follows the inevitable chicken and salad, or perhaps Vienna steak, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... had been too busy, all his days, to be introspective. He did not know that he had any tenderness in his nature; and if he had become conscious of its abstract existence he would have considered it as a manifestation of disease in some part of him. But he was decoyed into pity unawares; and pity led on to tenderness. That little helpless child—always ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... own opinion, was one who had missed his mark by excessive aiming. Having now, to a great extent, given up ideal ambitions, he wished earnestly to direct his powers into a more practical channel, and thus correct the introspective tendencies which had never brought himself much happiness, or done his fellow-creatures any great good. To make a start in this new direction by marriage, which, since knowing Elfride, had been so ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... with soft violet eyes—and it was as though some psychic bathhouse attendant had poured ice water down his spine. For he had seen that look before, that liquid introspective look in the velvet eyes of cattle. He shivered. For a moment he had been thinking of them as human. And somehow the lack of that indefinable some thing called humanity robbed them of much of their glamour. They were still beautiful, but their ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... few yards in silence. Even when he spoke, his gaze was introspective, and seemed to ignore ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... fine brown, which became him well. His eyes had lost the dreamy, introspective look of the student and author, and had grown keen with the habit of studying objects at long range. He walked with that peculiar, stiff-legged gait which betrays long hours spent in the saddle, and he wore a silk handkerchief around his neck habitually and had forgotten ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... to her girlish idea? If she had become a "Sister"? But—she shook her head as she sat there alone—Robin! And then she sighed; she had not thought, "But—Dion!" She was almost angry with herself for being so introspective, so mentally observant of herself. All this was surely unnatural in her. Was she going to become morbid—she who had such a hatred of morbidity? She tried to force herself to feel that she had missed Dion tremendously, that his return would make ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... smile my question called up died away, and an introspective look came over Mrs. Greyfield's still handsome face. She sat silent for a little time, that seemed long to me, for I was ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Tobin's mobile face looked back upon the past; his eyes had an introspective light ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... for a long walk. She preferred to go alone so she would not have to talk. Hers was one of those lonely, introspective natures that resent the intrusion of aimless chatter when preoccupied with serious thoughts. Long Island was unknown territory to her and it all looked very flat and uninteresting, but she loved the country ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... idea a decent funeral for the sake of having his adverb appear at the grave above reproach from grammatical gossip. Whenever I have risen from the splendid psychological perspective of old Job, the solemn introspective howls of Ecclesiasticus and the generous living philosophy of Shakespeare it has always been with the desire—of course it is undignified, but it is human—to go and get an English grammar for the pleasure of spitting upon it. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... recognize the budding of Hawthorne's genius. This clear introspective analysis is the foundation of all true mental power, and Hawthorne might have become a Platonic philosopher, if he had not preferred ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the same about other things," Alice continued, pausing from time to time as she became more introspective. "I'm fond of poetry, of course, but I can't understand how any one can be satisfied to do nothing else but write poems; I admire art, but with my admiration for the artist's work there's a real pity for the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... whole he was much too happy to be lonely or introspective. Brian's absence and his splendid, sacrificial freak of service, had been the price of Joan's content and the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and meaning of Christ's Vicarship, which he had so wantonly abused and dishonoured, and considered that to that Judge before whom he was summoned to appear the sins of his predecessors would be no justification or mitigation of his own. It may well be that, grown introspective upon his bed of death, he tardily sought to thrust from his mind the worldly things that had so absorbed it until the spiritual were forgotten, and had given rise to all the scandal concerning him that was spread through Christendom, to ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... economy was amassing for the benefit of his children. Scotch thrift was well exemplified in them both. But in the course of 1887 James Gilmour became troubled about this accumulation of even that small sum which he could call his own. In his lonely introspective Mongolian life the possession of money came to wear in his view the aspect of distrusting God. At this juncture the London Missionary Society was in a somewhat serious state as regards funds. A special appeal had been sent out indicating that if additional funds ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... a place as any to emphasize the fact that the introspective study of mental imagery has little to contribute to the measurement of intelligence. Intelligence tests are concerned with the total result of a thought process, rather than with the imagery supports of that process. Thought may be carried on almost equally well ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... tragically]. Don't treat me cruelly, Moo Moo. You don't understand me. No man ever really understands a woman. There are terrible depths to my nature. I had a long talk with Dr. Aesculapius only last week, and he told me I'm too introspective. It's the curse of us emotional women. I'm really quite worried, but much you care, much you care. [A note of tears comes into her voice.] I'm sure you don't love me any more, Moo Moo. No! No! Don't answer me! If ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... but our minds are still the minds of barbarians—blood brothers against the enemy, and everything not of us is enemy. Savages—hiding under a thin veneer of superficial culture. Savages with spaceships and the atom." Kennon looked down at Copper. Apparently her thoughts were miles away in an introspective world that was all her own. She had said her piece and having done that was content to let the two men develop it. Kennon looked at her with odd respect. Alexander eyed her with a mildly startled expression on his lean face. And both men ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... Father, who did not like people to be too introspective and self-tormenting, said that they should, however, walk as it is written of the Maccabees, Caute et ordinate;[1] that is, with circumspection and order, or, to use a common expression, "bridle in hand." And one of the best proofs of our advancement in virtue is, he said, a love ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... music; she had started off to get the gun herself. He knew, just a little, just dimly, he told himself humbly, what the sight of suffering was to her, and she had stood up to it. She, with her passion for animals; she, with her tender, tender heart! Larry, who believed himself to be profoundly introspective, did not know that it was his own flawless physical courage, finding and recognising its fellow in Christian, that had first lit the flame. He thought it was her face, with its delicate charm, its faint, elusive loveliness, that had felled him, laid ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... gladdened by a brighter look of her eyes at her next coming. They were introspective and beamless. She had an odd leaning to the talk upon Cuper's boys. He was puzzled by what he might have classed, in any other woman, as a want of delicacy, when she recurred to incidents which were red patches of the school ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
