"Self-examination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The positive precepts presented to my mind an idea of the high degree of holiness at which that man would arrive who could keep them without a single violation. The negative precepts, by leading me to a close self-examination, impressed me with a deep sense of my corruption, and convinced me that the authors of them must have possessed a profound knowledge of the human heart in general, and of my ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... the convent, she, for the first time, partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Her spirit was most deeply impressed and overawed by the sacredness of the ceremony. During several weeks previous to her reception of this solemn ordinance, by solitude, self-examination, and prayer, she endeavored to prepare herself for that sacred engagement, which she deemed the pledge of her union to God, and of her eternal felicity. When the hour arrived, her feelings were so intensely excited that she wept convulsively, and she was entirely ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... quiet pleasure over a life instead of being concentrated in intense and eager spasms. An old philosopher—a Descartes, suppose—fancied that out of primitive truths, which he could by ardent excogitation know, he might by pure deduction evolve the entire universe. Intense self-examination, and intense reason would, he thought, make out everything. The soul "itself by itself," could tell all it wanted if it would be true to its sublimer isolation. The greatest enjoyment possible to man was that which this philosophy promises ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... is that of one of the curates of the church in which I was asked to preach. At this time he was preparing for confession, and his self-examination had brought him to see and feel that he was a sinner. Under this course of preparation, the preaching of the Gospel had much effect upon him, and he came to tell me of his state. I was able to show ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... a great point with the Stoic to be conscious of 'advance' or improvement.[11] By self-examination, he kept himself constantly acquainted with his moral state, and it was both his duty and his satisfaction to be approaching to the ideal of the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... thus looked at the general features which characterize its many pages. But let it be repeated that to any reader who will for himself carefully examine its contents its perusal will prove a means of grace. To read a little at a time, and follow it with reflection and self-examination, will be found most stimulating to faith, though often most humiliating by reason of the conscious contrast suggested by the reader's unbelief and unfaithfulness. This man lived peculiarly with God and in God, and his senses were ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... disbelieve any of these sayings, but admiring them and emulating them and being enthusiastic about them, we ought to try and test ourselves in smaller matters with a view to greater, not avoiding or rejecting that self-examination, nor sheltering ourselves under the remark, "Perhaps nothing will be more difficult." For inertia[759] and softness are generated by that self-indulgence which ever occupies itself only with the easiest tasks, and flees from the disagreeable to what is ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... point the two suppliants are like each other; both alike look into their own hearts and lives; and both permit the judgment thus formed to determine the form and matter of their prayer. Both addressed themselves to the work of self-examination, and the prayers that follow are the fruits ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... observed Mr Pecksniff, with a placid leer, 'a habit of self-examination, and the practice of—shall I say ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the execution of this plan for self-examination, and continu'd it with occasional intermissions for some time. I was surpris'd to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. To avoid the trouble of renewing ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double, there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... may also be expressed in the statement that God is Lord of Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action; snap-judgment at short range; ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... terms, well, then, so far as she could see, He wasn't going to be of much use to her. Besides, if He hated naughty children, why did He make them naughty? At a moderate estimate quite half Joan's wickedness, so it seemed to Joan, came to her unbidden. Take for example that self-examination before the cheval glass. The idea had come into her mind. It had never occurred to her that it was wicked. If, as Mrs. Munday explained, it was the Devil that had whispered it to her, then what did God mean by allowing the Devil to go about persuading little girls to do indecent things? God ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... one that at the close of nearly every paragraph questions are thrown in. They are inserted to help you cultivate in yourself the very valuable habit of rigid self-examination. We are all liable to assume too soon that we have the thought. Not to mar the look of the page, the questions are thenceforward placed only at ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... lie in the path of a periodical which addresses a general audience. The appliances of the spiritual life belong to a more retired sphere—that of the priesthood, of the sacraments, of religious offices; that of prayer, meditation, and self-examination. They are profaned by exposure, and choked by the distractions of public affairs. The world cannot be taken into the confidence of our inner life, nor can the discussion of ascetic morality be complicated with the secular questions of the day. To ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... none of these. Young Fledgeby had a peachy cheek, or a cheek compounded of the peach and the red red red wall on which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding slim (his enemies would have said lanky), and prone to self-examination in the articles of whisker and moustache. While feeling for the whisker that he anxiously expected, Fledgeby underwent remarkable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along the whole scale from confidence to despair. There were times when he started, as exclaiming 'By Jupiter ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... all her newly acquired knowledge, her own character, which formerly she fancied that she thoroughly understood, became the first in rank among the terrae incognitae, the pathless wilds of a country that had no chart. Erringly and strangely she began the task of self-examination with self-condemnation. And then again she became aware of her own excellencies, and began to balance with juster scales the shades of good and evil. I, who longed beyond words, to restore her to the happiness it ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish,' he said, his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively, 'and of the other hours I maundered away in services and self-examination! Thank Heaven, however, the germ of revolt and sanity was always there. And when once I got to it, I learnt my lesson ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of our life, whether it is to God or from him; whether it is upward or downward; whether we are following truth, and justice, and love, or following our own selfish desires and will. In this sense self-examination is ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Some have been scrupulous to bathe, and some have been scrupulous to cake their bodies with the foulness of years. Many have devoted their lives to assist others in sickness or poverty. Chastity has been faithfully observed, chastity both of body and mind. Self-examination has been pursued till it ended in a species of sacred insanity, and all these have been of no more value than the tortures undergone by the Indian mendicant who hangs himself up by a hook through his back. All ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... sacred rites desecrated by these "unsanctified" "young men" in their "miserable pamphlet." "The Lord is exceedingly glorified, and his people are edified, by the accounts, which the candidates, of the communion in our churches give of that self-examination which is by plain institution ... a qualification, of the communicants. Now these think it not enough to charge the churches, which require & expect such accounts, with exceedingly provoking the Lord. But of the tears dropt by holy souls on those occasions, they ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... people want a religion which is made easy for them. They have no objection to being saved provided that the process is quick, easy, and costs them nothing. They turn away from the thought of self-denial, of keeping under the body, of fasting and prayer, of watchfulness and self-examination. They must be made good all at once, and be admitted into the front rank of saints, without having fought and suffered in a lower place. My brethren, beware of this mushroom religion, which grows up suddenly, and as suddenly vanishes away. The best ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... us here to-night have been at the Lord's Table to- day. We kept our feet firm on the steps as we skirted or crossed the slough that self-examination always fills and defiles for us before every new communion. And before our Lord let us rise from His Table this morning. He again said to us: 'Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. If I then have given you My hand, and ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... conscience, now lay within her, quiescent for the moment. And it was from moment to moment now that she was living, blindly evading, resolutely putting off what must come after that relentless self-examination ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... condition of boyish self-inquisition in which I then found myself, this acquaintance was a fresh element of fermentation, and the strongest to which my self-examination had hitherto been subjected. I instinctively desired to engage her fancy; but my attitude was from myself through her to myself. I wanted less to please than to dominate her, and as it was only my head that was filled with her image, I wholly lacked the voluntary and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Canyon had forgotten what she had thought and felt at sixteen. And, after all, he did not want again to see life through Inez' eyes. Long after the rest of the family slept, Douglas pursued his weary and futile self-examination, coming to a blind ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... struck him as novel. "Of course I'm manager for this expedition," he said, after an interval of self-examination. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... strength-givers and the helpers of others. There are multitudes in the world today, there are readers of this volume, who could add a dozen or a score of years—teeming, healthy years—to their lives by a process of self-examination, a mental housecleaning, and a reconstructed, positive, commanding ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... divided it into sciences and systems without number, employing his whole life in the vain pursuit. Upon no subject has it been so easy to deceive the world as upon this. In every breast the curiosity exists in a greater or less degree, and can only be conquered by a long course of self-examination, and a firm reliance that the future would not be hidden from our sight, if it were right that we should be acquainted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... every morning with the besom of prayer, and every night bear over it the torch of self-examination. So shall the evil insects ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... what is laudable without Noise, or Ostentation. I would, however, recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This Kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his horror of self-examination, is apt to forget the immediate end of existence in the means. And so much so, that when the first distant end—that of a secure old age—approaches achievement, he is incapable of admitting it to be achieved, and goes on worrying and worrying about the means—from simple habit! And ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... the fault was his, till Mrs Maurice called him away, and then very reluctantly he quitted her side. Poor Effie, thus left without sympathy, crept away to her own little room, and sat down, not merely to weep, but to enter into a regular self-examination. The truths she thus discovered were exceedingly humiliating, but the child began to feel that she needed humbling, and she did not shrink from the task. I do not know but Effie's self-condemnation was greater than the fault really called ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... purposes of his heart. Inspired by his determination with the deliberate wisdom which is in most men the result only of the experience of years, he employed the first days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing his future plans, and impartially calculating his chances of success. This self-examination completed, he devoted himself at once and for ever to his life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing discouraged, nothing impeded him. Outward events passed by him unnoticed; the city's afflictions and the city's triumphs spoke no longer to his heart. Year ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in the home harbour, to take some little fresh ballast on board and to rearrange what he at present had. He was able to stow away some of his useless tackle and bale out some of the water he had shipped in the last few rapids. Altogether, though Dick was not exactly a boy given to self-examination, or self- dedication, and although he would have scouted the notion that he was going in for being a reformed character, his little cruise in calm water did him good, and steadied him for his next venture on the tide, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... eye over the design and order of a new book,' says Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... tone of the Old Country Gazette tremendously. It wouldn't of course materially alter the methods or policy of the paper but it would make them all feel nobler, and Blenker was of that finer clay that does honestly want to feel nobler. He hated pessimism and all that criticism and self-examination that makes weak men pessimistic, he wanted to help weak men and be helped himself, he was all for that school of optimism that would have each dunghill was a well-upholstered throne, and his nervous, starry contributions to the talk were like patches of water ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... sins and rejecting them because they are from the devil; and that otherwise the sins are not forgiven him and he is damned. The English, despite the fact that they are in the doctrine of faith alone, nevertheless in the exhortation to the Holy Communion openly teach self-examination, acknowledgment, confession of sins, penitence and renewal of life, and warn those who do not do these things with the words that otherwise the devil will enter into them as he did into Judas, fill them with all iniquity, and destroy both body and soul. Germans, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... weariness of my own base pleasures which had been gaining on me for months past, to the undefined longing which that weariness implied for newer interests and fresher hopes than any that had possessed me yet. I attempted no such sober self-examination as this: I believed in destiny then, I believe in destiny now. It was enough for me to know—as I did know—that the first sense I had ever felt of something better in my nature than my animal self was roused by that girl's face looking at me from her picture ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... many of his absurd notions, of the fanaticism of his followers—for which he is not in the least chargeable—and of the many extravagances scattered through his twenty-eight treatises. But that he intended well, served his church and his Master, led thousands to self-examination, taught his nation that controversy was not the path to success or immortality, his whole career proves ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... examination. Days of humiliation ought to be days of self-examination. Let us therefore upon such a day as this, examine, whether we be not amongst the number of those that make the times perilous, whether we be not covenant-breakers? Here I will speak of three covenants; 1. Of the covenant we have ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... prerequisite to entering into the joy of heaven is righteousness, perfect obedience to the law of God. But every man of himself, when he enters into an honest self-examination, feels that he comes far short of the perfect keeping of the divine commands (1 John 1:8,9; Romans 3:23). He needs forgiveness for past disobedience, he needs help to lead a righteous life. Hence Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, came that through His life and death we might ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... in the State, no post at Court, he never has to say, "I am going to the Chamber." I alone in the house have sixteen hours for meditation. My father is absorbed in public business and his own amusements; my mother, too, is never at leisure; no member of the household practises self-examination, they are constantly in company, and have hardly ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which of course ensued: though why these pauses SHOULD come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? 'I am a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover's state of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of the lawyers with their clients are under supervision. This innovation was made necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty women on their counsel. Where will morality stop short? Such precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for self-examination, where pure imaginations are defiled by meditating on unknown and monstrous depravity. In this parlor, too, parents and friends may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners, whether on remand or awaiting ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... things point? In particular, to this, that despite all of the help which may be provided by outside agencies, finding the straight thoroughfare in work is mainly a problem of searching self-examination and personal decision. The impression which any other person may have of our talents and possibilities is largely formed by what we say, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... be comforted. And he was right about that. A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at any time during the last six months. She'd ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... home, the man was growing old: gradually at first, and insensibly; but towards the end, by leaps and starts, with an increasing consciousness of how he aged and altered, which did but feed his black melancholy. It was borne upon him, perhaps, a little brutally, and not by direct self-examination, when there came another photograph from England. A beautiful face still, but certainly the face of a woman, who had passed from the grace of girlhood (seven years now separated her from it), to a dignity ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... and think me too severe on her sex. I am only telling that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who reads this, shall find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, let her take the hint, and correct ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... apart a day of fasting and prayer, you ought to have in view some definite and particular objects. The day should be spent in self-examination, meditation, reading the Scriptures, confession of sin, prayer for the particular objects which bear upon your mind, and thanksgiving for mercies received. Your self-examination should be as practical as possible; particularly ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... did not himself suppose this. On the contrary, he really believed, I am convinced, that he scouted the ghost, and had merely volunteered this salutary self-examination as an exercise of conscience. He could not, however, have doubted that he was very nervous—and that he would have been glad of the companionship even of one of the Gylingden shopkeepers, through this infested bit ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... beside him the rich young man of the present day, on the threshold of Socialism. If we were to follow the difficulties, theories, doubts, resolves, and conclusions of each of these characters, we should find two very distinct threads of self-examination running through the two lives. And the essence of the difference was this: the modern Socialist is saying, "What will society do?" while his prototype, as we read, said, "What shall I do?" Properly considered, this latter ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Not even the severest self-examination will enable one in whom the Art-impulse exists to understand thoroughly its aim and uses; yet to approximate a clear perception of his own nature and that of the art to which he is called is one of his first duties. What ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... senses, is called vyakta (knowable or comprehensible) and whatever is beyond the reach of the senses and can only be perceived by guesses, is known to be avyakta (not vyakta). When a person engages in the discipline of self-examination, after having subdued the senses which have of their own proper objective play in the external conditions of sound, form, &c, then he beholds his own spirit pervading the universe, and the universe reflected in itself. He who is wedded to his previous karma, although skilled in the highest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... doubting Indwelling sin Mr. Fearing Encouragement for the doubting Christian Adoption Christ our life Union with Christ Life of faith Divine love improved Holy living Opportunities improved Good works Self-denial Obedience in little things Motives to holy living Obedience rewarded Self-examination Watchfulness Constitution-sins The Christian professor admonished Failings and ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... society. We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms and schools of art, and to discover instead our genuine needs, the forms of our possible happiness. To call for such self-examination seems revolutionary only because we start from a sophisticated system, a system resting on traditional fashions and superstitions, by which the will of the living generation is misinterpreted and betrayed. To shake off that system would not subvert order but rather institute ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... mind again. I now contemplated at leisure the mission which I was called upon to fulfil. I measured its extent, and weighed its consequences, and I could not help feeling astonished, and in some measure alarmed, by the result of this self-examination. So long as I merely intended to go to Elba for the sole purpose of offering my services to the Emperor, my journey appeared to be nothing out of the common course of things, and I thought that I should not have ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... for self-examination," he said, and his clear, quiet tones fell into the ears of the people with penetrating power. "And self-examination is a wise and profitable exercise. It is an exercise of the soul designed to yield a discovery of sin in the heart and life, and to induce penitence ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... priggish: "It is almost impossible for us to see our own faults, even when others are kind enough to point them out, for they are right ugly things and unpleasant to look upon. But lacking those outside monitors, one must all the more cultivate the habit of constant inlooking and self-examination. If we are only brave enough to confront our faults and look them in the face, ugly as they are, we shall be sure to overcome the worst of them. A striving toward good will achieve at ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... not a nature that lent itself readily to introspection, but he was putting himself now through a searching self-examination which was revealing all kinds of unsuspected flaws in his character. He had been having too good a time for years past to have leisure to realise that he possessed any responsibilities. He had lived each day as it came in the spirit of the Monks of Thelema. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "why does not God make a better world?" The only question which is at all to the point is, "why has God not made me better?" The problem of God's dealing with the world is, in essence, the problem of God's dealing with me. If He has not reformed me, if I do not, in my self-examination, find that I am responding to the ideals of God, as far as I know them, there is small point in declamations about the state of society. Society that is godless, is just a mass of godless individuals; and ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... deep mortification. Used to have the least hint of dawning seriousness thankfully cherished and fostered, it was a rude shock, when most in need of epanchement du coeur after her dreary day, to be thrown back on that incomprehensible process of self-examination; ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He offer Himself to them in Holy Communion? through the commands and sanctions of the Law. First, we are warned against secret sin, and called to self-examination; a week's preparation follows, then, when the time of celebration is come, we hear the Commandments read, we are solemnly exhorted to put off every thing which may offend God; we confess our sins and our deep sorrow for them; lastly, after being admitted to the Sacrament, we expressly ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... I can of course answer in no other way, than by requesting the youthful objector (as I have already done on a former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-examination, whether other influences may not be at work; whether spirits, "not of health," and with whispers "not from heaven," may not be walking in the twilight of his consciousness. Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce them to a distinct intelligible form; let him be certain, that ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... considerate in you," said Vivian, "to undertake such an office; for it is one which you yourself are alone capable of fulfilling. The only person that can ever satirize your Excellency is yourself; and I think even then that, in spite of your candour, your self-examination must ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... description of his great exploits; the Confessions of St. Augustine, with his intimate self-analysis and intense self-reproach, and the less well-known De Vita Propria Liber by Cardan. This latter is a serious attempt at scientific self-examination. Recently, attention has been directed to the accumulation of autobiographical and biographical materials which are interpreted from the point of view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The study Der Fall Otto Weininger by Dr. Ferdinand Probst is a representative monograph of this type. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when he endeavors to look within, prejudice and passion often affect his judgment; but more often, the fear of what he shall discover in the secret places of his soul deters him from making the attempt at self-examination. For it is a surprising truth that the transgressor dares not bring out into the light that which is most truly his own, that which he himself has originated, and which he loves and cherishes with all his strength and might. ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... amends. The capacity for self-hate and self-disgust depends largely upon the development of these ideals and principles of conscience, of expectation of the self. Frequently there is an overrigidity, a ceaseless self-examination that now and then produces miracles of character and achievement but more often brings the breakdown of health. This is the seeker of perfection in himself, who will not compromise with his instincts and his human flesh. There seekers ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... he was capable of, but to achieve it meant a surrender of nearly all the ties that bound him to life. The human qualities in him rebelled at the prospect. With the clairvoyance superinduced by much self-examination, he was able to forecast the vast scope of his powers, and the task that was set him. The whole future of the unapproachable artist that he was destined to become, was mirrored out to him almost at the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... To this particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two sorts of men. The one, those who have been attached to the cause from the beginning; the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... have a very practical question for our consideration and answering. "Is there anything in my life"—so the question comes to us in our self-examination—"which could be so described? any influence, spreading from my conduct, of which men might truly say that it also is helping to debase the moral currency? Is there to be seen in it anything that tends towards the lowering of common standards? any misuse of things sacred or holy? any foolish or ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... very well that it is not a wholesome thing for a man to be always poking in his own feelings and emotions. I know also that, in a former generation, there was far too much introspection, instead of looking to Jesus Christ and forgetting self. I do not believe that self-examination, directed to the discovery of reasons for trusting the sincerity of my own faith, is a good thing. But I do believe that, without the practice of careful weighing of ourselves, there will be very little growth in anything that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... privileges of a church relation, and, to the Lord's supper, in which the members of the church, by the use of bread and wine, are to commemorate together the dying love of Christ,—preceded always by solemn self-examination. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... precepts from the writings of some of the great heathen moralists, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then has urged the question how far we who profess to be the disciples of a loftier faith are true even to these ancient heathen ideals.[38] Perhaps, however, this is not a method of self-examination which is open to us all. But this, at least, we can do: we can test ourselves by that moral law, which God gave to the Jews by Moses, and which Christ reinterpreted in the Sermon on the Mount. "Thou ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... thoughts in the type of man who does not analyse his thoughts. He sees a slouching tramp, with a sick wife and a string of rickety children, and honestly wonders what he can do with them. But prosperity does not favour self-examination; and he does not even ask himself whether he means "How can I help them?" or "How can I use them?"—what he can still do for them, or what they could still do for him. Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than the former; he laments ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... of self-examination is hardly characteristic of the people as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of the historic American. He has been an opportunist rather than a dealer in general ideas. Destiny set him in a current ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with waves, and all on board were reeling to and fro, and staggering like a drunken man. Towards evening it blew a hurricane; the heavens were black with tempest, and all around us appeared awfully dangerous. Self-examination is at all times profitable and incumbent on the Christian, but when dangers press around him in a tumultuous scene of waters, it is peculiarly consolatory for him to find upon examination, that the sheet ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... sensation, the contact and feeling. To this end, a man retires to a suitable place, where what he does actively or passively is hourly determined for him in advance—attendance at chapel or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest—in short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations and overcome him with spiritual impressions; immediately around him, impressions of the same kind followed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Setting Apart Deaconesses," the "Rules for Self-Examination," and the "Rules of Discipline" in the order of deaconesses in Maryland are largely patterned after the Kaiserswerth rules. In truth, the general questions for self-examination in regard to external duties, spiritual duties to the sick, the conduct of the deaconesses or sisters to those whom ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... recent progress affords ground for encouragement, it is not a time for boastfulness. It is rather a time for self-examination, for an inquiry into our preparedness for ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... knows, was like the lid of a salt-box, always closed; and when he risked a wink with the right, it certainly gave him the look of a man shutting out the world, and retiring into himself for the purpose of self-examination. No, no; beauty is in the mind; in the soul; otherwise Phelim never could have been such a prodigy of comeliness among the girls. This was the distinction the fair sex drew in his favor. "Phelim," they would say, "is not purty, but he's very comely. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... species of self-examination on the part of the great war-ship, through the medium of its mind—the captain. Here was the father of a tremendously large family going the rounds on Sunday morning to observe whether his moral precepts and personal example during the week had been attended ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... fellowship he brought all he could whom he found desirous of living the life of full salvation which he everywhere advocated. He laid before them a set of home-questions which he urged upon them as a useful form of self-examination. A sample of these will show how practical was the religion he ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... took up again the self-examination, "that I am to blame for a good deal that I've found fault with in others. I mean that I'm a different variety of animal, and, naturally, no judge of the kinds of holes they live in or the way their affairs ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... she rejoiced in the return of his friend and preserver. Her heart beat a little faster than usual—that was the result of her long walk and disappointment at not meeting Le Gardeur on her arrival yesterday. But she feared to explore her thoughts: a rigid self-examination might discover what she instinctively felt ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rather as a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic. For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. Deeper self-examination, completer abstraction, than I can attain even here, are what I crave for. I long—forgive me, my friend—but I long more and more, daily, for the solitary life. This earth is accursed by man's sin: the less we see of it, it seems to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of the feelings of others. To wound them, however unintentionally, would occasion him painful disturbance. Though naturally rapid in the perception of character, his inexperience of life, and the self-examination in which he was so frequently absorbed, tended to blunt a little his observation of others. With a generous failing, which is not uncommon, he was prepared to give those whom he loved credit for the virtues which he himself ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... inside my bed-curtains.' He takes care that not one is there before he lays himself down to sleep. There seems to be nothing more sad than the complacent, easy-going way in which men allow themselves to keep their higher moral principles and their more rigid self-examination for the 'great' things, as they suppose, and let the little things often take care of themselves. What would you think of the captain of a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, only getting out his sextant when storms began to blow? And what about ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their daily lives of the religious faith which I have concisely stated, Father Rapp taught humility, simplicity in living, self-sacrifice, love to your neighbor, regular and persevering industry, prayer and self-examination. ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... and systematically wicked: even the worst find good motives for bad deeds, and are as intent upon discovering glosses for conduct to deceive themselves as to delude others. What wonder, then, that poor Lady Westborough, never too rigidly addicted to self-examination, and viewing all things through a very worldly medium, saw only, in the alternate art and urgency employed against her daughter's real happiness, the various praiseworthy motives of permanently disentangling Lady Flora from an unworthy attachment, of procuring for her an establishment proportioned ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the body is veritable reality. This philosophy is realistic and empirical to an extent entirely determined by its belief concerning being. But while naturalism is only secondarily epistemological, subjectivism and absolute idealism have their very source in the self-examination and the self-criticism of thought. Subjectivism signifies the conviction that the knower cannot escape himself. If reality is to be kept within the range of possible knowledge, it must be defined in terms of the processes ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... only after the consideration of many months, and after much self-examination as to my motives, and after much earnest prayer, that I came to the conclusion to write this little work. I have not taken one single step in the Lord's service, concerning which I have prayed so much. My great dislike to increasing the number of religious books would, in ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... one force that would tame her; but there was that force, and Diane knew that she had submitted to its domination. From weeks of tortuous self-examination she emerged into this knowledge, as one comes out of a labyrinthine cavern into sunshine. Even here in the open, however, was a problem still to solve. Could she marry the man who had never told her that he loved her, even though ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... not of the women who naturally analyze their own feelings toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the "Journal Intime" which it is impossible to read without blushing that one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... brother, but of the other seventeen as well. It has been intimated to us that a book on this subject "might be of special use to our young men." Glad shall we be if this prove to be the case! But not among the younger preachers alone do we seek to initiate this searching self-examination. Possibly it may be even less needful to them than to the more mature. The most dangerous days of the preacher's career are, after all, not its earliest. In the enthusiasm which, almost always, attends his launching forth into the work there is an element of ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... that had been seen for a long time; who had always passed his days in the most luxurious idleness and who was the most incapable by nature of all serious application, of all serious reading, and of all self-examination. He was afraid of the devil; and he remembered that his former confessor had resigned for similar reasons as this new one was actuated by. He was forced now, therefore, to look a little into himself, and to live in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... his son. The word Victoria had used, power, had touched him on the quick. What had she meant by it? Had she been his wife and not his daughter, he would have flown into a rage. Augustus Flint was not a man given to the psychological amusement of self-examination; he had never analyzed his motives. He had had little to do with women, except Victoria. The Rose of Sharon knew him as the fountainhead from which authority and money flowed, but Victoria, since her childhood, had been his refuge from care, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... commendation was not often so warmly called forth. It was not in any young heart not to beat quicker at such prospects. Honor, station, wealth, political ambition, all seemed to offer themselves to his grasp; but long ere this, in the solitude of retirement, in the stillness of prayer and self-examination, the young graduate had vowed himself to a different destiny; and if we may listen to a conversation, a few evenings after commencement, with a classmate, we shall learn more of the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of mind. Those leave frivolous ideas behind who enter here. The 'modiste' will tell the philosopher that it is now the fashion to be severe; in a word, it is 'fesch'. Nothing can go beyond that. And it symbolizes the whole life, its self-examination, earnestness, utmost candor in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... venerable John Baptist de la Salle, the founder of the institute known as the Brothers of the Christian Schools. At the age of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus, and after two years of study and self-examination had passed away, he was, as is usual with the young Jesuits, employed in teaching, which position he held for twelve years. No sooner had he been invested with the priesthood, than his desire to become in all things an imitator of his ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... need to lecture me upon the charms and virtues of Nicolete, for I loved them from the first moment of our strange introduction, and I dream of them still. There was indeed only one quality of womanhood in which she was lacking, and in which, after much serious self-examination, I discovered the reason of my instinctive self-sacrifice of her,—SHE HAD NEVER SUFFERED. As my heart had warned me at the beginning, "she was hoping too much from life to spend one's days with." She lacked the subtle half-tones of experience. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... fairly be called the house of silence, because it has been known to echo to exhortations as earnest, if not as vehement as one may hear from any pulpit. Still, there are sometimes long intervals of silence, and then the consciousness that silent self-examination is one purpose of the coming together, gives an impressiveness to the simple surroundings. It must have been here that Mr. Whittier learned to interpret so wonderfully that silent prayer of Agassiz for guidance when he opened his famous school from which he was so soon ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... opportunities for self-examination and consequent self-dissatisfaction grew fewer as the winter advanced. Luncheons, receptions, bridge tournaments, and theater parties followed each other with such bewildering swiftness that Elizabeth seldom ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... betrays little respect for himself. A wise man knows that if he have true distinction, he must be indebted to himself for it. The shadow of his own body is more valuable to him than the substance of another man's. In the mirror of self-examination he beholds the imperfections of his own doings and virtues, which will not for conscience' sake allow him to parade his small apparent excellencies or ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the power of others seriously to interfere with the calm, temperate life of an individual, and that when a fellow being did anything to us that seemed unjust he was acting in ignorance, and that instead of stirring up anger within us it should stir our pity for him. Oftentimes by careful self-examination we should find that the fault was more our own than that of our fellow, and our sufferings were rather from our own opinions than from anything real. The circle of man's knowledge is very limited, ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... the last court of inquiry and decision: in the mind itself. With greater intellects more remote the lad had not yet been put in touch; he had therefore grown reflective, and for nearly a week had been spending the best powers of his unaided thought in self-examination. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... it feels itself challenged by them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. Preaching is too much declamation and far too ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... my God lives, I have enough. He enabled me to say—'Although thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee.' In this time of trial I was led to enter into a renewed and explicit covenant with God, in a more solemn manner than ever before, and with the greatest freedom and delight. After much self-examination and prayer, I did give up myself and children to God with my whole heart. Never, until now, had I a sense of the privilege we are allowed in covenanting with God! This act of my soul left my mind in a quiet and steady trust in God. A few days after this, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... first her whole nature rose in arms against the charge: but, after a while, coming as it did from so revered a person, it forced her to serious self-examination. The poor girl said to herself, "Mamma is a shrewd woman. Am I after all deceiving myself? Would she be happy, and am I standing in the way?" In the morning she begged her sister to walk with her in the park, so that they ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... When a philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result of introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have contributed nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious self-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical self-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those who care for thought for thought's sake—the so-called Hamlets of the world, who are ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... thy zeal had no worldly views and whether thou didst believe all the nonsense of the sect, at the head of which thou wast pleased to become a legislator.—Adieu. Self-examination ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... entitled "Psychoanalyse und Ethik," and find there, p. 5, a passage which I reproduce here on account of its agreement with my position. I must state at the outset that according to Furtmueller, psychoanalysis is peculiarly qualified to arouse suspicion against the banal conscience, which leads self-examination into the realm of the conscious only, with neglect of the unconscious impulses, which are quite as important for the performance of actions. The passage of interest to us here reads: "There is no lack of intimation that these ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... devout Christian that never, during her life, whether in prosperity or adversity, did she omit that daily self-communion and self-examination, and those private devotional exercises, which would best prepare her for the self-control and self denial by which she was, for more than half a century, so eminently distinguished. It was her habit to retire to her own apartment ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his young comrades, in this ceaseless self-examination, and in the perpetual battle which he waged with the desire for death that pursued him; every day he had deeper doubts of himself; and on the 1st of January, 1817, he wrote ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
