"Self-criticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which she moves, dragging all the dumb Germanies after her, is due to the fact that her Servile State is complete, while ours is incomplete. There are not mutinies; there are not even mockeries; the voice of national self-criticism has been extinguished forever. For this people is already permanently cloven into a higher and a lower class: in its industry as much as its army. Its employers are, in the strictest and most sinister ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... 1862.—Self-criticism is the corrosive of all oratorical or literary spontaneity. The thirst to know turned upon the self is punished, like the curiosity of Psyche, by the flight of the thing desired. Force should remain a mystery to itself; as ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that here was a master, in his own fashion. What that fashion is may now be known by anyone who will take the pains to read the author's prefaces to the New York edition of his revised works. Never, not even in the Paris which James loved, has an artist put his intentions and his self-criticism more definitively upon paper. The secret of Henry James is told plainly enough here: a specially equipped intelligence, a freedom from normal responsibilities, a consuming desire to create beautiful things, and, as life unfolded its complexities ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... necessity a scholar, and in what he . proposes to do will have in mind, first of all, the scholar and the scholarly conscience—the male conscience in this matter, as we must think it, under a system of education which still to so large an extent limits real scholarship to men. In his self-criticism, he supposes always that sort of reader who will go (full of eyes) warily, considerately, though without consideration for him, over the ground which the female conscience traverses so lightly, so amiably. For the material ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... profound self-criticism, the stilling of his busy surface-intellect, his restless emotions of enmity and desire, the voluntary achievement of an attitude of disinterested love—by these strange paths the practical man has now been led, in order that he ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... part dared to speak of Alice and Hester. And very soon it was quietly recognized between these two that Alice's story was known to Mary; and, for the first time in his life, Meynell spoke with free emotion and self-criticism of the task which Neville Flood had laid upon him. Had there been in Mary some natural dread of the moment when she must first hear the full story of his relation to Alice? If so, it was soon dispelled. He could not ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness. Then Miss Le ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... was put on the "free list" at once. The experience he gained, however, by assiduous attendance at the theatre so convinced him of the defects in his own bantling, that he withdrew it before performance—a heroic act of self-criticism rare amongst ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... compared her ugliness with his beauty. But a great love breeds many regrets as well as many joys. And that was long ago. It was years since she had looked at herself in the glass with any keen feminine anxiety, any tremor of fear, or any cruel self-criticism. But now she stood for a long time before the glass, quite still, looking at her reflection with wide, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... write with a noble respect for his own best effort, on which account he never felt satisfied with his writing unless he had exerted every muscle of his faculty; unless every word he had written seemed to his severest self-criticism absolutely true. He loved his art more than his time, more than his ease, and could thrust into the flames an armful of manuscript because he suspected the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... such hopes are annihilated; I am forced to think of making my way in the world as a pianist. For some time I must keep in the background the higher artistic aim of which you wrote to me. In order to be a great composer one must possess, in addition to creative power, experience and the faculty of self-criticism, which, as you have taught me, one obtains not only by listening to the works of others, but still more by means of a careful critical examination of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... this clearly in his occasional moods of self-criticism. But as he saw no remedy, he raged intermittently and briefly, and straightway relapsed. Vanity supplied him with many excuses and consolations. Was he not one of the best reporters in the profession? Where was there another, where indeed ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... fated book in whose womb lay his child—The Ring and the Book. And he believed that he had certain God-given qualities which fitted him for this work. These he sets forth in this introduction, and the self-criticism is of the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... scarcely push their friendship so far that they will refrain from criticism upon myself and my doings. On one point, viz. the social morality of my conduct, I am so sure of criticism that I will anticipate it with self-criticism. Had I the moral right to desert the city, and to ignore the social obligations of the city, in order to find a life that was more pleasurable to myself? A city which presents a depressing variety of social needs can hardly afford to spare ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Return to London and public office Still writing essays; "Warren Hastings," "Clive" Special public appreciation in America Drops out of Parliament; begins "History of England" Prodigious labor; extent and exactness of his knowledge Self-criticism; brilliancy of style Some inconsistencies Public honors Remarkable successes; re-enters Parliament Illness and growing weakness Conclusion of the History; foreign and domestic honors Resigns seat in Parliament Social habits Literary tastes Final ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... talking for more than a quarter of an hour. Under stress of shame and intellectual self-criticism (for he could not help confuting every position as he stated it) his mind often wandered. When he ceased speaking there came upon him an uncomfortable dreaminess which he had already once or twice experienced when in colloquy with Mr. Warricombe; a tormenting metaphysical doubt ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing |
