"Self-examination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this change in herself that made her want to be alone. The solitude of her inner life had given her the habit of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... use of 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 ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... through his pious mother, Rose de la Salle, allied to the 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 ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... that, he had already lost something of his former purity of style. And now, for six long months, he worked at nothing but studies of the same subject; knowing only the criticisms of Irina herself. The days of honest labor and study, the earnest self-criticism and self-examination, were gone. For the moment he might believe himself to be of the elect few. But the period was brief; and, with the coming of the first cloud, the whole horizon ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tangible world which interacts with 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 or states of selves. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... led into a deep self-examination, and was severely exercised with fear and apprehension, whether I was myself a real partaker of those divine influences which I could so evidently discover in her. Sin appeared to me just then to be more than ever "exceeding sinful." Inward and inbred corruptions ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... 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
... everybody expected him to propose to her quite soon—indeed within the next couple of hours. And she felt that everybody was right. The universe was full of mysteries for Audrey. As regards her answer to any proposal, she foresaw—another mystery—that it would not depend upon self-examination or upon reason, or upon anything that could be defined. It would depend upon an instinct over which her mind—nay, even her heart—had no control. She was quite certainly aware that this instinct would instruct ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Ignorance gives disparagement a louder tongue than knowledge does. Wise men had rather know, than tell. Frequent dispraises are but the faults of uncharitable wit: and it is from where there is no judgment, that the heaviest judgment comes; for self-examination would make all judgments charitable. If we even do know vices in men, we can scarce show ourselves in a nobler virtue than in the charity of concealing them: if that be not a flattery persuading to continuance. And it is the basest office man can fall into, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... him, or to begin in the middle, or to read without a constantly alert attention. If you are not already a little interested and open-minded with regard to social and political questions, and a little exercised in self-examination, you will find neither interest nor pleasure here. If your mind is "made up" upon such issues your time will be wasted on these pages. And even if you are a willing reader you may require a little patience for the peculiar method ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... men to check oppression and expose superstition, while others followed to lay the foundation of excellence and greatness in the examination and cultivation of its true source—the mind. Heivetius sought to direct men's attention to self-examination, and to show how many disputes might be avoided if each person understood what he was disputing about. "Helvetius on the Mind" is a work that ought to be read widely, and studied attentively, especially by "rising young men," as it is one of those Secular works too ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... great name he had so dishonored. Earnestly, humbly, and sorrowfully did he confess his faults. How bowed to the earth he felt, in the consciousness of his utter impotence! He remembered how confident he had been in his good name; and now he became aware, in this silent self-examination, how mixed his motives had been, how full of vanity and vain-glory he had been, how careless in waiting for "more grace," how little he had thought of pressing forward, how wanting he had been in that single heart that thought only of doing the work committed to him regardless of the ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... taught Gillian more than she yet realised. As has been seen, the atmosphere of Vale Leston had deepened her spiritual life, and the sermons had touched her heart to the quick, and caused self-examination, which had revealed to her the secret of her dissatisfaction with herself, and her perception was the clearer through her intercourse on entirely equal terms with persons of a high ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 for ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... of kindness, at some momentary inconvenience to himself; and yet it looked as though he were taking advantage of his friend's weakness. Abram Van Riper was a man who cultivated a clear conscience, of a plain, old-fashioned sort, and the necessity for self-examination was novel and disagreeable ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... man is no fixed somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up into altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. Therefore we have all to feel that after all self-examination there lie awful depths within us which we have not fathomed; and after all our knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... important position was offered to him— the office of sub- almoner to the Queen, which had just been vacated by the Archbishop of York, and was almost certain to lead to a mitre. The offer threw Manning into an agony of self-examination. He drew up elaborate tables, after the manner of Robinson Crusoe, with the reasons for and against his acceptance of ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Self-examination should always precede confession. Those who arrive at this degree should expose themselves to God, who will not fail to enlighten them, and to make known to them the nature of their faults. This examination must be conducted in peace and tranquillity, expecting more from God than from our own ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... a Religious Society, into whose 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 both ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... with 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 ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... 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 me, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... is a limit to this physiological self-examination. But there is so close a solidarity between ourselves and our poor relations of the animal world, that our inaccessible inward parts may be supplemented by theirs. A comparative anatomist knows that a sheep's heart and lungs, or eye, must not be confounded with those of a man; but, so far as ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... babyish in the writing, but there was a method in this self-examination. I believed that I was fated to engage in strange ventures, and I wanted to equip myself for the future. The pressing business was that of self-defence, and I turned first to a gentleman's proper weapon, the sword. Here, alas! I was doomed to a bitter disappointment. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... books. But his Journal was, above all, the confidant of his most private and intimate thoughts; a means whereby the thinker became conscious of his own inner life; a safe shelter wherein his questionings of fate and the future, the voice of grief, of self-examination and confession, the soul's cry for inward peace, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life," said Plato, "is not worth living." Similar advice was given by Marcus Aurelius. The practice of self-examination, therefore, is not distinctive of Christianity: it is an obvious dictate of wisdom, wherever life and conduct are regarded seriously, that a man should from time to time take stock of himself in the light of his ideals and learn to know and recognize in detail where and how he has fallen ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... summoned and directed to pursue methodically the painful work of self-examination, which had oppressed him even before he entered the convent, and to use all the means of grace here offered to him. But the more he searched into his life and thoughts, the more transgressions of God's will he found, and the more grievously did they afflict his conscience. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... course of his self-examination with retrospect to this year, he seems to have been much dejected; for he says, January 1, 1774, 'This year has passed with so little improvement, that I doubt whether I have not rather impaired than increased my learning'; ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... people are in great domestic sorrow, self-examination is a superfluous advice. She listened a moment to his departing footsteps, shivering as she stood in the darkness, for a norther had sprung up, and the cold was severe. She only glanced into the pleasant parlor where the table was laid for dinner, and a great fire ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... 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," ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... because people cross your purposes and upset your plans and irritate you needlessly; but is not the secret really that you resent interference, and want to have your own way? Now, before blaming your circumstances, I suggest you have a thorough self-examination, for it may be that the inward trouble is due to unbelief, selfishness, ambition, pride, or some other form of heart sin, and that evil must be dealt with ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... we have only our own consciences to deal with. Neither do the two always go hand in hand. There are persons who are formally careful in regard to the truth, and yet live in perpetual delusion. Wasson recognized this danger and protected himself against it by a constant and severe self-examination. He knew himself at least better than most, and if he erred anywhere it was in too moderate an opinion of his own value. He had visually a clear consciousness of what he was about, in ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... consciousness which was released in his imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and stale ideas.... But now the cataclysm had come within himself, and he was brought to doubt and self-examination. Had he not denied too much? Had he not carried abnegation too far? Had he not thwarted powers in himself which were essential even to his impersonal purpose? Was it paradoxically true that a man ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... did not understand himself, did not know whither his steps might have tended had not the brutality of the Marchesino roused him abruptly to this self-examination, this self-consideration. He did not fully understand himself, and he wondered very much how Hermione and the Sicilian had ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... not listening to them; surprise had made him fall into a reverie of self-examination. He thought—terrified of the great error he had committed—he saw an immense gulf opening between himself and those he had believed to be his disciples. He remembered his brother's words. Ah, the good sense of the simpleminded! He, with all his reading, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... 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 make the attempt would be to ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... half-back refused to 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 hardly have ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... 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 succeeded ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 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 might be ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... in this atmosphere surcharged with domestic electricity, he got the notion—he could hardly tell how—that all this lowering of the sky had something to do with him. What had he done? Nothing. His closest self-examination told him that he had done no wrong. But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience condemned him for some unknown crime that had brought about all this disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very good, the cabbage he could not ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... penance of any kind In order that we may punish ourselves and feel that we have made 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 of perfection are among the noblest of the race, admired ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... that for us, annual self-examination is made a definite necessity by the fact that we now live in a divided world of uneasy equilibrium, with our side committed to its own protection and against aggression by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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 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 itself, have been ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... of exaltation, I am sometimes rudely awakened by a monster reflex wave of self-examination. Ah, dear heart! It is then that I ask of my soul: What am I? What have I done? What sweet guardian spirit guides my life, that I should be made so exceedingly happy by the priceless love of such a beautiful woman? Am I worthy of such a blessing? Can I properly appreciate the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Manresa proved eminently fruitful for the future method of Ignatius. It was here that he began to regard self-discipline and self-examination as the needful prelude to a consecrated life. It was here that he learned to condemn the ascetism of anchorites as pernicious or unprofitable to a militant Christian. It was here that, while studying the manual of devotion written by Garcia de ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... bloated aristocracy, these invectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the Populace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they are addressed, or awaken any thought or self-examination in them. Again, when Sir Thomas Bateson describes the Philistines and the Populace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating the aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and excited ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing out of the darkness like the light of a ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... argument of his, the effect of which would be to promote self-examination. The listener must needs be brought to ask himself, "Of what worth am I to my friends?" It happened thus. One of those who were with him was neglectful, as he noted, of a friend who was at the pinch ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... of 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 ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... that the task she had undertaken of doing good to this young man was not wholly for his sake but partly for her own. She wanted to see him nearly every day and to occupy a place in his life ever larger and larger. But for some time past the conscientious Giselle had neglected the duty of strict self-examination. She was thankful to be happy—and though Fred was a man little given to self-flattery in his relations with women, he could not but be pleased at the change produced in her by her ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... this day and say, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only Son,' whose words would stick in their throats if that question of the Master's was put to them, 'Do ye now believe?' And I wonder how many of us are the fools of our own verbal acknowledgments of Christ. Self-examination is not altogether a wholesome exercise, and it may easily be carried too far, to the destruction of the spontaneity and the gladness of the Christian life. A man may set his pulse going irregularly ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... allowed to help within its walls had brought Eva to Schweinau. The experiences of the past few days had swept through the peace of her young soul like a tempest, overthrowing firmly built structures and fanning glimmering sparks to flames. Since her quiet self-examination in the room of the city clerk, she had known what she lacked and what duty required her to become. The bond which united her to her saint and the Saviour still remained, but she knew what was commanded by him from whom St. Clare's mission also came, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... however, that the secret of her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her loving thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon philosophical and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the discontented retrospection winch goes with the multitude by the name of self-examination. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... and transcribing my notes, I underwent a strict self-examination. I passed in review all I had seen, all I had felt, and scrupulously challenged every expression of disapprobation; the result was, that I omitted in transcription much that I had written, as containing unnecessary details of things which ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... 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 ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... sister's judge? It is dangerous for young men to be too good. They are so sweeping in their condemnations, so sublime in their conceptions of excellence, and the most finished Puritan cannot out-do their demands upon frail humanity. Evan's momentary self-examination saved him from this, and he told the Countess, with a sort of cold compassion, that he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immediately repented—a situation which cannot but excite our pity, as well as our disapprobation; but this was a transaction which it is impossible either to extenuate or justify. Let it be improved as a motive for self-examination, and a beacon to warn us from similar misconduct. "O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in thee. Let INTEGRITY and UPRIGHTNESS preserve me, for I ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... 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
... "June 30.—Self-examination. Why is a missionary life so often an object of my thoughts? Is it simply for the love I bear to souls? Then, why do I not show it more where I am? Souls are as precious here as in Burmah. Does the romance of the business ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... 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, Swedes and Danes, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... The gathering darkness, the whining wind, the sound of restless water lapping and sucking around the keel, suggested superstitious forebodings and called up dismal images. To every mood there is a season; this was Wilkinson's hour of self-examination. He looked backward on his deeds and inward on his motives. He mistrusted the future. If he were sure that Burr's rainbow dipped its gorgeous ends in gold, no accusing ghost of the past would deter him from chasing the yellow temptation over mountains or through bogs. He was ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... is to aid and assist the communicant in this self-examination that we have our preparatory service. Its great object is to enable the communicant to realize his own sinfulness, to deepen in him true penitence and longing for forgiveness, and also to aid him in appropriating and rejoicing in the full and free forgiveness ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... that choose. And we ought not to despair or 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 ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... work 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
... our own. It is not so here. Here in this world, man knows himself but "in part." Even 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. He is afraid of his own heart! Even when God forces ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... to mention these circumstances, and to describe them so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early habit of introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early separation from companionship with other men. Soon after the birth of her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting "thou" in speaking to me, and began ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for 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 ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... 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 now and then my little book, which, by scraping out the marks on the paper ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... public, common prayer can well do this? And meantime the Book does, especially in the service of the Communion, and particularly in that too often omitted part of it, the "longer Exhortation," beginning Dearly beloved in the Lord, throw the worshipper back upon himself for self-examination. This is just the method of St Paul in his addresses to the Christian community. He writes to all as "saints," "faithful," "elect," "sanctified." What does he mean? Does he mean that those glorious terms are satisfied ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... and Europe to be drunk out of the same goblet? But what went through Wagner's mind on that day—how he became what he is, and what he will be—we only can imagine who are nearest to him, and can follow him, up to a certain point, in his self-examination; but through his eyes alone is it possible for us to understand his grand work, and by the help of this ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in the rabbinical sense, was reverenced by Ba[h.]ya, and he converted it into part and parcel of the Jew's inner life. The book is divided into ten parts:—the Unity of God; Contemplation; Worship; Trust; Consecration; Humility; Repentance; Self-Examination; the Ascetic Life; the Love of God. Some selections from Ba[h.]ya's work have been rendered into English by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... application to 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
... across the tapestry, and glancing from the blessed symbol, he saw before him, kneeling on the rug, the figure of a woman. For her it was an inauspicious interruption. With almost a frown, Charles, recalled from an absorbing period of oblation and self-examination, surveyed the young girl. The reflection of dark colors from the hangings and tapestries softened the pallor of her face; her hair hung about her in disorder; her figure, though meanly garbed, was replete ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... himself in good esteem; as every honest man is bound to do, or surely the rogues will devour him. Modesty kept him silent as to his merits very often; but the exercise of self-examination made them manifest to himself. As the Yorkshireman said to his minister, when pressed to make daily introspection, "I dare na do it, sir; it sets me up so, and leaveth no chance for my neighbors;" so the great free-trader, in charity for others, forbore to examine himself too much. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... change in his life—no other life was possible; but he was learning the practical value and mental comfort of straight living as he had never learned them before. And he was not so prone to metaphysics and morbid self-examination as he once was, and he shook off a mood of that kind when it came—impatiently—as he shook it off now. He was a soldier now, and his province was action and no more thought than his superiors allowed ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... 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 every morning after breakfast, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... characteristic of which a human being is capable. The last half century of his life, as he himself said in his Autobiography, had been constantly and faithfully devoted to the study of the human race. His knowledge came from minute self-examination—for he regarded himself as the entire human race compacted together. It was by concentrating his attention upon himself, by recognizing in himself the quintessential type of the race, that he succeeded in producing ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... gilded the verdure of the banks and the spires of the city of New York, as I revelled in my own thoughts and enjoyed the luxury of being alone—a double luxury in America, where the people are gregarious, and would think themselves very ill-bred if they allowed you one moment for meditation or self-examination. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... point in the direction of thinking that other acts which we do even more unconsciously may only escape our power of self-examination and control because they are even more familiar— because we have done them oftener; and we may imagine that if there were a microscope which could show us the minutest atoms of consciousness and volition, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... negation is the Spectre, the reasoning power in man: This is a false body, an incrustation over my immortal Spirit, a selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway. To cleanse the face of my spirit by self-examination, To bathe in the waters of life, to wash off the not human, I come in self-annihilation and the grandeur of inspiration; To cast off rational demonstration by faith in the Saviour, To cast off the rotten rags of memory ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... one other 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 of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... ordained, that we come to the duty as men purified by mental struggle and deep self-examination; secondly, it is recommended that the congregations deal with more than wonted severity with all backsliders and evil-doers, in order that the towns may not fall under the divine displeasure, as happened to them that dwelt in the devoted cities of Canaan; thirdly, it is determined to ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the subject, the student should give himself a thorough, honest, self-examination and mental analysis. He should write down a chart of his strong points and his weak ones. He should check off the traits which should be developed, and those which should be restrained. He should determine whether he needs development along physical, mental, and spiritual lines, ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... 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. She lacked all that a pretty wrinkle or two might ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... have been to blame, inasmuch as I was aware of all these things when I made the engagement. No, do not seek any longer to discover the reason. I really am quite ashamed to have been the cause of your undergoing such severe self-examination; let us drop the subject, and adopt the middle course of delay, which implies neither a rupture nor an engagement. Ma foi, there is no hurry. My daughter is only seventeen years old, and your son twenty-one. While we wait, time will be progressing, events will succeed ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... liberating itself from the narrowing and blinding influences of passion and imagination and all the shackles of merely practical needs and disabilities. Here too it fixed the idea or the ideal. 'Life without reflection upon life, without self-examination and self-study and self-knowledge, is a life not worth living by man.' In doing so it revealed a self deeper than the physical being of man and an environment wider and more real—more stable and permanent—than ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... of the community idea, and as communities become so organized that they have some mechanism for self-examination and self-expression, more study will be given to the physical structure of the community as essential for economy and utility, and more pride will be taken in making it beautiful and satisfying. Community planning is essential for the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... He was able, 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, when the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... an effort to atone for his momentary disloyalty; in his work he was devoted and exact to a degree beyond anything he had previously demonstrated; inwardly he was the investigator. Never had he put himself through so merciless a self-examination. He felt keenly Alice's misunderstanding of his dislike of business; he blamed himself for having spoken so freely to Mr. Gorham before he had fully satisfied himself that the doubts he expressed at that time were based on anything beyond ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... service and the glory of God, "One of them," said the Saint, "is severe and almost terrible in his preaching. He proclaims the judgments of God like the very trump of doom. In his special devotions, too, he speaks of nothing but mortifications, austerities, constant self-examination and such like exercises. Thus, by the wholesome fears with which he fills the minds of his penitents, he leads them to an exact observance of God's law, and to an anxious solicitude for their own salvation. He does not harass them with scruples, and yet keeps them in ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... were not his own, stormed around him, and instead of earnest self-examination, he was only able to recall the doubts and scoffings which he had encountered. Confused phantasms crowded his brain; and when he strove to come to a decision, to find solid ground somewhere, everything vanished, he lay powerless, bound hand ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Serious self-examination throws a clear light for him upon those merits of which he has a right to be proud, while revealing to him at the same time the faults to which he is most likely ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... 28, he attended a love feast at the brick meetinghouse. Of this he says: "The afternoon meeting was well attended. The second chapter of Peter's first letter was read. Much good instruction for self-examination was given, both in German and English, from the general scope of the chapter. I made a few remarks on the middle clause in the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... rush of consciousness, there came a difference. There always is a difference between night and day thoughts. Fresh from its wonder-journey, the soul is braver in the morning, the brain is calmer, the spirit more hopeful. After a half-hour's self-examination with her face in the pillow Esther began to wonder if she had not been foolishly apprehensive and whether it were not possible that half her fears were bogies. The weight began to lighten, she breathed more freely. Looking over the rim of the sheltering pillow ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Doe, "to say frankly 'everything' when he asked us what we had to confess; but, when you've got to go into details, it's the limit. I wish I were dead. Monty gave me a long list of questions for self-examination, and I had to go back and ask him for more. They didn't nearly ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... able to say honestly that he had arrived at his conclusions after earnest thought and conscientious inquiry, and that his conviction was the result of many lonely hours of self-examination. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... 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 new tasks and ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... "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 ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... are going. We need continually to know the direction 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 both possible ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... we do not blame them for it. It is a disease incident to their calling, as pedantry is to that of a scholar, or astuteness to that of an attorney. But it is most dangerous in the greatest minds, and in the highest places; and only to be kept off by them, as by us, each in our place, by honest self-examination, diligent prayer, and the grace of God which comes thereby. Once or twice in the world's history a great ruler, like Charles the Fifth, cuts the Gordian knot, and escapes into a convent: but how few can or ought to do that? There are those who must go on ruling, or see their country ruined; ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... says, 'Those who are accustomed to settle the meaning of ancient phrases by self-examination will find some strange conclusions arrived at by us.' The writer never wrote a more correct sentence—it admits of no kind ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... 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 ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he 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 ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to the disordered condition of my mind at that time; to the 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 ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... offended at this, and think me too severe on her sex. I am only saying, I am only telling the women, 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 shall read this, find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, there is plenty of time ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... 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 ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... plays no part was past and over long ago, and during the last few weeks he had reflected upon the situation with ever-increasing clearness and deliberation. At first he had not been quite sure of his feelings, but earnest self-examination by degrees made everything plain to him. What he was most distinctly conscious of was a sense of profound disgust at his present manner of life. Things could not remain as they were. Sooner or later it must inevitably come to the knowledge of his friends. What would they think of him for ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... perceptible by the 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
