"Introspective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... library, awaiting his lordship and the announcement of dinner. There was a book before him; but his eyes were upon the window, the smooth lawns beyond, all drenched in summer sunshine, and his thoughts were introspective. He looked into his shuddering soul, and saw that he could not—that he would not—do the thing which he was come to do. He would await the coming of Everard, to tell him so. There would be a storm to face, he knew. But sooner that than carry this vile ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... dimly, he told himself humbly, what the sight of suffering was to her, and she had stood up to it. She, with her passion for animals; she, with her tender, tender heart! Larry, who believed himself to be profoundly introspective, did not know that it was his own flawless physical courage, finding and recognising its fellow in Christian, that had first lit the flame. He thought it was her face, with its delicate charm, its faint, elusive loveliness, that had felled him, laid him low, devastated him. He pleased himself in ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... corpulent, but his face, though massive, had preserved something of the sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in that of his brother. His eyes, which were of a peculiarly light, watery gray, seemed to always retain that far-away, introspective look which I had only observed in Sherlock's when he was exerting his ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... followed the old cow-puncher's story. In reciting this page from the book of his life he had lost thought of his surroundings, but now he remembered, and seemed startled at having talked so much. He retired within himself, his eyes taking on an introspective look as though, as one of the boys expressed it, "he ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have told why he felt that strange form of depression. He was wholly unfamiliar with any form of introspective inquiry, any analysis of a mental state. He had never held sad intellectual inquest over a dead hope, nor groped blindly for a ray of light in the inky ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... where they are the three distinct and independent kingdoms, and turn our introspective gaze upon the kingdom of France. There we recognize the same fact; there the same work of dismemberment is going on. About the end of the ninth century there were already twenty-nine provinces or fragments of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... expression, that on the face of the dead man was stem and, as it were, fraught with importance where thick grey eyebrows lay parted over a large nose, and the latter curved downwards towards a moustache which divided introspective, partially closed eyes from a mouth that was set half-open. Indeed, it was as though the man were pondering something of annoyance, so that presently he would make shift to deliver himself of a final and urgent injunction. The blue smoke of a meagre candle quivered meanwhile, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... head, and his handsome face flushed. It was not a frank face; he had lived too solitary and introspective a life for frankness; but he ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... every one who loves the truth has the privilege of using for the sake of his own growth and wilfulness, and circumstances often turn it full upon us, greatly to our advantage, if we do not wince but act upon the knowledge that it brings. It is possible to acquire an introspective habit which is wholesome and true, and brings us every day a better sense of ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... knightly vigilance and of Christian watchfulness. An old Anglo-Norman, Osmont, writes: "The eye-speckled feathers should warn a man that never too often can he have his eyes wide open, and gaze inwardly upon his own heart." These dear people were so introspective and self-conscious, always looking for trouble—in their own motives, even—that no doubt many good impulses perished unnoticed, while the originator was chasing mental phantoms ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... own sake that Walter had ventured to ask it. Power's great fault was his over-refinement; the fastidiousness which marred his proper influence, made him unpopular with many boys, and shut him up in a reserved and introspective habit of mind. By a kind of instinct, Walter felt that it would be good to disturb this epicurean indifference to the general interests of the school, and the kind of intellectualism which weakened the character of this attractive and affectionate, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... to match-making mothers, and as his indomitable courage made him interesting to the other and better sort, you will see that Artie was pursued rather more than most eligible young men. This pursuit had made him wary and cautious. Had he been more introspective, it would have embittered him; but it shows his amiable modesty when I assert that Artie only fought shy of the more aggressive anglers, whose landing-nets were always in evidence, while he never refused ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... paralleling of Lincoln's own experience in the experience of the friend so like himself, broke tip for once the solitude of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward terror. Both men were deeply introspective. Each had that overpowering sense of the emotional responsibilities of marriage, which is bred in the bone of certain hyper-sensitive types—at least in the Anglo-Saxon race. But neither realized this trait in himself until, having blithely ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... in that way Loeben could best bring out his philosophy of friendship. The only change, it seems, that he ever made in this arrangement was to place one man between two women. The sick-bed is poetized as the cradle of knowledge, for in it, or on it, we become introspective and learn life. Old chronicles, tournaments, jewelry, precious stones, Maryism, nature from every conceivable point of view, dreams and premonitions, visions and hallucinations, religion of the renunciatory type, the pain that clarifies, the friendship ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... deserve. The tacit assumption of the majority of critics seems to be that the poet, like the criminal, is the last man who should pass judgment upon his own case. Yet it is by no means certain that this view is correct. Introspective analysis on the part of the poet might reasonably be expected to be as productive of aesthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the poet's self-exposition must ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him. A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chair, I have known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective that one couldn't get in a word about one's own ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... his genius is found to be so purely objective; he himself emphasized the objectivity of his art. From the beginning, as has been said, he had no message, no inspiration welling up within him, no inward life of his own that sought expression. He was not even introspective. He was primarily a moralist, an observer of life, which he saw as a thing of the outside, and he was keen in observation, cool, interested. If there was any mystery in his tales, it was in the object, not in the author's breast; he makes no confessions either ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... reasons for these variations at length. They depend upon certain differences between the English and the French public, which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which I have left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective side of the Journal, already so full—to overweight it, at any rate, for English readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relate to local names and books, more or less unfamiliar to the general public, yet seemed to me ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was "suffering from jaundice, or if it was only dirt." Dr. Jessop, who was afterwards headmaster of the school, says that there was a tradition that Borrow was indolent and even stupid. There is little doubt that he was a dreamy youth, much given to introspective thought and wild imaginings; but, in spite of these drawbacks in the dominie's eyes, he was a very human boy, fond of outdoor life and sports. Some of his pursuits, however—such as his liking for philological studies, and for the company of gipsies and horsey men generally—might ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... philosopher of British Socialism states: "Socialism utterly despises the 'other world' with all its stage properties—that is, the present objects of religion. It brings back religion from heaven to earth."[986] "As to the ethical teaching of Christ, with its one-sided, introspective, and individualistic character, we venture to assert that no one acquainted with the theory of modern scientific Socialism can for one moment call it Socialistic. Socialism has no sympathy with the morbid, eternally-revolving-in-upon-itself transcendent morality of the Gospel discourses. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... also took a leading part in the Courts of the Church in what was known as the "Marrow Controversy," regarding the merits of an English work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which he defended against the attacks of the "Moderate" party in the Church. B., if unduly introspective, was a man of singular piety and amiability. His autobiography is an interesting record of Scottish life, full of sincerity and tenderness, and not devoid of humorous ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... it was natural that I should regard Mr. Wentworth with stimulated curiosity. As I met him from day to day, passing through the Common with that same introspective air, there was something in his loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not read before in his pale, meditative face some such sad history as Mr. H——— had confided to me. I formed the resolution of speaking to him, though with no very lucid purpose. One morning we came face ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that she was right, so far, at any rate, as my outer conduct was concerned. The state of mind I was in, however, kept me from making any acknowledgment of it—the real cause of my keeping so much to myself and of being so distrait. And so I went on, torturing myself as before with introspective questioning; and she, with her mind set on my actions, and endeavouring to find a cause for them, continued and ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Again that shade of introspective bitterness clouded Marshby's face. "Yes," said he, involuntarily. "But how about her? ...
— Different Girls • Various
... poet who would fain improve and exalt them should do his utmost not to feel. On Wordsworth's more stubborn nature the effect produced by many years of detraction was of a different kind. Naturally introspective, he was driven by abuse and ridicule into taking stock of himself more frequently and more laboriously than ever. He formed an estimate of himself and his writings which was, on the whole, (as will now be generally admitted,) a just one; and this view ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... a while for this fact to be communicated to Mr. Heatherbloom. Though she shifted her figure often, as if to call attention to the pale profile of her face against a leaden sky, his thoughts remained introspective. Only the sky-line seemed to interest him. But one day something white came dancing in the breeze to his feet. Absorbed in deep neutral tones afar, he did not see it; his four-footed charges, however, were quick to perceive ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... work—a literary monument of intelligent and conscientious labor—deals with every phase and aspect of state and political activity, public and private, in the Fatherland.... Teems with entertaining anecdotes and introspective apercus of ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... characters, Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon. He loved to emphasize the superiority of history over fiction as dramatic material. The third of the three essays mentioned was a Jeremiad on the morbid self-consciousness of the age, which shows itself in religion and philosophy, as skepticism and introspective metaphysics; and in literature, as sentimentalism, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... marvellous poet, a precise sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him like Millet, and, like Millet, very near to the soil; a natural man, yet crossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of a sensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and as introspective as Heine; a visionary and a lover of life, very close to the periphery of things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's alter ego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionate fling at nature; withal a sculptor, always profound and tortured, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... clearly apparent when we were boys. He is the same ardent, jolly, whole-souled fellow that clapped me on the back after leaving the class-room. Everybody liked him then, everything favored him. Often when he had not looked at a lesson he would make a superb recitation. I was moody and introspective; so I am to-day. Even the unforeseen events of life league together to develop one's characteristics. The conditions of his life today are in harmony with all that has been; the same is true of mine, with the strange exception that I ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... influence of physical laws, and a continually increasing influence of mental laws; (6) That the mental laws which regulate the progress of society cannot be discovered by the metaphysical method, that is, by the introspective study of the individual mind, but only by such a comprehensive survey of facts as will enable us to eliminate disturbances, that is, by the method of averages; (7) That human progress has been due, not to moral ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... from wasted. He undoubtedly calls for considerable effort from the student who takes him, as he ought to be taken, seriously; but it is effort well worth while. He, perhaps, shines even more as a psychologist than as a philosopher—at least in the time- honoured sense. He has an almost uncanny introspective insight and, as has been said, a power of rendering its result in language which creates in the reader a sense of excitement and adventure not to be excelled by the ablest romancer. Fadaises, which are to be met with ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... and timidly at her husband's astonished face, as he threw off his waterproof and laid down his carpet-bag. Her own face was a little flurried with excitement, and his, half hidden in his tawny beard, and, possibly owing to his self-introspective nature, never spontaneously sympathetic, still expressed only wonder! Mrs. Rylands was a little frightened. It is sometimes dangerous to meddle with a man's habits, even when he ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thought and feeling, but these are of a very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so prominently in the writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... novelist creature—the kind of creature, God forgive me, that brother Percival is certain to become. You'll probably say when you read this that I am trying to drag out all the morbid side of Peter and make him the melancholy, introspective creature that he used to be, in fits and starts, when you first knew him. Of course that's the last thing I want to do, but work to a man of Peter's temperament is the one rock that can save him. He has, I do believe, a ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... those that we can associate with recognized outer stimuli. For practical purposes we think rather in terms of outer objects than of our states of experience; nature has had need to make men but very slightly introspective. And so it is that this derived use of our eulogistic and disparaging terms plays a larger part than its primary application. But the essential point to note is that "goodness" and "badness" in the first instance refer to the fundamental cleavage between the affective qualities ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... least were of the world of understandable things. Miller, slouching in his chair, with a cheap tie-clip showing underneath his waistcoat, a bulging mass of sock descending over the top of his boot, rolling a cigarette with yellow-stained, objectionable fingers, still involved him in introspective speculation as to real ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you here and now." Jay opened his hand, and Barrent saw a tiny single-charge weapon. "The law sets limits, and acts as a modifier upon the behavior of the lawbreaker and the law enforcer. To be sure, the law now states that you must die. But all men must die. The law, by its ponderous and introspective nature, gives you time in which to die. You have a day at least; and without the law, you would ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the town and college. There was no definite reason either in her physical or mental health for this life of extraordinary seclusion; it seems to have been simply the natural outcome of a singularly introspective temperament. She rarely showed or spoke of her poems to any but one or two intimate friends; only three or four were published during her lifetime; and it was with considerable surprise that her relatives found, on her ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... "I'm too introspective. I ought to look out of myself. But I can't. It isn't my fault that my eyes are turned inwards. I'm made like that. I can't alter my make. I can destroy myself, but I ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... to the very edge of the cliff and stood with folded arms, looking into the night as if it were a face or scroll to be read. But the eye, in truth, saw not, though the thoughtless sense perceived the shifting clouds and tossing sea. The vision was introspective wholly. It was turned on a wide inner field, where stood arrayed, like an order of battle, a strange array of Principles and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... indignation which animates every line of his satire is more akin to the spirit of Ezekiel or Isaiah than to the spirit of Juvenal or Persius: though the fierce literality of occasional detail, the prosaic accuracy of implacable and introspective abhorrence, may seem liker the hard Roman style of impeachment by photography than the great Hebrew method of denunciation by appeal. But the fusion of sarcastic realism with imaginative passion produces a compound of such peculiar and fiery flavor as we taste ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the habit of making life a consecutive series of absorbing preoccupations are numerous. The practice narrows the sphere of one's interests and activities, tends to introspective egoism, and robs the present of much of its savour. But, now and again, it has its compensations. Save for a single week-end of rather pensive moping, the end of my love affair changed the colour of my outlook but very little indeed. Its place was ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the first time by oneself alone when one does not know a soul in it, may be intensely boring or intensely interesting. It depends on oneself. Peter was in the mood to be interested. He was introspective. It pleased him to watch the early morning stir; to see the women come out in shawls and slipshod slippers and swill down their bit of pavement; to see sleepy shopkeepers take down their shutters and street-vendors set up their stalls; to try to gauge the thoughts and doings of the place from the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... introspective thought she had forgotten one who had forbidden that gloomy seclusion, and to whom it would be as natural for her to look for protection and refuge as to convent or husband. From her thoughts to-night the image of her wandering father had been absent. His ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the context that he accepted this confessional and introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life—of the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its sentiment is warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... ideal of her should rise to such splendor; this apotheosis left no place for the pitying tenderness of love, only for its glory. The color of this picture was like the sound of silver trumpets; the heart-throb of the strings was missing. Mary was neither morbid nor introspective, but at this time her whole being was keyed to more than normal comprehension. Watching the picture, seeing that it was a portrayal not of her but of his love for her, she wondered if any woman could long endure the arduousness ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... with his despatches, returned with two more dogs. "Billee" and "Joe" he called them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... came all prepared to be caught," he heard the other's voice like some one talking to him from a distance; "your deeply introspective mood had already reconstructed the past so vividly, so intensely, that you were en rapport at once with any forces of those days that chanced still to be lingering. And they swept you up ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... was puzzled, but deciding that Alec needed to have his mind turned from introspective subjects, she took him up at once. "I agree with you. He's a giant for ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... as hard as a stone," he went on in the same introspective voice, and looking as if his heart were lying as heavy as a stone in that unwarmed breast of which he spoke. "No, not so hard. But how to prove what you give me credit for—ah! that's another question. No one has ever expected such a thing from me before. No one whom my tenderness would have been ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... tragically]. Don't treat me cruelly, Moo Moo. You don't understand me. No man ever really understands a woman. There are terrible depths to my nature. I had a long talk with Dr. Aesculapius only last week, and he told me I'm too introspective. It's the curse of us emotional women. I'm really quite worried, but much you care, much you care. [A note of tears comes into her voice.] I'm sure you don't love me any more, Moo Moo. No! No! Don't answer me! If you did you couldn't speak to me the way you do. I've never ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... one who is what is popularly known as a drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it? Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only the oyster fascinated by the pearl that ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... bench well up toward the front where he could be fairly conspicuous and yet not too conspicuous; neither was it the persuasive person who had dangled the bait of private profit before the beguiled eyes of AEsop Loving. Rather was it the serious, self-searching, introspective Jeff, who earlier that day had besought counsel and comfort of Aunt Dilsey Turner. He came alone, walking with head bowed as walks one who is wrapped in his own thoughts. He arrived betimes; he remained silent and apart, inwardly communing, one would have said, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... little in common with his lodger, who was a thin, dark, spectacled man, with a stoop which gave the impression of actual, physical deformity. I remember that during our short visit we found the vicar garrulous, but his lodger strangely reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted eyes, brooding ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... semi-lunatic friend worry her, or the whole problem of what, if anything, was the motive of the book. Eventually he is shown pairing off with his earlier love, Winnie; and I am bound to say that she too has my sympathy. I should sum up by saying that the analysis of introspective egotism, however subtly done, can make at best only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... life demands. In a new age men must acquire a new capacity, must be men upon a new scale, and with added qualities. We shall need a new Renaissance, ushered in by a new "humanistic" movement, in which we shall add our present minute, introspective study of ourselves, our jails, our slums, our nervecenters, our shifts to live, almost as morbid as medieval religion, a rediscovery of the round world, and of man's place in it, now that its face has changed. ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... disposed to differ with him. He argued that a woman of Sylvia Whitman's type does not change her manner and grow introspective for nothing. He was inclined to think there might be something rather serious at the bottom of it all. His imagination, however, pictured some disease, which she was concealing from all about her, but which caused her never-ceasing anxiety ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... skies. The skipper, an admirable seaman but nothing more, favored us with very little of his society, except at his table; and the young woman, Miss Janette Harford, and I became very well acquainted. We were, in truth, nearly always together, and being of an introspective turn of mind I often endeavored to analyze and define the novel feeling with which she inspired me—a secret, subtle, but powerful attraction which constantly impelled me to seek her; but the attempt was hopeless. I could only be sure that at least it ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... whether, if he had never touched opium or wine, his real achievements would have been substantial, for he had no conception of a veritable stand-point of philosophical investigation; but the actual effect of his intemperance was to aggravate to excess his introspective tendencies, and to remove him incessantly further from the needful discipline of true science. His conditions of body and mind were abnormal, and his study of the one thing he knew any thing about—the human mind—was radically imperfect. His powers, noble and charming as they might ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... times. Three days ago he had made his choice, he had no intention of departing from it. For good or ill the thing must go forward now. And, after all, the ultimate decision did not lie with him. Admitting it his thoughts became introspective. Throughout his deliberations he had put self on one side, there had been no question of his own wishes; now for the first time he allowed personal considerations to rise unchecked. For what did he hope? He ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Penreath has a highly-strung, introspective temperament. He went to the front from a high sense of duty, but he was temperamentally unfit for the ghastly work of modern warfare, and broke down under the strain. Men like Penreath feel it keenly ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... very remarkable, so contradictory, so incongruous have I found the American that I hesitate. Shall I give you a satire; shall I devote myself to eulogy; shall I tear what they call the "whitewash" aside and expose them to the winds of excoriation; or shall I devote myself to an introspective, analytical divertissement? But I do not wish to educate you on the Americans, but to entertain, to make you laugh by the recital of comical truths; so without system I am going to tell you of these Americans as I found them, day by day, month by month, officially, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... at Elim's heart; and in his painstaking introspective manner he exposed it. He found a happiness that, at the same time, was a pain; he found an actual catch in his throat that was a nebulous desire; he found an utter loneliness together with the conviction that this earth was a place of glorious possibilities of affinity. Principally ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... beautiful character; "a spiritual adventure" might have been its sub-title, for the events in Sarah Eden's life were those of mind rather than body. There are two main divisions of the story: in the first we watch Sarah from her beginnings as a quiet introspective child in her Devon home, and through the short course of her unsatisfactory married life. With considerable skill the author has here shown the various forces that were at work building up the heroine's character, and that strange ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... in looking almost exactly like a German student. Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh. Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave a Bohemian touch to his pleasant ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... chiefly to blame, though, or you would be different," he added, with a dark, introspective look. "I was proud of you as a beautiful child, and tried to win your love by indulgence. Heaven knows, I would like to be a different man, but it's all a breathless hurry after bubbles that vanish when ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... wish to suggest that the way in which I have been defining perceptions is the only possible way, or even the best way. It is the way that arose naturally out of our present topic. But when we approach psychology from a more introspective standpoint, we have to distinguish sensations and perceptions, if possible, from other mental occurrences, if any. We have also to consider the psychological effects of sensations, as opposed to their physical ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... not of the character which lauded itself, indeed he was never introspective nor thought of himself at all. He was just strong and living and breathing, his actions governed by an inherited sense of the fitness of things for a gentleman's code, which, unless it was swamped, as on one ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... she been right in that long ago time? It seemed ages to her, so much had happened since, and she thought she could not live without the child, but after all the girl was not of her kind. What if she had done her a great wrong! She had never been an introspective woman, her life was mostly on the surface, ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not fully understand, but I think from things he has said, that as a boy he was jealous of my father. This feeling would naturally make him, when it came to the test, not unwilling to believe in his guilt. Then, being reticent and introspective, he magnified all this a thousandfold when the truth came out, and he realised he had profited by the unjust suspicion. By dwelling upon it he came to feel as if he had actually obtained the money himself by unfair means. But I am convinced that if he did encourage his uncle to believe in my father's ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... him with soft violet eyes—and it was as though some psychic bathhouse attendant had poured ice water down his spine. For he had seen that look before, that liquid introspective look in the velvet eyes of cattle. He shivered. For a moment he had been thinking of them as human. And somehow the lack of that indefinable some thing called humanity robbed them of much of their glamour. They were still beautiful, but their beauty ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... of a man altogether,' was his comment. Over the natural amiability of that son's face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour. The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher. He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... plain, heroic completeness is touched with a stately life that is a presage of immortality. It is evident, indeed, that Arnold wrote Balder Dead in his most fortunate hour, and that Merope is his one serious mistake in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and introspective drama—the presentation of character through action—is impossible; to a method thus reticent and severe drama—the expression of emotion in action—is improper. 'Not here, O Apollo!' It is written that none shall bind his brows with the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... has differed immensely. It is one thing to the apathetic, fatalistic Turk, and quite another matter to an energetic, nervous American. Facts, fancies, faiths, all show how wide is the variance in feelings. With them no introspective [greek]cnzhi seauton overexcites the consciousness of self. But with us; as with those of old possessed of devils, it comes to startle and stays to distress. Too apt is it to prove an ever-present, undesirable double. Too often does it play the part of uninvited ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... in exchange for a package of chewing gum. Here at the camp there was no such opportunity, but he would wait and watch for another chance. Meantime the long separation of miles, and the creeping days, gave him a feeling of desolation such as he had never experienced before. He began to grow introspective. He fancied that perhaps he had overestimated Ruth's friendship for him. The dear memories he had cherished during the voyage were brought out in the nightwatches and ruthlessly reviewed, until his own shy hope that the light in her eyes had been for him began to fade, and in its place there ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... he was in the introspective mood in which a man pays no attention to his listener as he cons over his secret thoughts, I remained silent, and, seating myself upon the bed, continued to watch his ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... between the conservative and the progressive principle in nature. After the long insensibility, spring was having her way with him, as she was having it with the grass and the flowers and the bloom on the trees. It was one of those moments of awakening, of ecstatic vision, which come only to introspective and imaginative minds—to minds that have known darkness as well as light. In that instant of realization, he knew, beyond all doubt, that he stood not for the past, but for the future, that he stood not for philosophy, but for adventure—for ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... long-nosed, even from the beginning—a shy, introspective, self-conscious little boy, made peculiarly familiar with his personal defects by constant remarks that his hair was red and that his nose was long. At school, for years, he was known familiarly as "Rufus," "Red-Head," "Carrot-Top," or "Nosey," and at home it ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... an introspective man. His life, the life of a rich man's son, had left little room for self-examination of mood and purpose and character. He had done well enough during his four years in the university, not because he was ambitious, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... materials enable us to judge no other prophet was more introspective or concerned about himself; and though it might be said that he carried this concern to a fault, yet fault or none, the fact is that no prophet started so deeply from himself as Jeremiah did. His circumstances ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... a personable man himself. He was tall and broad shouldered, with abundant brown hair and beard, and a winning smile. His eyes were dark and introspective, but they could glow like sunlit topaz, or grow dim with tears, as his congregation had opportunity to observe during this first sermon—but they were essentially ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... from her introspective vision, looked at him rather blankly a moment, then sprang to her feet. At first she seemed offended, then cried ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... great names of antiquity, that they are for this purpose scarcely suitable. In some departments the science of the Greeks was remarkable, though it is completely overshadowed by their philosophy; yet it was largely based on what has proved to be a wrong method of procedure, viz the introspective and conjectural, rather than the inductive and experimental methods. They investigated Nature by studying their own minds, by considering the meanings of words, rather than by studying things and recording phenomena. This wrong (though by ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this true of the women of this type whose introspective morbidity has led them to diagnose their own functional disturbances as the direct result of "over-sexuality" and restraint from normal sexual expression—a diagnosis that is probably wrong nine times in ten cases. Such a woman is a very dangerous teacher ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... flower of a pioneer stock, and him the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... painful to see how a mind of great scope and power was cramped and contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and distrust of almost all enjoyment. When, at another time, he had to examine on "Locke on the Human Understanding," the metaphysical study acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and anguish that he could hardly endure. It is pleasant, however, to find him in another mood, writing, "Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before; I ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... I mean, and—and socially, I suppose it should be called. Three years ago, at the time of her marriage to Spaulding, she was a slip of a girl, shy, delicate, and introspective. She and her lover were brought up in adjacent houses, and the world for her signified the garden hedge over which they whispered in the gloaming, and later his prowess at the divinity school and his ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... her only convent friend, contained little of idle gossip and of things that had happened. They had no continuity. They were introspective, and took the form of a diary taken up at odd moments and left again to be continued, sometimes the following day, sometimes after a week. They revealed intellectual development far in advance of her years, and clear perception ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... introspection, but there is at present considerable dissent from this doctrine, the dissenters holding that an objective type of observation of human behavior is distinctively psychological and probably more significant and fruitful than the introspective attitude. However this may be, both introspection and behavior study require attention to matters that are commonly disregarded. Every one is of course interested in what people do, or at least in the outcome of their activities; but psychology ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... mother's side, Hopeful was, to begin with, a youth of an unusually shallow and silly mind. In the jargon of our day he was a man of a peculiarly optimistic temperament. No one ever blamed him for being too subjective and introspective. It took many sharp trials and many bitter disappointments to take the inborn frivolity and superficiality out of this young man's heart. He was far on in his life, he was far on even in his religious life, before you would ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of your self-distrust! You—reign? Come, come! You would be pale and wan; One of those timid, introspective kings Who ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... The sense of sight; (2) the sense of hearing; (3) the sense of smell; (4) the sense of taste; (5) the sense of touch; (6) Mano-vijnyana (lit., mind-knowledge), or the perceptive faculty; (7) Klista-mano-vijnyana (lit., soiled-mind-knowledge), or an introspective faculty; (8) Alaya-vijnyana (lit., receptacle-knowledge), ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... difference between Corneille and the long line of his followers, those rhetorical poets whose mania it was to present nothing but sublime and ridiculous cases of conscience. And Racine he confounded with his offspring of pretentiously introspective Parisian psychologists. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... table, Bertram Chester expanded. The Judge took him in hand at once; led him on into twenty channels of introspective talk. Presently, they were speaking direct to one another, the gulf that separates youth from age, employer from employed, bridged by interest on one side and supreme confidence on the other. This grouping left Mrs. Tiffany free to study Heath. It grew upon ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... novelists, so much the better. But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority of authors do not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the last domestic drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last analysis of the inmost self of some introspective young girl which crossed ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... that only the rich and the leisurely have what is called religious experiences and shadowed souls. The finest developments, doubtless, of the religious sense require time and money. That leisurely groping after tendencies, that introspective analysis of the sins of omission and commission, that delightful perception of the falling away from righteousness of your brethren and sisters—all these choice sweets are, if they are to be adequately enjoyed, compatible only ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... man's, and whose habit of self-control is less formed, a sudden shock will upset his mental balance. Sometimes a very egotistical man will succumb to danger long drawn out. The same applies to men who are very introspective. I have seen a man of obviously low intelligence break down on the eve of an attack. The anticipation of danger makes many men "windy," especially officers who are responsible for other lives than their own. ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... a calculating, introspective philosopher, seeing only the mote in the sunbeam, and nothing of the glory." Here she gently disengaged the teaspoon from my fingers and laid it in her own saucer, having done which she sighed, and looked at me with her head to ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... had been too busy, all his days, to be introspective. He did not know that he had any tenderness in his nature; and if he had become conscious of its abstract existence he would have considered it as a manifestation of disease in some part of him. But he was ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... to endure those eyes all the next day. Then—the eyes retired in on themselves, became introspective. It was hardly easier for the General, that look of a suffering ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the earlier stage of psychology, but he was in reality the pioneer of the new. Subsequent psycho-physical investigations have all been in the spirit of his work; and although he consistently advocated the introspective method in psychological investigation, he was among the first to appreciate the help that may be given to it by animal and social and infant psychology. He may justly claim the merit of having guided the awakened psychological interest of British thinkers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Then his introspective mind, which had been trained in the Aristotelian dialectic, began to examine his opponent's point of view. A merciful loving Heavenly Father might very well smile at the follies and weaknesses of His human children; why, then, should we not be able ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... spirit of the craftsman—pride in and for his work, and not pride of self. Nothing was too good for his art, nothing too poor for himself. The following letter, written twenty-eight years ago, gives us a glimpse of himself as he was then, alone and introspective. There evidently had been a family jar, something that came far too frequently, and Father was alone here ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... read. He was left alone with his thoughts which, though sometimes sad and lonely, were never unhappy ones. These six months of silence and thought changed his disposition. He grew older in spirit. He acquired a habit of silence he never outgrew; of introspective reflection, such as the old have who sit silently in ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... brow. That pallor, by the way, I heard recently, has been characteristic of him from his earliest years. A schoolfellow from that far-off and almost pre-historic time when our Grand Old Man was a thin, slim, introspective and prematurely serious boy at Eton, tells to-day that the recollection he has of the young Gladstone is of a slight figure, never running, but always walking with a fast step, with earnest black eyes, and with a pallid face—the ivory ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... hired-men of the Midland town; and the introspective horses they curried and brushed and whacked and amiably cursed—those good old horses switch their tails at flies no more. For all their seeming permanence they might as well have been buffaloes—or the buffalo laprobes that grew bald in patches and ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... adjective American has any meaning at all, it qualifies Poe and Hawthorne. They were American to the core. They both revealed the curious sympathy with Oriental moods of thought which is often an American characteristic, Poe, with his cold logic and his mathematical analysis, and Hawthorne, with his introspective conscience and his love of the subtile and the invisible, are representative of phases of American character not to be mistaken by any one who has given thought to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... he had learned much about the affairs of the estates and had become awake to the obstacles good farmers encounter in their strife with soil and weather conditions. As a result his outlook broadened, he became less introspective and more alive to the concerns of those about him; and he gained a new respect for his father's and grandfather's employees. One had much less time to be depressed and discouraged when one had so many things ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... fretful; that, though married, life still has a few thorns. She finds out also that the long day, when husband is at business, affords many opportunities for reflection and serious thought. These moments of seeming leisure are the moments of destiny. They are the introspective moments, when she weighs and measures out for herself sympathy, if she is not made of the right stuff, or she makes strong resolutions, and prepares herself mentally to win out in the new life. They are the moments when her subconscious intelligence is trying to express ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... hurrying on to Rome, and I have no time to write a georgic. But, oh! my little friends of the north; my struggling, strenuous, introspective, self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant friends, who spout the 'Hue! Pater, oh! Lenae!' without a ghost of an idea what you are talking about, do you know what is meant by the god? Bacchus is everywhere, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... of time could not entirely efface the terrible scars. One cheek was wrinkled and crimson, while one eye and the mouth were drawn down pathetically. The accident might have changed the disposition of any child, but Lyddy chanced to be a sensitive, introspective bit of feminine humanity, in whose memory the burning flame was never quenched. Her mother, partly to conceal her own wounded vanity, and partly to shield the timid, morbid child, kept her out of sight as much as possible; so that at sixteen, when she was left an ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... late, too, had worried her not a little. She was unlike herself—at times brooding and introspective, at other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety—a gaiety which had the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda had ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though she were developing a certain new ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... dawn of a new idea. Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer, when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective eyes. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... author is as yet comparatively unfamiliar, and finally the book is dedicated to a member of the Harvard faculty, suggesting that whether it be a story of San Francisco or Dawson City, it must necessarily be vaporous, introspective and chiefly concerned with "literary" impressions. Mr. Norris is, indeed, a "Harvard man," but that he is a good many other kinds of a man is self-evident. His book is, in the language of Mr. Norman Hapgood, the work of "a large human being, with a firm stomach, who knows ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... its gorgeous alternative. I may say in all seriousness that this is a conservative and unexaggerated account of one phase of my early life—the one, I think, that tended most strongly to make me introspective and morbid. Later on, when I was trying to abandon the habit of masturbation, this early training greatly increased the despair I felt ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... It is an agreeable defect where one retains discretion sufficient for its regulation. This very night I am one of a party avowedly formed for pleasure, something my reflective mind would once have viewed with disapprobation. But again no matter. Perhaps I have been too analytical, too introspective. Perhaps the war has confused my sense of spiritual values. War is such ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... walls, against which the plum trees were nailed. At the back another garden was separated from the fields by a tall old hedge. It was very pretty. Miriam had not much to do, so she found time for her beloved reading, and for writing little introspective ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Father, who did not like people to be too introspective and self-tormenting, said that they should, however, walk as it is written of the Maccabees, Caute et ordinate;[1] that is, with circumspection and order, or, to use a common expression, "bridle in hand." And one of the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure of breast and back. There is no expression of immodesty. The woman of the Philippines is sad as she is swarthy, and her melancholy eyes are almost always introspective, or glancing far away, and revising the disappointed dreams of long ago. Profounder grief than is read in the faces of bronze and copper no mourning artist has wrought nor gloomy poet written. Below the jacket, the everlasting blazer, is a liberal width of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... discriminating Shan-se made no reply, being, indeed, undecided in his mind whether such a course was expected of him. On several previous occasions the somewhat introspective Emperor had addressed himself to persons in what they judged to be the form of a question, as one might say, 'How blue is the unapproachable air canopy, and how delicately imagined the colour of the clouds!' yet when they had ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... moment, threw himself back so that his elbow rested on the table, his forehead being shaded by his hand, which, however, did not hide the marks of introspective inflexibility on his features as he narrated in fullest detail the incidents of the transaction with the sailor. The tinge of indifference which had at first been visible in the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... thirty-second to his forty-second year, his invention seemed, to some extent, paralyzed. The Fisher Maiden, the one story written during that time, starts as beautifully as Arne; but it grows complicated and introspective: the psychological experiences of the stage-struck heroine are not in the same key as the opening chapters. Passing over nine years, we find Magnhild much more vague ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Fenshawe had to raise his hand as high as his own forehead to reach Dick's back. His eyes were shrewd and keen, with the introspective look of the student. Though it was more than probable that he was very wealthy, judging from the meager details within Royson's ken, he had the semblance of a university professor rather ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... LADY CAROLINE (suddenly introspective). I hope we are all nice women? We don't know each other very well. (Certain suspicions are reborn in various breasts.) Does anything ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... the self-tormenting strife of introspective and self-conscious aspiration, but rather an unrelaxed, diligent intention, a steady acquiescence, a simple and loyal surrender to the great currents of life, a holding on to results achieved in your best moments, that shall do it for you: a surrender not limp but deliberate, a trustful self-donation, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... grace, intense emotion, and melancholy refinement. In Hamlet, Richelieu, Othello, Iago, Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,—that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,—was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was complete. It was that which made him the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... effort needed for this good result. When, therefore, the writer finds himself working long hours day after day with no sense of mental fatigue, but a certain unusual gaiety of heart accompanying the successive days, as if life were on the whole rather a lark, he, being accurately introspective, and not easily deceived into optimistic conclusions, is forced to give the whole credit for this change of spirit to the functioning of the new glands, and he is confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... at this day, she would probably have spent her time between her promise and its fulfilment in self-analysis and introspective reasoning with her own conscience. But the women of a century ago were not tossed about with winds of various opinions, or made foolishly subtile by arguments about principles which ought never to be associated with dissent. A few strong, plain dictates had been ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... little way as yet. Enchanted forests lay beyond, and perilous seas, but there were hints, breaths like the wafting of the garments of unspeakable Presences. My talk with Vanna grew less personal, and more introspective. I felt the touch of her finger-tips leading me along the ways of Quiet—my feet brushed a shining dew. Once, in the twilight under the chenar trees, I saw a white gleaming and thought it a swiftly passing Being, but when in haste I gained the tree I found there only a Ninefold ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... vague question which is born not of the brain, but the heart, and which is the basis of all religions—where shall I be then? His mind was not of an introspective nature, and the question just strayed across it and was gone. And still the wonder of the thing held him. He was for the first time in his life in a reverie; the corpse that had shocked and terrified ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the centre of New York. With the life-long friend of M. Degas—Gustave Moreau—Solomon had much in common, but the colour of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a little overpowering, may care ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... nowhere do we recognize the budding of Hawthorne's genius. This clear introspective analysis is the foundation of all true mental power, and Hawthorne might have become a Platonic philosopher, if he had not preferred ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of that attribute. It means that he could contract or expand at will and momentarily, his own personality, so that it coincided exactly, now with a self-indulgent humorist like Falstaff, now with an introspective student like Hamlet, now with a cynical criminal like Iago, now with a high-spirited girl like Rosalind, now with an ambitious woman like Lady Macbeth, and then with a hundred more characters hardly less distinctive than these. It means ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee |
