"Self-absorption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been doing a little amateur work as a nurse in Belgium, but no one—not even Di herself—expressed curiosity as to details. They had so much to think of that interested them more; and I was thankful for the self-absorption of Kitty and Di which saved me from awkward questions as to how I had contrived to get out of Liege. It was simply taken for granted by my family that, according to my own written account, I had made the journey home with thoroughly reputable refugees. I felt sure ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dream-world. Nothing was real in it but his boundless love and his unendurable hate. His bad conscience suggested ever new combinations and was eagerly active to realize the most improbable notions and fancies. If he had still believed in hell, he would have imagined in those moments of self-absorption that he was in the midst of it. So the time had come when the seed of despair which he had so sadly and seriously tended in his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... as yet a natural corrective to the narrower kind of patriotism. America has vast spaces and many varieties of type and climate, and life to her is still a great adventure. Americans have their own form of self-absorption, but seem free as yet from the special competitive self-centrement which has been forced on Britons through long centuries by countless continental rivalries and wars. Insularity was driven into the very bones of our people by the generation-long ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... curious contrasts. Like the French fabulist, La Fontaine, he was a child all his life, and often a spoiled child; yet he joined to childlike simplicity no small share of worldly wisdom. Constant travel made him a shrewd observer of detail, but his self-absorption kept him from sympathy with the broad political aspirations ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... warm as David's. If the closing verses are his, we may, indeed, see in them the king re-awaking to a sense of his responsibilities, which he had so long neglected, first, in the selfishness of his heart, and then in the morbid self-absorption of his remorse; and the lesson may be a precious one that the first thought of a pardoned man should be for others. But there is much to be said, on the other hand, in favour of the conjecture that these verses are a later addition, probably after the return ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... mantel, next the clock!" Joel's eyes followed his sister as she crossed the room with that quick light step, so reminiscent of girlhood. She pounced upon the letter and even her brother's eyes, dimmed by life-long self-absorption, could ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... "The Cumberers," the fault to be assailed is selfishness, and, in honest zeal to show it in its most formidable light, she builds up her typical "Cumberer" into such a complicated monster, so stupendous in her self-absorption, as to be infinitely less beneficial to the reader than a merely ordinary inconsistent human being would have been. The most selfish younger sister reading this story would become a Pharisee, and thank God, that, whatever her peccadilloes, she was not so bad as this Amelia. "My Great-Aunt's Picture" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... think that people like you do a great deal of damage to Christianity. You only flatter human conceit. You get hold of some emotional creature and work upon his feelings until in an access of self-absorption he feels that the universe is standing still while the necessary measures are taken to secure his personal salvation. You flatter this poor soul, and then you go away and leave him to work out ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... smallness of her income. It was not sufficient to give her daughters the advantages she desired them to have, and she knew of but one way to increase it. That way was through the policy-shops. So she gave her whole mind to this business, with as much earnestness and self-absorption as a merchant gives himself to trade. She had a dream-book, gotten up especially for policy buyers, and consulted it as regularly as a merchant does his price-current or a broker the sales of stock. Every day she bet on some "row" or series of "rows," rarely venturing less than five dollars, and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... beneath which, like a gleaming sword, lay the Thames, barriered on either bank by the little bow-windowed houses, with their shining brasses and whitened steps. They were already catching up with the throng of London traffic when she shook herself out of her self-absorption by saying, "There must be thousands of Braithwaites ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... every inch my ideal of a woman—every fibre in you is utterly feminine. I adore your acquired courage, I worship your heavenly inconsistencies. The mental pleasure I experienced with you was measured and limited only by my own perversity and morbid self-absorption; the splendour of the passion I divine in you, unawakened, awes me, leaves me in wonder. The spiritual tonic, even against my own sickly will has freshened me by mere contact with the world you live in; the touch of your lips and hands—ah, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... pure reason affirmed in the first place, as the "beginning of wisdom," was that the world is but a thought, or a series of thoughts: that it exists, therefore, solely in mind. It showed him, as he fixed the mental eye with more and more of self-absorption on the phenomena of his intellectual existence, a picture or vision of the universe as actually the product, so far as he really knew it, of his own lonely thinking power—of himself, there, thinking: as being zero without ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... disposition to lower all culture to the level of their interests and comprehension—evincing the while a defiant self-assertion? And on the side of individualism, what do we see? Paltry meanness in abundance, embroidered selfishness, idle self-absorption, the craving to be conspicuous at all costs, repulsive hypocrisy, lack of courage despite all boastful talk, a lukewarm attitude towards all spiritual tasks, but the busiest industry when ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... labyrinth he is about to enter in search of his ravished bride;—we might expatiate on the graceful, dignified aspect of Beethoven, the concentration of his thoughtful brow, and the loving serenity of his expression,—a kind of embodied musical self-absorption, yet an accurate portrait of the man in his inspired mood; so might he have stood when gathering into his serene consciousness the pastoral melodies of Nature, on a summer evening, to be incorporated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... blurred, its petals delicately crisp, its fragrance only needing air and sunlight to diffuse itself. For all the youthfulness, a quality of indolent magic was about her, a soft haze, as it were, woven of matured experience, of detachment from youth's self-absorption, of the observer's kindly, yet ironic, insight. Her figure was supple; her nut-brown hair, splendidly folded at the back of her head, was hardly touched with white; her quickly glancing, deliberately ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... spirit in a waste of shame" reaches its culminating point. This tremulous self-absorption, rather than any defect of eye or imagination, is the reason of the extraordinary lapses which now and then he makes both in description and in sentiment. The vivid and picturesque sketches he gives of fashionable life at watering-places and country- ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... twenty-four hours in which to get away before he returns. But even if you decide to await his return, it will not be too late. His utter self-absorption must ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... ahead, seeing nothing, a rather ferocious frown causing many people to stare at her in surprise. She wore a delicately hued French frock and a mauve hat covered with blue convolvuli, but in her extraordinary self-absorption and intentness of thought there was something uncivilised about her. Her clothes were unsuited to her, and she walked as if quite alone in a ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten |
