"Self-criticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him, as she so often did, into self-realisation and self-criticism, a process so painful that, left to himself, he avoided it altogether.... He walked along moodily. They were crossing St James's Park. On the bridge he stopped, looked down into ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... stall where he found the fated book in whose womb lay his child—The Ring and the Book. And he believed that he had certain God-given qualities which fitted him for this work. These he sets forth in this introduction, and the self-criticism is of the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... will associate themselves. These will be invariably accompanied by the expression of the observer's opinion that they have no meaning or are unimportant. It will be at once noticed that it is this self-criticism which prevented the patient from imparting the ideas, which had indeed already excluded them from consciousness. If the patient can be induced to abandon this self-criticism and to pursue the trains of thought which are yielded by concentrating the attention, most significant matter ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... events or any plan touching the war, one runs into the question whether the British are doing the best that could be done or are merely plugging away. They are, as a people, slow and unimaginative, given to over-much self-criticism; but they eternally hold on to a task or to a policy. Yet the question forever arises whether they show imagination, to say nothing of genius, and whether the waste of a slow, plodding policy is the necessary price ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer's art. In the majority of woman's books you see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble imitation which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to barrenness; just as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune, while a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent. The foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being counterbalanced ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... more books of history, biography and miscellany—and none, of like prominence in his day, has dropped more completely out of sight. In common with the other Southern writers we have mentioned, Simms lacked self-restraint and the power of self-criticism. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... enough and to spare; conspicuous among which may be named the vulgar and disgusting "negrophobia,"—a mark of under-breeding which one hopes may not disgrace us always. But let us be carried away by no mania for self-criticism. Two claims for ourselves may be made. First, a higher grade of laws nowhere exists with a less amount of coercive application,—exists, that is, by the rational and constant choice of the whole people. Secondly, it may be questioned whether anywhere in the world the development of intelligence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... that here was a master, in his own fashion. What that fashion is may now be known by anyone who will take the pains to read the author's prefaces to the New York edition of his revised works. Never, not even in the Paris which James loved, has an artist put his intentions and his self-criticism more definitively upon paper. The secret of Henry James is told plainly enough here: a specially equipped intelligence, a freedom from normal responsibilities, a consuming desire to create beautiful things, and, as life unfolded its complexities and nuances before his vision, an ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... the teacher's having a firm command of a few essential principles which apply to all questioning used in teaching. The teacher's constant self-criticism in the light of these will greatly improve his control of discussion in the ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... world and time, not unsophisticated; but it chanced that she possessed a mind natively maiden. Through all her vigil, through all her questioning and novel self-criticism, her mind's-eye picture of Canning, as his arms went round her, ran like a torturing motif. The portrait became detestable to her. She hated him, she would hate him forever as the man who had cruelly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... force and power. From the days when he came under the tutelage of Mr. Howells, and humbly learned to prune away his stylistic superfluities of the grosser sort, Mark Twain indubitably began to subject himself to the discipline of stern self-criticism. While it is true that he never learned to realize in full measure, to use Pater's phrase, "the responsibility of the artist to his materials," he assuredly disciplined himself to make the most, in his own way, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... more of night, where the western edge has become a pale steel blade. Men were around her, forming a semi-circle. The world of men and women was mere timber and leafage to this flower of her sex, glory of her kind. How he behaved in her presence, he knew not; he was beyond self-criticism or conscious reflection; simply the engine of the commixed three liqueurs, with parlous fine thoughts, and a sense of steaming into ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... another idea. We concoct a fine joke to play on our friend; but then the thought comes to us that he may not take it kindly; we don't want to break with our friend, and so we regretfully throw our promising invention on the scrap heap. That is self-criticism, the {510} balancing off of one impulse by another. Self-criticism is obnoxious to the natural man, who prefers to follow out any tendency that has been aroused till it reaches its goal; but he learns self-criticism in the hard school of experience. For plenty ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... last self-criticism is very apparent from the fragments of the translation which were published in the Philological Museum; and Coleridge, to whom the whole manuscript was submitted, justly complains of finding "page after page without a single brilliant note;" and adds, "Finally, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... self-criticism is needed these chapters will not deny. That the church is passing through a critical period must be conceded. But the way of life is not obscure, and it seems almost absurd to indulge the fear that the church, which has ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... been with her she had often indeed secretly compared her ugliness with his beauty. But a great love breeds many regrets as well as many joys. And that was long ago. It was years since she had looked at herself in the glass with any keen feminine anxiety, any tremor of fear, or any cruel self-criticism. But now she stood for a long time before the glass, quite still, looking at her reflection with wide, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... many an hour of—strictly private—mental gymnastics out of the moral problem he saw, in his keeping for himself and Gladys the spoils he gathered up. He is inclined to think he was intelligent rather than right; but, knowing his weakness for self-criticism, he never gives a positive verdict against himself. That, however, is unimportant, as he is not the man to permit conscience to influence conduct in ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... going to visit him, answered: "I cannot reproach a person for not visiting me, whom I myself should not go to visit were he sick." Modern would-be wits might take the hint; for with candour so scarce, and self-criticism usually ending in a verdict of complete innocence, the blurted naked truth, not unaccompanied by a sidelong thrust at the speaker's own fallibility, would ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... better buckle to at once and write another poem.” She did so, and the result was an exquisite lyric which appeared in The Athenæum. Here is where she was wonderfully unlike Gabriel, whose power of self-criticism in poetry was almost as great as Tennyson’s own. But in the matter of inspiration she was, I must ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... a profound self-criticism, the stilling of his busy surface-intellect, his restless emotions of enmity and desire, the voluntary achievement of an attitude of disinterested love—by these strange paths the practical man has now been led, in order that he may know by communion something of ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... that it is pervaded, as it were, by an inherent intoxication, and stands dead drunk in its bottle! Yet just in this way Mr. Russell and Mr. Moore conceive things to be dead good and dead bad. It is such a view, rather than the naturalistic one, that renders reasoning and self-criticism impossible in morals; for wrong desires, and false opinions as to value, are conceivable only because a point of reference or criterion is available to prove them such. If no point of reference and no criterion were admitted to be relevant, nothing but physical stress could give to one assertion ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... passed a look of bewilderment, while Loveday, her moment of self-criticism gone, stood trembling with eager happiness. Then Miss Le Pettit spoke, ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... thing about mannerisms is that the speakers are usually unconscious of them, and would be the first to condemn them in others. The remedy for such defects lies in thorough and severe self-examination and self-criticism. However eminent a speaker may be with objectionable mannerisms, he would be still ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... a certain boyishness in him—a boyishness which is in fact no mean source contributary of his charm in verse. It is perhaps not always quite so charming in prose, and especially in letters. You do not want self-criticism of an obviously second-thought kind in them. But you do want that less obtrusive variety which prevents them from appearing unkempt, "down-at-heel" etc. Perhaps there is, at any rate in the earlier letters, something of this unkemptness ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury |
