"Self-delusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said here that this was not the ordinary self-delusion of an incompetent. Ventimore really had talent above the average, with ideals and ambitions which might under better conditions have attained recognition ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... had better live at all Why we teach so much that is not practical Wise enough to confess the fact of absolute ignorance Words that few understand and most will shortly forget Yielding to the tendency to self-delusion Young man knows the rules, but the old man ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... strongly enough this tendency to self-delusion, which inclines us to become the prey of untruth, by preventing the birth of faith, based ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... history of the preceding century are the rise and progress of two new sects called Mormons and Positivists. To the student who has carefully considered these remarkable phenomena nothing in the records of religious self-delusion can appear improbable. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... need not absolutely withdraw (as Sir Thomas More is reported to have prudently done for a time) from his profession, because the crown had taken umbrage at his discharge of a public duty. It is, however, flattery and self-delusion to imagine that the lust of power and the weaknesses of human nature have been put down by the Bill of Rights, and that our forefathers have left nothing to be done by their descendants. The violence of former times is indeed no longer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... to support any other method which would give a sensible increase in the Cavalry strength of our Peace establishment, and only protest against any scheme which would seek to swell out the ranks or create new units on mobilization; for all these are mere self-delusion, increasing, no doubt, the numbers on paper, but in reality striking at the efficiency of the Arm in ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... my promise, and am thoroughly satisfied. Phrenology deserves to be called a science, and one of the greatest and best of sciences, notwithstanding all the quackery and self-delusion that I find among the professors. I have now studied it and experimented upon it for more than thirty years, and have no longer any misgivings upon the subject, so far as the great leading ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... they would ever succeed in reaching Behring's Strait was therefore more than self-delusion—it was foolishness. Mr. Bredejord did not know what steps Tudor Brown would take to prevent this, but he felt certain that he would find some means of doing so. Dr. Schwaryencrona was inclined to the same opinion, and even Mr. Malarius ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... workers in the dark are destitute of the saving gift of conscience. They have it, and it is perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore, they are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it. Hence, their self-delusion is deep and endures. They march to their object, and gaining or losing it, the voice that calls to them is the voice of a blind creature, whom any answer, provided that the answer is ready, will silence. And at an hour like this, when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something peculiar in her lot: her relation to her father had claimed unusual sacrifices from her husband. Tito had once thought that his love would make those sacrifices easy; his love had not been great enough for that. She was not justified in resenting a self-delusion. No! resentment must not rise: all endurance seemed easy to Romola rather than a state of mind in which she would admit to herself that Tito acted unworthily. If she had felt a new heartache in the solitary hours with her father through the last months of his life, it had ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... revenge herself upon me? For surely even then my habitual scepticism would make me say to myself—'this is all very sublime and very comforting; but what evidence have you to give me that the whole business is anything more than self-delusion? The wish was probably father to the thought, and you might much better have performed your "act of will" by going in for a course of Indian hemp.' Of course a Christian would answer to this that the internal light would not admit of such doubt, any more than seeing the sun does—that God ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... allow himself to despair. Never before had that curious power of attraction failed him. He felt himself to be so strong in this respect that he was persuaded if he exerted himself to the limit of his capacity, something—he could not say what—must come of it. If it was only a self-delusion, an hallucination, he told himself ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... conjured me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and common pursuits, to have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my judgment and discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously obeyed, even when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion. So, gentle reader, I bid you farewell, recommending you to such fare as the mountains of your own country produce; and I will only farther premise, that each Tale is preceded by a short introduction, mentioning ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... them all. It was as if his apostasy from the faith of his fathers, filling him with the fiery zeal of the convert, and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every other element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man. The will to power was his answer to Christianity's affectation of humility and self-sacrifice; eternal recurrence was his mocking criticism of Christian optimism and millennialism; the superman was his candidate for the place of the Christian ideal of the "good" ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... the rock we split on then," Rhoda said coldly. She couldn't understand herself, even while she knew, deep down, that she wanted more information for him—John Dennis. Any other reason or excuse she used was a sham, a self-delusion. ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... contemporaneous things, should be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of genius who illustrate his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is driven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive. In such a case it is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an imaginative man will ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... ocean. And then, at least, it might seem as if he had attempted to ESCAPE—indeed, if he cared, he might be able to keep afloat until he was picked up by some passing vessel, bound to a distant land! The self-delusion pleased him, and seemed to add the clinching argument to his resolution. It was not suicide; it was escape—certainly no more than escape—he intended! And this miserable sophism of self-apology, the last flashes of expiring conscience, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... the following amusing anecdote of Giovanni da Capugnano, an artist of little merit, but whose assurance enabled him to attract considerable attention in his day. "Misled by a pleasing self-delusion, he believed himself born to become a painter; like that ancient personage, mentioned by Horace, who imagined himself the owner of all the vessels that arrived in the Athenian port. His chief talent lay in making crucifixes, to fill up the angles, and in giving a varnish to ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... by the tone, the manner, the expressions of the minister, when we passed an hour together, ignorant of each other's presence? It was a dreadful conviction that was forced upon me, and as wonderful as terrible. Self-delusion, for such it was, so perfect and complete, who could conceive—hypocrisy so super-eminent, who could conjecture! There was something, however, to be disclosed on the succeeding day. Thompson was very mysterious about this. He would give no clue to what he designed. I should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various |
