"Self-distrust" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth: but by wise self-distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as they ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... "determined exaggeration." Exaggeration, if you will; but not determined. No; I would have all open to the light, and would let my boughs be pruned, when they grow rank and unfruitful, even if I felt the knife to the quick of my being. Very fain would I have a rational modesty, without self-distrust; and may the knowledge of my failures leaven my soul, and check its intemperance. If you saw me wholly, you would not, I think, feel as you do; for you would recognize the force, that regulates my life and tempers the ardor with ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... competition for members and prestige. There is a chauvinism of "boom" towns and religious sects, as well as of nations. What pride and self-confidence are to the individual, ethnocentrism, patriotism, local loyalty are to social unities. Diffidence, humility, self-distrust, tolerance, are as dangerous to militant groups ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... forwardness, and to school herself in the endurance of brutality. She was constantly blushing in the most unfeigned way at his neatly-turned little compliments, and, when she spoke, did so with a pretty air of self-distrust which sat quite charmingly on her. Fain, fain would O'Gree have proposed to journey back to London by the same train, but good taste and good sense prevailed with him. At the ticket-barrier there ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... pass, that to secure myself from utter desolation I must recognize all the value that I truly possess. Therefore, through the, terrible experience of suffering let there come upon me the joy of deliverance—deliverance from self-distrust. ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... anything personal in quoting that?" I asked Francesca teasingly; but she shot me such a reproachful look that I hadn't the heart to persist, her face was so full of self-distrust and love ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... most troublesome of all was Elise with her thrice unsuccessful examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew, subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her to carry that unfortunate handbook of French history with her wherever she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... poverty and distress are not displayed. Obtaining her means to live by washing and occasional tasks, yet the wife is discarded. The sum total of the sunshine transforms the flowers; invisible their change. Regardless of self-distrust of the past is put aside. But you act with cruel motive; a grudge as lasting as a night without moonlight. From the clouds the drizzle falls on bamboo and on village. And between the intervals of rain there ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... way. This is true. It is also misleading. Whatever miracles Jesus may have performed, no one can say that he performed them to make life easier for himself, to escape the common lot, to avoid struggle, to evade suffering and disgraceful death. On the contrary, in genuine human self-distrust, but also in genuine heroism, he gave himself to his vocation, accepting all that went therewith, and finished the work of God which he had made his own. This is the more wonderful because it lay so much nearer to him than ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... distilled into her veins, and forced up in bubbles of laughter to her lips and eyes. Amherst had never seen her thus, and he watched her with the sense of relaxation which the contact of limpid gaiety brings to a mind obscured by failure and self-distrust. The world was not so dark a place after all, if such springs of merriment could well up in a heart as sensitive as hers to the burden ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Confidence and spontaneity of life are drifting out of my reach, and this is why I can no longer act." For abuse of the critical faculty brings with it its natural consequences—timidity of soul, paralysis of the will, complete self-distrust. "To know is enough for me; expression seems to me often a profanity. What I lack is character, will, individuality." "By what mystery," he writes to M. Scherer, "do others expect much from me? whereas ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hope to succeed who is timid, who lacks faith in himself, who has not the courage of his convictions, and who always seeks for certainty before he ventures. "Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures," said one. "In the assurance of strength there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... psychological autobiography as we have in literature. Such a work subjects its author to the severest tests which can be applied to a human mind in this life, and we have risen from its perusal with a new idea of the humility, sincerity, and saintliness of Dr. Channing's character. In him self-distrust was admirably blended with a sublime conception of the capacity of man, and a sublime confidence in human nature. He was not an egotist, as passages in his writings may seem to indicate, for he was more severe upon himself than upon others, and numberless remarks ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... suggestion. I asked him whether he had any objection to my looking it over before he read it. My proposal rather pleased him, I thought, for, as was observed on a former occasion, he has in connection with a belief in himself another side,—a curious self-distrust. I have no question that he has an obscure sense of some mental deficiency. Thus you may expect from him first a dogma, and presently a doubt. If you fight his dogma, he will do battle for it stoutly; if you let him alone, he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Religion" had come into my hands immediately after I left college. The reading of that book had made clear that men's poor little efforts to do right are put forth for the most part in the chill of self-distrust; I became convinced that if the new social order ever came, it would come by gathering to itself all the pathetic human endeavor which had indicated the forward direction. But I was most eager to know whether Tolstoy's undertaking to do his ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Self-Distrust. Do you ever feel distrust in yourself? If You do, just ask yourself, which self do I mistrust? Then say: my higher self cannot be affected. Then think of the wonderful powers of the higher self. There is a way to overcome all difficulties, and it is a delight ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... would have plenty of money. She was glad to think that she was wearing her newest frock, the smartest she had. Well, she demanded of herself, why not? It'll please him, or he wouldn't have asked me! Would they have wine to drink? she wondered. A momentary self-distrust seized her in the matter of table-manners; but she shook it off. She would watch what Gaga did. She mustn't drink too much. She must mind her step. Then, irresistibly: "What a lark!" murmured Sally. She was very demure upon Miss Summers' ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... liveliness and frivolity that had fascinated the hairdresser in days that had gone by; but if he had felt any self-distrust now in venturing within their influence, such apprehensions vanished with the first sight of the charms which had been counteracted before ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... greet his host, before coming to pay his first visit for nearly two years. The winter before he had received an invitation to Thurston House, but it had been refused; and even after that formal intimation that the way was open, he had delayed his coming, modesty and self-distrust alike combining to make him dread that final putting to the test which should "win or lose it all." How much Miss Nan had to do with the choosing of the "best man" is one of those secrets which are best left ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
