"Self-knowledge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself, if he is a Don Juan, by despising and disgracing the unfortunate victim, and if he is a sadist, by maltreating her. And yet he never entirely loses his illusion; he craves for complete satisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks. He differs very little from the type represented by Sordello, who loved one woman spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex. It is the tragedy of Don Juan to revolt ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Deity. When you stand, therefore, in front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the Greek and the Roman, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... its practical value, the way in which it works in life. "He that willeth to do His will shall know." Coleridge bursts out indignantly: "'Evidences of Christianity'! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of the need of it; and you may safely trust it to its own evidence." Religion approaches men saying, "O taste and see that the Lord is good." He cannot be good unless He is. A fancied Deity, an invention ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... I should have done so—it was a want of self-knowledge, the rash confidence of one untried which kept ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... this struggle dawned self-knowledge, and the strength which is born of it. When she returned to the house, she was pale and weary, but capable of responding to Betty Rambo's constant cheerfulness. The next day she left for the city, without ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the Absolute, and thus loses all the faculties which, so far as we know, constitute its greatness, power, and glory. In this condition of absorption the human soul is not only deprived of its separate existence, but also of all self-knowledge, which is the true basis ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... human mind. In general it may be observed that the theory of Kant constructed little; and rather tended to destroy the structures of an empty dogmatism of the understanding and prepare, by means of self-knowledge, the way for a better state of philosophical science; seeking in reason itself the principles on which to distinguish the several parts ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... grave indifference of the fatalist. He lacks the balance of the faculties which is imposed upon civilized man by a conscious distinction of the possible from the impossible; he lacks the capacity for being contented with that state of life in which he is placed. Instead of the quiet courage and self-knowledge of a serviceable strength, he possesses the reckless and all-destroying zeal of the frenzied iconoclast; in place of patience under misfortune, in the hope of better times, he cultivates the insensibility ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... tendencies followed by his eminent neighbours Ghiberti, Brunelleschi and Donatello. It was not so; but he only profited by the movement as far as he deemed possible without losing his own sentiment and character; thus giving a rare example of self-knowledge. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... it is their right as because it is their duty. We have also proposed to open new avenues of employment to women—to make them less dependent and less burdensome—to lift them out of unwomanly self-distrust and disqualifying diffidence into womanly self-respect and self-knowledge. To teach them to make all work honorable, by each doing the share that falls to her, or that she may work out to herself agreeably to her own special aptitude, cheerfully and faithfully—not going down to it, but bringing it up to her. We have ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... human life. To impute bad motives, indeed, when good are just as probable, is to be wanting in the scientific spirit, which views every subject in 'a dry light.' Nor can we help 'judging others by ourselves'; for self-knowledge is the only possible starting-point when we set out to interpret the lives of others. But to understand the manifold combinations of which the elements of character are susceptible, and how these are determined ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... could conduct a conversation better in a novel, or make more living the clash of various minds in a critical event, whether in a cottage or a palace; whom one would select as most likely to write a drama well—had self-knowledge enough to understand, after his early attempts, that true dramatic work was beyond his power. Wordsworth also made one effort, and then said good-bye to drama. Coleridge tried, and staged Remorse. It failed and deserved to fail. To read it is to know that the writer had no sense ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... said Mr. Cuthcott; "not politics at all, but religion—touches the point of national self-knowledge and faith, the point of knowing what we want to become and of resolving to become it. Your father will tell you that we have no more idea of that at present than a cat of its own chemical composition. As for these good people here to-night—I don't want to be disrespectful, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours was the injury of bruised faith—the suffering caused by outrage. No hell of self-contempt set you crawling about the world in agony; no despicable self-knowledge drove you out into the waste places. Yours was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love of ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... blanket, hallowed by associations of past-life realizations. My divine guru approached and passed his hand over my head. I entered the NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI state, remaining unbrokenly in its bliss for seven days. Crossing the successive strata of self-knowledge, I penetrated the deathless realms of reality. All delusive limitations dropped away; my soul was fully established on the eternal altar of the Cosmic Spirit. On the eighth day I fell at my guru's feet and implored him to keep me always near him ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... thing; self-mastery and self-knowledge are quite another. Thus the one is often distorted and always transient; the other ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Guy was right. To expect him to remain at home was cruelty. As he had said, he could not bear it—few could. Few even among women—of men much fewer. One great renunciation is possible, sometimes easy, as death may be; but to "die daily?" In youth, too, with all the passions vehement, the self-knowledge and self-control small? No; Nature herself, in that universal desire to escape, which comes with such a trial, hints at the unnaturalness of the ordeal; in which, soon or late, the weak become paralysed or callous; ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... At Dr. Stanhope's he had devoted himself exclusively to another. It does not require that a woman should be in love to be irritated at this; it does not require that she should even acknowledge to herself that it is unpleasant to her. Eleanor had no such self-knowledge. She thought in her own heart that it was only on Mr. Arabin's account that she regretted that he could condescend to be amused by the signora. "I thought he had more mind," she said to herself as she sat watching her baby's cradle on her return from the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Daksha was the seventh. And, O child, here it is that the seven celestial rishis with Vasishtha at their head rise and set. Behold that excellent and bright summit of the Meru, where sitteth the great sire (Brahma) with the celestials happy in self-knowledge. And next to the abode of Brahma is visible the region of him who is said to be the really primal Cause or the origin of all creatures, even that prime lord, god Narayana, having neither beginning nor end. And, O king, that auspicious place composed of all energies even the celestials, cannot behold. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... an easy task to break the bond that burdened and assume the tie that blessed. But Sylvia had grown wise in self-knowledge, timorous through self-delusion; therefore the greater the freedom given her the more she hesitated to avail herself of it. The nobler each friend grew as she turned from one to the other, the more impossible seemed ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... will tell you that they are sincere; your enemies are really so. Let your enemies' censure be like a bitter medicine, to be used as a means of self-knowledge. ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... feelings in a nicely-adjusted balance. 'Know thyself,' said an old thinker; but Audrey Ross would have altered the saying: 'Look out of yourself; self-forgetfulness is better than any amount of self-knowledge.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... friend, and the mother of our child; Aspasia is a wise woman, for she possesses modesty and conscientiousness, self-knowledge and foresight; Aspasia is prudent, for she is silent when wise men speak. But Aspasia can also cause wise men to speak wisely by listening to them; for she helps them to produce thoughts, not like Socrates' ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the original people in those days ended up as caricatures. The Rococo is the conscious humor of the Pigtail; for that reason it can still be used artistically today, whereas the Pigtail, which is totally lacking in the humor of self-knowledge, has long been artistically dead. Even today when a genre-painter wishes to paint real lifelike caricatures he paints them in Rococo costume. Hasenclever's Hieronymus Jobs, for example, would appear to us absolutely exaggerated, if the figures ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Christ, Truth, saith unto you, "Be not afraid!"—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you; but only fear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30] since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and your superiority to a ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... themselves all the functions of [85] government. But this comes from the working-class being, as I have often said, still an embryo, of which no one can yet quite foresee the final development; and from its not having the same experience and self-knowledge as the aristocratic and middle classes. Honesty it no doubt has, just like the other classes of Englishmen, but honesty in an inchoate and untrained state; and meanwhile its powers of action, which are, as Mr. Frederic Harrison says, exceedingly ready, easily run away with it. ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... not vain," said he, with that self-knowledge which is so general an attribute of human beings; "no man less so, nor am I jealous; but I respect myself, and I could never be content to share your time and your regard with Colonel Dujardin, nor with a much better ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... of the hidden fountain was like an exquisite melody in his ears. It was good to be in such a place, to look on such a woman, to breathe such odours, and to hear such tuneful music. A dreamlike, half-mysterious satisfaction of the senses dulled the keen self-knowledge of body and soul for one short moment. In the stormy play of his troubled life there was a brief interlude of peace. He tasted the fruit of the lotus, his lips were moistened in ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... of self-examination is good. Self-knowledge is a preface to self-control. The wise commander knows the weak and strong points of his fort. Too much self-inspection leads to morbidness; too little, conducts to careless, hasty action. The average American does not know himself well enough; he ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... nothing. Preventive measures of every practical and sound kind we want, but most of all we need to inculcate the truth that "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of his prudence. He could command himself even when thrown off his balance. And to become the slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an occurrence rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also in a great part because of the difficulty of converting it into a form in which it could become available. The mere act of getting it away from the island piecemeal, little by ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... processes of spiritual growth, there is ample scope for that training in self-knowledge and self-control which is commonly understood by the word "submission." But the character of the act is materially altered. It is no longer a half-despairing resignation to a superior force external to ourselves, which we can only vaguely hope is acting kindly and wisely, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... describing the condition of Ireland about the year 1170, says, "The state of the Celtic people was beyond all hope of self-amendment. The want of law, order and justice, the absence of self-knowledge and self-control, paralysed their national action and reduced the power of their chief king ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... it. In spite of myself, I returned here. Once more I stood on this spot, within the gaze of her deep eyes. I began to believe that a love everlasting, all enduring, had been given me! But still it was passion that pleaded for possession, and still it was self-knowledge that looked on ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... struggle that the Mayor had yielded himself to this true self-knowledge. But in vain he argued that he had not anticipated this fearful result, from proceedings that after all were only intended as the means of removing an obnoxious person from his path. In vain he reasoned with himself, "I did not wish ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... length of time, for any eternity of folly; he is there to be praised. Probably he is proud of this; probably he thinks he has a good digestion, because the poison of praise does not make him sick. He thinks the absence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, makes for composure, grandeur, a colossal calm, a superior race—in short, the whole claim of the Teutons to be the highest spiritual product of Nature and Evolution. But as I have noticed a calm unity ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... up the mountain of self-knowledge, said the Victorine mystics, is the necessary prelude to all illumination. Only at its summit do we discover, as Dante did, the beginning of the pathway to Reality. It is a lonely and an arduous excursion, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... hoped that Madame Recamier did not perceive the inconsistency of which he was totally unconscious. Though Chateaubriand was perpetually analyzing himself and his emotions, no man had less self-knowledge. He was too much absorbed by his "self-study, self-wonder, and self-worship," as one of his critics styles his egotism, to be clear-sighted. He had generous impulses, but no uniform generosity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... true Mason, as I have told you, lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge—for man can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief virtue—love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of a calm self-knowledge. By what she had endured, the woman knew what she could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... solemn prayer, conceived in agony, Blessed with response instant, miraculous; For in that hour my spirit was at one With Him who knows and satisfies her needs. The supplication and the blessing sprang From the same source, inspired divinely both. I prayed for light, self-knowledge, guidance, truth, And these like heavenly manna were rained down To feed my hungered soul. His guilt was mine. What angel had been sent to stay mine arm Until the fateful moment passed away That would have ushered an eternity Of withering remorse? I found ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... must be a dual thing—the experience of others must be used to supplement, correct and justify our own experience; in this way we shall become our own best critics only after we have trained ourselves in self-knowledge, the knowledge of what other minds think, and in the ability to judge ourselves by the standards we have come to believe are right. "If I ought," said Kant, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... this is self-knowledge, modesty, or disinclination, I leave the reader to decide, who, no doubt, will smile at the young man's innocence in imagining that Parisian, or, indeed, any journals distinguish themselves generally by maturity ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... as he imagined. In the discussion of a great question with his equals in station, perhaps he finds he has his superiors in intellect. These are the means by which the mind of man is brought to a healthy state, by which that self-knowledge that always has been lauded by sages may be most securely attained. It is a rule of universal virtue, and from the senate to the counting-house will be found of universal application. Then, to the youth of ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... it, he is convinced that it exists only in your malicious imagination. For example, go to a friend whose sense of humour is notoriously imperfect, and say gently to him: "Your sense of humour is imperfect, my friend," and see how he will receive the information! So much for the rarity of self-knowledge. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... play had not been hooted from the boards. It had, on the contrary, been better received than many very estimable performances have been-than Johnson's "Irene," for example, or Goldsmith's "Good-natured Man." Had Crisp been wise, he would have thought himself happy in having purchased self-knowledge so cheap. He would have relinquished, without vain repinings, the hope of poetical distinction, and would have turned to the many sources of happiness which he still possessed. Had he been, on the other hand, an unfeeling and unblushing dunce, he ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... their own consciences, either seriously or pertinently. Though the river and fountain of Christ's blood run by them, in the daily preaching of the gospel, yet being destitute of this daily self-inspection and self-knowledge, being altogether ignorant of themselves, they can no more wash here than those who never heard of this blood. They being strangers to themselves, sets them at as great distance and estrangement from the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice principles may not be concealed from so kind an eye as yours, friend reader, hear me profess myself honestly—if you approve, or shamelessly—if you will so think it—"a rabid Tory!" ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... counsels by which Mrs. Norris assisted to form her nieces' minds; and it is not very wonderful that, with all their promising talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity, and humility. In everything but disposition, they were admirably taught. Sir Thomas did not know what was wanting, because, though a truly anxious father, he was not outwardly affectionate, and the reserve of his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... launches from the shore; Before he builds, computes the cost; And in no proud pursuit is lost: 10 He learns the bounds of human sense, And safely walks within the fence. Thus, conscious of his own defect, Are pride and self-importance check'd. If then, self-knowledge to pursue, Direct our life in every view, Of all the fools that pride can boast, A coxcomb claims distinction most. Coxcombs are of all ranks and kind: They're not to sex or age confined, 20 Or rich, or poor, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... knots. Many a professing Christian life has a veneer of godliness nailed thinly over a solid bulk of selfishness. There are many goods in the market finely dressed so as to hide that the warp is cotton and only the weft silk. No Christian man who has memory and self-knowledge can for a moment claim to have reached the height of his ideal; the best of us, at the best, are like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were iron and clay, but we ought to strain after it and to remember that a stain shows most on the whitest robe. What made David's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on, 'it is you I love; my sentiment towards your sister is one of affection too, but protective, tutelary affection—no more. Say what you will I cannot help it. I mistook my feeling for her, and I know how much I am to blame for my want of self-knowledge. I have fought against this discovery night and day; but it cannot be concealed. Why did I ever see you, since I could not see you till I had committed myself? At the moment my eyes beheld you on that day of my arrival, I said, "This is the woman for whom ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... he? I have met a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common. Bless you, my dear, a man no more sees himself, as others see him, in a moral looking-glass, than he does in a mirror out of his dressing-box. I know a man who has forged bills, run off with his neighbour's wife, and left sixty thousand pounds odd in debts behind ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... traceable. These things [147] presented themselves at last only to remind him that, in a new intellectual hope, he was already on his way home. Straight through life, straight through nature and man, with one's own self-knowledge as a light thereon, not by way of the geographical Italy or Greece, lay the road to the new Hellas, to be realised now as the outcome of home-born German genius. At times, in that early fine weather, looking now not southwards, but towards Germany, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... be strengthened and freed from the dominion of the physical body and its surroundings, which must become his servants. Hence the first and chief necessity of Chelaship is a spirit of absolute unselfishness and devotion to Truth; then follow self-knowledge and self-mastery. These are all-important; while outward observance of fixed rules of life is a matter of secondary moment.—Lucifer: IV, ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... the world. The memory has but a feeble recollection of what we were saying or doing a few weeks or a few months ago, and still less of what we were thinking or feeling. This is one among many reasons why there is so little self-knowledge among mankind; they do not carry with them the thought of what they are or have been. The so-called 'facts of consciousness' are equally evanescent; they are facts which nobody ever saw, and which can neither be defined nor described. Of the three laws of ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... in the all-pervading principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in government,—of the State, of the family, and of one's self. Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that all men are born equally ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... "Saying this, the weeping king sat himself down upon the ground. Then a learned Brahmana, Saunaka by name versed in self-knowledge and skilled in the Sankhya system of yoga, addressed the king, saying, 'Causes of grief by thousands, and causes of fear by hundreds, day after day, overwhelm the ignorant but not the wise. Surely, sensible men like thee never ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... one needs love first—that all the other human needs come after that great necessity. He had thought himself a man full of self-knowledge, full of knowledge of others. But he had not known himself. Perhaps even now the real man was hiding somewhere, far down, shrinking away for fear of being known, for fear of being dragged up ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the child had not expected him to know more than that; and, her own knowledge of the hopeless truth, plainly enough, was the key to that note of bitterness which he had detected at times, and even spoken of—that curious maturity forced by unhappy self-knowledge, that apathetic indifference stirred at moments to a quick sensitive alertness almost resembling self-defence. She was aware of her own story; that was certain. And the acid of that knowledge was etching the designs of character upon a physical ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... and yet that he cannot give up these strong temptations tugging at his heart; why not extend more charity to others, and shew more candour in speaking of himself? There is either a good deal of bigoted intolerance with a deplorable want of self-knowledge in all this; or at least an equal ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and Lot's engagement had found mouth—whether Margaret Bean had vented her knowledge when it grew too big for her or not—it was scarce one day before the whole village was agape with it. With that tendency of the human mind born of involuntary self-knowledge which leads it to suspect a selfish motive in all untoward actions, many gave unhesitatingly a ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dolls that one meets at the after-war crushes and dances, but was austerely simple in dress, with a face which betrayed a spiritual nobility, the very incarnation of modern womanhood, alive with modern self-knowledge, modern weariness and ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... play may be defined as a "systematized sequence of experiences through which the child grows into self-knowledge, clear observation, and conscious perception of the whole circle of relationships," and the symbols of his play become at length the truth itself, bound fast and deep in heart knowledge, which is deeper and rarer than head knowledge, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... he began to earn a livelihood. Two deaths, a year's interval between them, released him from his office. Upon these events and their issue he had not counted; independence came to him as a great surprise, and on the path of self-knowledge he had far to travel before the significance of that and many another turning-point grew clear to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... things, a competitive soul who seeks to win rather than to understand or to "live." And to win, or, shall we say, to maintain to oneself the illusion of winning, one must carefully avoid seeing too much. The Russian is light hearted about the forms of truth, but revels in self-knowledge and frank self-declaration, enjoys unbottoming the abysses of his thoughts and feelings, however gloomy. In Russia time and space have no exact importance, living counts for more than dominating life, emotion is not castrated, feelings are openly indulged in; in Russia there are the extremes ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Does joy stimulate to fuller life; does suffering bring out moral qualities; do obstacles develop energy; do sharp temptations become a source of strength and assured soldiership; does knowledge of evil lead to a new exaltation of good; does sin lead to self-knowledge and so to regeneration? Then all these are ministers of grace, for through them the soul has reached greater heights and fuller life. Whatever bids the soul "nor stand nor sit, but go" is to be welcomed. The cost ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... ceremonials of sacrifice. The growth of the subjective speculation, as being capable of bringing the highest good, gradually resulted in the supersession of Vedic ritualism and the establishment of the claims of philosophic meditation and self-knowledge as the highest goal of life. Thus we find that the Ara@nyaka age was a period during which free thinking tried gradually to shake off the shackles of ritualism which had fettered it for a long time. It was thus that the Ara@nyakas could pave the way for the Upani@sads, revive the germs of philosophic ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... together. Albert likes being quite alone before he takes the Sacrament; we played part of Mozart's Requiem, and then he read to me out of Stunden den Andacht (Hours of Devotion) the article on Selbster Kentniss (Self-knowledge.)" The whole sounds like a sweet, solemn, blessed pause in the crowded ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... was to be pitied in any case. In dim self-knowledge I saw that the core of my resentment was her treating me with commiseration. Madame de Ferrier had not treated ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... modesty; humility &c 879; diffidence, timidity; retiring disposition; unobtrusiveness; bashfulness &c adj.; mauvaise honte [Fr.]; blush, blushing; verecundity^; self-knowledge. reserve, constraint; demureness &c adj.; blushing honors [Henry VIII]. V. be modest &c adj.; retire, reserve oneself; give way to; draw in one's horns &c 879; hide one's face. keep private, keep in the background, keep one's distance; pursue the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... SELF-KNOWLEDGE ATTAINED THROUGH RECORDS.—Through records of output, and especially through charts of such records, and timed motion-picture films, or micro-motion study pictures the worker may, if he be naturally observant, or if he be taught to observe, gain a ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... anything so fatal to true religion as self-righteousness. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." But the first prerequisite of repentance is self-knowledge—a difficult matter. Gross carnal offences, strong and flagrant sins, if such there be, are obvious and upon the surface. The subtler sins of the spirit— thoughtlessness, for example, or snobbishness or priggishness and pride—though we are quick to remark upon ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... endowed with intellect and will and freedom, God is a PERSON; and a LIVING person also, for He is both object and subject of his own activity, and to be this distinguishes the living from the lifeless. He is thus absolutely SELF-SUFFICIENT: his SELF-KNOWLEDGE and SELF-LOVE are both of them infinite and adequate, and need no extraneous conditions ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... he was on a voyage longer than usual, and she had not heard from him. Toby, her lover! Only when she had been a little frightened or distressed had she longed for his protective arms. Otherwise he had slipped into a sure place in her self-knowledge. He was the man she loved, strong and rough, the first to capture her heart, and until now the only man to hold her imagination. At the thought of deserting him Sally shrank. She belonged to Toby. Toby belonged to her. She had been going to marry him. If she had not loved Toby she would ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control: These three alone lead life to sovereign power, Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncalled for), but to live by law; Acting the law we ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the most important lessons that can be impressed on the human mind, is that of self-knowledge and a just apprehension of what it is that we are competent to achieve. We can do much. We are capable of much knowledge and much virtue. We have patience, perseverance and subtlety. We can put forth considerable energies, and nerve ourselves to resist great obstacles and much suffering. Our ingenuity ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... must he question his own motives with a severer judgment than that of the world, as his scrutiny is more close, and his self-knowledge more minute. He knows the secret sin, the mental act, the spiritual aberration. He knows the distance between his highest effort and that lofty standard of perfection to which he has pledged his purposes. ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... he is right, it seems to be by a sort of accident. He constantly appeals to the French critics as authorities. Another advantage will result from establishing principles of judging—we shall acquire self-knowledge. We can not ask ourselves, Is this true? does it accord with my own consciousness? etc., without gaining an acquaintance with ourselves. And then, in general, the more the taste is cultivated and refined, the more we shall find to like. Critics ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... limits and conditions in man, as well as around him, to which the like justice is done. Such are Special Character, Natural Degree and Vocation, Moral Imperfection, and Limitation of Self-Knowledge. Each of these plays a part of vast importance in life; each is portrayed and used in Goethe's picture. But, though with reluctance, I must merely name and pass them by. Enough to say here, that he sees them and sees through them. Enough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... think that this continual care of self is selfishness; it is the very reverse. Self-reverence is the antipode of self-conceit, of selfishness. If you honour yourself, you will be careful that nothing dishonourable shall come from you. 'Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control;' we, too, have had a poet who ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... Hell, and whose millstones grind the souls of Eve's lost daughters into the dust that makes the devil's daily bread—how should the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp dare to love her? But he did not cease to, for all the height of his self-knowledge and all the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in the air with unseen arm Hath turn'd my unchain'd fury against myself? Recoiling dragon! thy resistless force Scatters thy mortal master in his pride, To teach him, with self-knowledge, to fear thee. Forgetful of all corporal conditions, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... at the quiet self-sufficiency with which "I have been determined to try myself" follows the information that "so many great scholars in all ages" have failed. It is an admirable spirit, when accompanied by common sense and uncommon self-knowledge. When I was an undergraduate there was a little attendant in the library who gave me the following,—"As to cleaning this library, Sir, if I have spoken to the Master once about it, I have spoken fifty times: but it is of no use; he will not employ ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Self-knowledge, which from heaven itself (So sages tell us) came, What is it, but a daughter fair Of my ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge. But he wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could discern the changes in her husband's face before he observed with more of dignified bending and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... fallen—if not the god-head, yet the fine flower of his manhood royally and very sweetly disclosed. Her whole being yearned towards him; but humbly, a note of lowliness in her appreciation, as towards something exalted, far above her in experience, in self-knowledge and self-discipline. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... during the afternoon. He tried to say to himself that it was because the future of his darling little Mathilde was about to be settled. He shook his head, indicating that to settle the future of the young was a risky business; and then in a burst of self-knowledge he suddenly admitted that what was really making him nervous was the incident of the pier. If Mrs. Wayne referred to it, and of course there was no possible reason why she should not refer to it, Adelaide would never let him hear the last of it. It would be natural for Adelaide ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... months behind her, of Jerry, of Mrs. Draper, of her yellow dress, of her mother—of herself. In the lucidity of those silent hours of wakefulness she experienced for a time the piercing, regenerating thrust of self-knowledge. For a moment the full-beating pulses of her youth slackened, and between their throbs there penetrated to her perplexed young heart the rarest of human emotions, a sincere humility. If she had not burned the yellow dress at Mercerton, she would ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of that which has no attribute: I say, then, these powers and relations of the mind, which one finds everywhere treated of in Theosophical literature, are the determining factors in the formation of our Ethics. And since, from Socrates down, we are taught that self-knowledge is necessary for guidance of one's conduct, the knowledge of the mind and its capacities is at once shadowed forth as of immense value. It has at least three elementary powers—viz., the power of knowing, the power of feeling, and the power of acting. These powers, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... as you know. I was always a rebel against my fetters; I had not to learn that liberty was desirable, but how to obtain it, and what use to make of it. All the disorder through which I have gone was a struggle towards self-knowledge and understanding of my time. You and others are wildly in error in calling it dissipation, profligacy, recklessness, and so on. You at least, Miriam, ought to have judged me more truly; you, at all events, should not have ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... seldom able to discover under any ordinary conditions of self-knowledge, how intimately that spiritual part of us, which is undying, can attach to itself and its operations the poorest objects of that external world around us, which is perishable. In the ravelled skein, the slightest threads are the hardest to follow. In analysing the associations and sympathies ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... of the minister's barn under the elms on the hill Cynthia pulled the harness from the tired horse with an energy that betokened activity of mind. She was not one who shrank from self-knowledge, and the question put itself to her, "Whither was this matter tending?" The fire that is in strong men has ever been a lure to women; and many, meaning to play with it, have been burnt thereby since the world began. But to turn the fire. to some ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is thoroughly explained in the College of Therapeutics, making thereby a perfect guidance to health, and to progress in philosophy, and supplying the great lack in all systems of education—self-knowledge and the sublime art of health, longevity, and progress in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... Individuality only has meaning in relation to the whole, and individual consciousness can only be fulfilled by expanding until it embraces the whole. Nothing that exists in your consciousness now and constitutes your self-knowledge will ever be obliterated or ever can be, but in a higher state of existence you will realise it to be a part of the universal stock. I shall not cease to be I, nor you to be you; but there must be a region of experience where we shall find that you ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... in a vivid flash of self-knowledge.... If he couldn't sing he would go down, lower than Janin; perhaps sink ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... supposed they had done their whole duty to themselves and the world when they could vainly believe that they had realized in their experiences what they thought a compliance with their favorite maxim: "Know thou thyself." Whilst Christians believe and feel that self-knowledge, or the knowledge of one's self, is very important, at the same time they have longing aspirations to know all they can of the Being who created this self, this thinking, reasoning, loving, restless thing within them, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... whole, these compositions leave the impression that Overbeck had not mental force or physical stamina sufficient for the task. It is true that the presence of a lyrical spirit is felt; but scenes of Romance need more fire and passion; the deeds of Chivalry were not enacted in a cloister. Perhaps self-knowledge wisely counselled Overbeck to quit the regions of creative imagination. With greater peace of mind he trod in the future, the safer paths of Christian Art, wherein precedent and authority served as his ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... they never set sail. Tabs pondered the hidden profundity of her words. At last he believed that through her he understood himself. It wasn't youth that he or anybody coveted; it was the more supreme boon of not growing old. He had just arrived at this new self-knowledge ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... political prospects. Whatever he may have been in his youth, he was certainly not in mature life an ambitious man. With the great position he held in England the world had little to offer him, and the self-knowledge which was not the least of his many remarkable gifts showed him that party conflict was not the sphere in which Nature intended him to move. With many of the qualities of the highest statesmanship he wanted some necessary ingredients ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... would treat any other writer, and ask simply how a dramatic author is most apt to reveal himself. A great dramatist may not paint himself for us at any time in his career with all his faults and vices; but when he goes deepest into human nature, we may be sure that self-knowledge is his guide; as Hamlet said, "To know a man well, were to know himself" (oneself), so far justifying the paradox that dramatic writing is merely a form of autobiography. We may take then as a guide this first criterion that, in his masterpiece ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... who make booty of other men's wits, are not excepted from the general condemnation of wrong-doers. Some day, perhaps, they will consent to profit by what they prig, and thus, like the fat knight, turn their diseases to commodity—the national disease of appropriation to the commodity of self-knowledge and self-rebuke. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... wanting the first child apply in the case of the second, and to them are added more. What was in the first instance simply a hope and a vague if powerful urge has now grown into a conscious desire, based on the self-knowledge and experience gained from loving and looking after the first child. We have had a real taste of the joys of home and family building, and now nothing short of economic catastrophe is likely to stop us from building higher. I assume, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... convinces itself that such things must be. It knows that, but for storms, the constant heat of the sun would dry it up! It imbues itself with its own life—pets and punishes itself like a favourite child. It is only in that highest state of self-knowledge that a man can ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... failed as a man, and it had broken his nerve as an artist. He was a dabbler now, with—as Heine said of de Musset—a fine future behind him, and none but an artist can tell the bitterness of that self-knowledge. Had he kept his faith with Bassett in spirit as in letter, he might have failed just as decidedly; her daily companionship might have coarsened his inspiration, soured him, driven him to work cheaply, recklessly; but at least ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... so with just self-knowledge he wrote of himself; and the books which he most cared for and lived with were those of which the writers seemed—to quote again a phrase of his own—to have been 'eavesdropping at the door of his heart': those ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evolutions of our minds, we occasionally use for our amusement, possess an instinctive insight far keener than that of experience, enabling them to read our very souls with an accuracy which puts our self-knowledge to the blush, and might quite turn the tables upon us, could they themselves but appreciate ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... such, that I fear to say a word about it; not because language does not contain the word, but from dread of exaggeration. But his shape and colour may be reasonably told without wounding the feeling of an age whose incredulity springs from self-knowledge. ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... sign to thee that this love is still imperfect, and drawn far from the Source. What way is there, then, to make the imperfect perfect? This way: to correct and chastise the movements of thy heart with true self-knowledge, and with hatred and distaste for thy imperfection, that thou art such a peasant as to give to the creature that love which ought to be given wholly to God, loving the creature without moderation, and God moderately. For love toward God should be without measure, and that for the creature ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... see—see himself as he is; see his own inbred corruption; see the sin which doth so easily beset him, whatever it may be. Whatever anguish of mind it may cost him, it is a light price to pay for the inestimable treasure which true repentance and amendment brings; the fine gold of solid self-knowledge, tried in the fire of bitter experience; the white raiment of a pure and simple heart; the eye- salve of honest self-condemnation and noble shame. If he have but these—and these God will give him, in answer to prayer, the prayer of a broken and a contrite ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... GASSNER'S method partakes in equal proportions of the principles of the well-known "Faith Cure," and that of the Will, or of the passive and the active. What is wanting in it is self-knowledge and the very easily awakened forethought which, when continued, leads to far greater and much more certain results. Forethought costs little exertion: it is so calmly active that the weakest minds can ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... noteworthy in the serious passages of Goethe's Frankfort letters is the advance in maturity and self-knowledge which they reveal when compared with those written from Leipzig. Penetrative remarks on men and things, such as give its value to his later correspondence, now begin to fall from his pen by the way. He consciously takes the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... again. In the dark seclusion of the cab he speculated upon her toilette, the colour of her shoes. He thought of the last five weeks, of the next five years. Dwelling on their mutual love and esteem, their health, their self-knowledge and experience and cheerfulness, her sense and grace, his talent for getting money first and keeping it afterwards, he foresaw nothing but happiness ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... more things the mind knows, the better does it understand its own strength and the order of nature; by increased self-knowledge, it can direct itself more easily, and lay down rules for its own guidance; and, by increased knowledge of nature, it can more easily avoid what is useless. (2) And this is the sum total of method, as we have already ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... your self-knowledge very much. I do not believe, in the first place, that you are aware how wonderfully you are improved. You do not look the same girl you did a year ago. You have grown taller, fairer, brighter, Gabriella. I did not expect to see this, when I heard ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... you ask, as if you did not know it yourself. Self-knowledge should be our first aim! The ancient philosophers were wise to have inscribed over the entrances to their temples, 'Know thyself,' in order to remind all approaching, to examine themselves before they entered the halls of the gods. Is not the human heart equally a temple? only ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach |
