"Self-deception" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have parried with Pinker (only my language is so much more complicated than it ought to be) that thinking in one's bath is a self-deception. I lay in my own bath last night and thought very deep thoughts, but often when we think our thoughts are deep they are only vague. Bath thoughts are wonderful, but ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... "possessions." The only terms upon which educated British and Indians can meet to-day with any comfort is precisely that. The living intercourse of the British and Indian mind to-day is the discussion of the restoration. Everything else is humbug on the one side and self-deception ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... pacifying compensation. I trust, if your health continues to trouble you, you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't think so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of ass ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... formed the basis of the regulation of Oriental affairs in 565, viz. That the Halys should form the eastern boundary of the Roman client-states,(35) was not adhered to by the senate and was in its very nature untenable. The political horizon is a self-deception as well as the physical; if the state of Syria had the number of ships of war and war-elephants allowed to it prescribed in the treaty of peace,(36) and if the Syrian army at the bidding of the Roman senate evacuated Egypt ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... slip so silently to forty year? He had allowed her to drop out of his life—this child so early grown to winning womanhood—she was apparently dead for him, yet this sudden idea of her proximity had revitalized her so triumphantly that the philosopher wondered at the miracle, or at his own powers of self-deception. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... here, perhaps, hallucination, or self-deception, is more apparent than in all the strange tales you confided to me. For here is the hallucination of the man seated on the shores of Nature, and who would say to its measureless sea, 'So far shalt thou go and no farther;' here is the hallucination of the creature, who, not content with ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... talk to themselves for half an hour; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on, unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity, the choruses of the ancients. Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of self-deception; we must lend ourselves a little to the delusion; and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... dejections, yet they never hear or read of those who 'have drawn back to perdition,' but they are terrified with the idea that they shall shortly resemble them; so that every warning given against hypocrisy or self-deception seems to point them out by name, and every new discovery of any fault or mistake in their views, temper, or conduct, seems to decide their doom. At the same time, they are often remarkably melted into humble, admiring gratitude, by contemplating the love and sufferings ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in the hall. Oh, my dear, I am so very grateful to you for these precious jewels, and more than all for the friendship and kindness that prompted the gift," said Rose; and perhaps she really did believe that she prized the giver more than the gift; for such self-deception would have been in keeping ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... planted in the normal, organic expression of the both sexes. Where healthy individuals, male or female, have failed in their life-time to honor this duty towards Nature, it is not with them an instance of the free exercise of the will, even when so given out, or when, in self-deception, it is believed to be such. It is the result of social obstacles, together with the consequences which follow in their wake; they restricted the right of Nature; they allowed the organs to wilt; allowed the stamp of decay and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the hard path will lead to its reward. We must learn to know it, and to understand that it is a path of sacrifice. We must not accept the invitation of fools to a Christmas party—fools who will make the welkin ring with their outcries when they find out their self-deception. Let us tread our path of suffering with a pride which disdains ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... yield much of its entireness and intimacy to the influence of new ties; but for their lives ever being joined together, as had sometimes been his wild dreams, his cheek, though alone, burned with the consciousness of his folly and self-deception. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... she said. She was standing at the open window, in the stillness that tells of intense mental engrossment. Self-deception was impossible for her; her mind was too acute for tolerance of subterfuge; and for her, also, away and beyond the merciless findings of intellect was the besetment of presentiment, intuition, inward convictions that can override logical conclusions, words that ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... believed that this was a late and feeble resolve of Henry, formed on his death-bed, when he was acting the part of a self-deceiver, forgetful of the lamentable effects of his ambition, and seeking comfort from his self-deception in the last moments of his life. There is strong and clear evidence that he not only had contemplated such a measure, but had actually taken important preliminary steps to facilitate the execution of his design, whenever he might be happily released from his present ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... obstructions here, and might bring the rescuer within touch of the pine, where could be fastened the guy-rope; the other end would be affixed to the chair which could be lowered to the cabin only from the rugged face of the cliff. Kennedy harbored no self-deception; he more than doubted the outcome of the enterprise. He quaked and turned pale with dread as with the great rope knotted about his arm-pits and around his waist he was swung over the brink at the point where ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... they deem themselves, as it were, defrauded of life and activity in so large measure. In form, to be sure, their accusation lies solely against themselves; they reproach themselves with sleeping beyond need, sleeping for the mere luxury and delight of it; but the venial self-deception is quite obvious,—nothing plainer than that it is their necessity itself which is repugnant to them, and that their wills are blamed for not sufficiently withstanding and thwarting it. Pious William Law, for example, is unable to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... which depends upon foresight of possible future results, and there is no intelligence in present behavior. Let there be imaginative forecast but no attention to the conditions upon which its attainment depends, and there is self-deception or idle dreaming—abortive intelligence. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... of the lies of social life, but of self-deception. He goes on to class under that head "vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would." These things are the sweetness of "the lie that sinketh in." Many a man has a kind of mental ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... was nothing on the side of prudence to stop him or make his progress slow; no doubts of her deserving, no fears of opposition of taste, no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity of temper. Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits wanted no half-concealment, no self-deception on the present, no reliance on future improvement. Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny's mental superiority. What must be his sense of it now, therefore? She was of course only too good for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... ought to know, seeing I've had ten of 'em." It is, perhaps, in this sense that it is most true that little worries are most wearing. In its vaguer significance the phrase, though it contains a truth, contains also some possibilities of self-deception and error. People who have both small troubles and big ones have the right to say that they find the small ones the most bitter; and it is undoubtedly true that the back which is bowed under loads incredible can feel a faint addition to those loads; a giant holding up the earth and all its animal ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... than ours: we will not be its ministers. With all this, we are not obliged to shut our eyes to the true significance of what she tells us, or to assume that in the account she gives us of herself there is necessarily less self-deception than self-judgment generally exhibits. If she mistakes the selfish for the heroic, exalts a gratification into a duty, and preaches to her sex as from the standpoint of a morality superior to theirs, we shall set it down as it seems to us. But, for the sake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... without protesting. For years many persons suffer without learning that their eyes are unlike, or, as often happens, that one eye does all the close range work. Even when being tested, eyes will seem to see easily what requires a great effort of "accommodation." To prevent this self-deception skilled oculists do not trust the eye card, but put a drug in the eye that benumbs the muscles of accommodation. They cannot contract or expand if they want to. The oculist then studies the length of the eye and the muscle ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... Self-deception is a very easy thing in matters of this sort; it is seldom difficult to find arguments in favour of that which the heart is set upon. The one that knows the Lord, will pray until the other is brought to him; neither will be guilty of casting the slightest hindrance ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... memory, Aylmer sat in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... first, but I was never angry. What of it, if, with a sort of sweet absurdity, she talked in great agitation of the depravity of hearts, of the sin of light-mindedness, of the self-deception which leads men astray—a confused but purposeful jumble, in which occasional allusions to the errors of Rome, and to the want of seriousness in the upper classes, put in a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... feelings were impulsive. Yet it was only a very short time since Vincy had told her of Aylmer's miserable letter. Edith was not interested in herself, and seldom thought much of her own feelings, but she hated self-deception; and now she faced facts. She adored Aylmer! It had been purely jealousy that made her write to Paris so touchingly, asking him to come back—vague fears that, if he were so depressed in Spain, perhaps he might try by amusements to forget ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... forward—namely, that the Passover Sabbath might be saved from desecration—and, although their insatiable hatred may have made them suggest clubbing as the mode by which His death should be hastened, we need not question that their scruples were genuine. It is an extraordinary instance of the game of self-deception which the human conscience can play. Here were people fresh from the greatest crime ever committed—their hands still reeking, one might say, with the blood of the Innocent—and their consciences, while utterly untouched with remorse for this crime, are anxious about the observance ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... to live and speak the truth is beyond human strength and courage—as one finds it—is it not better for a man that he engage in some straightforward comparatively harmless cheating, than if he risk his mental integrity in some ambiguous position and fall at last into self-deception and self-righteousness? That is the essential danger. That is the thing I always guard against. Heed that! It is the master ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... human being, or even make him feel the magnetic current that flows through us all, and by which we are able to exist; all the rappings and table-turnings are mere hysterical imaginations, or worse—the cheapest form of either trickery or self-deception that can be. Barty, your unborn children are of a moment to me beyond anything you can realize or imagine, and Julia must be their mother; Julia Royce, and no other woman ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Peligros coming towards the drawing-room in her best black silk dress, and in what might have been called a fluster of excitement at the thought of a visitor, if such a word had been applicable to her placid life of self-deception. Juanita made some small jest and laughed rather eagerly at it as she passed the pattern lady on ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... her into July. She must be prepared to accept that, however—repellent though the thought was—she assured herself it was most repellent. She prided herself on her skill at catching and checking herself in self-deception; but it somehow did not occur to her to contrast her rather listless previous planning with the energy and interest she at once put into this project for supreme ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... religion to be encountered in history, and this applies even to its epistemology (which is a strict phenomenalism). It does not speak of a "struggle with sin," but, yielding to reality, of the "struggle with suffering." Sharply differentiating itself from Christianity, it puts the self-deception that lies in moral concepts behind it; it is, in my phrase, beyond good and evil.—The two physiological facts upon which it grounds itself and upon which it bestows its chief attention are: first, an excessive sensitiveness to sensation, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... question of whether the opponent is a noble opponent, of equal birth, or an interesting opponent; it is a question of meeting him. It is thus imperative that the Germans should have no opportunity for self-deception and resignation. The real pressure must be made more oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace more ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... moment capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of men than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience. Enthusiasm is good material for the orator, but the statesman needs ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... is it of value until it expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment; every act of devotion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is worse than useless; it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers to self-deception and tends to lower the line of personal morals.—W. H. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... atheist thinks that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very common in this matter, and in both directions. The religious mind does not understand how it is possible to contemplate the universe, and not see inscribed upon it distinctly the name of its Author; ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... than self-deception in this matter. A patient is suddenly taken with syncope, or nervous weakness, from which abundant experience has shown that a speedy recovery would take place by simple rest and fresh air. But in the alarm of patient and friends something must be done. A little wine or brandy is given, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... one as gives advice that ain't asked," declared Mrs. Sykes with sincere self-deception. "But what sensible folks see in Mary Coombe I can't imagine. I may be biased, not having ever liked her from the very first, but being always willing to give her a chance—which I may say she never took. There's a verse in the Bible she reminds me of, 'Unstable ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... . Dull boors See deeper than we think, and hide within Those leathern hulls unfathomable truths, Which we amid thought's glittering mazes lose. They grind among the iron facts of life, And have no time for self-deception. ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... well-named craft bowling along under whole canvas, and evidently trying her hardest to head-reach upon us. For the first half- hour we endeavoured to flatter ourselves that we were still holding our own, but at the end of that time such self-deception was no longer possible; the breeze suited us admirably, but there was still too much sea for the little "Mouette," and the "Vigilant's" superior power at length began to tell. Had they carried sail as recklessly through the night as we had, there can be no doubt they ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... keep nothing more diligently before the eyes of the heart, that faith be exercised thereby. Let another pray, fast, go to confession, prepare himself for mass and the sacrament as he will. Do thou the same, but know that all that is pure fool's-work and self-deception, if you do not set before you the words of the testament and arouse yourself to believe and desire them. A long time would you have to polish your shoes, pick the lint[7] off your clothes, and deck yourself out to get an inheritance, if you had no letter and seal with which you could prove your ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... against the further wall, beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a young girl's exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen years, and made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my reason inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it was comprehensible, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... has brought me to the same conclusion," said Wilhelm. "We know nothing to-day of the nature of phenomena—we knew nothing yesterday, and we shall know nothing to-morrow. The great advance in thought has only brought us to the point of no more self-deception, and exactly knowing what we do know, whereas yesterday men deceived themselves, and imagined that the fables of religion and metaphysics were positive knowledge. The history of physical science is in this respect very interesting. It teaches that every step ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... where our superior powers of self-deception come in," said the niece; "we are able to live our unreal, stupid little lives on our particular Mappin terrace, and persuade ourselves that we really are untrammelled men and women leading a reasonable existence in a ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... talk. His was essentially the nature of an artistic appreciator; he could find interest and beauty in endless aspects of things that I marked as evil, or at least as not negotiable; and the impulse I had towards self-deception, to sustained and consistent self-devotion, disturbed and detached and pointless as it was at that time, he had indeed a sort of admiration for but no sympathy. Like many fantastic and ample talkers he was at bottom secretive, and he gave me a series of little ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... these latter later aspects it was that I came at last to those subtler problems of tacit self-deception, of imperfect and unwilling apprehension, of innocently assumed advantages, of wilfully disregarded unfairness; and also to all those other problems of motive, those forgotten questions of why we make others work for us long after our ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... by joining the dancers at the Carnevaletto, were freed from their spasms and oppression of breathing for the whole year, although the corporeal cause of their malady was not removed. After such a result, no one could call their self-deception a mere imposture, and unconditionally condemn ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... not true!" I said to him in somber anger. "I proposed to put before her the fact of my own weakness, of my own self-deception, which also was deception of her. I propose to do ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... against hypocrisy, a vice unsightly rather than desperately wicked. And in the excitement about it its dangerous, even deadly near kinsman, self-deception, escapes unassailed. Seven cardinal sins; but what of the eighth?—the parent of all the others, the one beside which the children ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... a judgment diametrically different; each has his separate sense of the train of causation that culminated in the act; the accused himself would disagree with all the witnesses, if indeed he were capable of looking on the facts without conscious or unconscious self-deception; and we may be certain that an infallible omniscient mind, cognizant of all the hidden motives, would see the matter differently still. The task of the jury is, in the main, to induce from all these tragic inconsistencies an absolute outlook upon the real truth that underlies the facts so ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... adjustments and compromises. Yes ... he found himself pitying Helen Starratt most of all. Because he had a feeling that she would go on to the end cloaking her primitive impulses in a curious covering of self-deception. She would never understand ... never! She would always be restless, straining at the conventions, but unable or unwilling to pay the price of full freedom. And her remaining days would be spent in a futile pulling at the chains which her own cowardice had forged. She ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to the frank sincerity of a confession, which does not try to tell lies to God, and, attempting to deceive Him, really deceives only the self-righteous sinner. Whosoever opens his heart to God, makes a clean breast of it, and without equivocation or self-deception or the palliations which self-love teaches, says, 'I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' to that man the Psalmist thinks pardon is sure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... desire are those studied by psycho-analysis. In all human beings, but most markedly in those suffering from hysteria and certain forms of insanity, we find what are called "unconscious" desires, which are commonly regarded as showing self-deception. Most psycho-analysts pay little attention to the analysis of desire, being interested in discovering by observation what it is that people desire, rather than in discovering what actually constitutes desire. I think the strangeness of what they report would ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... The problem was subtler than he had thought. Weakness was at the core of it, weakness revealed in self-deception and self-accusation alike, the weakness of the finical dreamer, the man with the unrobust conscience. But the weakness which Lewis arraigned himself on was the very obvious failing of the diffident and the irresolute. Wratislaw tried the path ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... days. Sleep left me. The heavens were iron and the earth brass. I turned to Erskine to learn the signs of saving faith, but found only reason to suspect self-deception. I could not submit to God's will—could not be willing that William should be lost—nay, I was not willing that any one should be lost. I could not stay in heaven, and know that any one was enduring endless ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... peals of thunder to those who make the carnal boast of being Christians while destitute of love. He cites several facts as evidence that where love is lacking, necessarily faith and deliverance from death are absent, likewise. Thus no opportunity is given for self-deception or a frivolous excuse based upon wordy boasting of one's faith. The reality of the inner life is known by the presence of love, which in turn attests the presence of faith in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... clinical experience under expert guidance, even special training for surgical work, all came in connection with this great medical school. Such practical progress in medical education could not have been made but by men who faced the problems of the practice of medicine without self-deception and solved them as far as possible by ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... the mind as grasping the error, and I suppose it to do so independently of the free will's command. But when the error is voluntary; when a man clings to it simply because he loves it; when he hugs a delusion to his heart, this shows not mental but moral obliquity; it is not insanity but self-deception, and it is by no means of rare occurrence. In a well-reasoned article on "The Metaphysics of Insanity," written by Mr. James M. Wilcox and printed in the "American Catholic Quarterly Review" for January, 1878, some very severe and no less true strictures ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... in you; you would fain grasp the highest and the deepest; and 'reel from desire to enjoyment, and in enjoyment languish for desire.' When a momentary change of feeling comes over you, you think the change permanent, and thus live in constant self-deception." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to vex him. Even Effie, more thoughtful and anxious than the rest, cheated herself with the hope that time alone was needed to restore him. Whatever Aunt Elsie saw in her brother's changing face, she said nothing of her fears till the time for self-deception ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... savage animals Every woman that's married isn't in love with her husband Eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are Good nature, and means no more harm than he can help Graduated naturally enough the finer stages of self-deception Have her profile very frequently while I am conversing with her He was in love, and subtle love will not be shamed and smothered I did, replied Evan. 'I told a lie.' Is he jealous? 'Only when I make him, he is.' ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... lady in question must be a charming person!" replied the Abbe, "Perfectly charming! But of course she is deceiving herself; and she takes pleasure in the self-deception. She knows that the man had deserted her and was quite unworthy of her devotion;—but she pretends to herself that she does NOT know. And it is charming, of course! But women will do that kind of thing. It is extraordinary,—but ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... passed this summer, and next year he might write himself Bachelor of Arts. A return to the studies of boyhood probably accounted in some measure for the frequent gaiety which he attributed to improving health and revived hopes. Everything he undertook was easy to him, and by a pleasant self-deception he made the passing of a school task his augury of success in ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing |
