"Introspective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on your hat and come. I am going through the city first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Lina's eyes suddenly became introspective; then after a moment she rose slowly and stood in her tracks with an expression of deep thought, absent-mindedly took one step, then another, and after a pause a third, finally pulling up before the mirror, into which ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... our girls so that they may have just judgments and yet not make them so introspective that the bloom shall be brushed off the beauty of every action? Perhaps Emerson's suggestion, that every young person should be encouraged to do what he is afraid to do, would ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... his indomitable courage made him interesting to the other and better sort, you will see that Artie was pursued rather more than most eligible young men. This pursuit had made him wary and cautious. Had he been more introspective, it would have embittered him; but it shows his amiable modesty when I assert that Artie only fought shy of the more aggressive anglers, whose landing-nets were always in evidence, while he never refused to swim nimbly around and even ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... is the first vestige of a diary which has been found. But it seems plain that his longing for what he continually calls "communion," and the effort to divine the will of Providence in his regard, must frequently have urged him to that introspective self-contemplation so common to natures like his before their time for action has arrived. We make some brief extracts from this document which illustrates, still more plainly than any of the letters, the fact that the interior ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... caste sentiment had alike precluded the idea. But after the first sensation of bewilderment had passed, it was evident that the shock which the popular mind had received from Perez' words, was not wholly disagreeable, but rather suggestive of a certain shuddering delight. The introspective gleam which shone in everybody's eye, betrayed the half-scared pleasure with which each in his own mind was turning over the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... entirely efface the terrible scars. One cheek was wrinkled and crimson, while one eye and the mouth were drawn down pathetically. The accident might have changed the disposition of any child, but Lyddy chanced to be a sensitive, introspective bit of feminine humanity, in whose memory the burning flame was never quenched. Her mother, partly to conceal her own wounded vanity, and partly to shield the timid, morbid child, kept her out of sight as much as possible; so that at sixteen, when she was left ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Billee" and "Joe" he called them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of no avail, and cried (still ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... never before give us an introspective vision of ourselves as he sees us. This will surely clothe us with the mantle of Christ-like charity, in the event of our determination to live up to our ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... mind; have in one's mind. make an impression; sink into the mind, penetrate into the mind; engross the thoughts. Adj. thinking &c. v.; thoughtful, pensive, meditative, reflective, museful[obs3], wistful, contemplative, speculative, deliberative, studious, sedate, introspective, Platonic, philosophical. lost in thought &c. (inattentive) 458; deep musing &c. (intent) 457. in the mind, under consideration. Adv. all things considered. Phr. the mind being on the stretch; the mind turning upon, the head turning upon, the mind running upon; " divinely, bent to meditation ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... right in that long ago time? It seemed ages to her, so much had happened since, and she thought she could not live without the child, but after all the girl was not of her kind. What if she had done her a great wrong! She had never been an introspective woman, her life was mostly on the surface, with commonplace aims ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... During one of these introspective periods Alaire telephoned Dave Law, arguing to herself that she must learn more about her husband's connection with the Lewis gang. Dave arrived even sooner than she had expected. She made him dine with her, and they spent the evening on the dim-lit gallery. In the course of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... long-nosed, even from the beginning—a shy, introspective, self-conscious little boy, made peculiarly familiar with his personal defects by constant remarks that his hair was red and that his nose was long. At school, for years, he was known familiarly as "Rufus," ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... naturally the effect of such a faith upon the sensitive nerves of the women of those days? Viewed in its larger aspects this was an objective, not a subjective religion. It could but make the sensitive soul super-sensitive, introspective, morbidly alive to uncanny and weird suggestions, and strangely afraid of the temptation of enjoying earthly pleasures. Its followers dared not allow themselves to become deeply attached to anything temporal; for such an emotion was the device of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... it qualifies Poe and Hawthorne. They were American to the core. They both revealed the curious sympathy with Oriental moods of thought which is often an American characteristic, Poe, with his cold logic and his mathematical analysis, and Hawthorne, with his introspective conscience and his love of the subtile and the invisible, are representative of phases of American character not to be mistaken by any one who has given thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... us had come home from school hilariously eager for the trail service. But the silent plains made men thoughtful and introspective. Days of endless level landscapes under wide-arching skies, and nights in the open beneath the everlasting silent stars, give a man time to get close to himself, to relive his childhood, to measure human values, to hear the voice in the storm-cloud and the song of ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... fire; but to stand aside in irksome leisure was a harder trial, at which he trembled. This was the new complication in which Gerald asked his brother's sympathy and counsel. It was a long letter, curiously introspective, and full of self-argument; and it was hard work, with a mind so occupied as was that of the Perpetual Curate, to give it due attention. He put it away when he had done with his cold breakfast, and deferred the consideration of the subject, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... he could be fairly conspicuous and yet not too conspicuous; neither was it the persuasive person who had dangled the bait of private profit before the beguiled eyes of AEsop Loving. Rather was it the serious, self-searching, introspective Jeff, who earlier that day had besought counsel and comfort of Aunt Dilsey Turner. He came alone, walking with head bowed as walks one who is wrapped in his own thoughts. He arrived betimes; he remained silent and apart, inwardly communing, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... with her, and are known. Whom they abandon misery persecutes No more: them half-eyed apathy may loan The happiness of pitiable brutes. Whom the just Gods abandon have no light, No ruthless light of introspective eyes That in the midst of misery scrutinize The heart and its iniquities outright. They rest, they smile and rest; have earned perchance Of ancient service quiet for a term; Quiet of old men dropping to the worm; And so goes out the soul. But not of France. She cries for grief, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... son by rigid economy was amassing for the benefit of his children. Scotch thrift was well exemplified in them both. But in the course of 1887 James Gilmour became troubled about this accumulation of even that small sum which he could call his own. In his lonely introspective Mongolian life the possession of money came to wear in his view the aspect of distrusting God. At this juncture the London Missionary Society was in a somewhat serious state as regards funds. A special appeal had been sent out indicating that if ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... his face, though massive, had preserved something of the sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in that of his brother. His eyes, which were of a peculiarly light, watery gray, seemed to always retain that far-away, introspective look which I had only observed in Sherlock's when he ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... looked at him with soft violet eyes—and it was as though some psychic bathhouse attendant had poured ice water down his spine. For he had seen that look before, that liquid introspective look in the velvet eyes of cattle. He shivered. For a moment he had been thinking of them as human. And somehow the lack of that indefinable some thing called humanity robbed them of much of their glamour. They were ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... was a personable man himself. He was tall and broad shouldered, with abundant brown hair and beard, and a winning smile. His eyes were dark and introspective, but they could glow like sunlit topaz, or grow dim with tears, as his congregation had opportunity to observe during this first sermon—but they ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... had been all vivacity and life, on a sudden kept silence, or when she did speak, her tongue had lost its sharpness. The weapons of her office, bright sarcasm and irony, or laughing persiflage, were sheathed; her fine features were thoughtful; her dark eyes introspective. In the dazzling sunshine, the memory of their ride through the gorge; the awakening at the shepherd's hut; something in his look then, something in his accents later, when he spoke her name while she professed to ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... work—a literary monument of intelligent and conscientious labor—deals with every phase and aspect of state and political activity, public and private, in the Fatherland.... Teems with entertaining anecdotes and introspective apercus of character."—London Telegraph. ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... had gone over a hundred times. Three days ago he had made his choice, he had no intention of departing from it. For good or ill the thing must go forward now. And, after all, the ultimate decision did not lie with him. Admitting it his thoughts became introspective. Throughout his deliberations he had put self on one side, there had been no question of his own wishes; now for the first time he allowed personal considerations to rise unchecked. For what did he hope? He knew ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... from the context that he accepted this confessional and introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life—of the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its sentiment is warmly religious; it is ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... conclusion that she was right, so far, at any rate, as my outer conduct was concerned. The state of mind I was in, however, kept me from making any acknowledgment of it—the real cause of my keeping so much to myself and of being so distrait. And so I went on, torturing myself as before with introspective questioning; and she, with her mind set on my actions, and endeavouring to find a cause for them, continued and ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... adventure" might have been its sub-title, for the events in Sarah Eden's life were those of mind rather than body. There are two main divisions of the story: in the first we watch Sarah from her beginnings as a quiet introspective child in her Devon home, and through the short course of her unsatisfactory married life. With considerable skill the author has here shown the various forces that were at work building up the heroine's character, and that strange ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... degree of emotional tension; that this paralleling of Lincoln's own experience in the experience of the friend so like himself, broke tip for once the solitude of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward terror. Both men were deeply introspective. Each had that overpowering sense of the emotional responsibilities of marriage, which is bred in the bone of certain hyper-sensitive types—at least in the Anglo-Saxon race. But neither realized this trait in himself until, having blithely pursued his impulse to the point of committal, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... not fully understand, but I think from things he has said, that as a boy he was jealous of my father. This feeling would naturally make him, when it came to the test, not unwilling to believe in his guilt. Then, being reticent and introspective, he magnified all this a thousandfold when the truth came out, and he realised he had profited by the unjust suspicion. By dwelling upon it he came to feel as if he had actually obtained the money himself by unfair ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... those that count themselves pillars of orthodoxy; to the philosopher, by the restraints on the freedom of learning and teaching which every Church exercises, when it is strong enough; to the conscientious soul, by the introspective hunting after sins of the mint and cummin type, the fear of theological error, and the overpowering terror of possible damnation, which have accompanied the Churches like their shadow, I need not now consider; but they are assuredly not small. If agnostics lose heavily on the one side, they ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the hearth, and her expression changed as she gave an uncontrollable shudder. It was in that chair her father had been found on that fateful morning, about a week ago, clad still in the dinner-clothes of the previous evening, a faint, introspective smile upon his keen, inscrutable face; his eyes wide, with a politely inquiring stare, as if he had looked upon things which until then had been withheld from his vision. She walked over to the chair, and laid her hand where his head had rested. Then, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... training gradually disappear. Habits wane with disuse. In the dancer, it is not possible to establish with certainty the existence of memory in the introspective psychological sense; but it is possible to measure the efficiency of the training to which the animal is subjected, and the degree of permanency of habits. The materials which constitute this chapter concern the ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... emotion stirred at Elim's heart; and in his painstaking introspective manner he exposed it. He found a happiness that, at the same time, was a pain; he found an actual catch in his throat that was a nebulous desire; he found an utter loneliness together with the conviction that this earth was a place of glorious ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that I should regard Mr. Wentworth with stimulated curiosity. As I met him from day to day, passing through the Common with that same introspective air, there was something in his loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not read before in his pale, meditative face some such sad history as Mr. H——— had confided to me. I formed the resolution ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the life-long friend of M. Degas—Gustave Moreau—Solomon had much in common, but the colour of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a little overpowering, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... area they rose like notes of exclamation in a French novel. I was on the whole inclined to trace these things back to the influence of the pork, working on systems weakened by shock; but Robert was not in the mood to trace them to anything. Unsuccessful fishermen are not fond of introspective suggestions. The member of the expedition who enjoyed himself beyond any question was Mrs. Coolahan's car-horse. Having been taken out of the shafts on the road above the river, he had with his harness on his back, like Horatius, unhesitatingly ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that you and me mightn't cotton to," said her husband. "This man is Jack Hamlin." As his wife's remote and introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... introspective person, but this, clearly, was something that wanted thinking over. It was to "think" that she went out for the walk. Only, being Paula, the rhythm of her stride, the sparkle of the spring air, the stream of sharp new-minted sensations incessantly assailing eye and ear, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... less vital. His business dealings with the Carrolls had been limited to sundry spools of thread and kitchen towellings and buttons, but they were as lead in his estimate of wrong, although he had a grave, introspective expression, out of proportion to the seeming triviality of the matter in his mind. He held in one long hand a slip of paper, and eyed Carroll with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Rome, and I have no time to write a georgic. But, oh! my little friends of the north; my struggling, strenuous, introspective, self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant friends, who spout the 'Hue! Pater, oh! Lenae!' without a ghost of an idea what you are talking about, do you know what is meant by the god? Bacchus is everywhere, but if he has special sites to be ringed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... martial type is greatly enjoyed by the children, also that suggesting action, but never the meditative, introspective sort. Great care should be taken to guard the voices from overstrain in loud singing, as irreparable damage may be done for all ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... his introspective gaze wandered unconsciously over the ground before him, his attention was arrested by a second mark of the same perplexing shape, which he could see behind a rose-bush, more than half-way across the bed. Stepping as near the hedge as he could, the detective proceeded to examine this duplicate ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... state (so it is thought) which is convertible either into ordinary sleep, on the one hand, or into hypnotic sleep on the other. It all depends upon how this state is handled and controlled. It may be the same here; the medium may sink into internal reverie, or introspective trance; or she may be converted into a genuine "medium" by some influence ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the pain became intense, and fever set in. Dr. Kendrick was summoned; and, though the case was severe, it had no alarming symptoms at first. Jack went to and fro with his merry whistle; speculative he might be, but he was not introspective or morbid: wife and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... with everybody, on account of his appeal to the universal sentiments of comedy and pathos. Scott's influence, somewhat checked during the growth of these reputations and the succession of fertile and accomplished writers on both sides of the Atlantic,—including the introspective analysts of the past fifteen years,—has within a decade been rising again, and has lately burst forth in a new group of historical romancers who seem to have "harked back" from the subjective ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... while for this fact to be communicated to Mr. Heatherbloom. Though she shifted her figure often, as if to call attention to the pale profile of her face against a leaden sky, his thoughts remained introspective. Only the sky-line seemed to interest him. But one day something white came dancing in the breeze to his feet. Absorbed in deep neutral tones afar, he did not see it; his four-footed charges, however, were ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Valpy to inquire whether he was "suffering from jaundice, or if it was only dirt." Dr. Jessop, who was afterwards headmaster of the school, says that there was a tradition that Borrow was indolent and even stupid. There is little doubt that he was a dreamy youth, much given to introspective thought and wild imaginings; but, in spite of these drawbacks in the dominie's eyes, he was a very human boy, fond of outdoor life and sports. Some of his pursuits, however—such as his liking for philological studies, ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... in Raja Yoga Is what is called Pratyahara or the art of making the mind introspective or turned inward upon itself. It is the first step toward mental control. It aims to turn the mind from going outward, and gradually turning it inward upon itself or inner nature. The object is to gain control ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... had been too busy, all his days, to be introspective. He did not know that he had any tenderness in his nature; and if he had become conscious of its abstract existence he would have considered it as a manifestation of disease in some part of him. But he was decoyed into pity ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... Berlioz, in the present volume, reveals a true insight into the personality of this unfortunate and great artist, and removes any false misconceptions which unsympathetic and superficial handling may have engendered. Indeed, the same introspective faculty is displayed in all the other essays which form this volume, which, it is believed, will prove of the greatest value not only to the professional student, but also to the intelligent listener, for whom the present series of volumes ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... character and mission have perhaps received less attention than they deserve. The tacit assumption of the majority of critics seems to be that the poet, like the criminal, is the last man who should pass judgment upon his own case. Yet it is by no means certain that this view is correct. Introspective analysis on the part of the poet might reasonably be expected to be as productive of aesthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the poet's self-exposition must have interest for ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... color of a panther's hide, eyes dark hazel, glinting through dust-colored lashes, chin round like a fruit. The pressure of her fingers accented the slight uptilt of her brows to elfishness, and her look was introspective. She might, instead of wondering on the outside, have been the very center of the mystery itself, toying with unthinkable possibilities of revelation. She looked far over the head of Clara Britton's annoyance that there should be ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... understandable things. Miller, slouching in his chair, with a cheap tie-clip showing underneath his waistcoat, a bulging mass of sock descending over the top of his boot, rolling a cigarette with yellow-stained, objectionable fingers, still involved him in introspective speculation as to real values ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to wake Margaret from her introspective mood. An agonised spasm swept her face; but almost on the instant she was calm. She almost smiled as ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... just torn out some pages written a year or so ago. A diary of the introspective type is doubtless a pandering to egotism, but I have always detested that affectation which ignores the fact that each person is to him or herself the most interesting soul—yes, and body—in the universe, and now there is nothing ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... His eye was introspective, vacant, his mouth was half open, and his tongue lolled out so comically that Dick almost laughed aloud. No one moved by so much as a hand's breadth. The bear dropped back to his cooling sand with a sigh of voluptuous pleasure. The canoes drew a ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... a calculating, introspective philosopher, seeing only the mote in the sunbeam, and nothing of the glory." Here she gently disengaged the teaspoon from my fingers and laid it in her own saucer, having done which she sighed, and looked at me with her head to one side. "Were they all like you, Peter, I wonder—those old philosophers, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... crime a man can be guilty of in the eyes of such a woman, yet the accusation did not trouble him now as much as it would have done at another time. He was restless, and if his conscience was too moribund to have the power of pricking, he had become introspective. Fear and superstition took hold of him, and he could not shake himself free. The news which the messenger had brought him was good news, yet, even as the man had delivered it, a candle had guttered and gone out, and Sir John saw a warning ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... The truth broke upon me in an introspective moment one morning as I was nearing Sotchi. I felt I had changed. I stopped to take stock of my new life and ways. I had been living in the forest and on the seashore, away from mankind, on Nature's gifts. All my days from dawn to sunset I hunted for food. My life ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... are the three distinct and independent kingdoms, and turn our introspective gaze upon the kingdom of France. There we recognize the same fact; there the same work of dismemberment is going on. About the end of the ninth century there were already twenty-nine provinces or fragments of provinces which had become petty states, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Langham, it may well be believed that after the scene in the garden he had rated, satirised, examined himself in the most approved introspective style. One half of him declared that scene to have been the heights of melodramatic absurdity; the other thought of it with a thrill of tender gratitude towards the young pitiful creature who had evoked it. After all, why, because he was alone in the world and must ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Lambert's was one of those dispositions, often peculiar to those who have led an isolated and introspective life, which never do anything half-heartedly; and just as he took his somewhat empty secretarial duties seriously, so did he look on this self-imposed task, against which his better judgment rebelled, with ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... married, life still has a few thorns. She finds out also that the long day, when husband is at business, affords many opportunities for reflection and serious thought. These moments of seeming leisure are the moments of destiny. They are the introspective moments, when she weighs and measures out for herself sympathy, if she is not made of the right stuff, or she makes strong resolutions, and prepares herself mentally to win out in the new life. They are the moments when ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... her own nature to realise that she could be happy in giving Stanor a happiness which he could only gain through her. It was as natural to her to be happy as for a flower to lift its face in the sun, but for both the sun was needed. A more introspective soul would have realised that there were degrees in happiness, and that she would be missing the best; Pixie with characteristic simplicity accepted what seemed to her the right step, and shut her mind ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... our shouting offspring clamber Up your broad and beetling sides; Ne'er again, when eventide's Coming turns the skies to amber And the fluting blackbirds call, Poised above a bale of fodder In your well-appointed stall Will you muse upon it all, Patient introspective plodder. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... interest philosophers—more deeply, perhaps, than any aspect of experience—but their conception of it will be a corollary of their metaphysics and epistemology. The remainder of the field of the old philosophical psychology, the introspective and experimental analysis of special states of mind, is already the province of a natural science which is becoming more and more free from the stand-point ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... three periods in our lives: the youth period or prospective period, the adult or introspective period, and the old age ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... M'Barka's eyes became introspective, as if she waited for a message, or saw a vision. She was as strange, as remote from modern womanhood as a Cassandra. Presently she started, and began trailing her brown fingers lightly over the sand, pressing them down suddenly now and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him. A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... These introspective reflections brought back irresistibly the feelings with which she had read Flint's letter, little dreaming that it was his,—the letter so full of wise and friendly counsel. She remembered how, as she read, she had been filled with a yearning desire to rise ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... must not be supposed that she was morbidly introspective. Her life had been apparently a life of cheerful acquiescence in worldly conditions; it had been, in some measure, a life of fashion, or at least of society. It had not been without the interests of other girls' lives, by any means; she had sometimes had fancies, flirtations, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Marie Bashkirtseff to intrigue my readers as the young Russian lady in question had intrigued Mr. Gladstone and the rest of us, but I thought I could get hold of some one who could write a similar sort of diary, which, though it might not be so introspective, would be a good deal more witty. I therefore turned over in my mind the people I could ask to write a "journal intime." While I was in bed, experiencing the mental state that Sir Walter Scott used to call "simmering," i.e., thinking about my work in a half- hypnotic condition, I remember ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... utterly despises the 'other world' with all its stage properties—that is, the present objects of religion. It brings back religion from heaven to earth."[986] "As to the ethical teaching of Christ, with its one-sided, introspective, and individualistic character, we venture to assert that no one acquainted with the theory of modern scientific Socialism can for one moment call it Socialistic. Socialism has no sympathy with the morbid, eternally-revolving-in-upon-itself transcendent morality of the Gospel discourses. This ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... presuppositions of time and place; it would be unfair, furthermore, to deny the appeal that he makes to our sympathy. But, on the other hand, he is not free from suggestions of artifice; his characters are abnormally introspective and self-explanatory, and they reveal a talent for logical exposition which belongs rather to Friedrich Hebbel than to men of like passions with ourselves. In the unsought, accidental, ingenuous details which ingratiate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... study. He is unquestionably turning pale, and his eyes are filled with a strange, introspective, puzzled look. ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... the world, and found them lacking. She was not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... is as yet comparatively unfamiliar, and finally the book is dedicated to a member of the Harvard faculty, suggesting that whether it be a story of San Francisco or Dawson City, it must necessarily be vaporous, introspective and chiefly concerned with "literary" impressions. Mr. Norris is, indeed, a "Harvard man," but that he is a good many other kinds of a man is self-evident. His book is, in the language of Mr. Norman Hapgood, the work of "a large human being, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... last. The novelty wore off toward noon, and he found himself morose and introspective again. Sounding the depths of his grievances, he at length took to thinking of the white corral beside the river. Not in many a day had he thought of the ranch. But he was recalling it now, not through affection, not ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... receive her answer, but she smiled with a bright courageousness that secretly amused and pleased him. "I thank you, Doctor, for my recovery; I certainly should thank you." Her face lighted up with that soft radiance which was its best quality, and her smile became half introspective as her eyes dropped from his, and followed her outstretched hand as it rearranged the farther edges of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of new understandings were developing in Helbeck. His own nature was simple and concentrated, with little introspective power of the modern kind—even through all the passions and subtleties of his religion. Nevertheless his lover's sense revealed to him a good deal of what was going on in the semi-darkness of Laura's feelings and ideas. He divined this jealousy of his religious life that had taken ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but the stronger influence, his family pride, overcame his habitual secretiveness when he thought it necessary and desirable to do so in furtherance of his darling ambition—the restoration of this title. Men who lead a solitary, self-contained life, like my brother, become introspective and ultra-sensitive, and face any intimate personal revelation with the utmost reluctance. They will nerve themselves to it when the occasion absolutely requires, but the after effects—the mental self-probings, the agonized self torture that a self-conscious proud man can inflict on himself ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... a quite hairless face, very fair, with Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh. Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently boiled. A flowing blue tie, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... were few and fleeting, called into life by such uncomfortable circumstances as touching old Wetherbee for money or putting his tailor off when the date for his monthly dole fell due. He had never been introspective enough to quite place himself in the social scale, but when, in his thought or conversation, he referred to people of the better class he unconsciously included himself. He was not a drunken, disorderly, or radical member of society, and he didn't black boots, or man a ship, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... command of the ship and love it, but there is a difference between being second in command and being It. It makes you introspective to realize that a hundred lives and a $700,000 ship are absolutely dependent upon you, without anybody but the Almighty to ask for advice if ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... an ascertained fact that those periods when morals have been imposed on man as his sole and proper business and subject for contemplation have been unprogressive, introspective, feeble times. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... feel the same about other things," Alice continued, pausing from time to time as she became more introspective. "I'm fond of poetry, of course, but I can't understand how any one can be satisfied to do nothing else but write poems; I admire art, but with my admiration for the artist's work there's a real pity for the man because he is debarred from the world of action. ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... stomach. This is followed by omelette or fish. Of the two evils you choose the less, and cry "Omelette!" When the omelette is thrown in front of you it at once makes its presence felt. It recalls Bill Nye's beautiful story about an introspective egg laid by a morbid hen. However, if you smother the omelette in salt, red pepper, and mustard, you will be able to deal with it. I fear I cannot say as much for the fish. Then follows the inevitable chicken and salad, or perhaps Vienna steak, or vol-au-vent. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... as our materials enable us to judge no other prophet was more introspective or concerned about himself; and though it might be said that he carried this concern to a fault, yet fault or none, the fact is that no prophet started so deeply from himself as Jeremiah did. His circumstances flung him in upon ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... not an introspective man. His life, the life of a rich man's son, had left little room for self-examination of mood and purpose and character. He had done well enough during his four years in the university, not because he was ambitious, but simply because he was not a fool and found a mild satisfaction ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... is more in love with himself than he ever was with any woman. There are men, you know, whose one grand passion in life is for themselves. But Alice knows that Brandt still cares for her, and she feeds her romantic fancy on this fact, and has her introspective miseries to her heart's content. She is far too cool-headed a woman to do anything rash. Sometimes I think her morbid nature obtains more real satisfaction out of her joyless situation than positive happiness would compensate her for. She appears to take a certain negative pleasure in it. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... who marry young are entitled, I think, to a certain amount of introspective treatment by their authors. Without some knowledge of their mental working it is not very easy for the reader to have patience with them. I was introduced to Anne (HEINEMANN) when she was fifteen, and in the act ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... even as she gazed at the cloth, felt it, did the figures seem to reiterate themselves in her brain? "1762." There could be nothing especially significant about the date; yet even as she concluded thus, by some introspective process she saw herself bending over, studying those figures on another ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... and, although twenty-seven years old, was housed like a supernumerary in a small furnished room on the second floor above the ground. At this time his physique was that of a young man of medium height, slight, pale, and nervous, sensitive in disposition, reserved and introspective in habit. His delicate features, his intelligent forehead surmounted by soft chestnut hair, his pathetic blue eyes, his curved, dissatisfied mouth, shaded by a slight, dark moustache, indicated a melancholy, unquiet temperament ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the covering's were being drawn steadily off, with a hateful, stealthy sort of motion. I heard the slow, dragging slither of the clothes; but I could see nothing of the thing that pulled. I was aware in a funny, subconscious, introspective fashion that the 'creep' had come upon me; yet that I was cooler mentally than I had been for some minutes; sufficiently so to feel that my hands were sweating coldly, and to shift my revolver, half-consciously, whilst I rubbed my right ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... been gladdened by a brighter look of her eyes at her next coming. They were introspective and beamless. She had an odd leaning to the talk upon Cuper's boys. He was puzzled by what he might have classed, in any other woman, as a want of delicacy, when she recurred to incidents which were red patches of the school time, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of using for the sake of his own growth and wilfulness, and circumstances often turn it full upon us, greatly to our advantage, if we do not wince but act upon the knowledge that it brings. It is possible to acquire an introspective habit which is wholesome and true, and brings us every day a better sense of ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... find one who is what is popularly known as a drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it? Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only the oyster fascinated by the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... devour omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this true of the women of this type whose introspective morbidity has led them to diagnose their own functional disturbances as the direct result of "over-sexuality" and restraint from normal sexual expression—a diagnosis that is probably wrong nine times in ten cases. Such a woman ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... that incorrigible egoist and introspective epicurean, William Hazlitt, whose essays are themselves full of an ingratiating and engaging sensuousness, should have taken Rousseau as his special master and idealised him into a symbolic figure, is a proof of the presence in him of something ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... judiciously in a popular studio costume, which is not that of the sitter's day, it reveals to us the author of 'The Deserted Village' as Reynolds conceived him to be at his best, serious, dignified, introspective, with his physical defects partly extenuated by art, partly over-mastered by his intellectual power. To quote the 'Jessamy Bride' once more — it is 'a fine poetical head for the admiration of posterity, but as it is divested of his wig and with the shirt collar open, it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... old cow-puncher's story. In reciting this page from the book of his life he had lost thought of his surroundings, but now he remembered, and seemed startled at having talked so much. He retired within himself, his eyes taking on an introspective look as though, as one of the boys expressed it, "he was tellin' ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... vanities. Walpole was a social being, and not finally self-centred. His chief purpose in life was not to know himself, but to give pleasure to his friends. If he was bored by Montaigne, it was because he had little introspective curiosity. Like Montaigne himself, however, he was much the servant of whim in his literary tastes. That he was no sceptic but a disciple as regards Shakespeare and Milton and Pope and Gray suggests, on the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... sinuous murmuring shell. It was an art of an art, the penumbra of an art. Its faint outlines melted into one's soul and refused to be turned away. The recollection of other music seemed gross after this curiously introspective, this almost whorl-like, music. It was the return to the invertebrate, the shadow of a shadow, and the hearts of Merville's guests were downcast ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... this fault. The critics charged him with just the opposite defect. They called him cold. No doubt, such perfect poise — such intuitive self-adjustment — was not maintained by nature without a sacrifice of the qualities which would have upset it. No doubt, too, that even his restless-minded, introspective, self-conscious children who knew him best were much too ignorant of the world and of human nature to suspect how rare and complete was the model before their eyes. A coarser instrument would have impressed them more. Average human nature is very ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... antiquity, that they are for this purpose scarcely suitable. In some departments the science of the Greeks was remarkable, though it is completely overshadowed by their philosophy; yet it was largely based on what has proved to be a wrong method of procedure, viz the introspective and conjectural, rather than the inductive and experimental methods. They investigated Nature by studying their own minds, by considering the meanings of words, rather than by studying things and recording phenomena. This wrong (though by no means, on the face of it, absurd) method ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... 12. Make an introspective study of your conscious states to note the difference in clearness of the different processes that are going on in consciousness. Do you find ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... and feeling, but these are of a very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so prominently in the writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative orders. Improved conduct and improved circumstances ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... which are sound in the views of life they present ought to be within the reach of children; these stories ought to be well constructed and well written; they ought to be largely objective stories; they ought not to be introspective, morbid or abnormal in any way. Goody-good and professionally "pious" stories, sentimental or unreal stories, ought to be rigorously excluded. A great deal of fiction specially written for children ought to be left severely alone; ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and unclouded skies. The skipper, an admirable seaman but nothing more, favored us with very little of his society, except at his table; and the young woman, Miss Janette Harford, and I became very well acquainted. We were, in truth, nearly always together, and being of an introspective turn of mind I often endeavored to analyze and define the novel feeling with which she inspired me—a secret, subtle, but powerful attraction which constantly impelled me to seek her; but the attempt was hopeless. I could only be sure that ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... saw, lay the best road to human success. He recognized the homely virtues of industry and thrift, on which the young American society had worked out its real strength, and assigned to them the fundamental place, instead of that mystic and introspective piety which the Calvinist made his corner-stone. He took the lead in penetrating the secrets of nature, and not less in moulding and guiding the infant nation. If his virtue was prudential rather than heroic, his prudence was close to that large ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... knightly vigilance and of Christian watchfulness. An old Anglo-Norman, Osmont, writes: "The eye-speckled feathers should warn a man that never too often can he have his eyes wide open, and gaze inwardly upon his own heart." These dear people were so introspective and self-conscious, always looking for trouble—in their own motives, even—that no doubt many good impulses perished unnoticed, while the originator was chasing mental phantoms of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Given two young creatures, handsome, clean, healthy, mutually sympathetic, throw them together a while without too many distractions—and there you are! It's as inevitable as that two and two make four. Don't think too much about it, dear—you're too watchful, too introspective. Just let go, and be natural. She's very sweet, my Jacqueline, very loving and tender. And you—well, you're not unattractive, you know! Don't worry.—Why, I give you my word as a mother, as a woman," she exclaimed, "that a month after you and Jacqueline ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... you here and now." Jay opened his hand, and Barrent saw a tiny single-charge weapon. "The law sets limits, and acts as a modifier upon the behavior of the lawbreaker and the law enforcer. To be sure, the law now states that you must die. But all men must die. The law, by its ponderous and introspective nature, gives you time in which to die. You have a day at least; and without the law, you would have ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... disposed to differ with him. He argued that a woman of Sylvia Whitman's type does not change her manner and grow introspective for nothing. He was inclined to think there might be something rather serious at the bottom of it all. His imagination, however, pictured some disease, which she was concealing from all about her, but which caused her ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lived at this day, she would probably have spent her time between her promise and its fulfilment in self-analysis and introspective reasoning with her own conscience. But the women of a century ago were not tossed about with winds of various opinions, or made foolishly subtile by arguments about principles which ought never to be associated with dissent. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... ought to be taken, seriously; but it is effort well worth while. He, perhaps, shines even more as a psychologist than as a philosopher—at least in the time- honoured sense. He has an almost uncanny introspective insight and, as has been said, a power of rendering its result in language which creates in the reader a sense of excitement and adventure not to be excelled by the ablest romancer. Fadaises, which are to ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... from between his teeth, he deposited it in the grate, where a sickly fire burned; then, tearing the wrapper from a fresh slip, he resumed his chewing and stood looking about him with unseeing eyes. Fierce they were as ever, but introspective ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... evangelist who smacks his lips in anticipation of the future conquest of these Islands, I would say frankly that there is no room for Protestantism in the Philippines. The introspective quality which is inherent in true Protestantism is not in the Filipino temperament. Neither are the vein of simplicity and the dogmatic spirit which made the strength of the Reformation. Protestantism will, of course, make some progress so long as the fire is ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... change in Lady Fanny's life; henceforward for the next eight years more than half of every year was spent by her in London. There is a change, too, in the spirit of her diaries. Her nature was the reverse of introspective and melancholy, but at this time she was often unhappy and dissatisfied for no definite reason; her diaries show it. It is not likely that others were aware of this private distress. She was leading at the time ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... disrupting force of a stimulus becomes less. Attention becomes less painful, less tense, i.e., there is less general muscular and emotional reaction. Expectation is less a physical matter—perhaps because we have been so often disappointed—and is more cerebral and the emotions are more reflective and introspective in their expression and less a physical outburst. Indeed, the process often enough goes too far, and we long for the excitement of anticipation and realization. We do not start at a noise, and though ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... whether the preceding view be too introspective for Homer, who is usually declared to be the unconscious poet, quite unaware of his purpose or process. No one can carefully read the Third Book without feeling its religious purport; an atmosphere it has ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... quality called fudoshin, or immobility of heart. That this existed in practice from an early era cannot be doubted, but its cultivation by a recognized system of training dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the introspective tenet (kwanshin-ho) of the Zen sect of Buddhism taught believers to divest themselves wholly of passion and emotion and to educate a mind unmoved by its environment, so that, in the storm and stress of battle, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... should rise to such splendor; this apotheosis left no place for the pitying tenderness of love, only for its glory. The color of this picture was like the sound of silver trumpets; the heart-throb of the strings was missing. Mary was neither morbid nor introspective, but at this time her whole being was keyed to more than normal comprehension. Watching the picture, seeing that it was a portrayal not of her but of his love for her, she wondered if any woman could long endure the arduousness ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... imaginary, and half his inability to get on with his fellows, no less than with the maidens who were brought down in single file to Ashbridge, was due to this. He knew very well how light-heartedly they escaped to the geniality and attractiveness of Francis, and in the clutch of his own introspective temperament he could not free himself from the handicap of his own sensitiveness, and, like others, take himself for granted. He crushed his own power to please by the weight ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... older now—perhaps I am more selfish. I don't know which it is and—I can't express my feelings, but I have had sufficient time since you went away to think and to look into my own soul. Really I have become quite introspective. Of course, my feeling for you is just the same as it was, dear, but I—I can't—" She waved a graceful hand to indicate her surroundings. "Well, this is my world, and I am a part of it. You understand, don't ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... was vouched for and might go in. Only a little way as yet. Enchanted forests lay beyond, and perilous seas, but there were hints, breaths like the wafting of the garments of unspeakable Presences. My talk with Vanna grew less personal, and more introspective. I felt the touch of her finger-tips leading me along the ways of Quiet—my feet brushed a shining dew. Once, in the twilight under the chenar trees, I saw a white gleaming and thought it a swiftly passing Being, but when in haste I gained the tree I found there only a Ninefold flower, white as ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... The man who sways a nation's conscience controls that nation's life. To rule conscience, a man must himself be unprejudiced and well informed. He must strive, not to keep up an unhealthy excitement which shall make conscience introspective and morbid, but to preserve a sane moral outlook, to encourage freedom of thought and judgment, and to develop a normal conscience which reacts promptly against wrong. Conscience measures our inner recoil from evil. The power of a preacher is in direct proportion to the energy with which he ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... be made to see them in one or the other way in accordance with his special needs. To tell him that his brain cells are in disorder and that they can be cured will be the right thing for him who takes only the introspective view of his suffering and is in despair because his own will seems powerless to overcome those mental changes. For the next patient, the opposite may be wiser. The belief that his brain is ill may ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... shaping and tinging its views opened the whole range of sentient existences to an indiscriminate sympathy, and made the idea of transmigration natural, and more pleasing than repugnant. Furthermore, the Brahminic thinkers and sages were a distinct class of men whose whole lives were absorbed in introspective reveries and metaphysical broodings calculated to stimulate the imagination and arouse to the keenest consciousness all the latent marvels and possibilities of human experience, thus furnishing the most favorable conditions for exactly such a belief as that of transmigration, an endless ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... he been accustomed to spare any of his powers for introspective imagination, might have beheld his crossroads, his turning point, in this passage through the South of Market picnic to the little group waiting, by the Sausalito Ferry, to take him to the Masters ranch. But a month ago, he himself had whistled ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... been had he not had his early environment of egotism, mystery and clap-trap—had he, also, not developed through his childhood and youth his passionate devotion to his father. The religious ceremonies of his young days had made him self-conscious and introspective and, although during his years abroad he had felt on many occasions that he was completely freed from his early bondage, scenes, thoughts and longings would recur and remind him that he was celebrating his liberty too soon. The licences that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... not a joy for ever. But comparisons are odious, and if Munich is ugly Verona is beautiful enough. You may laugh at my logic, but will probably assent to my meaning. I carried away from Verona a precious mental picture upon which I cast an introspective glance whenever between Botzen and Strassburg the oppression of external circumstance became painful. It was a lovely August afternoon in the Roman arena—a ruin in which repair and restoration have been so ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... points. He also took a leading part in the Courts of the Church in what was known as the "Marrow Controversy," regarding the merits of an English work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which he defended against the attacks of the "Moderate" party in the Church. B., if unduly introspective, was a man of singular piety and amiability. His autobiography is an interesting record of Scottish life, full of sincerity and tenderness, and not devoid of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... spot for a man in love to pass a day or two than the typical English village. The Rocky Mountains, that traditional stamping-ground for the heartbroken, may be well enough in their way; but a lover has to be cast in a pretty stem mould to be able to be introspective when at any moment he may meet an annoyed cinnamon bear. In the English village there are no such obstacles to meditation. It combines the comforts of civilization with the restfulness of solitude ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... down on his crutches, observing progress and despatch with slow-moving, introspective eyes. Presently he came to a halt and clapped his hands sharply together. Twenty pairs of eyes, some cringing, some with vestiges of boldness, some favor-currying, sought his, and twenty pairs of hands ceased work as when power is shut off from as many machines. Blizzard's eyes passed slowly over ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... we are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but in the open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeated transition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his Sordello, the turning-point between the early introspective and the later ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... introspection, but there is at present considerable dissent from this doctrine, the dissenters holding that an objective type of observation of human behavior is distinctively psychological and probably more significant and fruitful than the introspective attitude. However this may be, both introspection and behavior study require attention to matters that are commonly disregarded. Every one is of course interested in what people do, or at least ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... his own opinion, was one who had missed his mark by excessive aiming. Having now, to a great extent, given up ideal ambitions, he wished earnestly to direct his powers into a more practical channel, and thus correct the introspective tendencies which had never brought himself much happiness, or done his fellow-creatures any great good. To make a start in this new direction by marriage, which, since knowing Elfride, had been so entrancing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... at all introspective she might have found a clew as to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown lying in state on the bed for a white satin ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... spectacles, who had been standing on the opposite corner vacantly eating an apple out of a paper bag, had unwisely chosen his moment to try the crossing. He was evidently an indoors sort of man and no shakes at crossing streets, owing to the introspective nature of his mind. A grocery wagon shaved him by an inch. It was doing things to the speed-limit, this wagon, because a dashing police patrol was close behind, treading on its tail and indignantly clanging it to turn out, which it ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was darkly tanned, too, and had a grey gaze, by turns sharply focused with bright black pupils and blankly introspective. He was garbed in white flannels, with bare ankles and sandals, and an old, collarless silk shirt, with sleeves rolled back on virile arms incongruously tattooed ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... troubled. Between 1864 and 1874, from his thirty-second to his forty-second year, his invention seemed, to some extent, paralyzed. The Fisher Maiden, the one story written during that time, starts as beautifully as Arne; but it grows complicated and introspective: the psychological experiences of the stage-struck heroine are not in the same key as the opening chapters. Passing over nine years, we find Magnhild much more vague ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hustle me. You know that. All the boys on the round-up know that. And why? Because I learnt the business from Peter—and Peter taught me to shoot quick and straight. Those three years taught me a deal, and I take it those things didn't happen for nothing," with a moody introspective gaze. "Those years taught me how to look after myself—and my uncle. Say, Bill, what I'm telling you may sicken you some. I can't help that. Peter was my brother and blood's thicker than water. I wasn't going to let him be hunted down by a lot of bloodthirsty coyotes who were ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... not wish to suggest that the way in which I have been defining perceptions is the only possible way, or even the best way. It is the way that arose naturally out of our present topic. But when we approach psychology from a more introspective standpoint, we have to distinguish sensations and perceptions, if possible, from other mental occurrences, if any. We have also to consider the psychological effects of sensations, as opposed to their ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... to have been made to steal the younger brother, although "people were in the habit of standing still to look at me, ay, more than at my brother." {7b} Unlike John in about everything that one child could be unlike another, George was a gloomy, introspective creature who considerably puzzled his parents. He compares himself to "a deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines, cypresses and yews," {7c} beside which he once paused to contemplate "a beautiful stream . . . sparkling in the sunshine, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... still hours and days set apart for the severe inward scrutiny of motives and "frames" and the grounds of one's hope. However truly the church of to-day may judge that the piety of their fathers was disproportioned and morbidly introspective and unduly concerned about one's own salvation, it is none the less true that the reaction from its excesses is violent, and is providing for itself a new reaction. "The contemplative orders," whether among Catholics or ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a place as any to emphasize the fact that the introspective study of mental imagery has little to contribute to the measurement of intelligence. Intelligence tests are concerned with the total result of a thought process, rather than with the imagery supports of that process. Thought may be carried on almost equally well by various kinds of ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... is impassive, unemotional, slow to anger, but not of great kindness, persistent in pursuing his purposes. The sanguine type is optimistic, impressionable, enthusiastic, but unsteady. The melancholic type is pessimistic, introspective, moody, suspicious of the motives of others. Most pupils belong to more than one class. Perhaps the two most prominent types represented in school are (1) that variety of the sanguine temperament which ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... did not like people to be too introspective and self-tormenting, said that they should, however, walk as it is written of the Maccabees, Caute et ordinate;[1] that is, with circumspection and order, or, to use a common expression, "bridle in hand." And one of the best proofs of our advancement in virtue is, he said, a love of correction ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... times he seemed a monster of cantankerous self-righteousness, whom nobody could please or satisfy, but indeed when he was most pitiless about the faults of his race or nation he was really reproaching himself, and when he seemed more egotistical and introspective and self-centred he was really ransacking himself for a clue to that same confusion of purposes that waste the hope and strength of humanity. And now through the busy distresses of the night it would have perplexed a watching angel to have drawn the line ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells |
