"Self-consciously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he seems to have hated more than death. For he had the splendid insolence of youth. Youth commonly feels high-spirited in an unconscious, instinctive fashion, like a kitten or a puppy; but Rupert Brooke was as self-consciously young as a decrepit pensioner is self-consciously old. He rejoiced in the strength of his youth, and rolled it as a sweet morsel under his tongue. He was so glad to be young, and to know every morning on rising ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... equally inexhaustible in forms; each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within, and even such is the appropriate excellence of Shakespeare, himself a nature humanized, a genial understanding, directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even than ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... writes of the business in hand, the vagaries of stores and indents and mere men and brass hats, on this and the other side of the Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business manfully. Of the men in particular he has illuminating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... to say to this pretty pouting creature who had rushed in from a later world and dissipated the atmosphere of mediaevalism, and so he addressed himself to Meshach upon the eternal subject of the staple trade. The women at the table talked quietly but self-consciously, and Twemlow saw Milly forced to taste parkin after three refusals. Even while still masticating the viscid unripe parkin, Milly rose to depart. She bent down and dutifully grazed with her lips the cheek of the parkin-maker. 'Good-bye, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... poet Tennyson, or like Robert Browning glutting his sense upon the world—"Miser, there waits the gold for thee!"—or Francis Thompson swinging the earth a trinket at his wrist. In truth, she was at times self-consciously afraid that she resembled all these three, whom (in the moods they thus expressed) she disliked beyond reason, finding them ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... him with her wonderful grey eyes, not shyly, not self-consciously, but with slow, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... looking at the Christ, a curious wonder at himself came into his mind. He was musing on the confession of Julian, so long withheld, so shyly made at last. This confession caused him, for the first time, to look self-consciously upon himself, to stand away from his nature, as the artist stands away from the picture he is painting, and to examine it with a sideways head, with a peering, contracted gaze. This thing that protected a soul from sin—what was it like? What was it? He could not easily surmise. He had a clear ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... city highways! Among all these thousands of passers-by no one guessed how closely and with what inquisitive interest I was observing them. I suppose I must have covered eight or ten miles of pavement before walking self-consciously into that wine-shop, and sitting down beside a little metal table. I know now that, with me, nervousness generally takes the form of marked apparent nonchalance. Doubtless, this is due to concentrated effort in my youth to produce this effect. I did not know the name of a single Australian ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... concern themselves with the business of their fellows—and it must be confessed that they never shrank from this duty. They were neither well-educated, nor experienced, nor tactful; but blissfully ignorant of these defects, they shepherded their flock with little moral barks, and gave them, rather self-consciously, a good example in the difficult way to eternal life. They were eminently worthy people, who thought light-heartedness somewhat indecent. They did endless good in the most disagreeable manner possible; and in their fervour ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... themselves at the last moment, as it were permitting them to do what they liked within the limits of goodness for one night, and commanding them to return sagely home on the morrow. A red-nosed actor, hands in pockets, waddled self-consciously on to the stage, and the packed audience, emitting murmurs of satisfaction, applauded. Conversations were interrupted. George, expectant, gave his attention to the show. He knew little or nothing of musical comedy, having come under influences which had taught him to despise it. His ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... atheist must deny the existence of the Qualities of God, deny that there is any mind of or in the Universe, any self-conscious Providence, any Providence at all. He must deny that there is any Being or Cause of Finite things, that is self-consciously powerful, wise, just, loving, and faithful to itself and its own nature. He must deny that there is any plan in the Universe or any part of it. He must hold, either that matter is eternal, or that it originated itself, which is absurd, or that it was originated by an Intelligence, or at least by ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... with every black circumstance his wealth and his position demanded. Mrs. Harman would need that, and so it must be done. Cabinet Ministers must follow him, members of Parliament, all Blenkerdom feeling self-consciously and, as far as possible, deeply, the Chartersons by way of friends, unfamiliar blood relations, a ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... for that, but as she bade him good night at the top of the companion-way she saw herself in armour. Her vague dreams of John the Baptist, of Siegfried and of Britomart suddenly crystallized, and she saw herself, very self-consciously, the Deliverer who would save Louis Fame. It did not occur to her to wonder if he were worth saving. He was imprisoned in the first windmill she had encountered on her Don Quixote quest—and so he ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the idea occurred to her, it occurred to Bruce also. She had a hypnotic effect on him; as soon as she thought of anything he thought of it too. Something in her slight change of manner, her cautious way of answering, and of rustling self-consciously out of the room when they were left alone together, had this effect. Bruce was enchanted. Madame Frabelle thought he was getting too fond of her! Then, he must be! Perhaps he was. He certainly didn't like the idea at all of her going away and changed the subject directly she mentioned it. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... very thrilling and exciting, but the champagne was beginning to lose its effect. The world was growing grey again. Joan's head throbbed, and she felt self-consciously inclined to make a fool of herself. She sat very silent through the supper to which Brown treated the company at his hotel. There were about twenty people present, nearly all men; Joan wondered where they had ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... I've been over the whole island," said Bjerregrav self-consciously; "but I never got anywhere where I couldn't see the sea. Every parish in all Bornholm borders on the sea. But it has no power over the farmers and peasants—they belong to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... exceedingly good talker, rather elaborate in the construction of his phrases, and occasionally dandiacal in his choice of words. One does not arrive at his skill in conversation without taking thought, and he must have devoted a lot of thought to the art of talking. Hence he talked self-consciously, fully aware all the time that talking was an art and himself an artist. Beneath the somewhat finicking manner there was visible the intelligence that cared for neither conventions nor traditions, nor for possible inconvenient results, but solely for ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... little self-consciously. "It's just that I want to be sure it's real. I needn't tell you how important this trick is that Miss Brandeis has just turned." He turned to Fanny, with a boyish laugh. "Now don't pose. You know you can't be as bored as ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... exterior is the physiognomy of the being within,—its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror;—and even such is the appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our own Shakespeare,—himself a nature humanized, a genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... formation. In any case, the pathos is there. Consider a children's May party, on its way to Central Park. A fife-and-drum corps of three little boys in uniform leads the way. The Queen of the May, all in white, walks with her consort under a canopy of ribbons and flowers, a little stiffly, perhaps, and self-consciously, but not more so than older queens and kings on parade. A long line of boys and girls in many-coloured caps moves between flying detachments of mothers carrying baskets. The confectioner's wagon, laden with its precious commissariat ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... she smiled slightly in the direction of Susan and Rachel. They did not like to be included in the same lot, but they both smiled a little self-consciously, and Arthur and Terence glanced at each other too. She made them feel that they were all in the same boat together, and they looked at the women they were going to marry and compared them. It was inexplicable how any one could wish to marry Rachel, incredible that any one should be ready to ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... usually includes lots of science and science fiction. The typical hacker household might subscribe to "Analog", "Scientific American", "Whole-Earth Review", and "Smithsonian" (most hackers ignore "Wired" and other self-consciously 'cyberpunk' magazines, considering them {wannabee} fodder). Hackers often have a reading range that astonishes liberal arts people but tend not to talk about it as much. Many hackers spend as much of their spare time reading as the average American ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... in the pale halo of light cast by the window into the darkness. He looked at her for moments without moving. Then she saw him get up and say good night to his father, putting his hand awkwardly and self-consciously on his sleeve. Minutes passed, and she knew he had gone to say good night to his mother, and then she saw the light of his cigarette coming toward her across the lawn. She waited without moving for him to touch her. So many times she would feel him coming toward her in the moonlight, the outline ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... saw how self-consciously, almost rigidly, she sat when she had recovered herself, and, suspicion instantly alert, turned a ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... loud noise of the organ. The whole party was trooping to the vestry. There was a blotted, scrawled book—and that young girl putting back her veil in her vanity, and laying her hand with the wedding-ring self-consciously conspicuous, and signing her name proudly because of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... this feminine fuss? Self-consciously he dropped his tail, imploringly he looked up at the man. The man understood. He poked the dog with his foot, and Dan started back with a mock snarl. Embarrassment vanished, equilibrium was established, they were placed at once on that footing of ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... an inviting, almost an aggressive air. And he stooped and picked it up, putting it rather self-consciously, because of the girl from whose table it had come, on the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Sary smirked self-consciously at Eleanor's words, for she thought she was being coupled with Barbara and her attractions. Sary felt quite sure that she was good-looking and winsome, but she had to hear Eleanor's words to make her believe she ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... The Pendletons were too thorough-going Americans not to abdicate before the young. They did not saunter self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... white road. Roderigo Vicello had only arrived that morning in Cellino, and Lucia was not the familiar little figure to him that she was to the other soldiers. But she was none the less welcome for that, after the monotony of the day, and Roderigo as she came nearer straightened up self-consciously and tilted his black patent leather hat with its rakish cluster of cock feathers a little more ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... mounted. As she gave Ginger his head Ambrose deftly caught her hand and kissed it. Colina was not displeased. If it had been self-consciously ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... its publication in the Metropolitan Magazine a year ago that it is interesting to find him achieving high distinction in other imaginative fields. Captain Greene's natural gift of narrative is the result of a strong impulse toward creative expression, which molds its form a little self-consciously, but convincingly, for the most part. I think that he is at his best in these two stories rather than in "The Cat of the Cane-Brake" and "The Black Pool," because they are based upon a more direct apprehension and experience of life. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shyness possessed Tim now, a thing which he had never felt in his life. He moved about self-consciously, awkwardly, until at last there was a sudden silence over ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... even for Mrs. Maldon. The cutlets were wrapped in newspaper, and Louis rather self-consciously opened the maw of the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... self-consciously, knowing himself the hero of the hour. And in the twinkling of an eye the music ceased; he was surrounded. Elias, a saffron sash at his waist, a scarlet dust-cloak streaming from his shoulders, flung an arm around his dear friend's neck, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall |
