The Conquest of Self |
Common terms and phrases
ability able achievements activity actually attitude beauty become better body carry cause CHAPTER character child comes consider continually daughter dependence desire develop direct effect emotional energy especially experience expression fact fail failure father feel field follow force gained girl give grow habits hand happiness human husband ideal ideas important individual influence interest keep kind later less living marry matter means mental methods mind mother nature nervous never organ parents personality physical play position possible practical problems qualities realize reason responsibility result seems sense social success suffer sure teacher teaching things thought tion traits true turn unconscious understanding wife woman women
Popular passages
Page 176 - Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life ; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Page 13 - The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, Is — not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be, — but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means: a very different thing!
Page 30 - The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague.
Page 12 - This spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions — this process of finding "good" reasons to justify our routine beliefs — is known to modern psychologists as "rationalizing," clearly only a new name for a very ancient thing. Our "good" reasons ordinarily have no value in promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they may be marshaled, they are at bottom the result of personal preference or prejudice, and not of an honest desire to seek or accept new knowledge.
Page 175 - How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints.
Page 319 - All our lives long, every day and every hour, we are engaged in the process of accommodating our changed and unchanged selves to changed and unchanged surroundings; living, in fact, is nothing else than this process of accommodation...
Page 230 - Abstract reasonings they dislike, subtle reasonings they suspect; they accept nothing as practical which is not plain, downright, apprehensible by an ordinary understanding. Although open-minded, so far as willingness to listen goes, they are hard to convince, because they have really made up their minds on most subjects, having adopted the prevailing notions of their locality or party as truths due to their own reflection.
Page 304 - POISONS. 10. Evacuate thoroughly, regularly and frequently. 11. Stand, sit and walk erect. 12. Do not allow poisons and infections to enter the body. 13. Keep the teeth, gums and tongue clean.
Page 89 - Enlist the interest of every pupil in every school in his daily tasks in order to get from him hard, persistent, and enjoyed work. Cultivate every hour in every child the power to see and describe accurately.