self-conscious Quotes

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. . . . With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults.

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

Play the game, but don’t believe in it – that much you owe yourself … Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate.

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”

“I feel like someone breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless. I am Divergent.”

“You may go— Or tell me why are you staring at my nose!”

“Our thoughts make us what we are.”

“There were moments—not just today, moments every day since they’d met—when Eleanor made him self-conscious, when he saw people talking and he was sure they were talking about them. Raucous moments on the bus when he was sure that everyone was laughing at them.”

“This is your child, and you’ll have to make the best of it. We’re going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as possible-some time to-day.”

“I was becoming too ‘rich’ for the kids from the neighborhood and too ‘poor’ for the kids at school. I had forgotten how to act naturally, thinking way too much in each situation and getting tangled in the contradictions between my two worlds.”

“Girls are from the earliest infancy fond of dress. Not content with being pretty, they are desirous of being thought so.”

“In the orientation of the creative, once you have consciously made the choice to be healthy and you are attracted to eating certain foods and following certain forms of exercise, you are involved in an organic process.”

“It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them.”

“Camilla was always worried what other people thought of her.”

“She didn’t want to miss the first day of school, but she was afraid of what the other kids would say. And she had no idea what to wear with those crazy stripes.”

“When he looks in the mirror, he might notice his hair needs a trim. So he’ll probably ask for a pair of nail scissors.”

“Alix also found herself reorganizing her lifestyle around Emira, despite the fact that she didn’t have an explicit reason to. If Alix went shopping, she took the tags off clothes and other items immediately so Emira couldn’t see how much she’d spent, even though Emira wasn’t the type to show interest or ask.”