Self-culture

It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was, and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English people or criticising English statesmanship: he would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures, leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all, self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would have been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general.

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans.

Why was this easiest, simplest work of self-culture always too much for me?

Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.'

Still others conjured souls filled with the light and peace of knowledge where previously, as William Ellery Channing puts it, "only dark, vague chaos" had dwelled, and "perhaps some violent passion, which has driven them to injurious excess" (Self-Culture 7).

The middle class of this era was one that, as numerous social and cultural historians have documented, sacralized art and was invested in self-culture, self-improvement, and social reform (Lears, Trachtenberg, Levine).

"Poise and posture are globally recognised cultural cues that reflect the care and dedication our associates provide in every service interaction."DIVERSE CULTURESInter-cultural intelligence is the ability to have an honest look at your own culture, accurately map and effectively navigate the self-culture of others and your host culture, and use this information to create a common ground where teams, and 'win-win' solutions can prosper, says Amal Loring, a counsellor behind MBD, which provides a range of skills workshops for executives.

ESPN fiction thus creates and conditions its own consumers--sports fans--by challenging them to examine their flaws in a way that both accepts and even celebrates them for their idiosyncratic humanity, while also inspiring individual improvement, self-actualization, and self-culture. The fiction ESPN typically chooses for publication presents a challenge to readers "to come to a clear understanding of the lie of literature and the lie of sports" in order to let themselves "believe there might be a kind of certainty and self-actualization that can be derived from both," as Kevin Brooks explains ("Life" 853, "Confessions" 71-82).

Historians of self-culture tend to corroborate this view: Daniel Walker Howe's Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln suggests that the nineteenth century witnessed a profusion of texts purporting to teach white American males how to access and fulfill their individual potential, to nurture and grow the perfection God had planted in each of them like a seed, "to make oneself better--mentally, morally, and physically--[and] use one's abilities to proper advantage" (123).

Conversation as a means to social, intellectual, and spiritual self-culture was advocated during the American Romantic period by members of the Transcendental movement.