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More "Self-indulgence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said I, "we all overlook one great leading principle of our nature, and that is, that we are made to find a higher pleasure in self-sacrifice than in any form of self-indulgence. There is something grand and pathetic in the idea of an entire self-surrender, to which every human soul leaps up, as we do to the sound of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "The lines are obscured by cushions of flesh; no heart line at all, mentality small, self-indulgence and irritability ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... this scholarship fund is the result of endless self-denial. I have known several alumnae, to say the least, who have sacrificed greater privileges than visits to the Opera for the sake of contributing an extra mite. Would it be just for one who benefits from the economy of others to spend in self-indulgence?" ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... amiable, generous, and munificent. But his temper was spoiled by self-indulgence and incessant flattery. The moroseness he exhibited in his latter days was partly the effect of physical disease, brought about, indeed, by intemperance and gluttony. He was faithful to his wives, so long as he lived with them; and, while he doted on them, listened to their advice. But few ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... discriminating, practical intelligence, was formed and disciplined amid that company of distinguished scholars and writers who, at Oxford, in the second decade of the century were revolted by the scandalous inertness and self-indulgence of the place, with its magnificent resources squandered and wasted, its stupid orthodoxy of routine, its insensibility to the questions and the dangers rising all round; men such as Keble, Arnold, Davison, Copleston, Whately. These men, different as they were from one another, all represented ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... prayed—"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." Now, his cry would be—"Come to me, let not my sins cause Thee to stay, but come quickly." There are many of us who feel we need to cry to Peter's Saviour and Lord, for we have allowed doubts to hide His face, or self-indulgence to fence Him about. Let every preacher who reads these words unite with us in pleading for a Pentecost that shall renew our commission, and make all men to know that a risen Saviour is our King, and a ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... the mantel-piece. She arranged without enthusiasm her straggling hair, and put straight a lace cap which was chronically crooked. She looked at her reflection pessimistically, as well she might. It was the puffy red face of a middle-aged woman given to petty self-indulgence. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... indifferent, more intelligent than those around him, scarcely a Buddhist in belief, and very kind-hearted: indeed Judson believed that it was his interposition alone that prevented the lives of the captives from being taken at once; but he was demoralized by self-indulgence, and allowed himself to be governed by his queen, the daughter of a superintendent of gaols; and through her, by her brother, who was cruel, rapacious and violent, and the chief author of all the sufferings inflicted on the prisoners. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Campbell, "but since it has been lost to me, I have often thought that I might have done more good with it. But the fact is, my dear children, there is nothing so dangerous to our eternal welfare as great wealth; it tends to harden the heart by affording the means of constant self-indulgence:—under such circumstances, man is apt to become selfish, easily satisfied with his own works, and too proud to see his errors. Did you observe in the Litany, which I read at this morning's service, how very appropriately is inserted the prayer for deliverance ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... on this part of my subject, because I think it very probable that, with your warm affections, and before your selfishness has been hardened by habits of self-indulgence, you might some time or other fall into the error I have been describing. In the ardour of your anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own health, and unfit you for more ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... swam from London to Chelsea, a distance of four miles. Several of his companions he taught to swim in two lessons. His celebrity was such that he was urged to open a swimming school.[9] The life of self-indulgence he was now living in London, was not such as even his loose religious principles could approve. He had abandoned the faith of his fathers, and had adopted, for his rule of conduct, the principle, that it was right to yield to any indulgences to which his passions incited him. He became ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... continued at Mr. Marchinton's, attending school, and busied, as is usual with boys of that age, until the year 1805. I fear I was naturally disposed to idleness and self-indulgence, for I became restive and impatient under the restraints of the schoolmaster, and of the gentleman in whose family I had been left. I do not know that I had any just grounds of complaint against Mr. Marchinton; but his rigorous discipline disgusted ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... keep the contempt she felt for her husband's weak rejoinder, "don't confuse the head, dethrone the reason, brutalize, debase and ruin men in soul and body as do wine and brandy. The difference lies there, and all men see and feel it, make what excuses they will for self-indulgence and deference to custom. The curse of drink is too widely felt. There is scarcely a family in the land on which its blight does not lie. The best, the noblest, the purest, the bravest, have fallen. It is breaking hopes and hearts and fortunes every day. The warning cross that marks ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... redeeming presence in this dismal household. Mrs Fred sat dawdling opposite her husband over some wretched fancy-work. Eyes less prejudiced than those of Edward Rider might have imagined this a scene of coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. To him it was a disgusting picture of self-indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, almost vice. The very tobacco which polluted the atmosphere of her room was bought with Nettie's money. Pah! the doctor came in with a silent pale concentration of fury and disgust, scarcely able to compel himself to utter ordinary words of civility. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience is confined to the accidents that befal others: all their good-humour is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about any thing but their own ease and self-indulgence. Their charity begins and ends at home. Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is owing to their indifference to the common feelings of humanity; and if you touch the sore place, they betray ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... to sing Him the Song of the Soul from some quiet hill among the olive trees by the Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible, joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that I should choose: I wanted it so that it became spiritual greed—spiritual self-indulgence. ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... that hearts break, that tears fall, that there are prayers that stagger upward through life's storm, but the froth and foam of life is in their eyes; they look out on the rim of a life where they see only self-indulgence, and when now and then they are hushed long enough to listen to the world cry, they turn away quickly for fear they will actually touch lives with ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... heart sunk within her as she stood, silent, beside the coffin of Jane's husband, remembering how lately she had seen the young man, full of life and vigour, thoughtlessly devoting the best energies of body and soul to culpable self-indulgence. It is melancholy indeed, to record such a close to such a life; and yet it is an event repeated in the gay world with every year that passes. It is to be feared there were companions of Tallman Taylor's, pursuing the same course ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... desire of knowledge as a luxury to brighten life and kindle thought. I am very much afraid that, in the ordinary temper of our people, and the ordinary mode of looking at life, the last of these motives savours a little of self-indulgence, and sentimentality, and other objectionable qualities. There is a great stir in the region of physical science at this moment, and it is likely, as any one may see, to take a chief and foremost place in the field of intellectual activity. After the severity with which science was for so many ages ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... highest aim of all—the enlargement of reverence, obedience, and faith; for he had never turned his face full in the direction of infinite growth—the primal end of a man's being, who is that he may return to the Father, gathering his truth as he goes. Yet by the simple instincts of a soul undebased by self-indulgence or low pursuits, he was drawn ever toward things lofty and good; and life went calmly on, bearing Godfrey Wardour toward middle age, unruffled either ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... average of mankind—that rapacious multitude, whom nothing animates but a chance of gain, with whom nothing weighs but a commercial argument. A new tenderness stirred within him, and resolutely he stamped under foot the impulses of self-esteem, of self-indulgence, which made his life hard ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... God, no principles can be so fixed, as not to leave a ready escape from all obligation. Such minds, either by indolence (and consequent ignorance) or by sophistry, will convince themselves, that a life of engrossing self-indulgence, with perhaps the gift of a few dollars, and a few hours of time, may suffice, to fulfil the requisitions of the ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... that we reached the parsonage gate before another word was spoken. In spite of the firmest of resolutions, the smallest self-indulgence brought me to the very verge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of service, to employ herself in house affairs, she neither ate nor drank more than seemed good for her; but as soon as she had but to live and be served, she began to counterbalance ennui with self-indulgence, and continued to do so until the death of her boy, ever after which she had sought refuge from grief in narcotics. Possibly she would not have behaved as she did in church, but that her nervous being was a very sponge for morphia. Born to be a strong woman, she was a slave to her impulses, and, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... in India had not ended in his making no further debts. He was not a man to put the brake on in the matter of self-indulgence. He got into debt so long as a shred of credit remained to him, and afterwards he tried to add to his resources by cards and betting at races. He made and lost by turn, and was in a desperate state when he got his leave. He applied ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... children be taught to understand their natures, and knowing them, they will learn self-government. "As man rises in education and moral feeling he proportionately rises in the power of self-restraint; and consequently as he becomes deprived of this wholesome law of discipline he sinks into self-indulgence and the brutality ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... carmine which was all that he possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this could be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth of self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and wealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, that at Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, surrounded by flowers and jewels, carried the monarch's proudest possession, a cake of carmine. I knew of no object ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... English political system, and to some extent in the English character, is a weakness which necessarily produces a curious crop of superstitions, of lying legends, of evident delusions clung to through low spiritual self-indulgence. There are so many of these public-school superstitions that I have here only space for one of them, which may be called the superstition of soap. It appears to have been shared by the ablutionary Pharisees, who resembled the English public-school aristocrats in so many ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... of breathing, it was treated as affectation—as a phase of imaginary indisposition, which could be dissipated by a good scolding. She had been brought up rather in a school of Spartan endurance than in one of maudlin self-indulgence, and could bear many a pain and relinquish ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpable self-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragement only, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire and sustain us. For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is only our past that can come to ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... living near his work. With a roar, the flood of her bewilderment, diverted for a time, broke over her again. She braced herself against it. Through her companion's dimly-heard exhortations that, from her high heaven of self-indulgence, she stoop to lend a hand to her less favored sisters, she repeated to herself, clinging to the phrase as though it were a magic formula: "If I can only wish hard enough to make things better, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... presented right there in front of him where he can rest his elbows on it, your average fattish man nevertheless refuses to acknowledge the visible situation. Vanity blinds his one eye, love of self-indulgence blinds the other. Observe now how I speak in the high moral tone of a reformed offender, which is the way of reformed offenders and other reformers the world over. We are always most virtuous in retrospect, as the fact of the crime recedes. Moreover, he ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... her appeal, and Charlie knew she was right, but he always found it hard to give up anything he had set his heart on, no matter how trivial, for the maternal indulgence which had harmed the boy had fostered the habit of self-indulgence, which was ruining the man. So when Rose looked up at him, with a very honest desire to save him as well as herself from being swept into the giddy vortex which keeps so many young people revolving aimlessly, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend the kind of cooperation to the less fortunate members that will inspire hope, confidence and progress. A rich nation can for a time, without noticeable damage to itself, pursue a course of self-indulgence, making its single goal the material ease and comfort of its own citizens-thus repudiating its own spiritual and material stake in a peaceful and prosperous society of nations. But the enmities it will incur, the isolation into which it will descend, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... been hungry. Some time before Mrs. Rastall-Retford's doctor had recommended to that lady a Spartan diet, and in this Eve, as companion, had unwillingly to share. It was not pleasant for either of them, but at least Mrs. Rastall-Retford had the knowledge that she had earned it by years of honest self-indulgence. Eve ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... at Ortygia, despaired of his position, and resolved to surrender the fortress, stipulating for a safe conveyance and shelter at Corinth. This tyrant, broken by his drunken habits, did not care to fight, as his father did, for a sceptre so difficult to be maintained, and only sought his ease and self-indulgence. So he passed into the camp of Timoleon with what money he could raise, and the fortress was surrendered. A re-enforcement from Corinth enabled ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... continents between them, and treat him as if he were of secondary importance in her life—the being who had to provide the wherewithal on which the human idol might be suitably reared. His own personal need of her was viewed as masculine self-indulgence ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... communicate to him she was waiting for a more free moment to do so, and that she would let him know in time when he could come to see her. She declared she would send back his letters unopened, as they were "simple self-indulgence." I read that letter myself—he ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... due performance of the various processes concerned in the formation and destruction of the bodily tissues, eventually sap the foundations of life among Europeans; but how far this result has been caused by bad habits as regards food, exercise, and self-indulgence, I cannot say. Rapid changes of temperature in this country are often very injurious to the young and old, causing diarrhoea and derangements of the liver when great heat occurs, and inflammatory diseases of the lungs, colds, etc., when the air becomes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... that men are the descendants of barbarians and beasts. Do Socialist agitators really believe that they can convert the descendants of barbarians and beasts into ideal beings by constantly preaching to them the gospel of hatred, envy, selfishness, self-indulgence, and plunder, and by even encouraging them to continue poisoning themselves and their descendants by over-indulgence in alcoholic drink?[1216] Surely "the defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... in return for his attention. Joan, like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads, one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... weakness would have killed him in the end.—You, who are a great artist, who have labored through poverty, through injustice, through calumny, through the jealousy of friends and the libel of enemies, and have conquered them all, you know well in your heart that great ignorance, great vanity, great self-indulgence, belong not to the characters of the truly great.—Oh I, I, Irina, the outcast, know that well! Did I tempt you?—Those traits were Joseph's. I, who have loved him, say it. For love of me and of himself, he degraded his art. For himself, he has played and played and played, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... brief record of hope and passion left in the notes which Lily treasured somewhere among the archives of a young girl's triumphs. He had a morbid curiosity to see these letters again, but he dared not ask for them; and indeed it would have been an idle self-indulgence: he remembered them perfectly well. Seeing Lily so indifferent, it was characteristic of him, in that safety from consequences which he chiefly loved, that he should tacitly constitute himself, in ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... had once been hers. Some of the neighbours, who were regarding them as they met, would have said that once Miss Betsey had been much handsomer than ever Miss Elizabeth would be. For Miss Betsey had been young at a time when there was little danger that indolence or self-indulgence could injure the full development of healthful beauty, and as yet Miss Elizabeth had fallen on easy days, and was languid at times, and delicate, and if the truth must be told, a little discontented with what life had as yet brought her, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the nose. Their faces beam with good nature and they evidently regard the frequent enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes as among the real pleasures of life. But the older men all show traces of this life of ease and self-indulgence. It is seldom that one sees a man beyond fifty with a strong face. The Egyptian over forty loses his fine figure, he lays on abundant flesh, his jowl is heavy and his whole face suggests satiety and the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... most honorable and desirable task which can be set any woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and self-sacrifice. Of course there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... variety of the articles of merchandise here enumerated, is calculated to impress the reader with the idea of the wealth, luxury, splendor, and self-indulgence of the metropolis of the idolatrous Roman empire, the "mother and mistress of all churches."—The prophetic declaration, however,—"with feigned words shall they make merchandise of you," (2 Pet. ii. 3,) is not confined to the Romish communion. This traffic, in souls, pervades all ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... what threatens you—oh, my own darling! my little Geraldine!—is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence to stand between you and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... then, if no fruit appears, since the seed is smothered as I said. Perhaps you would find some excuse in saying, "Still, I have to condescend to my friends and relatives by doing this, so that they will not be annoyed and irritated with me." So fear and perverted self-indulgence sap our life, and often kill us; rob us of the perfection to which God chose and calls us. This excuse is not acceptable to God; for we ought not to condescend to people in a matter which wrongs God and our own soul; nor to love or serve them, except in those matters which come from God and ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... extraordinary levies and ravages of war often reduced the whole of the peasantry to the most abject poverty, bordering on starvation, the boyards lived in comparative ease, and led a life of immorality and self-indulgence. Concubinage widely prevailed, and many boyards had, besides their legitimate wife, ten or a dozen mistresses. They appear to have been gradually growing in influence, and the greater boyards filled all the chief ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... bear the wear-and-tear of actual life. Cloistered virtues do not count for much. The life that rejoices in solitude may be only rejoicing in selfishness. Seclusion may indicate contempt for others; though more usually it means indolence, cowardice, or self-indulgence. To every human being belongs his fair share of manful toil and human duty; and it cannot be shirked without loss to the individual himself, as well as to the community to which he belongs. It is ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the Weekly Dispatch (17 June, 1917) alone gave some account of this last scene of the drama. The rest atoned for their self-denial in narrative by proportionate self-indulgence in comment. One of them described the coup as "a distinct gain both to our interests in the East and to our moral position in the world." British agents on the spot must have been strangely blind to this aspect of the business; for ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS... What are the inadequacies of instinct and impulse that necessitate morality? What factors are to be considered in estimating the worth of personal moral ideals? Epicureanism vs. Puritanism. What are the evils in undue self-indulgence? What are the evils ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... and saw that his boots were in a puddle. He walked on. For a moment, the mists of sloth and self-indulgence that had for years obscured his vision had shifted and cleared, but even as he moved they settled down and resolved themselves once more. The muscles of Paul's soul were stiff with disuse. Training is a lengthy affair and a tiresome business ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that despotism to which he was devoted. Sensuality ever robs a man of the advantages and gifts which reason gives, even though they may be bestowed to an extraordinary degree. There is no more impotent slavery than that to which the most gifted intellects have been occasionally doomed. Self-indulgence is sure to sap every element of moral strength, and to take away from genius itself all power, except to sharpen the stings of self-reproach. "Louis XV. was not insensible to the dangers which menaced his throne, and would have despoiled the Parliament of the right of remonstrance; would have imposed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE, they have betrayed their own secret; it has been for the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. They have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was OUTLIVED, they have always said "We must remove hence to where YOU are least at home" In the face of a world of "modern ideas," which would like to confine ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cruel to undeceive him; and nothing particular ever occurred to bring about an eclaircissement. Rupert's want of principle was a negative, rather than an active quality, and was only rendered of account by his vanity and selfishness. Self-indulgence was all he aimed at, and he was much too self-indulgent and shrewd to become an active rogue. He would have spent Lucy's and my joint fortunes, had they been put at his control; but, as they never were, he was fain to limit his expenditures to such sums ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... apparently, on their conception of what a greedy boy, without pocket-money, feels when he stares at the tarts lying in a pastry-cook's window. To them it seems that the desire for great wealth means simply the desire for purely sensual self-indulgence—especially for the eating and drinking of expensive food and wine. Consequently, whenever they wish to caricature a capitalist they invariably represent him as a man with a huge, protuberant stomach. The folly of this conception is sufficiently ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... continent? It is the 'Kaiser' in each one of us that makes wars possible. It is because we have in every nation, and in every class, multitudes of men and women who neglect the service of their fellow-creatures in a desire for self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement, that this catastrophe has fallen upon us all. It is a case of devil-possession, and our only hope is to exorcise ourselves of the evil spirit. Our avowed intention is to cast out 'Kaiserism' in Germany by brute ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... arrival in London he got with bad companions. He has naturally extravagant tastes—they introduced him to some of those gambling saloons. Given a weak nature, the love of money for the pleasure it can give, a will weakened with self-indulgence, and the result is easy to forecast. George has been going from bad to worse for months past. He has sometimes won considerable sums of money, and these successes have excited him to try again—with this devil's luck, as the saying is. Of late, however, that luck has turned against him, and ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... move, and by which he was, as a man and a thinker, if not altogether as a poet, to live; reticent where it approaches the complexities of the concrete which the poet was not yet sufficiently mature to handle, restrained where increased power was to breed a too generous self-indulgence, a too manifest aptitude for glorying and drinking deep. It is flushed with the peculiar mellow beauty which comes if at all to the early manhood of genius,—a beauty like that of Amiens or Lincoln in Gothic art, where ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... This was not how life ought to be; a poor creature like Clarence Copperhead, without birth, or breeding, or brains, or anything but money, was able to gratify every wish, while he—his senior, his superior! Instead of blaming himself, therefore, for his self-indulgence, Mr. May sympathized with himself, which is a much less safe thing to do; and accordingly, it soon began to appear to him that his self-denial all this time in not giving himself what he wanted had been extreme, and that what he had now done, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... proportion of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and we passed out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought of these infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving families at home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given up, and from three to five years' indulgence will utterly wreck the firmest constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... collection of essays by several authors on the various aspects of social hygiene, and on the proper means of forming an enlightened public opinion concerning the measures which society can now, at last, wisely undertake against the vices and evils which in the human race accompany bodily self-indulgence ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits—the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains of vanity and self-indulgence." ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... in the matter of reform in right good earnest, but he found it hard work; old habits and inclinations were very strong. Still he had some strength of mind, and he brought this into as vigorous exercise as it was possible for him to do, mainly with success, but sometimes with gentle lapses into self-indulgence. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to eschew self-glorification or self-indulgence. It is the virtues of the holders of office, not their office itself, which alone in the end entitles them to consideration. Adventitious circumstances give no man claim to respect. A man is alone worthy of regard by reason of his personal character. Honour comes from his own acts, neither from ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... monoglots," MacHenery sighed. "It figures, though. There's no profit in having today's youth read the clinical record of another civilization that died of self-indulgence, that went roistering to its doom in ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence, to which men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of those who, born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part in the work of their generation—who "scorn ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... and elegance of Greek and Syrian slaves often proved a staircase by which new religions found a way into the chambers of the great and wealthy. In spite of some signs of moral vigour, society was cankered with pride of class and with self-indulgence. It possessed no regenerating force capable of checking the repulsive vice which was encouraged by the obscenity of actors and the frivolity ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... matter, yearning to go, but restrained by the fear that, as an old woman, she would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria's day old people were only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... entire personal freedom. His patron did as the world is so naturally ready to do with those who choose the stoic's way; he declared that Rousseau was gone mad.[208] Talk like this had no effect on a man whom self-indulgence led into a path that others would only have been forced into by self-denial. Let it be said, however, that this is a form of self-indulgence of which society is never likely to see an excess, and meanwhile we may continue to pay it some respect ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... more ways of viewing the question than could be compressed into so short a play. Myself, I confess to a sneaking sympathy with the standpoint of Crawshaw. Money for him did not mean mere self-indulgence; it meant outward show—a house in a better neighbourhood, a more expensive car, a higher status in the opinion of his world—all the things that somehow help in what is called a career. By accepting the fifty thousand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... point of not allowing oneself to become the slave of miserable contingencies which appear as temptations to self-indulgence, and conceal from their pettiness the beauty of the consistent action—this is only given to the chosen few and can only be understood by those who cultivate ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... That waggery of fate which started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... are in the element to which they were born, and where they can live naturally, and spend their lives helping in the great work of feeding, clothing, and housing their fellow men. I've no desire to leave my job or take them from theirs, to start a lazy, shiftless life of self-indulgence. I don't meddle much with the Bible, but I have a profound BELIEF in it, and a large RESPECT for it, as the greatest book in the world, and it says: 'By the sweat of his brow shall man earn his bread,' or words to ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... They bore me but I'd rather they did that than disgrace me. Mary never had even one child, although her husband must have wanted an heir. I have lived a life of duty—duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the war. But noblesse oblige. What else could she do? And now, she'll be at it again. She'll have the pick of our young men—I don't know whether it's all tragic ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... disappointment, vacuity, all but despair must come. The immortal spirit, finding no healthy satisfaction for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-given and natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake itself, from the mere craving for action, to self-invented ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... they "seeking first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness?" Are they "working out their salvation with fear and trembling?" Are they "clothed with humility?" Are they not, on the contrary, supremely given up to self-indulgence? Are they not at least "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God?" Are the offices of Religion their solace or their task? Do they not come to these sacred services with reluctance, continue in them by constraint, and quit them with gladness? And of how many of these persons may ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... remove from the world all outward evil—get rid of sickness, pain, poverty, death. Would not the worst part of evil still remain? Would not discontent, selfishness, envy, wilfulness, cruelty, self-indulgence continue? All these exist—perhaps exist most frequently—where there is the least of outward evil; and the outward evil is the bitter medicine which comes by and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... quiet and orderly. He wants to be left undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue by the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence, hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all high purposes, spiritual coma and deadness, these do not disturb him. They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... faced the sea and the storm. Think of the deed, and its hardships, and its heroism; of the brave hearts who 'darkling faced the billows,' and the anxious women left behind, ye who live to kill time in graceless self-indulgence, and ere it be too late, learn ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... was a pause. Our new acquaintance had become involved in a vexatious difficulty with his pipe which had suddenly betrayed his trust and disappointed his anticipation of self-indulgence. To keep the ball rolling I asked Marlow if this Powell was remarkable ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... epoch. The supply of good-tempered, cheap labour—upon which the fabric of our contemporary ease and comfort is erected—is giving out. The spread of information and the means of presentation in every class and the increase of luxury and self-indulgence in the prosperous classes are the chief cause of that. In the place of that old convenient labour comes a new sort of labour, reluctant, resentful, critical, and suspicious. The replacement has already gone so far that I am certain that attempts to baffle and coerce the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... stainless truthfulness. On the same principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions resembled those of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor Morum, an inquisitor who might examine into the habits of private families, rebuke extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and self-indulgence, nay, who could remove from the Senate, the great council of elders, persons whose moral conduct was a reproach to a body on whose reputation no shadow could be allowed ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... most splendid mansions in Seville he selected for his residence, and in less than two years he found that one-half of his princely fortune had melted away. They were two years of adulation, of self-indulgence, of mental intoxication. It was a delirious dream from which he suddenly awoke. Reflection taught him that he must immediately curtail his expenses, and very seriously, or engage in some new enterprise to replenish his ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... gallant party; of one who believed himself to hold a divine commission to regenerate a fallen country; of one who knew that he alone in all the world held up aloft at the head of an army the proud banner of Conservatism; of one who, for this mission, had given up ease and luxury and self-indulgence; had entered upon a life of danger, hardship, and ceaseless toil, and every day lived in the very presence of Death; in short, they saw before them the idol of the Spanish Legitimists—the high-souled, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Edgeworth's dear little clean bright-looking boys, who would have carried all he got to his mother; but in Nick it was detestable. No human feeling seemed to warm his young heart, not even the love of self-indulgence, for he was not only ragged and dirty, but looked considerably more than half starved, and I doubt not his dinners and suppers half fed ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Philip passionately; "by making use of the brains with which I have been blessed, and not going through life willing to risk the lives of my fellow-men for the sake of a little self-indulgence." ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... for he was a very handy man, and much more of Mr. Chaloner's opinion in everything about church business than the older parishioners. Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the Oyster Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more than hinting at a life of Sultanic self-indulgence which he had passed in the West Indies, shaking his head now and then and smiling rather bitterly, as men are wont to do when they intimate that they have become a little too wise to be instructed about a world which has long been ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... mentor, had seemed to mortify them in the interests of tiresome virtues and work which began to look useless and hopeless in Lucien's eyes. Work! What is it but death to an eager pleasure-loving nature? And how easy it is for the man of letters to slide into a far niente existence of self-indulgence, into the luxurious ways of actresses and women of easy virtues! Lucien felt an overmastering desire to continue the reckless life of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... she should begin vith dischargin' her dooties at home, and makin' them as is about her cheerful and happy, and that vile she goes to church, or chapel, or wot not, at all proper times, she should be wery careful not to con-wert this sort o' thing into a excuse for idleness or self-indulgence. I have done this," she says, "and I've vasted time and substance on them as has done it more than me; but I hope ven I'm gone, Veller, that you'll think on me as I wos afore I know'd them people, and as I raly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... periods, so with people; self-indulgence, i. e., indulgence of the passing desires, follows the idealism of adolescence. Youth sows its wild oats. Then the steadying purposes appear partly because the pleasure of indulgence passes. Marriage, responsibility, straining effort mark the passing of ten or a dozen years; then in middle ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... dinner in Eaton Place, dull and heavy though it might probably be, to the chance of Lord Chiltern's companions at Moroni's. Whatever might be the faults of our hero, he was not given to what is generally called dissipation by the world at large,—by which the world means self-indulgence. He cared not a brass farthing for Moroni's Chateau Yquem, nor for the wondrously studied repast which he would doubtless find prepared for him at that celebrated establishment in St. James's Street;—not a farthing as compared with the chance of meeting so great a man as ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... desirable condition, and in the highest sense, where it borders on blessedness, may be fairly termed "the end and aim of being." But on the lower stretches of the senses, where it becomes mere enjoyment or pleasure, largely concerned with amusement and self-indulgence of various sorts, it becomes parasitic, robbing life of its strength and flavor and preventing its development and full growth. It is insidious in its deterioration and omnivorous in its appetite. It tends to habits that undermine and to the appropriation ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... thorough love of things good and noble. Such men,—or women,—may hardly, perhaps, debase themselves with the more vulgar vices. They will not be rogues, or thieves, or drunkards,—or, perhaps, liars; but ambition, luxury, self-indulgence, pride, and covetousness will get a hold of them, and in various moods will be to them virtues in lieu of vices. Such a man was Frank Greystock, who could walk along the banks of the quiet, trout-giving Bob, at Bobsborough, whipping ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... felt the necessity of employment more strongly each day, not only for the sake of the money it might bring, but also as an antidote to a growing tendency to brood over her deep disappointment. She soon began to recognize that such self-indulgence would unfit her for a struggle that might be extended and severe, and was not long in coming to the conclusion that she must make the best of her life as it was and would be. Days and weeks had slipped by ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... observed between those who inherit greatness and those who acquire it for themselves. We see the same analogy reigning at the present day, when the sons of the wealthy, who are born to fortune, substitute pride, and arrogance, and vicious self-indulgence and waste for the modesty, and prudence, and virtue of their sires, by means of which the fortune was acquired. Philotas was proud, boastful, extravagant, and addicted, like Alexander his master, to every species of indulgence and dissipation. He was universally hated. His father, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... an extremely capable doctor his main business in life seemed to be self-indulgence. He apparently did not know the meaning of the word "restraint." The serious questions in life to him were food, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... impressionable, more nervous, and more irritable than is natural to her; and while her family should make a certain allowance for her condition, she, on her part, should not allow herself to give way to her morbid feelings. The prospective mother should not lead a life of self-indulgence, on the one hand, or, on the other, should not be weighed down with cares; she should interest herself in her usual duties, and be relieved of all ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... seem wild, wicked talk to Mr. Eltinge; it would seem weak and irrational to any man. But I'm only Ida Mayhew, and such is my nature. I've been made all the more incapable of patient self-sacrifice by self-indulgence from my childhood up. Oh, will it be very, very wrong to win him if I can?" and the passionate tears and sobs that followed these words would seem to indicate that she understood her ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... she went on, "after your years of self-indulgence, of getting what you wanted, no matter about the cost, you see me again. You find I have mended my heart, have coaxed a few flowers of happiness to bloom. You find there was something you did not destroy, something you think it will make ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... in the tavern he had to seek in the Church. Denied the wild wit-combats of the Mermaid, he disported himself in a pamphlet-war on bishops and divorce. But he found health and exercise for his faculties there; and the moral (for all things have a moral) is this: that when, in a mood of self-indulgence, we can write habitually with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and the careless wealthy insolence of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus, we need not then repine or be ill-content ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... that he had no principles and no feelings at all, except as they began, continued, and ended in that system of centralization which not more paralyzes healthful action in a State than it does in the individual man. Self-indulgence with him was absolute. He was not without power of keen calculation, not without much cunning. He could conceive a project for some gain far off in the future, and concoct, for its realization, schemes subtly woven, astutely guarded. But he could not secure their success by any long-sustained ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open air, and a far from negligible administration of the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or wiser than ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... blame-worthiness; we cannot get rid of the sense of sin, yet retain the sense of righteousness. The determinist sponge passes over the whole moral vocabulary, not only over the inconvenient parts; it obliterates the terms self-indulgence, dishonesty, cowardice, but the same fate overtakes self-conquest, integrity, bravery. To vary the phrase slightly, we must not, on the determinist hypothesis, insult God by taking credit to ourselves for what ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... companions, on account, as it should seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts of D'Argens were good, and his manners those of a finished French gentleman; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and self-indulgence. He was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without being religious. Hating Christianity with a rancour which made him incapable of rational inquiry, unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conceal them entirely; nothing short of knowing some of the facts would prevent his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future. Moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than Mrs. Dornell feel that they must let out a few truths, if only in self-indulgence. So she told so much of recent surprises as that Betty's heart had been attracted by another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting her now might drive the girl to desperation. 'Betty has, in fact, rushed off to her father to avoid you,' she said. ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... broadly speaking, higher than that of training camps at home, especially of those where little or no supervision is exercised as to strong drink. How plainly this shows that hardness, even of an extreme character, braces up the body; softness and self-indulgence enfeeble it. ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... whether I have any strength, but if I have I dare say it will find some way of exerting itself. I will live as I like living, not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my aunt and you I can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I mean to have it. You know I like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes, "I have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all it must be ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... been fretful, combative. egotism, its hand against every man. Instead of the light of pure vision, there have been restless senses nave been re and imaginings. Instead of spiritual joy, the undivided joy of pure being, there has been self-indulgence of body and mind. These are all real forces, but distorted from their true nature and goal. They must be extricated, like gems from the matrix, like the pith from the reed, steadily, without destructive ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... them, not in the name of Ormuzd, nor of any other deity, but in the name of mere brute force and lust of conquest. The old Persian spirit was gone out of them. They were the symbols now of nothing save despotism and self-will, wealth and self-indulgence. They, once the children of Ormuzd or light, had become the children of Ahriman or darkness; and therefore it was, as I believe, that Xerxes' 1000 ships, and the two million (or, as some have it, five million) human beings availed naught against the little fleets and little ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... he had acquired it by the exercise of translation from classical languages; that he watched against the temptation of using unreal and fine words; that he employed care in his choice of verbs rather than in his use of adjectives; and that he fought against self-indulgence in writing just as he did in daily life. His sermons have the same quality of self-restraint. His private letters are fresh and simple, and contain many unaffected epigrams; in writing of religious ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... inconvenience, therefore, may be risked to obtain this; in fact, it often occurs that by waiting too long the freshness of life is worn off, and that the generous glow of early feelings becomes tamed down to lukewarmness by a too prudent delaying; while a slight sacrifice of ambition or self-indulgence on the part of the gentleman, and a little descent from pride of station on the lady's side, might have ensured years of satisfied love ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... or your occupation, or your companionship will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you yourself will be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weathercock that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort to get away from it now, and you yield ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... I wanted, in place of the life of self-indulgence, to which I was yielding myself, a happy, conscious sense that I was pleasing God, living right, and spending all my powers to get others into such a life. I saw that all this ought to be, and I decided that it should be. It is wonderful that I should have reached ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... is. There is no sinner that will be visited with a heavier vengeance than that cool and calculating man, who, because he dislikes the unyielding purity of the moral law, and the awful sanctions by which it is accompanied, deliberately alters it to suit his wishes and his self-indulgence. If a person is tempted and falls into sin, and yet does not change his religious creed in order to escape the reproaches of conscience and the fear of retribution, there is hope that the orthodoxy of his head may result, by God's blessing upon his own truth, in sorrow for the sin and a forsaking ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed them by continued gratification. He will not think, it is true, to any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon himself and his ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... II. was not characterized by any special development in the political condition of the country. Lacking in energy and decision, given to self-indulgence, controlled by courtiers and favorite women, although by the partition of Poland he increased the national domains, and by educational measures helped to promote German literature instead of the French preferred by his father, he was yet too inferior to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of King Ethelred the Unready, when the teaching of good King Alfred was fast fading away from the minds of his descendants, and self-indulgence was ruining the bold and hardy habits of the English, the fleet was allowed to fall into decay, and Danish ships again ventured to ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would be done away with. I felt even then the shame and disgrace of so doing, and knew also the trouble and grief I was causing to you, whom (although you may find it difficult to believe) I really loved, and who had ever been such a kind friend to me. I now see that it was a love of self-indulgence which led me to commit so foul a sin. Conscience remonstrated, and the words of the Bible, so early instilled into my mind by my mother, constantly reproached me; but I turned from and stifled the voice of conscience, and deliberately chose the evil way. All these years I have experienced ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... a poor man for a year, would learn how infinitely more noble was the abstinence of this young Roman, who though born in the midst of splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe the petty vice of gluttony, and to despise the unmanliness of self-indulgence. Very early in life he joined the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not only a duty but ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... left-hand defections," provided they promise to interest himself and to amuse his readers. Judging from Coleridge's similar practice, we are forced to conclude that it is in De Quincey too—a weakness fostered, if not produced, by long habits of self-indulgence. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... And if his conduct under the circumstances was not exactly what a father or brother of Paolina might have desired it to be, the fault arose from the indecision of character, which belonged to a weak man accustomed to self-indulgence. There was difficulty and annoyance before him; and instead of meeting it, as a strong man would have done, he turned from it, and was content to put off the evil day, contenting himself with the enjoyment of that which was passing. He marvelled ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... which a man takes delight, so that his bent is towards it, his time spent in it, and his whole life ordered with a view to it, is said to be the life of that man. Hence some are said to lead a life of self-indulgence, others a life of virtue. In this way the contemplative life is distinguished from the active, and thus to know God is said to be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... and though it may be doubted whether they openly ventured to deny the claims of all the other books of the Old Testament, it is certain that they discarded the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, [10:2] and that they were disposed to self-indulgence and to scepticism. There was another still smaller Jewish sect, that of the Essenes, of which there is no direct mention in the New Testament. The members of this community resided chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, and as our Lord seldom visited that quarter of the country, it would ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... in the world and see what way it is that has brought your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true success lies in a contented heart and ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... stranger mental and spiritual dress fade, and we have here a mere woman, affected, as every true sister of hers to-day would be, by the helpless wailing. God has put that instinct there. Alas that it ever should be choked by frivolity or pride, and frozen by indifference and self-indulgence! Gentle souls spring up in unfavourable soil. Rameses was a strange father for such a daughter. How came this dove in the vulture's cage? Her sweet pity beside his cold craft and cruelty is like the lamb couching by the lion. Note, too, that gentlest pity makes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... answer is much easier. According to him, instead of working better, organising better, and putting more of our output into plant and equipment and less into self-indulgence and vulgarity all that we have to do to work the necessary reform is to provide more money and credit. Since, he ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... is a grave importance as well as a pleasant charm in the beginning of life. There is awe as well as excitement in it when rightly viewed. The possibilities that lie in it of noble or ignoble work—of happy self-sacrifice or ruinous self-indulgence—the capacities in the right use of which it may rise to heights of beautiful virtue, in the abuse of which it may sink to the depths of debasing vice—make the crisis one of fear as well as of hope, of sadness as well ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... this there is nothing which for one moment implies approval of licentiousness, profligacy, unbridled self-indulgence. On the contrary, it is a well-considered and intellectually-defensible scheme of human evolution, regarding all natural instincts as matters for regulation, not for destruction, and seeking to develop the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and wide. In the course of them no doubt he studied other things than botany. It may be that he sowed some of the wild oats with which youth is endowed; but not in the gardens of others; nor with that cold self-indulgence which transforms passionate impulse into sensual habit. He had a permanent and regulative devotion to botanical research; and that is a study which seems to promote modesty, tranquillity, and steadiness of mind in its devotees, of whom ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... end, and these means can be procured only by sinning. Obstacles often stand in the way and new sins furnish steps to vault over, or implements to batter them down. Intricate and difficult conditions frequently arise as the result of self-indulgence, out of which there is no exit but by fresh sins. Hence the long train of crimes led by one capital sin towards the goal of its satisfaction, and hence the havoc wrought by its untrammeled ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... his error in regard to Adrian; he found he had mistaken vivacity for genius, and frankness of manner for generosity of heart, when in fact his favourite proved unformed and untaught, indifferent to the opinion of all whom he ought to have valued, and given up to idleness and self-indulgence. Such a companion was quitted without any effort of resolution, but the sister's power over him did not yield so easily. Amaranthe's vanity had been too much flattered by such a conquest, for her to endeavour to conceal the satisfaction it afforded her, and the enamoured Lionel was ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... vain-glory, and luxury are ever prompt to rise,—visions that belong only to the love of self and of the world,—visions that do not beckon us onward to the performance of duty, but only entice us with the allurements of sensuality and self-indulgence; or still worse, if discontent, envy, and malice darken the temple of Imagination with their scowls, the kingdom of heaven is far from us as the antipodes. This imaginary heaven that selfishness and worldliness have built up within us is in truth ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... only survived his last victory over the Danes, at Kent, a few years, when he died greatly lamented. He was a brave soldier, a successful all-around monarch, and a progressive citizen in an age of beastly ignorance, crime, superstition, self-indulgence, ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... laws. Still as an after thought Saadia added a chapter to the "Emunot ve-Deot" in which he attempts to give a psychological basis for human conduct. Noting the various tendencies of individuals and sects in his environment to extremes in human behavior, some to asceticism, some to self-indulgence, be it the lust of love or of power, he lays emphasis on the inadequacy of any one pursuit for the demands of man's complex nature, and recommends a harmonious blending of all ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... of some other one. For example, we must think of other people's convenience in the exercise of our own liberty and in the indulgence of our own tastes and desires. It may be pleasant for us to lie late in bed in the morning, and we may be inclined to regard the habit as only a little amiable self-indulgence. But there is a more serious side to the practice. It breaks the harmonious flow of the household life. It causes confusion in the family plans for the day. It makes extra work for faithful housekeepers or servants. It sorely tries ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... approve of the virtue which costs no trouble; to contemplate in ourselves or others, with a spurious moral satisfaction, the development of this or that virtuous quality in souls which are deteriorating in undoubted criminal self-indulgence. We have all of us, at the bottom of our hearts, a fellow feeling for all human affection; and the sinfulness of sinners like Tristram and Yseult lies largely in the fact that they pervert this legitimate and holy sympathy into a dangerous leniency for ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... after having posted his secret letter, he had regained a certain measure of composure by writing in his secret diary. He was aware of the danger of that strange self-indulgence. He alludes to it himself, but he could not refrain. It calmed him—it reconciled him to his existence. He sat there scribbling by the light of a solitary candle, till it occurred to him that having heard the explanation of Haldin's arrest, as ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... he was from active life in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone was far too acute an observer to have any leanings to the delusive self-indulgence of temporary retirements. To his intimate friend, Sir Walter James, who seems to have nursed some such intention, he wrote at this very ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the wide discrepancies between what he had proposed and what he had accomplished. How insignificant circumstances had effected momentous results! He saw how, whenever failure and dishonor had filtered in, it was where weakness, self-indulgence, or untruthfulness, had left an opening. He saw how one wrong had been a sure and easy path to another, until in the end he had groveled ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... herself suffering from various diseases, shut herself up in her house, and refused to see any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted everybody. Infatuation with every new acquaintance was quickly ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... been prompted to leave her under an illusion by a distinct calculation of his own possible need, but since that critical moment it seemed to him that the web had gone on spinning itself in spite of him, like a growth over which he had no power. The elements of kindness and self-indulgence are hard to distinguish in a soft nature like Tito's; and the annoyance he had felt under Tessa's pursuit of him on the day of his betrothal, the thorough intention of revealing the truth to her with which he set out to fulfil his promise of seeing her again, were a ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the hoard of the Nibelungen, is the occasion, but the curse attached to it is not the cause, of crimes; this cause is the cupidity of human nature and the helplessness of the individual who allows the forces of evil to gain sway over him. Jason, in overweening self-indulgence, attaches himself to a woman to whom he cannot be true. Medea, in too confident self-sufficiency, is not proof against the blandishments of an unscrupulous adventurer and progresses from crime to crime, doing from beginning to end what it is not her will to do. An unnatural ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 1714, the Duchesse found herself a widow, within four years of her wedding-day; and the last frail barrier was removed from the path of self-indulgence and low passions to which her life was dedicated. When, with the aged King's death in the following year, her father became Regent of France, her position as daughter of the virtual sovereign was now more splendid than ever; ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... objection. No boy of fourteen can smoke without being affected injuriously. Men are frequently injured by smoking, and boys always. But large numbers of the newsboys and boot-blacks form the habit. Exposed to the cold and wet they find that it warms them up, and the self-indulgence grows upon them. It is not uncommon to see a little boy, too young to be out of his mother's sight, smoking with all the apparent ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... girl baby. At one side of the table nearer the window stood Nora. Hers were the hard features and corrugated skin popularly regarded as the result of a life of toil, but in fact the result of a life of defiance to the laws of health. As additional penalties for that same self-indulgence she had an enormous bust and hips, thin face and arms, hollow, sinew-striped neck. The young man, blond and smooth faced, at the other side of the table and facing the light, was Doctor Stevens, a recently graduated pupil of the famous Schulze ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the other so easily! To her, the keynote of whose character was single-hearted devotion, this facile, fluid love, which could be poured out with equal warmth on every one alike, was no love at all. It was a degraded kind of self-indulgence for which she had no respect; and though she did not feel for Josephine as she had felt for madame—as her mother's enemy—she despised her father even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... permitted by professional decorum that leading advocates habitually met their clients in taverns, and having talked themselves dry at the bars of Westminster Hall, drank themselves speechless at the bars of Strand taverns—ere they reeled again into their chambers. The same habits of uproarious self-indulgence were in vogue with the benchers of the inns, and the Doctors of Doctors' Commons. Hale's austerity was the exceptional demeanor of a pious man protesting against the wickedness of an impious age. Had it not been for the shortness of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... tomb; and with all those strong desires of the time for the delight of being envied, for marble baths and horses and brown Greek manuscripts and mistresses, the seeds of human decay planted in the plot of Time, known as the Central Renaissance, by the same lingering fleshliness and self-destroying self-indulgence as was at home in pagan days, are livingly exposed ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. The man, although he assumed the jauntiness of youth, was past middle-age, and his mottled cheeks, his thin, watery eyes, and thick red neck were the unmistakeable hall-marks of years of self-indulgence. He was well dressed and groomed, and his demeanour towards his companion was one of deferential good humour. She, however, was a person of a very different order. She was a girl apparently between fifteen and sixteen, her figure as yet ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... own unique temptations. It is against these that we pray to-day. We are all prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the statement, we have gone on accepting it, year ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... lives much at a club is apt to fall into a selfish mode of life. He is taught to think that his own comfort should always be the first object. A man can never be happy unless his first objects are outside himself. Personal self-indulgence begets a sense of meanness which sticks to a man even when he has got beyond all hope of rescue. It is for that reason,—among others,—that marriage is ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... now?" he asked, looking steadily at the face whence had gone all the warmth of manhood, all that courage of life which keeps men young. The lean parchment visage had the hunted look of the incorrigible failure, had written on it self-indulgence, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it by the exercise of translation from classical languages; that he watched against the temptation of using unreal and fine words; that he employed care in his choice of verbs rather than in his use of adjectives; and that he fought against self-indulgence in writing just as he did in daily life. His sermons have the same quality of self-restraint. His private letters are fresh and simple, and contain many unaffected epigrams; in writing of religious ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... curiously enough, the story of masculine brutality, self-indulgence, and vice. The history of the world also proves that woman's sphere has been to submit patiently and silently to injustice and imposition. Practical eugenics is the first worthy effort in the history of all time to hold men and women ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... and richer culture, and he was far too quick in sympathy with life to remain untouched by his surroundings. He was more tolerant of opinions other than his own, but more unrelenting in his fidelity to conscience and more impatient of half-heartedness and self-indulgence. He was full of reverence for the great scholars and the great leaders of men he had ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... the Seymours, while they practised the broadest liberality, had instincts of great sobriety in expense. Needless profusion shocked them as out of taste; and a quiet and decent reticence in matters of self-indulgence was habitual with them. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rather they did that than disgrace me. Mary never had even one child, although her husband must have wanted an heir. I have lived a life of duty—duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the war. But noblesse oblige. What else could she do? And now, she'll be at it again. She'll have the pick of our young men—I don't know whether ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... questionable deeds. It was a life of adventure and excitement, and abundantly gratifying to pride and ambition. While it could be idealized into a noble calling, it too often ended in a lawless, capricious career of self-indulgence. The cross on the mantle symbolized the heavy blows and sorrows inflicted on those who had the misfortune to differ in opinion, faith, or race with the knight, the steel of whose armor seemingly got into his heart, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... measures for our safety; though into June and July, when the pestilence was raging, none infected had come our way, and that from our remote and isolated position. Yet it needs but fear for the crown to that wickedness that is self-indulgence; and forasmuch as this fear fattens like a toadstool on the decomposition it springs from, it grew with us to the proportions that we were set to kill or destroy any that should approach us ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... much difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any very perceptible excess; for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of self-indulgence than of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced through the pleasures ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the paralyzing cold of the Poles, forbid the hope of successful colonization of those regions. Social life is an elaborate apeing of behavior which has no root in the real impulses of the human heart; its true underlying spirit is made up of hatred, covetousness, and self-indulgence. There are no illusions left to us, no high, inspiring sentiment. We have reached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... merchant at his trading post, in these primitive days of Canada, was a kind of commercial patriarch. With the lax habits and easy familiarity of his race, he had a little world of self-indulgence and misrule around him. He had his clerks, canoe men, and retainers of all kinds, who lived with him on terms of perfect sociability, always calling him by his Christian name; he had his harem of Indian beauties, and his troop of halfbreed children; nor was there ever wanting a louting train ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... brilliant and successful surprise raids which Washington made upon Trenton and Princeton. But these exploits were wholly owing to Washington's skill, and sleepless energy, and heroic courage, with feeble forces, in contrast to the lethargy and self-indulgence of the English officers on the one hand and the inactivity ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... starving baby abroad. And overburdened as the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... of that despotism to which he was devoted. Sensuality ever robs a man of the advantages and gifts which reason gives, even though they may be bestowed to an extraordinary degree. There is no more impotent slavery than that to which the most gifted intellects have been occasionally doomed. Self-indulgence is sure to sap every element of moral strength, and to take away from genius itself all power, except to sharpen the stings of self-reproach. "Louis XV. was not insensible to the dangers which menaced his throne, and would have despoiled the Parliament of the right of remonstrance; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... recommended to that lady a Spartan diet, and in this Eve, as companion, had unwillingly to share. It was not pleasant for either of them, but at least Mrs. Rastall-Retford had the knowledge that she had earned it by years of honest self-indulgence. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... never seemed to care for money. In that respect he was like one who dwelt by the side of a pond, ready to dip up and to give its waters to any man who might thirst. He never wasted money, or spent it for any self-indulgence. But he was ready to share it with any deserving object. Starr King said of him that "he lived all ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... household. Mrs Fred sat dawdling opposite her husband over some wretched fancy-work. Eyes less prejudiced than those of Edward Rider might have imagined this a scene of coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. To him it was a disgusting picture of self-indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, almost vice. The very tobacco which polluted the atmosphere of her room was bought with Nettie's money. Pah! the doctor came in with a silent pale concentration of fury and disgust, scarcely able to compel himself to utter ordinary words of civility. His ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... infant, but to that of a brute; and of one of the most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed them by continued gratification. He will not think, it is true, to any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... certainly be forgotten, and many Englishmen, in spite of them, still remain immensely incurious about us. The American who wishes to be taken nationally by them must often inspire them with a curiosity about us, before he can gratify it, and that is a species of self-indulgence which leaves ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... on an ample scale, and has proved a dismal failure. To give, they say, is more blessed than to receive. It is certainly far easier, for the most part, to give than to refrain from giving. We are at last shaking off the form, of self-indulgence called charity; we realize that if mankind is to profit, sterner conceptions must prevail. The apotheosis of the god-favoured loafer is ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to?" she flashed back at him disconcertingly. "It was my choice, you know: there was a time when I couldn't live without it. Philanthropy is one of the subtlest forms of self-indulgence." ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... quite as stylish a personage as herself, and that was saying a great deal. But every line of his full handsome face, as well as the expression of his light blue eyes, showed that he had less decision in the whole of his luxurious nature than she in her little finger. Self-indulgence and good-natured vanity were unmistakably his characteristics. To yield, not for the good of others, but because not strong enough to stand sturdily alone, was the law of his being. If he could ever ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... prophecy Amos lashes that with terrible invectives, nor foul breaches of morality, though these were not wanting in Israel, but the vices peculiar to selfish, luxurious upper classes in all times and countries, who forget the obligations of wealth, and think only of its possibilities of self-indulgence. French noblesse before the Revolution, and English peers and commercial magnates, and American millionaires, would yield examples of the same sin. The hardy shepherd from Tekoa had learned 'plain living and high thinking' before he was a prophet, and would look ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... very often, in all ages of the world, to be observed between those who inherit greatness and those who acquire it for themselves. We see the same analogy reigning at the present day, when the sons of the wealthy, who are born to fortune, substitute pride, and arrogance, and vicious self-indulgence and waste for the modesty, and prudence, and virtue of their sires, by means of which the fortune was acquired. Philotas was proud, boastful, extravagant, and addicted, like Alexander his master, to every species of indulgence and dissipation. He was universally hated. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... him, struggling with him. He put out his tongue at her, but presently released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in evident recrimination and complaint. The faces of the two were plain now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who had been his wife. Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet, overcome by a sense of horror at ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... like to go through our joint lives day by day, hour by hour, microscopically—to describe every book we read, every game we played, every pensum (i.e., imposition) we performed; every lark we were punished for—every meal we ate. But space forbids this self-indulgence, and other considerations make it unadvisable—so I will ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... think you are. When you accuse me of self-indulgence you are against me,—me, who for myself have desired nothing but to be allowed to do my duty, and to have bread enough to keep me alive, and clothes enough to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the fact that Shelley behaved far better than ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done, given the same principles and the same circumstances. He was a man who never followed the line of least resistance or of self-indulgence, as most men do in their love affairs. He fought a difficult fight all his life in a world that ignored him, except when it was denouncing him as a polluter of Society. Whatever mistakes we may consider him to have made, we can hardly ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Maurice went on to explain the necessity of order in the distribution of time, and shewed her little daughter, that it was as necessary in the government of a house as in the government of a nation. 'But that is not the only bad effect,' she added, 'of your self-indulgence.' ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (Buebchen) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (Gecken) are they; and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... pretty generally, indeed, in a state of happy intoxication—and has borrowed from his great original, not indeed the force or brilliancy of his fancy, but something of its playfulness, and a large share of his apparent joyousness and self-indulgence in its exercise. It is evidently a great pleasure to him to be fully possessed with the beauties of his author, and to follow the impulse of his unrestrained eagerness to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... natural powers would have been utterly buried and lost beneath a mountain of sloth and laziness, had not God determined otherwise. He had in his early years chalked out for himself a plan of life in which he had his own ease and self-indulgence solely in view; he had no particular bad passions to gratify, he only wished to live a happy quiet life, just as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease or quiet, or that Providence would ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... desperate, foolish proposition to Paul to get more time together by living near his work. With a roar, the flood of her bewilderment, diverted for a time, broke over her again. She braced herself against it. Through her companion's dimly-heard exhortations that, from her high heaven of self-indulgence, she stoop to lend a hand to her less favored sisters, she repeated to herself, clinging to the phrase as though it were a magic formula: "If I can only wish hard enough to make things better, nothing ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and teach mankind what he conceived to be the way of life, through self-control. He had tried pleasure; next he had tried extreme asceticism; he now struck out what he called "The Middle Path," as between self-indulgence on the one hand, and extreme bodily mortification as a thing of merit on the other. This middle ground still demanded abstinence as favorable to the highest mental and moral conditions, but it was not carried to such extremes as to weaken the body or the mind, or impair ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... hundred schemes, is the man's ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses— the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood. Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his 'Goddess,' 'Angel,' ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... person so omniscient as Mavick for his friend. No combination could be more desirable for a young man who proposed to himself a career of getting money by adroit management and spending it in pure and simple self-indulgence. There are plenty of men who have taken advantage of like conditions to climb from one position to another, and have then kicked down the ladders behind them as fast as they attained a new footing. It was Jack's fault that he was not one of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... more obvious sympathy with its victims. Since the methods taken to insure self-control are insufficient, would it not have been possible to indicate better? Since Woodbury does not think abstinence to be the cure of intemperance, could he not justify his practice by a higher principle than self-indulgence, lay it on a deeper foundation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... and a thorough love of things good and noble. Such men,—or women,—may hardly, perhaps, debase themselves with the more vulgar vices. They will not be rogues, or thieves, or drunkards,—or, perhaps, liars; but ambition, luxury, self-indulgence, pride, and covetousness will get a hold of them, and in various moods will be to them virtues in lieu of vices. Such a man was Frank Greystock, who could walk along the banks of the quiet, trout-giving Bob, at Bobsborough, whipping the river with his rod, telling himself that the world lost for ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... quite an unexpected point in the character. Hidden licentiousness, which one would expect to evince itself in over-ripe sentiment and feeling, manifests itself instead in cruelty and hardness of heart. The little habit of self-indulgence which you in your foolish fondness have allowed in that boy of yours may, in after-life, come out as the very impurity which you have endeavored so earnestly to guard him against. This mystical ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... had not ended in his making no further debts. He was not a man to put the brake on in the matter of self-indulgence. He got into debt so long as a shred of credit remained to him, and afterwards he tried to add to his resources by cards and betting at races. He made and lost by turn, and was in a desperate state when ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to plead before the Chorus. The former draws a picture of the old-fashioned times when a sturdy race of men was reared on discipline, obedience and morality—a broad-chested vigorous type. In utter contempt the latter brands such teaching as prehistoric. Pleasure, self-indulgence, a lax code of morality and easy tolerance of little weaknesses are the ideal. The power of his words is such that the Just ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... of Pyroch'les, son of Aerates, husband of Acras'ia the enchantress. He sets out against Sir Guyon, but being ferried over Idle Lake, abandons himself to self-indulgence, and is slain by King Arthur (canto 8).—Spencer, Faery Queen, ii. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... not life rest on the moral rather than upon the physical? The higher comes first, then the lower, first the human and rational, afterwards the animal. Yet they are not absolutely divided; and in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they seem to be only different aspects of a common human nature which includes them both. Neither is the moral the limit of the physical, but the expansion and enlargement of it,—the highest form which the physical is capable of receiving. As Plato would say, the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... a poor little shaver like that! Look! It says sleeping in that dirty room without a window gave it to him. Ugh, that old man! 'Self-indulgence and intemperance.' Looka that girl in the tobacco factory. Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful! Dirty shops and stores, it says; dirty saloons and dance halls—weak lungs ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... could not speak, for fear of breaking the spell; we smiled at each other. Twenty-three times the smile went round. Twenty-three trout, and not a pigmy among them, lay at our feet. More fish for one dinner and breakfast would be waste and wanton self-indulgence. We stopped. And I must avow, not to claim too much heroism, that the fish had also stopped. So we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... be, the cynical feelings that took her in his presence, mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an excess of content was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or wine-bibbing, or any other self-indulgence. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tell me precisely what I'm telling you. Here, where's that rascal of mine?' He opened the door and shouted, and in came a bronzed dragoon in civilian costume. 'Get a bottle of champagne and bring glasses. I've been longing for an excuse for self-indulgence all the morning, and I'm much obliged ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... before? Indeed rather, what had I not gained? But my reasonings were of no use. Against them all, some vision of Thorold's face, some sparkle of his eyes, some touch of his hand, would come back to me, and break down my power and unlock fresh fountains of tears. This passion of self-indulgence was not like me, and surprised myself. I suppose the reason was, I had been so long alone; I had been working my way and waiting, in exile from home as it were, so many days and years; nobody that ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... butterflies. One man hovered attentive about the most beautiful of these, and whispered entertainingly as she scanned the gowns submitted to her choice. He was a dissolute—looking man, although faultlessly arrayed. His hair was thin, his eyes were cruel, and his face bespoke self-indulgence. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Mr Meggs at thirty-six. The necessity for working for a living and a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the more expensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare had up to that time kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he had twinges; more often he ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... splendid mansions in Seville he selected for his residence, and in less than two years he found that one-half of his princely fortune had melted away. They were two years of adulation, of self-indulgence, of mental intoxication. It was a delirious dream from which he suddenly awoke. Reflection taught him that he must immediately curtail his expenses, and very seriously, or engage in some new enterprise to replenish his ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... chance of Lord Chiltern's companions at Moroni's. Whatever might be the faults of our hero, he was not given to what is generally called dissipation by the world at large,—by which the world means self-indulgence. He cared not a brass farthing for Moroni's Chateau Yquem, nor for the wondrously studied repast which he would doubtless find prepared for him at that celebrated establishment in St. James's Street;—not a farthing as compared with ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... drink more than was good for him on various occasions in order to test the metal of the restraint, but the Indian displayed a wonderful self-control. He knew when and where to begin and stop in any self-indulgence, but having fulfilled his part he showed no interest or curiosity in his companion. Once the trading station was reached, Farwell might buy or seek pleasure as he chose; he might write or receive letters; might sleep or ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... always an unacknowledged sense of self-indulgence in this act, and the sense made her go a little softly about it, as if it had to be done secretly. She opened the door slowly, and the rush candle showed her clothing scattered about the room. Her heart stood still; she was breathless; ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... disillusioning the mind of "the superstitious fear that went to disturb happiness"; he was a man of a temperate and blameless life, and it is a foul calumny on him to charge him with summing up happiness as mere self-indulgence, though it is true he regarded "virtue as having no value in itself, but only in so far as it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... autumn. The degree of hardship to which I refer lies between these two extremes. The science of Egyptology does not demand from its devotees a performance of many extreme acts of discomfort; but, during the progress of active work, it does not afford many opportunities for luxurious self-indulgence, or for any slackness in ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... their drawbacks, this young man was as tolerant and bountiful as Sir Ralph, without his austerity and sectarianism; as keen a sportsman and as bold a rider as Nicholas, without his propensities to excess; as studious, at times, and as well read as Abdias, without his laziness and self-indulgence; and as courtly and well-bred as his father, Sir Richard, who was esteemed one of the most perfect gentlemen in the county, without his haughtiness. Then he was the handsomest of his race, though the Asshetons ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... him; and nothing particular ever occurred to bring about an eclaircissement. Rupert's want of principle was a negative, rather than an active quality, and was only rendered of account by his vanity and selfishness. Self-indulgence was all he aimed at, and he was much too self-indulgent and shrewd to become an active rogue. He would have spent Lucy's and my joint fortunes, had they been put at his control; but, as they never were, he was fain to limit his expenditures ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... to a house of his own. She had even furnished it anew for the most part, and had banished as far as possible the things that reminded her of the time when she was not his wife. He humored her in this fantastic self-indulgence, and philosophized her wish to give him the appearance of having the money, as something orderly in its origin, and not to be deprecated on other grounds, since probably it deceived nobody. They lived a very tranquil life, and Clara had no grief of her own unless it was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Edith agrees with me, that my best chance is to get a small lot of wild land, and begin at the beginning, as you did. I want the discipline of all the enforced hard work, Bob. My unfortunate bringing up in every species of self-indulgence was no good education for a settler; but, with God's ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... lover of fair play, an impetuous follower of anything that appealed to him as great. She was sure that these characteristics had been an essential part of his nature. He had failed through instability, through self-indulgence and weakness of purpose. But he was not fundamentally wicked. She was sure that she could appeal to those good impulses within him, and that she would not appeal in vain. She was sure that the power of good would still be paramount ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort of devotees,—persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence. How could he speak with the old physician and the old black woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to strike dumb ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had been enervated by a constant course of self-indulgence, had nothing to support the terror of the shock, and, at the time her husband breathed his last, was passing from one fainting fit to another; and he to whom she had been joined in the mysterious tie of marriage passed from her forever, without ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wishing and willing—"chiefly," she thought, "because it is something he cannot have." She was amazed at his display of such a weakness. It gave her the chance to learn an important truth about human nature—that self-indulgence soon destroys the strongest nature—and she was witness to how rapidly an inflexible will disintegrates if incessantly applied to an impossibility. When a strong arrogant man, unbalanced by long and successful self-indulgence, hurls himself at an ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... much pleased with the gleams of sense and feeling which escaped from the Justice through the vapours of sloth and self-indulgence, assured him of my respect to his admonitions, and took a friendly farewell of the honest magistrate and his ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pulpits—the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains of vanity and self-indulgence." ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... the following I wish to make clear that, had I been living a life of ease or self-indulgence, I could not have been justified in expecting God to undertake for me in such matters as are here recorded. It must be remembered that I had stepped out into a life ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... that last fateful Monday back again—to live over again these last weeks of self-indulgence. And now it was too ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... he clung with a child's love to the living present, and recoiled from a contemplation of the great change which awaits us. Like him, he was content with the goodly green earth and human countenances, and would fain set up his tabernacle here. He had less of what might be termed self-indulgence in this feeling than Lamb. He had higher views; he loved this world not only for its own sake, but for the opportunities it afforded of doing good. Like the Persian seer, he beheld the legions of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of Light and Darkness, contending for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and I wanted him to start with every advantage, to have a gentleman's education. At home he's seen nothing of extravagance and self-indulgence." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the olive trees by the Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible, joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that I should choose: I wanted it so that it became spiritual greed—spiritual self-indulgence. ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... Ortygia, despaired of his position, and resolved to surrender the fortress, stipulating for a safe conveyance and shelter at Corinth. This tyrant, broken by his drunken habits, did not care to fight, as his father did, for a sceptre so difficult to be maintained, and only sought his ease and self-indulgence. So he passed into the camp of Timoleon with what money he could raise, and the fortress was surrendered. A re-enforcement from Corinth enabled Timoleon ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... who also lived with them, had days of high vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... the table at Julian, who responded to it with a complacent smile—"You can talk, talk, talk—of course! every man that ever sat in clubs, smoking and drinking, can talk one's head off—but you've got to LIVE, as well as talk! What do you know about self-indulgence being 'paramount,' except in your own case, eh? Do you think at all of the thousands and thousands of poor creatures everywhere, who completely sacrifice their lives to the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... minute the commissionaire was in the colonel's ante-chamber. This distinguished officer had a method in his madness. He was not accustomed to keeping a body servant, and, as his aim was to make a fortune, will ye nill ye, he managed, even now, in his hours of pride and self-indulgence, to get along without one. It was not many moments, therefore, before he came out and ushered Desiree himself into his salon; a room of ten feet by fourteen, with a carpet that covered just eight feet by six, in its centre. Now that ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... in a state of flushed repletion, he would have old brandy, black coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the name of temperance omit the brandy and have rather more coffee, in the smoking-room. I would sit and watch that stiff dignity of self-indulgence, and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... would develop their own discipline, not borrow its details from the past: for they would soon find that some drill was necessary to them, and that luxury, idleness, self-indulgence and indifference to the common-good were in conflict with the inner spirit of the herd. They would inevitably come to practise that sane asceticism, not incompatible with gaiety of heart, which consists in concentration on the real, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... was of medium height, slight, with a putty complexion; cold, pale-blue eyes; pale, straw-colored hair, and a look of self-indulgence around his rather weak mouth. He was dressed in a city business suit of the latest cut, however, and looked as much out of place in that crude little house as did Margaret Earle herself in her simple gown of dark-blue ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... does not require much penetration," said Mary, "to discover the Doctor's master-passion; love of ease and self-indulgence seem to be the pre-dominant features of his mind; and he looks as if, when he sat in an arm-chair, with his toes on the fender and his hands crossed, he would not have an idea beyond 'I wonder what we shall have ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Extravagance and play, Of self-indulgence, vice and pride, And then reflecting say, It was not stern Nemesis' part, To punish each, as cause Of retribution to himself For breaking ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... follow, and providing him with a model of extravagant dandyism that he was only too certain to copy. In her heart she knew that Comus would have embarked just as surely on his present course of idle self-indulgence if he had never known of the existence of Youghal, but she chose to regard that young man as her son's evil genius, and now he seemed likely to justify more than ever the character she had fastened on to him. For once in his life Comus appeared to have an idea of behaving sensibly ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... pessimist answers what easier than the demolition of a sexless world gone entirely mad? How simple the engineries of destruction. Civil war in America; universal hara-kiri in Europe; the dry rot of wealth wasting itself in self-indulgence. Then a thousand years of total eclipse. Finally Macaulay's Australian surveying the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral from a broken parapet of London Bridge; and a Moslem conqueror of America looking from the hill of the Capitol ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... remarkable man. His active and independent mind, with its keen, discriminating, practical intelligence, was formed and disciplined amid that company of distinguished scholars and writers who, at Oxford, in the second decade of the century were revolted by the scandalous inertness and self-indulgence of the place, with its magnificent resources squandered and wasted, its stupid orthodoxy of routine, its insensibility to the questions and the dangers rising all round; men such as Keble, Arnold, Davison, Copleston, Whately. These men, different as they were from one another, all represented ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... be seen, had turned his passionate affection for his daughter to the advantage of his self-indulgence. The immoral aspect of the situation was justified by the highest morality. And then the ex-perfumer derived from this style of living—it was the inevitable, a free-and-easy life, Regence, Pompadour, Marechal de ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... knew also the trouble and grief I was causing to you, whom (although you may find it difficult to believe) I really loved, and who had ever been such a kind friend to me. I now see that it was a love of self-indulgence which led me to commit so foul a sin. Conscience remonstrated, and the words of the Bible, so early instilled into my mind by my mother, constantly reproached me; but I turned from and stifled the voice of conscience, and deliberately chose the evil way. All these ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... many have to hobble along on crutches because they were never taught to help themselves, but have been accustomed to lean upon a father's wealth or a mother's indulgence? How many are weakened for the journey of life by self-indulgence, by dissipation, by "life-sappers"; how many are crippled by disease, by a weak constitution, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... with people; self-indulgence, i. e., indulgence of the passing desires, follows the idealism of adolescence. Youth sows its wild oats. Then the steadying purposes appear partly because the pleasure of indulgence passes. Marriage, responsibility, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... in adversity, as appeared fitted to sustain his drooping spirits. It seems, however, that, according to the general course of violent emotions, the rebound of high spirits was in proportion to his first despondency. He omitted nothing of his usual luxury or self-indulgence, and he even found spirits for going incognito to the theatre, where he took sufficient interest in the public performances, to send a message to a favorite actor. At times, even in this hopeless situation, his native ferocity returned upon him, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... thrift.—Thrift is just forethought. It is reasonable prudence in regard to money. It provides for "the rainy day." If poverty be our lot, we must bear it bravely; but there is no special blessing in poverty. It is often misery unspeakable. It is often brought upon us by our self-indulgence, extravagance and recklessness. We are to use every means in our power to guard against it. The words of the poet Burns are full ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... commends to us the golden mean—the safe line of conduct that lies midway between the rejection of earthly joys and the worship of them. If asceticism too often spurns the commonplace duties of life, excessive self-indulgence unfits us for them. In each case we lose some of our moral efficiency. But in the latter case there is added an inevitable degradation. The man who mortifies his body for his soul's sake has at least his motive to plead for him. But the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... generation of monoglots," MacHenery sighed. "It figures, though. There's no profit in having today's youth read the clinical record of another civilization that died of self-indulgence, that went roistering to its doom in ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... amongst Christians? How did it fare with the poor all over Europe in the centuries when Christianity was at the zenith of its power? How is it we have twelve millions of Christians on the verge of starvation in England to-day, with a Church rolling in wealth and an aristocracy decadent from luxury and self-indulgence? How is it that the gulf betwixt rich and poor in such Christian capitals as New York, London, and Paris ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... imposed upon the citizens generally the absolute necessity of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all times personal hardship and discomfort: so that increase of wealth, on account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If in their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they were willing to sanction great interference with preexisting rights for the purpose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... to the credit side of my account he had put the whole bag of tricks to my debit. He had mixed them up with my sins—with my acts of hypocrisy, vanity, self-indulgence. Under the head of Charity he had but one item to my credit for the past six months: my giving up my seat inside a tramcar, late one wet night, to a dismal-looking old woman, who had not had even the politeness to ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... want knowledge, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work his life is a ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... eyes of Alain Chartier. His Livre de l'Esperance, where the oratorical prose is interspersed with lyric verse, spares neither the clergy nor the frivolous and dissolute gentry, who forget their duty to their country in wanton self-indulgence; yet his last word, written at the moment when Joan of Arc was leaving the pastures for battle, is one of hope. His Curial (The Courtier) is a satire on the vices of the court by one who had acquaintance with its corruption. The large, harmonious phrase of Alain Chartier ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... and drink really proves nothing as regards manhood. Doubtless there is some courage required in learning to smoke, and so much, but it is not much, is to the smoker's credit; but for the rest, smoking and drinking are simply forms of self-indulgence, and though they are doubtless very excusable and are often practised by splendid men, they are of no virtue in themselves. Further, they are open to the fundamental objection that they lessen the measure of a man's self-mastery. Women ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... end the bending of the human will to "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." To the full and perfect surrender which this implies men are found to be opposed in every possible way. Pride is against it; selfishness is against it; self-indulgence and the lusts of the flesh are against it. Often, in addition to these natural elements of opposition, a man's reluctance to yield himself to God will be fortified by tradition and strengthened by association. A hundred circumstances affecting his life, his comfort, his general well-being ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... reaching; and his heavy body, short neck, and muscle-bent shoulders, all suggested the man who had relentlessly fought his way to whatever position of dominancy he might then occupy. He wore the same faded black hat planted squarely on his head, and was in his shirt-sleeves. The only sign of self-indulgence betrayed in him or his surroundings was an old crucible, serving as an ash tray, which was half-filled with cigar stumps, and Dick observed, in that instant's swift appraisement, that even these were chewed as if between the teeth of a mentally ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... fairly good time myself while doing so. I do not think I mentioned that second part, which is the only one I have managed to carry out; but my father must have suspected the suppression, for he branded the whole affair as self-indulgence. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... merit in me, but, as you say, rather self-indulgence, to be looking up and relieving destitute cases. But it would be merit in you, if you don't like it; and you might have all that, and none ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... good-tempered, cheap labour—upon which the fabric of our contemporary ease and comfort is erected—is giving out. The spread of information and the means of presentation in every class and the increase of luxury and self-indulgence in the prosperous classes are the chief cause of that. In the place of that old convenient labour comes a new sort of labour, reluctant, resentful, critical, and suspicious. The replacement has already gone so far that I am certain that attempts to baffle and coerce the workers back to ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... His sole self-indulgence consisted in frequent bathing; for his only craving was for extreme cleanliness. But, just as the disciples of Epicurus would never have adopted his regimen, so would they equally have refused to imitate this last enjoyment; ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... fear; but 2 ultimately hope prevailed. Some people believed that his longing to get back to Queen Berenice[205] fired him to return. True, the young man's fancy was attracted by Berenice, but he did not allow this to interfere with business. Still his youth was a time of gay self-indulgence, and he showed more restraint in his own reign than in his father's. Accordingly he sailed along the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor, and, skirting the seas which lay upon his left, reached the islands of Rhodes and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... from each other, the lifeboats of Walmer and Kingsdown, and faced the sea and the storm. Think of the deed, and its hardships, and its heroism; of the brave hearts who 'darkling faced the billows,' and the anxious women left behind, ye who live to kill time in graceless self-indulgence, and ere it be too late, learn to sacrifice ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... time he swam from London to Chelsea, a distance of four miles. Several of his companions he taught to swim in two lessons. His celebrity was such that he was urged to open a swimming school.[9] The life of self-indulgence he was now living in London, was not such as even his loose religious principles could approve. He had abandoned the faith of his fathers, and had adopted, for his rule of conduct, the principle, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the Divine, there has been fretful, combative. egotism, its hand against every man. Instead of the light of pure vision, there have been restless senses nave been re and imaginings. Instead of spiritual joy, the undivided joy of pure being, there has been self-indulgence of body and mind. These are all real forces, but distorted from their true nature and goal. They must be extricated, like gems from the matrix, like the pith from the reed, steadily, without destructive violence. Spiritual powers are to be drawn ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... might have lived to old age. But it secured him four years of the tense and poignant joy of living on which his heart was set; and during two of these years the joy was of a kind which absolved him for ever from the reproach of mere hedonism and self-indulgence. He would certainly have said—or rather he was continually saying, in words full of passionate ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... true is this of the Christian Nazarite. Whether he eat or drink, or whatsoever he do, the will of GOD and not self-indulgence must be his one aim. Christians often get into perplexity about worldly allurements by asking, Where is the sin of this, or the danger of that? There may be danger that the questioner cannot see: Satan's baits often skilfully conceal a sharp hook; but supposing that the thing be harmless, it ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts of D'Argens were good, and his manners those of a finished French gentleman; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and self-indulgence. His was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without being religious. Hating Christianity with a rancor which made him incapable of rational inquiry, unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... young man of fifty-two. And we all know that Napoleon at forty-two was incapacitated for Borodino by incipient disease of the stomach; so that from that day he, though junior by seventeen years to Pompey, yet from Pompey's self-indulgence (not certainly in splendid sensuality, but in the gross modes belonging to his obscure youth) was pronounced by all the judicious, superannuated as regarded the indispensable activity of martial habits. If he cannot face the toils of military command, said his officers, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... West which offered to the people of older lands a strange and fascinating interest. Every one on the range had money; every one was independent. Once more it seemed that man had been able to overleap the confining limitations of his life, and to attain independence, self-indulgence, ease and liberty. A chorus of Homeric, riotous mirth, as of a land in laughter, rose up all over the great range. After all, it seemed that we had a new world left, a land not yet used. We still were young! The cry arose that there was land enough for all out West. And ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... not required for the business and the necessaries of life went into the little coffer with steel bands and florid key. They denied themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one another's looks, smiled; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set up their fourth son as a master-tailor, and their eldest daughter as a robemaker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade would enable them to throw work into the hands of this pair. But ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... for organization." In truth, it is not inborn incapacity to which we owe our unquestioned inferiority, but to the atrophy of will-power which is one of the consequences of years of egotism, overweening confidence, self-indulgence and the loss ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... no more to beautify her person Sally turned again to the clothes-press, by now so far gone in self-indulgence, her moral sense so insidiously sapped by the sheer sensual delight she had of all this pilfered luxury, that she could contemplate without a qualm less venial experiments with the law of meum ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... the whole world, children are taught that virtue is self-control. In the Southern States, among these tobacco-lords, boys learned just the opposite lesson,—that virtue is self-indulgence. This particular youth, thin-skinned, full of talent, fire, and passion, the heir to a large estate, fatherless, would have been in danger anywhere of growing up untrained,—a wild beast in broadcloth. In the Virginia ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... wage-earning as long as endurance will hold out, and also from the sheer carelessness which is a part of their necessary habit, both the men and the women not seldom allow themselves to fall into sickness which a little self-indulgence, if only they dared yield to it, would enable them to avoid. I should not know how to begin counting the numbers I have personally known enfeebled for life in this way. Things are better now than they ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... of these natural processes an opportunity can be used to make the presentation of the subject more personal. He can be told that during childhood his own sexual processes have been undeveloped, but that as he grows older they will awake. That with their awakening in adolescence new temptations to self-indulgence in thought or action may assail him, but that these temptations are delayed by the wisdom of Nature until his understanding has grown and his man's strength of character has developed. A high ideal of ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... possibly conceal them entirely; nothing short of knowing some of the facts would prevent his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future. Moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than Mrs. Dornell feel that they must let out a few truths, if only in self-indulgence. So she told so much of recent surprises as that Betty's heart had been attracted by another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting her now might drive the girl to desperation. 'Betty has, in fact, rushed off to her father to avoid you,' she said. 'But if you wait she ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... such as the sacredness of animal life, the necessity of abstaining from animal food, other than milk, cheese, or eggs, the propriety of simplicity in apparel, and the need of abstemiousness and devotion. He thus presented the spectacle of an enthusiast who preached a doctrine of laxity and self-indulgence, not from any base or selfish motive, but simply from a conviction of its truth. We learn without surprise that the doctrines of the new teacher were embraced with ardor by large classes among the Persians, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... into the great Saskatchewan Valley, her hand in his, and hope in his eyes, and such a look of confidence and pride in her as brought back his old strong beauty of face, and smoothed the careworn lines of self-indulgence, she gave him his course: as a private he must join the North-West Mounted Police, the red-coated riders of the plains, and work his way up through every stage of responsibility, beginning at the foot of the ladder of humbleness and self-control. She believed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... such a bother with himself as me?" he asked vaguely but vehemently. "It's self-indulgence does it—sitting down's ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... home-sickness. There are few classes of men more frugal in tastes and habit than the village priest in Italy; but Don Egidio, by his own account, had been introduced, at an impressionable age, to a way of living that must have surpassed his wildest dreams of self-indulgence. To whatever privations his parochial work had since accustomed him, the influences of that earlier life were too perceptible in his talk not to have made a profound impression on his tastes; and he remained, for all his apostolic simplicity, the image of the family priest who has ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... penuriously and alone, his only companion being a beautiful and evidently much petted donkey. I ventured to express an English view of the matter, namely, the undesirability of encouraging idleness and self-indulgence in one's children by toiling and moiling ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... genius, and frankness of manner for generosity of heart, when in fact his favourite proved unformed and untaught, indifferent to the opinion of all whom he ought to have valued, and given up to idleness and self-indulgence. Such a companion was quitted without any effort of resolution, but the sister's power over him did not yield so easily. Amaranthe's vanity had been too much flattered by such a conquest, for her to endeavour to conceal ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... had gone to bed, he would refresh himself by a vigorous flirtation with Madame Seraphine de Belle-Ile, a brisk and vivacious young widow, who affected always gowns of a peculiarly vivid and searching scarlet. And this self-indulgence proved in the end the ruin of his fine scheme of establishing himself in life on a sound ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... shadow."(53) "For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass is withered, and the flower thereof is fallen away."(54) To the natural man all this is appalling, and how frequently it finds its solution in unbridled self-indulgence, in mental unbalance, and self-destruction! But the saints, and all the truly wise, have viewed the problem of human suffering in a vastly different light. They have discerned it, first of all, as really ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... to the wielder, too, this weapon of wealth, double-edged with the cupidity and misery of mankind, steeped in all the vices of self-indulgence as in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in the hand. There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. But he promised himself to see it shattered into small bits before ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... hardly keep the contempt she felt for her husband's weak rejoinder, "don't confuse the head, dethrone the reason, brutalize, debase and ruin men in soul and body as do wine and brandy. The difference lies there, and all men see and feel it, make what excuses they will for self-indulgence and deference to custom. The curse of drink is too widely felt. There is scarcely a family in the land on which its blight does not lie. The best, the noblest, the purest, the bravest, have fallen. It is breaking ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... sugar-house—they were all there, and all the rest of it, with the slaves, slaves, slaves everywhere, whole villages of negro cabins. And there were also, most noticeable to the natural, as well as to the visionary, eye—there were the ease, idleness, extravagance, self-indulgence, pomp, pride, arrogance, in short the whole enumeration, the moral sine qua non, as some people considered it, of the wealthy slaveholder of ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
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