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More "Self-interest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undermine his sway; whereas both Cambaceres and Lebrun, overawed by his presence, proved eminently serviceable in drawing over to the interests of the Chief Consul innumerable persons, of their own ways of thinking originally, but no longer such zealous theorists as to resist the arguments of self-interest—those strong springs of hope and fear, of both of which Napoleon, while at the Tuileries, held the master-key. It was thus, also, that, in forming his ministry, he grouped together men, each of whom detested or despised the others; but each unquestionably fitted, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the more infamous. The fact that he was a man of substantial means, and had sought no office or aggrandizement by the votes of colored men, made his offence the more heinous, because he could not even plead the poor excuse of self-interest. The fact that he had served the Confederacy well, and bore on his person the indubitable proof of gallant conduct on the field of battle, was a still further aggravation of his act, because it marked him as a renegade and a traitor to the cause for ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the shawl which he had found in his cab. Is it credible that if he had been paid only his legal fare he would have been at such virtuous pains? It may, indeed, be surmised that if the shawl was not worth more than an imaginable reward for its restoration he was actuated by self-interest, but this is a view of our common nature which ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... destruction of animal life. Educated Hindus throw back against the charge of idolatry our idolatry of pelf, which, as they claim, eclipses every other thought and aspiration, leads to dishonesty, over-reaching, and manifold crime, and sinks noble ethics to the low level of expediency or self-interest; the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... glorifying. She even consented that it might be the first deliberate falsehood this honourable, discriminating gentleman had told in all his life. At the moment, he may have been actuated by a motive that deceived him, but even unknown to him the Wrandall self-interest was at work. He was not lying for her, but for the Wrandalls! And she would have to remain his debtor all her life because of that ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... of you may be mere self-interest," said Charles Osmond. "Perhaps he puts on a sort of appearance of affection for you just for the sake of what people would say not a very likely thing for Mr. Raeburn to consider, I own. Still, you can't demonstrate to me that his love ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and folly takes different turns, and some particular kinds of it are more open and avowed in some ages than in others; and, I suppose, it may be spoken of as very much the distinction of the present to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to self-interest, than appears to have been done formerly. Upon this account it seems worth while to inquire whether private interest is likely to be promoted in proportion to the degree in which self-love engrosses us, and prevails over all other principles; or whether the contracted affection may not ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... these schools, and in others the United States Government gave meagre aid. As early as 1775 the Continental Congress had appropriated five hundred dollars for the support and education of youths at Dartmouth College. This was, however, less an act of benevolence than of self-interest, since its avowed object was to conciliate the friendship of those Indians who might be inclined to ally themselves with the British during the struggle ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... given him a certain contempt for men; moreover, he was not inclined by nature to think well of them. His lips were often heard to utter the grievous maxim—all the more grievous because he personally knew its truth—"There are two levers by which men are moved, fear and self-interest." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... that they have not yet received any pay, and their remaining stock would be confiscated. They are not totally devoid of self-interest, and most of them have a respect for the fighting powers of the Sieur and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... much good policy in the means by which they have done this. They have in most cases upheld and strengthened the authority of the native chiefs, to whom the people have been accustomed to render a voluntary obedience; and by acting on the intelligence and self-interest of these chiefs, have brought about changes in the manners and customs of the people, which would have excited ill-feeling and perhaps revolt, had they ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of the punishment of death in a community, which counts human life amongst its most valuable objects of trade, is not, however, very surprising; and considerable influence must be conceded to the operation of self-interest, as well as to the feelings of humanity, in accounting for this merciful feature, if it be indeed merciful, in the criminal code of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... called; but upon the extension of its methods to the whole domain of knowledge (p. 7), the practical effect being the reduction of religion to superstition, of anthropology to physiology, of metaphysics to physics, of ethics to the result of temperament or the promptings of self-interest, of man's personality to the summation of a series of dynamic conditions of particles of matter. I shall proceed to state the case, as I often hear it stated, and I shall put it in the strongest way I can, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... the army Bonaparte inaugurated a new era in the wars of the Republic. Previously the leading motives had been pure patriotism and love of liberty; Bonaparte for the first time, in his proclamation on taking command, invoked the spirit of self-interest and plunder, which was to dominate the whole policy of France for the next twenty years. Evil as were the passions which he aroused, Napoleon's great military genius flashed forth in its full brilliancy in this his first campaign. His power lay ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... first point is not so necessary as it was in 1908. The assumption that men are automatically guided by 'enlightened self-interest' has been discredited by the facts of the war and the peace, the success of an anti-parliamentary and anti-intellectualist revolution in Russia, the British election of 1918, the French election of 1919, the confusion of politics ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... tells us, a second method. He argues that no acquisitions of guilt can compensate a man for the loss of inward peace, for the attendant horror, anxiety, and danger, to which he subjects himself; thus endeavouring to enlist man's self-interest no less than his admiration, on the side of virtue. Again, he explains yet another method by which he essays to foil the progress of evil, viz. to show that virtue and innocence are chiefly betrayed "into the snares that deceit and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... 'the simpler thing would be to hold aloof from such people as use the profession in a spirit of unalloyed selfishness, who seek only material advancement, and who, whatever connection they form, have nothing but self-interest in view.' ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... anybody, except for a legitimate purpose, as in military strategy; and, above all, he was incapable of deceiving himself. He possessed that rarest of all human faculties, the power of a perfectly accurate estimate of himself, uninfluenced by pride, ambition, flattery, or self-interest. Grant was very far from being a modest man, as the word modest is generally understood. His just self-esteem was as far above modesty as it was above flattery. The highest encomiums were accepted for what he believed them to be worth. They did ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... got than he thinks I do; and I can form a shrewd guess why he was so zealous in warning you of the report about Lady Sarah Lidhurst—he had his own snug reasons for wanting you away—Oh, trust me for scenting out self-interest, through all the doublings and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... might occur to the religious," he said, "but I will give you one that will appeal to your own self-interest. If you kill me, the curse which follows the parricide will follow you to your last hour—of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the Chinese, is one composed of a large number of nationalities which have very little in common, and amongst whom a good deal of rivalry prevails. It may have been that when the question of revising the treaties was being keenly agitated, self-interest, or what was deemed to be self-interest, occasioned a sort of fictitious unity among foreigners, but at the present time, so far as my observation has gone, there is very little real unity among the foreigners ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... sincerely. For the moment all thought of self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt again, as she had felt that day, the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his. Something in her voice must have attested it, for she saw a change in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... material benefits as we see in the recent British budgets, as if they were concessions, only hiding the fact that they would soon have conferred these benefits on the workers through their own self-interest, whether the workers had given them their political ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... circumstances. Other differences might be composed, but that resting on the instinct of self-preservation could know no end. Statesmen had to shape their policy—sometimes blindly enough—but always under the pressure of this vigorous instinct of self-interest prevalent amongst the trading classes ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Odry in "Les Funambules," "is high comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian language has but two tones,—Self-interest, Vanity." ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... response to the law of God, which is Love! The child was healed of his infirmity by the power of unselfish prayer. Are we not told 'Ask and ye shall receive'? But the asking must be pure! The prayer must be untainted by self-interest! God does not answer prayer that is paid for in this world's coin! No miracle was ever wrought for a fee! Only when perfect love and perfect faith exist between the creature and the Creator, are ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... as isolated from and antagonized with the world about him, but as cut off sharply and definitely from the past before he lived and the future after he is dead; it puts what is, in relation to the view we have taken, a disproportionate amount of stress upon his egotism, upon the pursuit of his self-interest and his personal virtue and his personal fancies, and it ignores the fact, the familiar rediscovery which the nineteenth century has achieved, that he is after all only the transitory custodian of an undying gift of life, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... about the rights of the Indians, than the injuries which, through their instrumentality, might be inflicted upon the rising republic. This feeling towards the whites, and especially to the people of the United States, had a deeper foundation than mere prejudice or self-interest. Tecumseh was a patriot, and his love of country made him a statesman and a warrior. He saw his race driven from their native land, and scattered like withered leaves in an autumnal blast; he beheld their morals ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... affliction and grief she had suffered, and only remembered that John Gotzkowsky was her creditor, and that she owed him large sums of money. So, when at last, weary of long waiting, he pressed for payment, they accused him of self-interest, and said that he had unnecessarily mixed himself up in their affairs, and that it would have been better if he had left them to their captivity; for although they might have had much to suffer, they would have ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... hide the eternal stars. But as the stars are still there, and will appear again when the smoke has blown away, so will the truth reappear and assert itself, when men grow calm, and put aside pride and passion and prejudice and self-interest. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... and rapid hand of gain, of what Jouffroy calls self-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain and will of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform. An illustration of this statement, and a practical recognition of the physiological method of woman's work, lately came under my observation. There is an establishment in Boston, owned ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... wasted a moment's thought on the ultimate future of the race. All that they desired was to preserve the very valuable fur-trade of the region round the Great Lakes for their own benefit. They were acting from the motives of self-interest that usually control nations; and it never entered their heads to balance against these immediate interests the future of a nation many of whose members ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... it cheerfully in order to promote our safety. It shows that even among those dreadful Amahagger—who are certainly with their gloom and their devilish and ferocious rites by far the most terrible savages that I ever heard of—there are people with kindly hearts. Of course, self-interest may have had something to do with it. He may have thought that She would suddenly reappear and demand an account of us at his hands, but still, allowing for all deductions, it was a great deal more than we could expect under the circumstances, and I can only say that ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... narrowed, and the brig, picking her way daintily through the traffic, sought her old berth at Buller's Wharf. It was occupied by a deaf sailing-barge, which, moved at last by self-interest, not unconnected with its paint, took up a less desirable position and consoled itself ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Well! I had all the credit of the offer, without any of the trouble and expence of putting it into execution. I have detailed these facts as another proof of my enthusiasm. I never acted from any cold calculating notions of self-interest. If I thought it right to perform an act of public or private duty, having once made up my mind, I never suffered any selfish considerations to interpose to prevent my carrying ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Vapid, "but this will regulate itself."—Will it, indeed? Be good enough to tell me how! All the potent individual agencies now affecting it are attached by self-interest to the wrong side. The Capitalists, the Employers, the Exporters, engaged in the Silk trade, all own property in Lyons, and are naturally anxious that the manufacture shall be more and more concentrated there. The Shipper, the Importer, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... aliens among them, while Pablo was of their own race and class. That we all were like to be done to death by this barbarous theocrat we did not for a moment doubt; but it was plain enough that every motive of self-interest must prompt him to put Pablo and the poor ass most summarily out of the way. And as the logic of these facts irresistibly presented itself in my mind a keen and heavy sorrow overcame me, for I could not shirk the conviction ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... had its inception in knowledge of his whereabouts, and in a suspicion that the Laniers and William Dodge knew incriminating facts which they theretofore suppressed through motives of discretion or self-interest? Probably the Laniers yielded to pressure, and falsely accused Oswald of murdering Alice Webster. Even now, fate's coils may be closing ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... because a man who owns a certain fortune has a greater interest than others in a sound management of public business, and self-interest opens and quickens the eye; and again a man who has money and does not lose it cannot be altogether ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... many persons of influence and different chambers of commerce are earnestly in favor of the proposed change in their coinage. The change is so slight with them that an enlightened self-interest will soon induce them to make it, especially if we make the greater change in our coinage. We have some difficulty in adjusting existing contracts with the new dollar; but as contracts are now based upon the fluctuating ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... to efface the effigy of Deity in the soul, and to dissolve this energy, this noble enthusiasm, in the cold, killing breath of a pusillanimous indifference. Under the slavish influence of their own unworthiness they have entered into terms with self-interest, the dangerous foe of benevolence; they have done this to explain a phenomenon which was too godlike for their narrow hearts. They have spun their comfortless doctrine out of a miserable egotism, and they have made their ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... took up Raleigh on the same grounds that a boarding- school miss might have done. Not that I deny the cloak story to be a very pretty story; perhaps it justifies, taken alone, Elizabeth's fondness for him. There may have been self-interest in it; we are bound, as 'men of the world,' to impute the dirtiest motive that we can find; but how many self-interested men do we know who would have had quickness and daring to do such a thing? Men who are thinking about themselves are not generally either so ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... above all, the glittering contents of his purse, and the indifference with which he seemed to regard them, somewhat overawed his companion, and deterred him from making any attempts to enter upon conversation. His own reflections were moreover agitated by various surmises, and by plans of self-interest with which these were intimately connected. The travellers journeyed, therefore, in silence, until it was interrupted by the annunciation, on the part of the guide, that his 'naig had lost a fore-foot shoe, which, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... number of their lights. The cheerful groups broke up, strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled, bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. In its own way suffering was a relief. It was the first time he had given it a chance since he had brought himself to facing squarely the fact of his useless, pointless love. He had always dodged ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... it was more difficult to prevent this than to execute the game-laws. For such an order of affairs the decision of the French Academy was largely responsible, for if men only find a shadow of right on the side of self-interest, they are likely enough to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... accountancy, and to exercise absolute authority over accepting and dismissing them, as in the present case. Hence my proposition was disliked by them both. Thus may your Majesty see carried out in this case the same motive that I stated for all the others—namely, that they do not vote without self-interest or passion. He to whom your Majesty can and ought to trust most is the person to whom all the government shall have been charged; and he should be given authority so that he may, after having heard the opinions of the treasury ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... members are capable of yielding their opinions to the brutum fulmen of the League. That body is by no means popular. The great bulk of the manufacturing artisans are totally indifferent to its proceedings; for they know well that self-interest, and not philanthropy, is the motive which has regulated that movement, and that the immediate effect of cheap bread would be a reduction of the workman's wages. We cannot, therefore, admit that any pressure from without has wrought this change of opinion, about which there seems to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the public utility of these virtues is the chief circumstance, whence they derive their merit, it follows, that the end, which they have a tendency to promote, must be some way agreeable to us, and take hold of some natural affection. It must please, either from considerations of self-interest, or from ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... is that implacable self-interest with which I have just come in contact, which is the law of the world, the watchword of society! So, in refusing to share the common folly, I risk remaining in isolation, and I must be strong to make others stand in awe of me. Very well, then, I shall henceforth act in such a manner as to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the Twist Frame. She cared much for the Mill women and spent a good portion of her hours with them. A very genuine friendship, little tainted with time-serving, or self-interest, obtained for her in the works. On her side, she valued the goodwill of the workers as her best possession, and found among them a field for study in human nature and, in their work, matter for poetry and art. For were not all three Fates to be seen at their eternal business here? Clotho ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... natural harmony of interests. Maintain external order, suppress violence, assure men in the possession of their property, and enforce the fulfilment of contracts, and the rest will go of itself. Each man will be guided by self-interest, but interest will lead him along the lines of greatest productivity. If all artificial barriers are removed, he will find the occupation which best suits his capacities, and this will be the occupation in which he will be most productive, ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... so much danger. A hint of this escaping him when Mr Pleggit was attending him on the third day after his accident, the latter, who knew the value of the locale, also hinted that if Mr Cophagus was inclined so to do, that he would be most happy to enter into an arrangement with him. Self-interest will not only change friendship into enmity, in this rascally world, but also turn enmity into friendship. All Mr Pleggit's enormities, and all Mr Cophagus' shameful conduct, were mutually forgotten. In less than ten minutes it was, "My ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... and Whigs, or as "prerogative men" and "friends of liberty," fall naturally into two classes. A line of cleavage could be seen at the time, and can even be traced now, among the supporters of either side, according as they followed principle or self-interest. There were those who sought profit in supporting the colonies, as well as those who knowingly faced loss in defending the king. It is well for Americans to remember, therefore, that while many sided with the king for what they could get, there were ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... and riches rubbing shoulders—noisy self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,—many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... may have been guided to this course by the question of self-interest is a matter of speculation. He had been cruel enough to strike this old man down and to rob him of his money. He had been wary enough to wound himself, and to have feigned a terror which had deluded many into a belief in his innocence. He had been ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... kingship scattered throughout mankind. The aristocrats are not at the high table, the kings are not enthroned, those who are enthroned are but pretenders and SIMULACRA, kings of the vulgar; the real king and ruler is every man who sets aside the naive passions and self-interest of the common life for the rule ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... decline the defence. But he knew his duty and discharged it. And for which will he be most honoured by posterity? By which most ennobled? for having in spite of threats, and all the seductions of self-interest, persevered in his duty? or for having been exalted to the peerage of England and adorned with the national order of Scotch knighthood? But, if even my humble situation, should not exempt me from the attacks ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... kindly voice, and his own self-interest becoming prominent once more, old Dougal told his tale—not an uncommon one —of sheep lost on the hill-side, and one misfortune following another, until a large family, children and orphan grandchildren, were driven at last to want the "sup ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... this), but because his very inferiority interests her, and makes her want to remedy it and mother him. Egoism is in the impulse: it is pleasant to have a feeling of superiority, and to be assured that it can be maintained. If now, that feeling he mingled with sexual curiosity and economic self-interest, it obviously supplies sufficient motivation to account for so natural and banal a thing as a marriage. Perhaps the greatest of all these factors is the mere disparity, the naked strangeness. A woman could not love a man, as the phrase is, who wore skirts ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... employes, as that the employes themselves should change their opinions. How long would an English tide-waiter, for instance, keep his place should he vote against the ministerial candidate? I apprehend these things depend on a common principle (i. e. self-interest) everywhere, and that it makes little difference, in substance, what the form of government may happen ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been invited to illuminate the fronts of their houses, and moved either by enthusiasm or self-interest, they had spent large sums for this purpose. Among the notable illuminations was that of the engineer Chevalier, on the Pont Neuf. There was a transparency in which, amid encircling laurels and myrtles, was to be seen an optician turning his glass up to the sky towards a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... this occasion, when above all other occasions it was not only the duty, but to the highest interests of Germany, to give to the world any substantial reason for violating the neutrality of Belgium, the defense of Germany is rested upon the ground of self-interest,—euphemistically ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... nature—all its disputes, all its ill-will and bad blood, rise up before you. You know from your experience of juries (I mean no disparagement to you or them) how much depends upon effect; and you are apt to attribute to others, a desire to use, for purposes of deception and self-interest, the very instruments which you, in pure honesty and honour of purpose, and with a laudable desire to do your utmost for your client, know the temper and worth of so well, from constantly employing them yourselves. I really believe that to this circumstance may ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... over. The dream of Edward I. had been but a dream, and self-interest and ambition directed the swords of Christian princes against each other rather than against the common foe. The Western Church was lapsing into a state of decay and corruption, from which she was only partially ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... usage, pleading always implies some appeal to the feelings. One argues a case solely on rational grounds and supposably with fair consideration of both sides; he advocates one side for the purpose of carrying it, and under the influence of motives that may range all the way from cold self-interest to the highest and noblest impulses; he pleads a cause, or pleads for a person with still more intense feeling. Beseech, entreat, and implore imply impassioned earnestness, with direct and tender ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Religion and Politicks can never set up in one House. As to our Statesmen, don't imagine that the Purple makes 'em less Courtiers than are those of other Nations; they know and pursue the Reggione del Stato (a Term of Art which means Self-Interest) with as much Cunning and as little Conscience as any Secular; and are as artful where Art is required, and as barefaced and impudent when their Power is great enough to support 'em, in the oppressing the People, and aggrandizing their Families. What their Morals are, you may ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... relations. "Our next war will be with Bulgaria," said the man on the street in Athens, and this bellicose sentiment was reciprocated alike by the Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian army. The secular mutual enmities and animosities of the Greeks and Bulgarians, which self-interest had suppressed long enough to enable the Balkan Allies to make European Turkey their own, burst forth with redoubled violence under the stimulus of the imperious demand which the occasion now made upon them all for an equitable distribution of the conquered territory. For ages the fatal ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... that his adulatory manner was originally adopted under strong promptings of self-interest, and that his absurdly over-acted deference to persons from whom he expects no patronage is the unreflecting persistence of habit—just as those who live with the deaf will shout ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... are not arguments for the wide distribution of the ballot—they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the self-interest of the present real rulers. We say easily, for instance, "The ignorant ought not to vote." We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... know as soon as I receive the answers. I wish you would also send me your lectures, and likewise Sebastian Bach's five-part Mass, when I will at once remit you the money for both. Pray, do not imagine that I am at all guided by self-interest; I am free from all petty vanity; in godlike Art alone dwells the impulse which gives me strength to sacrifice the best part of my life to the celestial Muse. From childhood my greatest pleasure and felicity ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... then," he said with heat, "I imagine the mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not better and could not be better; my horses carry me well enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... he chose to covet, nothing more that it could give him. He was not rich; but his habits were simple, and, except by reason of his sickness and its consequences, unexpensive. At all times he was far above the meanness of self-interest, particularly in its meanest shape, a love of money. Doering tells us, that a bookseller having travelled from a distance expressly to offer him a higher price for the copyright of Wallenstein, at that time in the press, and for which he was on terms with Cotta of Tuebingen, Schiller ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... display is now a minor cause: women obviously dress for other women's eyes. Much the same is true of subservience to fashions in furniture, food, manners, morals, and religion. The institution of tipping, which began, perhaps, in kindliness and was fostered by economic self-interest, is now well-nigh impregnable because no man is brave enough to withstand the scorn of a line of lackeys whom he heartily despises, or of a few onlookers whom he ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... convicts, but who, whatever their crimes, are still our own flesh and blood, brothers of ours, our own very selves but for special circumstances for which we can claim no merit; but for their souls and lives we are responsible, and to strive to redeem and succor them our own intelligent self-interest should prompt us to spend and labor lavishly. Instead of that, our habitual attitude toward them is that of indifference or even hostility. For why should we honest people waste our good money and precious sympathy on a convict? Has he not ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the sort, Mrs Fyne assured me with some resentment, as though I had aspersed little Fyne's sanity. Fyne very sensibly had set himself the mental task of discovering the self-interest. I should not have thought him capable of so much cynicism. He said to himself that for people of that sort (religious fears or the vanity of righteousness put aside) money—not great wealth, but, money, just a little money—is the measure of virtue, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... growls with rage. He learns the English liner COLLINGWOOD has arrived, a day or so too late—only another enemy. Still, better temporary English rule than the long reign of the grasping Yankee. The Don's self-interest, in alarm, is in the logical right ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... not gobbled up one solitary foot of territory. Which is finer, grander, than your Napoleonic glory! And yet it's selfish, of coh'se it is. But listen here, there'll never be any Utopia, Altruria, Millennium, or what not, that don't coincide with self-interest. And first among the races of the earth, the Americans have made 'em coincide, and I want to know right now if the Americans are not the hope ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... circumstances, a thing which has been pronounced just does not any longer appear to agree with utility, the thing which was just... ceases to be just the moment it ceases to be useful."[780] So that self-interest is still the basis of all virtue. And if, by the performance of duty, you are exposed to great suffering, and especially to death, you are perfectly justified in the violation of any and all contracts. Such is ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... arrested by some obstruction opposed to them from a quarter foreign to conscience. And the main and final thing in reserve to limit their career, after all the worthier restraints were annihilated, would be only this,—the resistance which men's self-interest opposes to one another's bad inclinations. A gloomy and humiliating spectacle truly it is, to be offered by a world of rational and moral agents, if we see that, instead of a repression of the propensity to ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... great action, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This high-water mark has often been reached. Men have given themselves to each other, with nothing to gain, with no self-interest to serve, and with no keeping back part of the price. It is false to history to base life on selfishness, to leave out of the list of human motives the highest of all. The miracle of friendship has been too often enacted on this dull earth of ours, to suffer us to doubt either its possibility ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... self-interest is more likely to warp your judgment than all other circumstances combined, therefore, look well to your duty when ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... of the Government by taxation, the process of supply is too facile. The funds so easily procured are in danger of being too profusely spent. Individual responsibility in money-matters, aided by direct self-interest, is usually more efficient in imposing limits to improvidence than a general sense of duty on the part of official personages. But if funds could be obtained ad libitum by the speculator, without the necessity of giving security for the payment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... obliged to be acting adversely to some one of whom he at once makes an enemy; for an attorney's weapons must necessarily be pointed almost invariably at our pockets! He is necessarily, also, called into action in cases when all the worst passions of our nature—our hatred and revenge, and our self-interest—are set in motion. Consider the mischief which might be constantly done on a grand scale in society, if the vast majority of attorneys and solicitors were not honorable, and able men! Conceive them, for a moment, disposed everywhere to stir up litigation, by availing themselves of their perfect ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... government, unless we were to exclude particular descriptions of men, such as the holders of the funds, from all office. I told him, there was great difference between the little accidental schemes of self-interest, which would take place in every body of men, and influence their votes, and a regular system for forming a corps of interested persons, who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury. He touched on the merits of the funding system, observed there was a difference of opinion about ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Worcester has made so much progress that at the three largest and best hotels, which make up nearly one hundred beds each, no intoxicating liquor of any kind is sold. A people thus willing to carry out their convictions, to the sacrifice of prejudice, appetite, and apparent self-interest, cannot long remain a nation of slave-holders. In common with the rest of New England, this town is remarkable for the number, size, and beauty of its places of worship. I calculated, with the aid of a well-informed inhabitant, that if the entire population were to go to a place of worship, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... were thundered the curses, from the other broke the benediction of the blessings; the one is barren, the other is verdant—'which thing is an allegory.' The Religion of Fear does nothing, the Religion of Love does all. The Religion of Self-interest is narrow, poor, mostly inoperative of any lofty enthusiasm or high nobleness of character. The Religion of Duty; 'I ought to worship, I am bidden to do this, that, or the other thing, which I do not a bit like to do. I am forbidden to do this, that, and the other thing which I should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... even among the men, all those who have displayed, either at reviews or in battles, capacity, activity, or valour, are all members of his Legion of Honour; and are bound to him by the double tie of gratitude and self-interest. They look to him alone for future advancements, and for the preservation of the distinction they have obtained from him. His emissaries artfully disseminate that a Bourbon would inevitably overthrow everything a Bonaparte has erected; and that all military ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... honest," he said; "practically none at all. Look at politics, the Church, art, the sciences—those who flourish are the imposters, while your honest men are foolish enough to starve in garrets. If a man will undertake nothing that is open to the suspicion of self-interest, he should abandon all his affairs at once and retire to a monastery, where possibly he will discover that the prior is cheating the abbot and the cellarer cheating them both. You have a great business opportunity, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... theory of foreign affairs was based on the idea that diplomacy was {184} mainly a matter of bargain and sale, with national commerce as the deciding factor. He believed so firmly that national self-interest would lead all European powers to make suitable treaties with the United States that he considered the navy as wholly superfluous, and would have been glad to sell it. But when circumstances arose calling for a different sort of diplomacy, he was ready to modify his methods; ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... press, if I chose, both these motives upon you, of pride and self-interest, with more force, but these are not motives which ought to be urged upon you at all. The only motive that I ought to put before you is simply that it would be right to do this; that the holding of property abroad, and the personal efforts of Englishmen to ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... in the upper hall, at the door of the vacant guest-room, the candle in her hand, Gladys had a sudden keen intimation that she was herself but human, endowed with muscles susceptible of overstrain, with nerves of sensitive fibre, with instincts importunate with the cry of self-interest, with impulses toward collapse, tears, terrors, anxieties—all in revolt against the sedulous constraint of will. The light of the candle in her hand, thrown upward on her face, showed the fictitious ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a second striking example of the impotence of philosophical and religious sentiments in a conflict with the energetic activity of self-interest. ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... ministry, who were either appointed by them, or afterwards chosen by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole church; and who have with all lowliness and innocency ministered to the flock of Church, in peace, and without self-interest, and were for a long time commended ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... The self-interest of each one of the parties to the war is evident, with the exception of Turkey. Why she ever entered in on the side of Germany, or on either side, is a puzzle. She was the one to lose in any event. German success meant German domination. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... reassuring to the recluses in his appearance and manner that they had not thought it necessary to behave very rigidly. It later occurred to this gentleman that the promptness with which the pretty mendicants procured him an interview with the Superior had a flavor of self-interest in; and that he who came to the Conservatorio in the place of a father might have been for a moment ignorantly viewed as a yet dearer and tenderer possibility. From whatever danger there was in this ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... with his smiling calmness, which had not yielded for an instant to the storm of Napoleon's reproaches, "Austria has no motives of self-interest. The sole advantage which the Emperor Francis wishes to derive from the present state of affairs is the influence which a spirit of moderation, and a respect for the rights of independent states, cannot fail to acquire from those who are animated with similar sentiments. ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... man had entered the service of grand vizier; but whether he had become a renegade through love for some Turkish maiden, or with the hope of ameliorating his condition in a worldly point of view, whether, indeed, self-interest or a conscientious belief in the superiority of the Moslem doctrines over those of Christianity, had swayed Alessandro, no ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... island of Elephanta, and, with the miasma just as deadly that rises from the swamps, makes any residence upon its lovely-seeming hillsides a constant menace. But where will not people stay if prompted by self-interest? The dwellers on the sides of Vesuvius do not lie awake to wait for its eruption, and the dwellers on Elephanta do not step any more gingerly in their bare feet because at any moment a sting may ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... country for another appeal, which I perceive is about to be made to popular prejudice, another attempt to obscure all distinct views of the public good, to overwhelm all patriotism and all enlightened self-interest, by loud cries against false danger, and by exciting the passions of one class against another. I am not mistaken in the omen; I see the magazine whence the weapons of this warfare are to be drawn. I hear already the din of the hammering of arms preparatory to the combat. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... But the moral sense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum of equity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or in case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. In those cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, even very attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would under ordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating circumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... us us is a little i, and over every one of us there is a little dot of self-importance, self-will, self-interest, self-confidence, self-complacency, or something to which we cling and for which we contend, which just as surely reveals self-life as if it were a mountain ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... and declare ourselves now even two. You are as modest as an archbishop on salary day, and seldom openly embrace territory; we prefer the frank style in all our adoptions. Let us not quarrel over that—you love freedom, we love free government. Our political thoughts are moulded in one die, though self-interest may vary them. To be mutually just toward each other, to live on terms of friendship, and preserve that amity which is our bulwark, serves well that unity of great principles which conserves and preserves our happiness. Yea! cursed ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the monastic and medieval idea of the religious calling, an idea involved in the mist of human passions and imaginations and the cause of terrible life tragedies. If we could but enter into the cloister and examine the religious vocation of those whom the self-interest of their parents had forced as children into a novice's cell and who had suddenly awakened to the life of the world—if indeed they ever do awake!—or of those whom their own self-delusions had led into it! Luther saw this life of the cloister at close quarters and suffered ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... [Footnote 28: Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters, but with regard to myself I am perfectly easy on this head. I did not, at my first setting out in public life, nearly seventeen years ago, turn my thoughts to subjects ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... freedom which abates Beyond the Straits: For patriot virtue starved to vice on Self-praise, self-interest, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... respects improved, by all of the great industrial nations. This is true in America of the manufacturing states, tho the agricultural states have still very few such regulations. As a result of these measures, accompanying and stimulating an enlightenment of the employers' self-interest, there has been a very remarkable improvement in such matters in recent years. In many American factories erected in the last quarter-century the conditions as to lighting, heating, ventilation, stairways, fire-escapes, protection ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... sorrows, that seemed to have departed from the family forever. But it was too late now to close it up; he must follow out the thread that led him on,—the thread of fate, if you choose to call it so; but rather the impulse of an evil will, a stubborn self-interest, a desire for certain objects of ambition which were preferred to what yet were recognized as real goods. Thus reasoned, thus raved, Eldredge, as he considered the things that he had done, and still intended ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when many men and women have hardly got a firm hold of life at all, or have parted with weak illusions. Yet years before she had said sternly to a friend who was meditating a flight from hard conditions of life: "The right course is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest." Many people could have said that, but I know no figure who more relentlessly and loyally carried out the principle than Charlotte Bronte, or who waged a more vigorous and tenacious battle with every onset of fear. "My conscience tells me," she ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... difficulties without blows. The peace people had their jubilee. They talked about the advance of intelligence, and the softening power of civilization. They placed war among the forgotten horrors of a dead barbarism. They proved that commerce had rendered war impossible, because it had made it against self-interest. They talked about reason and persuasion, and moral influences. They asked, 'Why not settle all troubles in a grand world's congress, some huge palaver and paradise of speechmakers, where it will be all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gratitude for the recommendation of that dignitary, by which Vermond himself first obtained his situation at Court; but there were others, who have been deemed deeper in the secret, who impute it to the less honourable source of self-interest, to the mere spirit of ostentation, to the hope of its enabling him to bring about the destruction of the De Polignacs. Be this as it may, the Abbe well knew that a Minister indebted for his elevation solely to the Queen would be supported ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... annum, that the evils of careless building and want of sanitary precautions become most apparent. Until recently sanitary science was but little studied, and many things were done a few years since which even the self-interest of a speculative builder would not do nowadays, nor would be permitted to do by the local sanitary authority. Yet houses built in those times are still inhabited, and in many cases sickness and even death are the result. But it is with shame ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... who love him,[1] as well as from many whom he generously supported, filling every heart capable of appreciating goodness and greatness with the deepest sorrow, affected me also in the most profound and painful degree. The stern duty of self-interest compels me to lay before your Highness a humble petition, the reasonable purport of which may, I hope, plead my excuse for intruding on your Highness at a time when so many affairs of importance claim your attention. Permit me to state the matter to ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... economic interests that are opposed to those of wage-earners. But this argument involves far too simple a theory of political human nature—a theory which orthodox socialism adopted from the classical political economy, and has tended to retain in spite of growing evidence of its falsity. Economic self-interest, and even economic class-interest, is by no means the only important political motive. Officials, whose salary is generally quite unaffected by their decisions on particular questions, are likely, if they are ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... taunt so readily rebuttable will anti-Utilitarians be excited to speedier apprehension of the nature of the lien which corporate self-interest is presumed to have upon individual self-devotion. Not the less tenaciously may they cling to their belief in the right of every one to do as he will with whatever has come by fair means into his exclusive and complete possession. Neither, I venture ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Joncaire, the principal French commander in the region under dispute, but he replied that he must wait for orders from the Governor in Quebec. One object of Washington's mission was to win over, if possible, the Indians, whose friendship for either the French or the English depended wholly on self-interest. He seems to have been most successful in securing the friendship of Thanacarishon, the great Seneca Chief, known as the Half-King. This native left it as his ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... cattle ranch work, and had been so employed. Before leaving London I inquired much as to the best part of America to go to, but, as is so often the case, I found that nearly all the advice I received was prompted by self-interest, i.e. that among the class I applied to, mostly agents connected in some way or other with America, each vaunted the excellence of the State and locality he worked for. In short, the result of all ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... Smith. There takes place in us a natural transposition of feelings, mediated through sympathy, which arouse in each of us the qualities of the other, and we can say "that morality in Smith's sense, just as Feuerbach taught later, is only reflected self-interest, although Smith himself was quite unwilling to look at sympathy as an egotistic principle. By means of a process that we can almost call a kind of self-deception of the imagination, we must look at ourselves with the eyes of others, a very sensible precaution of nature, which thus has created a balance ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... changeable, it is almost impossible to keep an army a whole year in the field without being interfered with. And whoever should reply: If the people have property outside the city, and see it burnt, they will not remain patient, and the long siege and self-interest will make them forget their prince; to this I answer that a powerful and courageous prince will overcome all such difficulties by giving at one time hope to his subjects that the evil will not be for long, ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... that we find God Himself appealing to men just at that point of self-interest. What a chapter is that fifty-fifth of Isaiah, beginning, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters', and so on, the second verse finishing, 'Eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness'. As much as to say, 'You ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... chaise stopped, the Baron awoke from his nap. At first he fancied that he was still in his friend's park; then he was startled by a celestial vision, which found him unarmed with his usual weapon—self-interest. The moonlight was brilliant; he could have read by it—even an evening paper. In the silence of the forest, under this pure light, the Baron saw a woman, alone, who, as she got into a hired chaise, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... seem the wilful blindness of self-interest; but the utterances of the press and the legislative debates of the period are similar in tone. In relation to another railroad, the "Boston Transcript" of Sept. 1, 1830, remarks: "It is not astonishing that so much reluctance exists against plunging into doubtful speculations.... The public itself ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... it is possible, or should be possible, to obtain these without owning the country in which are the mines, grain, and sugar cane. The United States needs Canada's products; it has no desire to own Canada. But in recent years the exchange of products has been subjected to a new influence. National self-interest has been added to private self-interest. This has intensified and called out many of the worst ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... appointment to some respectable post, possibly the same from which his victim has been evicted. Practical advantage carries the day against abstract notions of aesthetic fitness. Sublime it might be to see the guardians of the common weal striking down the unworthy, with a public spirit untainted by self-interest; but in China (and in some other countries) such machinery requires self-interest for its motive force. Wanting that, it would be like a windmill without wind, merely a ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... be convinced by the argument that, from a national point of view, a policy based on principles of sound morality is wiser, inasmuch as it is likely to be more successful, than one which excludes all considerations save those of cynical self-interest. There was truth in the commonplace remark made by a subject of ancient Rome, himself a slave and presumably of Oriental extraction, that bad government will bring ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... human nature and its inherent kindness. No; human nature is a sort of fetish which is credited with a great many amiable qualities it never possesses, and though there are exceptions to the general rule, Balzac's aphorism on mankind that 'Nature works by self-interest,' still holds ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... own quaint logic—the logic of self-interest—and this is how it reasoned: "The election of Bryan would disturb our control of American institutions, therefore American institutions would be destroyed by Bryan's election. On us, the 'System,' devolves the sacred if expensive duty of saving the nation, and, however abhorrent to our ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... of their voices, in a manner that rivalled civilized Europe. I was perfectly astonished at their volubility, and the pertinacity of their attentions, which were poured forth in the true Milesian fashion—an odd mixture of blarney, self-interest, and audacity. At Kingston these gentry are far more civil and less importunate, and we witnessed none of this disgraceful annoyance at any other port on the lake. One of these Paddies, in his hurry to secure ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... because man, in spite of evil temper, blundering and vanity, in spite of indolence and base desire, does also respond to Good Will and display Good Will. You may declare that all the good things in life are the result of causes over which man has no control, that in pursuit of an "enlightened self-interest" he makes things better inadvertently. But think of any good thing you know! Was it thus ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... in the conflagration of patriotism which consumed the consumer, a chance of bettering themselves. Having a constitutional right to do it, they took this tide in their affairs at what they (rather hastily) conceived to be its flood. Actuated by motives of the new ("enlightened") self-interest, they had proceeded to run up the prices of their goods by nice and easy gradations of from ten to twenty, thence to fifty, and were well on their way to a hundred, per cent., when a thunderbolt, an unexpected projectile, smashed the ring. It was a pity, in a way, for the process ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Several influences had been at work to make a new man of him. Hitherto his life had been unconsciously selfish. It had been all getting, and no giving. That had seemed inevitable in his college days; but when they were over, self-interest had still remained the strongest force. To attain, to gain what he desired most for himself, had brought him to this country practice, and for a while he was in danger of quenching finally the generous impulses that were a part of his ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her unpleasant, merely ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... responsible and immortal beings. It may be thought that I should have given this plea the precedence of every other. I did not, because I felt more anxious to make good my ground with the prudent and the philanthropic—to show them that self-interest and humanity demand our exertions in this cause. I knew that when I came to urge such efforts upon the attention of the Christian, I could not possibly fail. No one who is a sincere follower of Him who said "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... branch of commerce profitable to theologians, it is evidently not only superfluous, but injurious to the rest of society. Self-interest will sooner or later open the eyes of men. Sovereigns and subjects will one day adopt the profound indifference and contempt, merited by a futile system, which serves only to make men miserable. All persons will be sensible of the inutility of the many expensive ceremonies, which contribute ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... to name the men who a few years since created the 'Saturday Review' style, now imitated by another and a younger race. But when the style of a periodical is once formed, the continuance of it is preserved by a much more despotic impulse than the tendency to imitation,—by the self-interest of the editor, who acts as trustee, if I may say so, for the subscribers. The regular buyers of a periodical want to read what they have been used to read—the same sort of thought, the same sort of words. ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... THE CRUSADES.—The Crusades were a spontaneous movement of Christian Europe. It was a great tide, which bore away all classes of people. It lends to the Middle Ages an ideal and heroic character. An overpowering sentiment, submerging calculation and self-interest, swept over society. There was infinite suffering: countless lives were the forfeit. The results, however, were beneficent, 1. It is true that the conquests made in the East were all surrendered. The holy places were given up. Yet the Turks had received a check which was a protection ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the minister—coming in an hour afterwards to take up the interrupted discussion—"the kirk of the Marrow overrides all considerations of affection or self-interest. If you are to enter the Marrow kirk, you must live for the Marrow, and fight for the Marrow, and, above all, you must ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... upon a medical man or surgeon who deals with the thousands of human bodies, all wearing somewhere the repulsive distortions of civilization. The ordinary personality stripped of the pretense which cannot fool the doctor, appears so hysterical, so distorted by the heats of self-interest, ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... these countries, that humanity and self-interest are not closely united; therefore I fear it is that the former is here scarcely known. One day, riding in the Pampas with a very respectable "estanciero," my horse, being tired, lagged behind. The man often shouted to me to spur him. When I remonstrated that it was a pity, for the horse ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... weightier argument? They are responsible and immortal beings. It may be thought that I should have given this plea the precedence of every other. I did not, because I felt more anxious to make good my ground with the prudent and the philanthropic—to show them that self-interest and humanity demand our exertions in this cause. I knew that when I came to urge such efforts upon the attention of the Christian, I could not possibly fail. No one who is a sincere follower of Him who said "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... tenor was thus formulated: "In various degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty. While professing to seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and neutral peoples jointly. The tide of public trust in them has reached ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... scratching his grizzled head. "I've been kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of them Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyer's Crossing. He was a kind of friend o' Pete's wife. That's why I thought yer might find out ef he'd been there." Salomy Jane grew more self-reproachful at her father's self-interest in her "neighborliness." "But that ain't all," continued Mr. Clay. "Thar was tracks over the far pasture that warn't mine. I followed them, and they went round and round the house two or three times, ez ef they mout hev bin prowlin', and then I lost 'em in the woods again. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... already discussed, and those to which we are coming. It has sometimes been disputed whether his Toryism was much more than mere sentiment; and of course there were not wanting in his own day fellows of the baser sort who endeavoured to represent it as mere self-interest. But no impartial person nowadays, I suppose, doubts, however meanly he may think of Scott's political creed, that that creed was part, not of his interests, not even of his mere crotchets and crazes, literary and other, but of his inmost heart and soul. That reverence ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... consequence of new circumstances, a thing which has been pronounced just does not any longer appear to agree with utility, the thing which was just... ceases to be just the moment it ceases to be useful."[780] So that self-interest is still the basis of all virtue. And if, by the performance of duty, you are exposed to great suffering, and especially to death, you are perfectly justified in the violation of any and all contracts. Such is ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... abundant evidence to show that these particular virtues which belong to a self-subordinating life are those which have suffered most in the changes and new adjustments of modern society. We have replaced these virtues largely by those of self-interest, self-direction, and self-assertiveness. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... One would say, that, if there had formerly been such pleasant relations between them, there ought now to be mutual sympathy and forbearance, instead of mutual distrust and antagonism. One would say, too, that self-interest, the common interest of capital and labor, ought to keep them in harmony; while the fact is, that this very interest appears to put them in an attitude of partial defiance toward each other. I believe the most charitable traveller must come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... great advantage of an undisputed command, while Eumenes always had to contend with many competitors for the first place, which nevertheless he always obtained by his brilliant exploits. Sertorius was eagerly followed by men who were proud to obey him, but Eumenes was only obeyed out of self-interest, by men who were incompetent to lead. The Roman ruled the tribes of Lusitania and Iberia, who had been long before conquered by the Romans, while the Kardian led the Macedonians, when fresh from the conquest of the world. Yet ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... thing," said Mangan, rather testily. "It's an awful price to pay for a few puffs. I wonder a woman like that can bear him to come near her, but she pets the baboon as if he were a King Charles spaniel. Linnie, my boy, you're no longer first favorite. I can see that; self-interest has proved too strong; the flattering little review, the complimentary little notice, has ousted you. It isn't you who are privileged to meet my Lady ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly compounded ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the luckless abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to him,—not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... bankruptcy, oppression and tolerance. Their own science is dead among Jews, and the intellectual concerns of European nations do not appeal to them, because, faithless to themselves, they are strangers to abstract truth and slaves of self-interest. This abject wretchedness is stamped upon their penny-a-liners, their preachers, councillors, constitutions, parnassim, titles, meetings, institutions, subscriptions, their literature, their book-trade, their representatives, their happiness, and their misfortune. No heart, no feeling! ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... natures that burst into what is generally called recklessness and impiety the moment they feel that anything is being poured upon them for their good which does not come home to their inborn sense of right, or which appeals to anything like self-interest in them. Daring and honest by nature, and outspoken to an extent which alarmed all respectabilities, with a constant fund of animal health and spirits which he did not feel bound to curb in any way, he had gained for himself with ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Friendly persuasion, self-interest, wounded self-love carried the day. Reluctantly he decided upon the redoubtable sea-voyage. Whether he suffered from sea-sickness or no we are not told. In any case the visit was repeated, John Bull according the great Alsatian, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... seem to him quite useless. They ever are, he says, and ever were, "a drain to and an incumbrance on the Mother-country, requiring perpetual and expensive nursing in their infancy, and becoming headstrong and ungovernable in proportion as they grow up." All wise relations depend upon self-interest, and that needs no compulsion. If Gibraltar and Port Mahon and the rest were given up, the result would be "multitudes of places ... abolished, jobs and contracts effectually prevented, millions of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... commercial development of the West was characterized in his early days by a narrow colonial partisanship. He was a stout Virginian; and all stout Virginians of that day refused to admit the pretensions of other colonies to the land beyond the mountains. But from no man could the shackles of self-interest and provincial rivalry drop more quickly than they dropped from Washington when he found his country free after the close of the Revolutionary War. He then began to consider how that country might grow and prosper. ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... decree, and the commerce of Virginia made free, the planters were the only factor. Virginia, it was true, was made a royal province and put under deputy rule, but the big planters contrived to get the laws and customs their self-interest called for. There were only two classes—the rich planters, with their gifts of land, their bond-servants and slaves and, on the other hand, the poor whites. A middle class was ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... was a failure, and I told him I thought it was, and then he said he thought he ought to commit suicide, and I said "all right," which was disinterested advice to a friend in trouble; but, like all such advice, there was just a little bit of self-interest back of it, for if I could get a "scoop" on the other newspapers I could get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Weakness, piety, and self-interest combined to make Henry III. acquiesce in the legate's exactions. "I neither wish nor dare," said he, "to oppose the lord pope in anything." The union of king and legate was irresistible. The lay opposition was slow and feeble. Gilbert Marshal, though showing no lack of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... uneasily whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still be able to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them both to spend the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin was "a great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the Louvre school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist, "I'd a hundred times rather," he would reply, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... advised by some of her relations to secure before marriage some part at least of what she had, to be at her own disposal; which, though perhaps not wholly free from some tincture of self-interest in the proposer, was not in itself the worst of counsel. But the worthiness of her mind, and the sense of the ground on which she received me, would not suffer her to entertain any suspicion of me; and this laid on me the greater obligation, in point of ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... world use enthusiasts—like those two I have just been drawing out—for their tools; we don't let them make tools of us. Osmond, you know, is jackal to an asylum in London; Dr. Wycherley, I have heard, keeps two or three such establishments by himself or his agents: blinded by self-interest and that of their clique—what an egotistical world it is, to be sure!—they would confine a melancholy youth in a gloomy house, among afflicted persons, and give him nothing to do but brood; and so turn the scale against his reason. But I have my children's interest at ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... digest it. But they can't digest it and stay what they are; you've got to be democratic, to some extent, to understand the idea. What keeps us obeying laws we ourselves make? What keeps us obeying laws that make things inconvenient for us? Sheer self-interest, of course—but try to ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... those may justly be thrown out of their ministry, who were either appointed by them, or afterwards chosen by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole church; and who have with all lowliness and innocency ministered to the flock of Church, in peace, and without self-interest, and were for a long ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... its reason-to-be in economic causes. Profits, market, financing, are placed in certain jeopardy by such a labor policy, and this risk is not continued, generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deep below the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest and un-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance in the language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economic reason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it did not pay, and America stopped building a merchant marine because ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... reception, by pointing out the almost necessarily direct pecuniary benefit ultimately derivable from his unpalatable tax; and the instant that he has disclosed his proposal, in the same breath carries our attention to a similar topic—an assurance calculated to arouse the self-interest and excite the approbation first of the commercial classes, and then of all classes, by the means this tax will give the Minister of proposing "great commercial reforms," and "reducing the cost of living." No power of description we possess can adequately set before the reader the effect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to adopt the manners of such great examples: but self-interest, some affection to Rebecca, and concern for the character of his family, made him wish to talk a little more with Henry, who new repeated what he had said respecting his marriage with Rebecca, and promised "to come the very next day in secret, and deliver her from the care of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... some particular kinds of it are more open and avowed in some ages than in others; and, I suppose, it may be spoken of as very much the distinction of the present to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to self-interest, than appears to have been done formerly. Upon this account it seems worth while to inquire whether private interest is likely to be promoted in proportion to the degree in which self-love engrosses us, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... increase; which is desirable, as it would leave us less dependent on America, than we now are, for the raw material. The shipping of America is not held by the cotton-growing states; and although the nationality of the southerns is no doubt great, yet their love of self-interest is much greater, and would always preponderate in their choice of vessels. It would be even better, if found necessary, to make some arrangement in the shape of draw-back, than that a nation which has imposed a duty on our manufactured goods, almost amounting to ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... attempt the very extirpation of the name of christian; and it was unfortunate for the gospel, that many errors had, about this time, crept into the church: the christians were at variance with each other; self-interest divided those whom social love ought to have united; and the virulence of pride occasioned a variety ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... implacable self-interest with which I have just come in contact, which is the law of the world, the watchword of society! So, in refusing to share the common folly, I risk remaining in isolation, and I must be strong to make others ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... longer, in the hope that she could secure Graydon and wealth also? The persistence of a will that had always had its own way decided finally in favor of the last course of action. She would not give Graydon up unless she must, and not until she must. Accustomed to consult self-interest, she believed that her father was doing the same, that he was favoring Arnault because the latter would be more useful to him, and that for this reason he was exaggerating the Muirs' peril, if not inventing it. She dismissed his words about leaving ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... of motives. Better, perhaps, than usual, when a careful weighing of the relative proportions of self-esteem, self-interest and higher impulses ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... kickers, visionaries, and frauds! Is there any practical doubt that we should have witnessed all this? None whatever; in fact, something of the same sort was heard in Europe at the time of the demonetization of gold. It all goes to show that self-interest blinds the intellects of the best of men so that they readily believe that which is to their interest is honest, but that the farmer who seeks to raise the price of what he has to sell thereby throws himself down as dishonest. Of course, the ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... than clever enough to discover her shortcomings. Mme. d'Espard, sure that her pupil would do her credit, did not decline to form her. In short, the compact between the two women had been confirmed by self-interest on either side. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... desperate risk. Well! I had all the credit of the offer, without any of the trouble and expence of putting it into execution. I have detailed these facts as another proof of my enthusiasm. I never acted from any cold calculating notions of self-interest. If I thought it right to perform an act of public or private duty, having once made up my mind, I never suffered any selfish considerations to interpose to prevent my ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... misfortunes, in a country where humanity to enemies is looked upon as a crime, friendship to those of the same party altogether unknown, and even common civility never practised but for the gratification of self-interest, or some ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... a strong impression upon a medical man or surgeon who deals with the thousands of human bodies, all wearing somewhere the repulsive distortions of civilization. The ordinary personality stripped of the pretense which cannot fool the doctor, appears so hysterical, so distorted by the heats of self-interest, so monkey-like! ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... She even consented that it might be the first deliberate falsehood this honourable, discriminating gentleman had told in all his life. At the moment, he may have been actuated by a motive that deceived him, but even unknown to him the Wrandall self-interest was at work. He was not lying for her, but for the Wrandalls! And she would have to remain his debtor all her life because ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... pray for the Dead that they may be loosed from their sins"—if natural affection, even, do not move them to think of the probable sufferings of their own near and dear—sufferings which they may have it in their power to alleviate—at least, a motive of self-interest ought to make them reflect that when they themselves are with the dead, retributive justice may leave them forgotten by their own flesh and blood, as they forget others now. But to those who do faithfully unite with the Church in ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the rapid growth of trade; imports from the United States to Canada had grown especially fast and Canada now ranked third in the list of the Republic's customers. Yet in many ways the tariff hindered free intercourse. Though every dictate of self-interest and good sense demanded a reduction of duties, Canada would not and did not take the initiative. Time and again she had sought reciprocity, only to have her proposals rejected, often with contemptuous indifference. When Sir Wilfrid Laurier announced in ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... my wife and I to supper; and so she to read, and made an end of the Life of Archbishop Laud, which is worth reading, as informing a man plainly in the posture of the Church, and how the things of it were managed with the same self-interest and design that every other thing is, and have succeeded accordingly. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... through baffling mist, Is a professional philanthropist, Rosy-gilled, genial, hearty. A mouthing Friend of Man. He dreams he's deep In jungles of self-interest, where creep Sleuth-hounds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... magnitude. Besides, it were base to quit my faith while the wind of fortune sets against it, unless I were so placed, that my conversion, should it take place, were free as light from the imputation of self-interest. I was bred a Catholic—bred in the faith of Bruce and Wallace—I will hold that faith till time and reason shall convince me that it errs. I will serve this poor Queen as a subject should serve an imprisoned and wronged sovereign—they who placed me in her service ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... of it. The claim that the work of the American Missionary Association makes upon our attention, may be presented in a variety of forms. Its work is commended to us, for example, because it is patriotic, that is, it makes its appeal to our self-interest. The instinct of self-preservation demands that we sustain it. Four and a half millions of Negroes in our Southern States are utterly illiterate. Half that number of Southern whites are in the same deplorable condition. ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... any such ever reformed their lives after setting themselves on Pagan ground, by opposing Christianity, I have yet to learn the fact. It is the morality of a wicked world that simply asks for the profitable, and not the right; which inquires not for duty, but for self-interest—for the opinions of men; it is a body without a spirit—a whitewashed sepulchre—splendid ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... implicit, ostentation of skill, and spleen, through the want of some serious, useful occupation. And as this practice arises from such corrupt sources, so it has a tendency to increase them; and indeed may be considered as an express method of begetting and inculcating self-interest, ill will, envy, and the like. For by gaming a man learns to pursue his own interest solely and explicitly, and to rejoice at the loss of others, as his own gain, grieve at their gain, as his own loss, thus entirely reversing the order established by ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... this will regulate itself."—Will it, indeed? Be good enough to tell me how! All the potent individual agencies now affecting it are attached by self-interest to the wrong side. The Capitalists, the Employers, the Exporters, engaged in the Silk trade, all own property in Lyons, and are naturally anxious that the manufacture shall be more and more concentrated there. The Shipper, the Importer, the Jobber of our own country, has a like interest ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... economy(104) (husbandry) aims at securing a maximum of personal advantage with a minimum of cost or outlay.(105) And there are always two intellectual incentives at the foundation of this economy. There is, first, self-interest, the positive manifestation of which is the effort to acquire as much of the world's goods as possible, and the negative expression of which, the effort to lose as little of them as possible—acquisitiveness—saving. Self-interest, losing its ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... in fairs and markets, and who have, in fact, a natural love for strife. But all are not so. There are many respectable men here who, though a little touched, as is only natural after all, by a little cacoethes of self-interest, yet, never suffer it to interfere with the steadiness and propriety of their conduct, or the love of peace and good will. It is these men, who, in truth, sustain the character of the Orange-Institution. These are the men of independence and education who repress—as far as they can—the turbulence ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit. Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... "all Europe is going to pieces" with Russia, and faces the same "utter ruin," Lenine covers his plea for Russia under an appeal to the self-interest of other nations. Yet his confession that Russia is "going to pieces" and trembles on the brink of "utter ruin" is plain enough, making his whole argument a cry to the "capitalistic" nations to help Socialistic Russia. Indeed, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... plain to her the attitude of American men and women and the semi-independence of the latter. As well explain theology to a child. To her mind the undeviating path of absolute obedience was the only possible way. Anything outside of a complete renunciation of self-interest and thought meant ruin and was not even to be whispered about. I gave it up and came back to her sphere of poetry ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... say so?" repeated the unhappy Amy, laying aside every consideration of consistency and of self-interest. "Oh, if I did, I foully belied him. May God so judge me, as I believe he was never privy to a thought ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'Catch several hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society—the more whole coats, so to say—the firmer are ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the possession of an extensive franchise, and upon enlightened self-interest to guarantee their proper use of it. Macaulay rejoined, in the Edinburgh Review, that the masses might possibly conclude that they would get more pleasure than pain out of universal spoliation; and that if ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... sentiments—self-destroying; but I always maintain that sentiment is stronger than fact, and even than self-interest. I see clearly how foolish these feelings are, and how they operate to the disadvantage of those whom they influence. Yet I confess that were I in the same position I should be just as foolish. If I lived in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... grew red and pale in a breath, and successive emotions of envy and old rivalship, humbled pride and fierce discontent, passed across his turbulent heart. But these died away as the predominant thought of self-interest, and somewhat of that admiration for success which often seems like magnanimity in grasping minds, and something too of haughty exultation, that he stood a King's brother in the halls of his exile, came to chase away the more hostile and menacing feelings. Then ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and self-restraint, in order to reach a distant goal, no longer existed; and, although a woman of many amiable and generous impulses, she had not a shred of principle to take the place of the motive of self-interest, which hitherto had been so peremptory in its exactions. What she was in delicacy in 1791, that she remained in 1796,—five years after the disappearance of her social disabilities; a pretty fair ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... per annum, that the evils of careless building and want of sanitary precautions become most apparent. Until recently sanitary science was but little studied, and many things were done a few years since which even the self-interest of a speculative builder would not do nowadays, nor would be permitted to do by the local sanitary authority. Yet houses built in those times are still inhabited, and in many cases sickness and even death ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... have not gobbled up one solitary foot of territory. Which is finer, grander, than your Napoleonic glory! And yet it's selfish, of coh'se it is. But listen here, there'll never be any Utopia, Altruria, Millennium, or what not, that don't coincide with self-interest. And first among the races of the earth, the Americans have made 'em coincide, and I want to know right now if the Americans are not the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... their own ambition and self-interest, Sir Duncan," answered Montrose, "who brought the country to the pass in which it now stands, and rendered necessary the sharp remedies which we are now ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... with the extremes of extrospection and introspection, it is safe to say that in the vast majority of people there is a definite and unassailable interest in both of these directions. Interest in others is not altruism and interest in the self is not self-interest or egoism. But, on the whole, they who are not interested in others never become philanthropists; they who are not interested in things never become savants; and they who do not dig deep into themselves are not philosophers. There are, therefore, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... would not have been nearly so well supported as it was, had it not been for the fact that the abuses which existed touched the self-interest of many persons who were by no means Reformers at heart, and who in fact cared nothing about responsible government. The first successful attack which was made on the existing order of things was with regard to the fees charged on land grants. These fees went to the various officials, ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... forbidden; and correlatively in the subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, assurance of the being, the power, the veracity and seeingness of the law-giver, in whom I here comprise the legislative, judicial and executive functions; and secondly, self-interest, desire, hope and fear. Now from this view, it is evident that the deeds or works of the Law are themselves null and dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped and ink colored paper ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... America, here is your real problem! Southern self-interest may be relied upon to keep the Negro here; being here, no human power can prevent him from contributing his quota to the atmosphere of the group in which all the sons of the South must find their environing inheritance. In the contact of the street ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Apart from the self-interest and happiness of its inmates, it was no small benefit to others that such a home was made in that rugged country. Such homes are the outposts of the army of pioneers: here they can pause and rest, gathering courage and confidence when they regard them as establishments ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... was less than a year old when this petition was presented. It was characteristic of Mormon duplicity to find their representatives in Great Britain appealing to Queen Victoria on the ground of self-interest, while their chiefs in the United States were pointing to the organization of the Battalion as a proof of their fidelity to the home government. Practically no notice was taken of this petition. Vancouver Island, was, however, held out to the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... interests and inclinations, and prefer them to one's own, may promote a habit of general benevolence which may outlast the present occasion. Every thing, in short, which tends to abstract a man in any degree, or in any way, from self,—from self-admiration and self-interest, has, so far at least, a beneficial ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... reason, the law of nature, and principles of humanity, to deny it, and plead innocent, when accused of witchcraft, and yet, at the same time, to be acting witchcraft in the sight of all men, when they know their lives lie at stake by doing it. Self-interest teaches ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... is to put chains upon himself, that to maim another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence of God furnishes a scientific ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... is a branch of commerce profitable to theologians, it is evidently not only superfluous, but injurious to the rest of society. Self-interest will sooner or later open the eyes of men. Sovereigns and subjects will one day adopt the profound indifference and contempt, merited by a futile system, which serves only to make men miserable. All persons will ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... force of the International Congress went in favor of the idea of reforming the prisoners. For this the body advocated stimulating the prisoners' self-interest, thus: ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... absolute humanity, justice, and morality of slavery, its excellence as a social institution, and its efficiency in maintaining order and insuring progress, must be fully established and universally admitted, in order to enlist the powerful motives of self-interest on the side of the projected revolution. And finally, it was necessary to show that the divine institution was in danger, that the free labor of the North was actively hostile to it and planning its ruin, and that this hostility was to be aided by all the selfish desires of the protectionists and ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... requires a far more vital and enduring affection, a distinctly superior mutual understanding and sense of justice, and a far larger natural equipment of tact and power of adjustment than was required in other economic conditions, in order to make the family life enduring and happy. The economic self-interest of each member of the family in the domestic circle was obviously that of every other member when the household was a workshop. Even, the land and all which it implied was a family possession in primitive days. And the worker's ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... saying little; and understands the art of putting others forward to save the necessity of posing before them; then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far greater abilities to play like puppets, and despising those whom it has brought down to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails; it has the advantage of persistence over the plasticity of ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Honesty, and Wisdom, are ever suffering, ever struggling, ever triumphing. No, it matters not with me if the spirit of intelligence and power, of freedom and culture, which must go the rounds of the earth, is always dominated by the instinct of self-interest. That must be; that is inevitable. But the instinct of self-interest, O my Brother, goes with the flesh; the body-politic dies; nations rise and fall; and the eternal Spirit, the progenitor of all ideals, passes to better or worse hands, still chastening and strengthening itself ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... week, died to deliver us. At all events, if that is to be the condition of man, and of society, then man is not made in the likeness of God, and has no need to be led by the Spirit of God. For what the likeness of God and the Spirit of God are, Passion-week tells us—namely, Love which knows no self-interest; Love which cares not for itself; Love which throws its own life away, that it may save those who have hated it, rebelled against it, put it to a ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... trade between Australia and the mother-country, the safety of the Cape route must always be a question of the very highest importance in the eyes of Australian statesmen. And apart from such considerations of contingent self-interest, Australians had strong personal feelings over the issue between Kruger and the Uitlanders. Australian miners formed no small section of the population of the Rand. Australians were under no illusions as to the idyllic character of the ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... by the time her visit had come to an end, her new education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, egotistical, and purse-proud ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... he reasoned until the first generous impulse to proclaim the truth and relinquish his titles and his estates to their rightful owner was forgotten beneath the mass of sophistries which self-interest had advanced. But during the balance of the trip, and for many days thereafter, he was moody and distraught. Occasionally the thought obtruded itself that possibly at some later day Tarzan would regret his magnanimity, and claim ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... certain allowance must, indeed, be made for the vis inertiae of whatever exists, which makes it exert a stubborn and not unwholesome resistance to the reformer's zeal. This conservatism (which may, however, have more laudable motives than mere self-interest) Bjoernson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club in the third act. But, I fancy, it looks to him only as a sinister power, which for its own base purposes has smitten humanity with blindness to its own welfare. Though not intending to enter into a discussion, I am also tempted ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... they are able to supply the place of any good which may be in it by a project of their own,—namely, by a sort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the physical wants of men, progressively carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as they have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one quarter to another. The strategy he used was not his own free choice nor were the battles he fought contrived by himself. But his devotion to the Imperial cause, his unfailing loyalty, and his indifference to self-interest have kept his memory fresh and will always keep it fresh. If, two hundred years after his death, a chieftain was born of his blood to carry the Minamoto name to the pinnacle of glory, who shall say that heaven did not thus answer the prayer put up by Yoshisada ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not see, or seeing will not act wisely? And I will ask another question, of the highest magnitude in my mind, to wit: if the eastern and northern states are dangerous in union, will they be less so in separation? If self-interest is their governing principle, will it forsake them, or be restrained by such an event? I hardly think it would. Then, independently of other considerations, what would Virginia, and such other states as might be inclined to join her, gain by a separation? Would they not, most unquestionably, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... rapid hand of gain, of what Jouffroy calls self-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain and will of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform. An illustration of this statement, and a practical recognition of the physiological method ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... Function Works.—Doubtless it will be always true that the regulative function in its largest sense will be the main business of the city government. The interests of individuals clash. The self-interest of one often runs counter to the interests of another, and the city government is their mediator. At every turn one sees evidences of public oversight. The citizen leaves home to go to work in the morning. A sidewalk is provided for his convenience and safety ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... people, some drawn by curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest—house owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants—streamed into Moscow as blood ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... mankind. The aristocrats are not at the high table, the kings are not enthroned, those who are enthroned are but pretenders and SIMULACRA, kings of the vulgar; the real king and ruler is every man who sets aside the naive passions and self-interest of the common life for the rule and service of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... secretly jealous of Erle—if it had been possible he would have supplanted him. Only he himself knew how he had tempted him, and the subterfuges to which he had stooped. He had encouraged Erle's visits to Beulah Place from motives of self-interest, and had been foiled by ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... what sad music fills the quiet hall If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh! what noises shake the tranquil house, If old SELF-INTEREST cheats her of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... wise men, especially if Italians, was by no means inclined to the credulous view of human nature. Indeed, he was in the habit of detecting self-interest in the simplest actions of his fellow-creatures. And when the Parson thus invited him to pot luck, he smiled with a kind of lofty complacency; for Mrs. Dale enjoyed the reputation of having what her friends styled "her little tempers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge in "little tempers" ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... diminish the number of their lights. The cheerful groups broke up, strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled, bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. In its own way suffering was a relief. It was the first time he had given it a chance since he had brought himself ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... sufficient power to overcome all possibility of resistance. You ought likewise to reflect that matters will necessarily take a quite different turn than they have hitherto done. Hitherto your followers have been influenced by their own self-interest, not only considering the late viceroy as your enemy and your cause as good, but all of them looked upon him as their personal enemy, who wished to deprive them of their properties, and to put to death every one who opposed his designs. Under these ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... was now nearly seventy years old, could spend his thirty thousand a year as he pleased, without feeling that he injured the prospects of his children, all finely provided for, whose attentions and proofs of affection were, moreover, not prompted by self-interest. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... independent piracy in the Mediterranean was in some sort an infringement of the rights of himself and his brother. One of the most salient peculiarities of the corsairs at this time was the apparent recklessness with which they assailed others who were participants in their nefarious business. Self-interest and policy would seem, to the observer in the present day, to have dictated quite a different course of action; but we shall see, when we come to deal with the life-history of Kheyr-ed-Din, that this infinitely wiser and more intellectual ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... fond of him even before the drunken riot in which he got his wounds. This friendship had then become a proprietary emotion, a compound of affection, remorse, the fear of revenge, and even a sort of proselytizing zeal mixed up with self-interest. Muene-Motapa hoped that in time his prisoner would renounce all desire for the white world, embrace the beliefs and habits of the Mambava, become a subtle counselor in diplomacy as well as in wars of conquest. In short, those tales of the lands beyond these ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the only such synonyme. In this case, I found afterwards that the man in question, a small grocer, had been an object of suspicion to the whites from his readiness to lend money to the negroes, or sell to them on credit; in which, perhaps, there may have been some mixture of self-interest with benevolence. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... body of electors so ideally adapted to their office, as regards absolute impartiality, knowledge of the special qualifications and record of candidates, solicitude for the best result, and complete absence of self-interest. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... order than to obtain an increase of the slender salary with which they make shift. Personal interest is very rarely a powerful motive force with crowds, while it is almost the exclusive motive of the conduct of the isolated individual. It is assuredly not self-interest that has guided crowds in so many wars, incomprehensible as a rule to their intelligence—wars in which they have allowed themselves to be massacred as easily as the larks hypnotised by ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... common motives still inclines to reduce everything to a single impulse—the young are moved exclusively by self-interest and the search for pleasure. But surely this view is false. Hazlitt, the English essayist most interested in psychology, in his essay on "Mind and Motive," correctly observes that, "love of strong excitement both in thought and action" has much ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... commit, uncheck'd by shame, What in a beast so much you blame? 70 What is a law, if those who make it Become the forwardest to break it? The case is plain: you would reserve All to yourselves, while others starve. Such laws from base self-interest spring, Not from the reason of the thing—" He was proceeding, when a swain Burst out,—"And dares a wolf arraign His betters, and condemn their measures, And contradict their wills and pleasures? 80 We have establish'd laws, 'tis true, But laws are made for such as you. Know, sirrah, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... allure, nor fear to repel. The whole world is the same to me. That I have a purpose, I admit; and even you may know me better by and bye! Till then, no professions, no promises, no pledges. I use you for my own selfish purposes, that is all; and you can frankly study your own self-interest. We are two clay jars swept along down the Ganges of life. For a few threads of the dark river's current, we travel on, side by side! You have frankly taken me at my word! I have taken you at yours! There is a written order ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Army had resorted to severe measures, though they by no means went to the extremes that were reported in the press. It was realized, however, that the establishment of a permanent peace must rest upon an appeal to the good will and self-interest of the natives. The treatment of the conquered territories, therefore, was a matter of the highest concern not only with reference to the public opinion at home but to the lasting success of the military operations which had ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... which he had long triumphed,— "and I have always felt that I did right in advising against a romantic notion of self-sacrifice in such matters. You may commit a greater wrong in that than in an act of apparent self-interest. You have not put the case fully before me, and it isn't necessary that you should, but if you contemplate any rash sacrifice, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... triumph of loyalty and self-interest, and such is its limit. "A regimental cloak," continues our author, "may sometimes be seen covering a fat body inclosed in all the robes of the Turkish costume; the whole bundle, including the fur-lined gown, being strapped together round ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... will give you all Pietrino's letters, but I should just like to run on with my own impressions from them first. It seems that, since Madame Danterre's death, there has been a good deal of wild talk against her in Florence, which was kept down by self-interest as long as she was living and an excellent paying-machine. You will see, when you read the gossip, that very little is to the point. But, on the other hand, Pietrino has valuable information from one of the nurses. She is a young ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the present situation—from Pratt's standpoint of yesterday—is this. He's so sure of his own safety that he doesn't mind revealing to the daughter that the mother's in his power. Why? Because Pratt, like most men of his sort, cannot believe that self-interest isn't paramount with everybody—it's beyond him to conceive it possible that Miss Mallathorpe would do anything that might lose her several thousands a year. He argued—'So long as I hold that will, nobody and nothing can ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... offensive—manner than by the French in the course of a conquering onslaught. They did not realise these things partly because they did not enjoy Wellington's full confidence, and in a greater measure because they were blinded by self-interest, because, as O'Moy told Forjas, they placed private considerations above public duty. The northern nobles whose lands must suffer opposed the measure violently; they even opposed the withdrawal of labour from those ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... incognita, she went, under various disguises, to see him whom she had never ceased to love. These mysterious visits soon became no longer a secret to any one; and then Conde and his sister could convince themselves how different are the sentiments which love inspires and those which self-interest and vanity simulate. The great Conde, by his intelligence and bearing, had all the means of pleasing women; but obtained small success notwithstanding. Mademoiselle Vigean excepted, he appears to have been incapable of inspiring the tender passion, in the truest ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... man, if ever there was one. He was a man of big ideas, too big for prejudice or suspicion or self-interest. His mind was at once imaginative and matter-of-fact, making him that rare combination, a practical idealist. But the abiding memory which I shall retain of him as long as I live is not his wide knowledge, his singleness of purpose, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... indeed, look dangerous; but on the whole is not revolt, unknown now for five generations, an impossibility? The Three Estates can, by management, be set against each other; the Third will, as heretofore, join with the King; will, out of mere spite and self-interest, be eager to tax and vex the other two. The other two are thus delivered bound into our hands, that we may fleece them likewise. Whereupon, money being got, and the Three Estates all in quarrel, dismiss them, and let the future go as it can! As good Archbishop Lomenie was wont to say: "There are ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... prosperity has been counted on through some appointment, long expected and long sought. How many troubles are to be allayed! how many entreaties and pledges given to the ministerial divinities! how many visits of self-interest paid! At last, thanks to her boldness, Madame Rabourdin heard the hour strike when she was to have twenty thousand francs a ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... years in totally different environments had dug a great gulf between them. He felt an arbitrary sense of duty toward her, she knew, but in its manifestations it never lapped over the bounds of his own immediate self-interest. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that Mr. Spencer tries to erect a safeguard against such moral disruption, by asserting that for every immoral act, word, or thought, each man during this life receives minute and exact retribution, and that thus a regard for individual self-interest will effectually prevent any moral catastrophe. But by what means will he enforce the acceptance of a dogma which is not only incapable of proof, but is opposed to the commonly received opinion ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... that with a woman justice and self-interest are inextricably interwoven, immediately began to search for the visitor's selfish motive in offering to surrender the murderer, if, indeed, she meant to surrender the real perpetrator of the crime and not to shield him behind someone against ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... character. With the merely base motives which led him to seek her affection and put him at secret hostility with Sidney Kirkwood, there mingled before long a strain of feeling which was natural and pure; he became a little jealous of his father and of Sidney on other grounds than those of self-interest. Intolerable as his home was, no wonder that he found it a pleasant relief to spend an evening in Hanover Street; he never came away without railing at himself for his imbecility in having married Clem. For the present he had to plot with his wife and ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the risk to herself was practically removed forever. Thus faded the old life out of Arthur's view, its sin-stained personages frightened off the scene by his well-used knowledge of their crimes. Whatever doubt they held about his real character, self-interest accepted him ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... that it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards helping or delivering myself, that I had made all the pleas I ever could have made to all eternity; and that all my pleas were vain, for I saw that self-interest had led me to pray, and that I had never once prayed from any respect to the glory of God. I saw that there was no necessary connection between my prayers and the bestowment of divine mercy, that they laid not the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... by rising from her chair and removing her hat. Reckage watched the play of her arms as she stood before the mirror, and he did not see, as she could, the reflection of his face—sensual, calculating, and, stormed as it was for the moment by the meanest feelings of self-interest, repellent. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... must be enlisted for our cause ere it can succeed. Why is it that, having accomplished so much, the woman suffrage movement does not force itself as a vital issue into the thoughts of the masses? Is it not because the ends which it most prominently seeks do not enlist the self-interest of mankind, and those palpable wrongs which it had in early days to combat ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... benefit it. It had been crystallized in a previous epoch, even as the tenets of its church were the crystallized superstitions of a barbaric age. It was, in fact, a venerable institution which certain men wished to perpetuate not so much from self-interest as from a blind veneration for its age and traditions. To them even the interests of the people were of far less importance than the maintenance of this anachronism in its absoluteness. Where the German rulers had the intelligence to divert opposing forces ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... influence; whose whole lives, therefore, are an education in the noble art of suppressing natural affection and sympathy, are not likely to have any large stock of these commodities left. But, without them, there is no conscience, nor any restraint on the conduct of men, except the calculation of self-interest, the balancing of certain present gratifications against doubtful future pains; and experience tells us how much that is worth. Every day, we see firm believers in the hell of the theologians commit acts by which, as they believe when cool, they risk eternal ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... in those who call themselves friends, or zealous and affectionate servants, &c. &c. You must have sufficient strength of character to bear continually in mind that all these professions are mere words, that all these people are alike false, and actuated but by one motive, self-interest. To secure yourself from secret and open enemies, you must farther have sufficient courage to live without a friend or a confidante, for such persons at court are only spies, traitors in the worst forms. All this is melancholy and provoking, to be sure; but all this you must see without feeling, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... affectionate awe has sometimes lifted him to heaven, a spiteful hate has often hurled him down to hell. Every nation, every party, faction, and cabal among his own and other peoples, has judged him from its own standpoint of self-interest and self-justification. Whatever chance there may be of reading the secrets of his life lies rather in a just consideration of the man in relation to his times, about which much is known, than in an ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lines of the educational necessities of a modern community, plain enough to see, so that every man who is not blinded by prejudice and self-interest can see them to-day. We have now before us a phase of opportunity in educational organisation that will never recur again. Now that the apostolic succession of the old pedagogy is broken, and the entire system discredited, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... came from some violent rival of his. In this opinion Rita concurred, formulating, in ill-composed words of her own, this thought: virtue is indolent and niggardly, wasting neither time nor paper; only self-interest is ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art gives our personality the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... be a dozen reasons. Purely as an hypothesis, Grell may have a hold on these people by threatening them with exposure for some crime they have committed. Self-interest is the finest incentive I know ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... certain point are virtues. Beyond that point they become vices. Certainly we should think well of ourselves, and then act so that this good opinion is merited. Self-interest and selfishness are the main-springs of progress. Most of us need some inducement to do good work. It is well that it is so. The ones who deserve the great rewards generally get them, whether they are mental ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... humanity it would produce. Sir Tom himself had humour enough to appreciate the philosophy of the old humorist, and the droll spectator position which he had evidently chosen for himself, as though he could somehow see and enjoy all the struggles of self-interest raised by his will, with one of those curious self-delusions which so often seem to actuate the dying. Sir Tom, however, had thought it little more than a folly even at the moment when it had amused him ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... that we are doing our full share to bring about such contact and to get ourselves and what we believe in properly understood, believe in not only because it happens to be our job in life and our self-interest, but because in the general scheme of things it serves a legitimate and useful and necessary ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... than any physical torture. I thought of the world's wicked misjudgments passed on those who are greater in spirit than itself,—how, even when we endeavour to do good to others, our kindest actions are often represented as merely so many forms of self-interest and self-seeking,—how our supposed 'best' friends often wrong us and listen credulously to enviously invented tales against us,—how even in Love—ah!-Love!—that most etherial yet most powerful of passions!—a rough word, an unmerited slight, may separate for a lifetime those whose love would ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Rome the industry and zeal of the inferior clergy are kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in any established protestant church. The parochial clergy derive many of them, a very considerable part of their subsistence from the voluntary oblations of the people; a source of revenue, which confession gives them many opportunities of improving. The mendicant orders ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... their calls for aid; and the demand for that they rested chiefly upon the same ground which naturally sustained part of their own calculations of reimbursement in some shape, direct or indirect—local self-interest. The dislike to the entire loss of a large outlay on an uncertain event is not peculiar to this commercial age. Appeals on the side of patriotism and of public enthusiasm over the jubilee of a century would be at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... that the majority of men and women were fakirs pure and simple, whose chief motives were prompted solely by self-interest; and any suggestion to reform the world he invariably greeted with laughter. In fact, the world in his opinion, was not worth reforming; yet, in spite of this melancholy truth, he had remained human to the core, and took a live interest in that world of men which he knew to be ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... complete revelation. From first to last we see in him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible idealist. His ideals are narrow, and his devotion to them fanatical; but it is devoid, if not of egoism, at any rate of self-interest and self-seeking. As he shrank from applying the money entrusted him to ends of personal luxury, so also he shrank from making his ideas and convictions subserve any ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Mrs. Merwyn's self-interest and natural affection led her to yield to necessity with fairly good grace. The course resolved upon by Willard preserved her son and the property. When the South had accomplished its ambitious dreams she believed she would have ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... For my part, I contend that India surpasses all in importance; in India you can often trade a knife, a fork, or a pair of scissors with the savages for its full weight in gold. We must contrive it so that the plan we put before the council will not smell of self-interest, or else we shall get ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... Himself and with His eyes." With less vagueness, and quite as mystically, Fenelon defined the sublime love taught by Madame Guyon in the following maxim, afterwards condemned at Rome: "There is an habitual state of love of God which is pure charity, without any taint of the motive of self-interest. Neither fear of punishment nor desire of reward have any longer part in this love; God is loved not for the merit, or the perfection, or the happiness to be found in loving Him." What singular seductiveness ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... poorly fed as the scholars. The punishments are severe, no paternal remonstrance or guidance, the under-masters maltreated on applying the rules, despised by their superiors and without any influence on their pupils.—"Libertinage, idleness self-interest animated all breasts, there being no tie of friendship uniting either the masters to the scholars nor ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he did or said. He wandered by the sea till it was dark, and then went home and passed a sleepless night in dreams of wealth, by which alone it seemed his love could be cleansed from all appearance of self-interest. Before his mother awoke in the morning he slipped out, and walked into the town, where he loitered down by the quay, kicking his heels, until it was time to present himself at the hotel ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the first, but with more concentrated power, Mr. Gladstone tells his father (Jan. 17th, 1832) how the excitement has subsided, but still he sees at hand a great crisis in the history of mankind. New principles, he says, prevail in morals, politics, education. Enlightened self-interest is made the substitute for the old bonds of unreasoned attachment, and under the plausible maxim that knowledge is power, one kind of ignorance is made to take the place of another kind. Christianity teaches ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... rain swept against the panes, and tears stole from under the girl's long lashes—tears for her empty, vapid life, for the hopelessness of the future, for the humiliations of the present, for the lack of a love that should be without self-interest. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... speech. Certainly, during this visit, Morley's scruples relaxed; but when he returned home they came back with greater force than ever,—with greater force, because he felt that now not only a spiritual ambition, but a human love was a casuist in favour of self-interest. He had returned on a visit to Humberston Rectory about a week previous to the date of this chapter; the niece was not there. Sternly he had forced himself to examine a little more closely into the condition of the flock which (if he accepted the charge) he would have ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppliants at the threshold of the Christian world. They have no voice but ours to utter their complaints, or to demand justice. The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the literature, the prejudices, the political arrangements, the present self-interest of the country, are all against us. God has given us no weapon but the truth, faithfully uttered, and addressed, with the old prophets' directness, to the conscience of the individual sinner. The elements which control public opinion and mould the masses are against us. We can but pick off here ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... another Fashionable Foreigner [shews the head], a very simple machine; for he goes upon one spring, self-interest. This head may be compared to a disoblezeance; for there is but one seat in it, and that is not the seat {41}of understanding: yet it is wonderful how much more rapidly this will move in the high road of ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
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