"Egotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attention of West and Shee[C] in his mere boyhood. We heard all the interesting particulars of his panoramic picture of the Storming of Seringapatam, which, the first of its class, was known half over the world. We must not, however, be misunderstood—there was neither personal nor family egotism in the Porters; they invariably spoke of each other with the tenderest affection—but unless the conversation was forced by their friends, they never mentioned their own, or each other's works, while they were most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Philo Judaeus, "The good man seeks the day for the sake of the day, and the light for the light's sake; and he labours to acquire what is good for the sake of the good itself, and not of anything else." So far for the egotism, naive and unconscious, of Christianity, whose burden is, "Do good to escape Hell and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... been content with merely a wild, unreasoned cry to Heaven that Angele should be restored to him, but the vast egotism that seems to run through all forms of disordered intelligence gave his fancy another turn. He forgot God. He no longer reckoned with Heaven. He arrogated their powers to himself—struggled to be, of his own unaided ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... dreamer and an egotist," said M. Leminof, looking fixedly at him. "I hope, sir, that you have the virtues of the class. I mean to say, that while wholly occupied with yourself, you are free from all indiscreet curiosity. Egotism is worth its price only when it is accompanied by a scornful indifference to others. I will explain: I do not live here absolutely alone, but I am the only one with whom I desire you to have any intimate acquaintance. The two persons who live in this house with me know nothing of Greek, and ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... caught the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . Give Peni's and my love to the dearest 'nonno' (grandfather) whose sublime unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched feeling. (When he is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long life's ungoverned will.) May God bless him!—. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Speranza egotism in this confident assurance to bring the twinkle to the captain's eye. He twisted his beard between his finger and thumb and regarded ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... sudden sense of the enormity of this act came upon him, and for her sake he would have drawn back then, had it not been too late. He realized that it was a crime to put this young, beautiful life in peril; that his own life was a poor, contemptible thing, and that he had been possessed of the egotism of the selfish and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... from the innermost source of life to different parts and organs of the physical body. The flow of the life currents is impeded and diminished. Such are the actual physiological effects of fear, anxiety and egotism ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... character was made by his necessity. He was a liar and an egotist; a man who had to beg for bread at the hands of his publishers and critics could be nothing but a liar, and had he not had the insane egotism and conviction of genius, he would have broken down and written the drivelling trash that his countrymen delighted to read. Poe lied to his publishers sometimes, there is no doubt of that, but there were two to whom he was never false, his wife and his muse. He drank sometimes ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... republic, the church and the home must undergo the same upheavings we now see in the state; for while our egotism, selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose life was a sacrifice, while at the family altar we are taught to worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is vain to talk of a republican government. The fair fruits ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... your ideas are so singularly like my own," he said. "It is rather remarkable they should be, but so it is. You have even a way of putting your thoughts that strikes me as familiar, and which, out of my natural egotism, I find attractive. But I wish you would go back to your old castle; ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... paint landscapes, but figures—and figures not of physique, but of soul—the delineation of character being the dramatist's business. Here is Shakespeare always accurate. To argue with him savors of petulancy or childish ignorance or egotism. Some people ourselves have met had no sense of character, as some have no sense of color. They do not perceive logical continuity here, as in reasoning, but approach each person as an isolated fact, whereas souls are a series—men repeating men, women repeating women, in large ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... adduced to mitigate the seeming ferocity or egotism of these passages. It would be indeed strange if Prussia, which Napoleon wittily described as "hatched from a cannon-ball," should be found really resembling Judaea, whose national greeting was "Peace"; whose prophet ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... and make lunacy rampant, and a whole city is left after such a visitation an asylum of melancholia—Mad Melbourne. Lunacy frequently takes the form of egotism. Peasants imagine themselves princes; Calibans believe themselves to be Adonises; beggars imagine themselves millionaires. It is a harmless vanity and hurts no one, but a mad city may ruin thousands by suddenly imagining itself ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to me, trying, but in vain, to restrain his tears, 'it was no tyrant who begot you, and I will not poison the life which I myself gave you. I had hoped that your hand would remain in our cottage to close my eyes; but when Patriotism has spoken, Egotism must be still. My prayers will always follow you to the field where Mars harvests heroes. May you merit the guerdon of valor, and show yourself a good citizen, as you have ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... shone the more from Peel's making a very poor exhibition. He had been so nettled by Macaulay's sarcasms the night before on his tergiversation, that he went into the whole history of the Catholic question and his conduct on that occasion, which, besides savouring of that egotism with which he is so much and justly reproached, was uncalled for and out of place. The rest of his speech was not so good as usual, and he did not ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... common fate of those who dare to strike a blow for human justice against the prejudices of national egotism. But he was no longer able to bear obloquy and neglect, as he had borne it through the war with the colonies. When he opened the impeachment of Hastings at Westminster, Burke was very near to his sixtieth year. Hannah More noted in 1786 that his vivacity ...
— Burke • John Morley
... have," said Lankford with calm egotism, "but it was necessary for me to do it. I've got an inquirin' mind, I have, and also a calculatin' one. When I saw your little troop comin', an' then that big troop of the Yankees comin' on behind, I knowed that you needed ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with her the Son of God, the Author of grace, the Principle of eternal life, the Source of chaste desires and holy hopes. The worldly woman carries with her in her visits the spirit of the world, the spirit of deception, egotism and folly, which is in every way opposed to the spirit of Christianity. Mary sings the praises of humility and proclaims it the virtue beloved of God,—the virtue which secures His love and assistance; she extols ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... one weak spot in his armour—and the world never suspected it: the consuming passion with which he loved his two children. This was the side of his nature he had hidden from the eyes of man. A refined egotism, this passion, perhaps—for he meant to live his own life over in them—yet it was the one utterly human and lovable thing about him. And if his public policy was one of stupendous avarice, this dream of millions of confiscated wealth he meant to seize, ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... true Estabrook went tearing up through the crust of custom, manners, traditions, egotism, smugness, and self-love. From the depths of his personality, the man for whom I have since that moment had a deep regard, then called his soul and it came. He leaned forward and looked through the misty glass in the door, across the wind-swept street, at the dripping ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... impossibility of these efforts after peace ever attaining their ultimate object in a world bristling with arms, where a healthy egotism still directs the policy of most countries. "God will see to it," says Treitschke,[I] "that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... time the minister was ready to burst with indignation. Never before in all the bombastic days of his egotism had he been so grossly insulted, and by such rude creatures! And yet there was really nothing that could be said or done. These men appeared to be simple creatures who had wandered in idly, perhaps for a few moments' amusement, and, finding the discourse above their caliber, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... is going on at Manassas. All the news is good for us. It appears that Pope, in his consummate egotism, refused to believe that he had been outwitted, and "pitched into" our corps and divisions, believing them to be merely brigades and regiments. He has been ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... strand, and had left him when the conference began. Henry was not easily thrown from his equanimity nor wont to exhibit passion on any occasion, least of all in his discussions with the ambassadors of England, but the cool and insolent egotism of this communication ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... when I sot out for Mr. Moons'es. But I went back a thinkin' that potatoes had never been fried by me, sech is the power of a grand achievment over a inferior one, and so easy is the sails taken down out of the swellin' barge of egotism. ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... troubled with doubts. She sometimes wonders whether she ought not, after all, to respect the popular standards (notwithstanding the compact), instead of disturbing everybody by clinging to her own. Now was it strength of character or obstinate egotism that induced her to stick to her original colours, come what might? That is the question which the book has ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... husbands) for the sex. Mrs. TODD has not as yet been irresistibly seized by the movement; but if TIMOTHY knows himself, he longs for the day when the seizer may come. Although TODD—who is the writer of this epistle—says it, who perhaps shouldn't, lest the shaft of egotism be hurled mercilessly at him, he does unhesitatingly say that to aid this movement he would make the greatest of sacrifices. He is willing to sacrifice his wife and other female relations upon the sacred altar of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... to irritate her master, but instantly the man's brutal egotism was aroused. The savage jest became a fearful reality, and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... silly chin, goggle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering mirror the idealized image of a strong-chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed youth, a mixture of Napoleon at Saint Helena and Lord Byron invoking the Alps to fall upon him. Now, I loathe such music. It makes its chief appeal to the egotism of mankind, all the time slily insinuating that it addresses the imagination. What fudge! Yes, the imagination of your own splendid ego in a white vest [we called them waistcoats when I was young], driving ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... part of recent origin, whose existence was founded simply on their power to maintain it. In them for the first time we detect the modern political spirit of Europe, surrendered freely to its own instincts. Often displaying the worst features of an unbridled egotism, outraging every right, and killing every germ of a healthier culture. But, wherever this vicious tendency is overcome or in any way compensated, a new fact appears in history—the State as the outcome of reflection and calculation, the State as a work of art. This ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... replied, with all an author's unconscious and simple egotism, "it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange tale will have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as regards the story I intended to make out ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was one of Banneker's elements of strength, which subsequently won for him his unique place, that he was always too much interested in estimating the man to whom he was talking, to consider even what the other might think of him. It was at once a form of egoism, and the total negation of egotism. It made him the least self-conscious of human beings. And old Horace Vanney, pompous, vain, the most self-conscious of his genus, felt, though he could not analyze, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in new rooms, in a new building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... willingly, and the thought that we were assisting others more unfortunate than ourselves would have made the hardest bed endurable. Besides, in this war we had more than one opportunity to learn how to put aside all feelings of egotism and narrow personality; and had we been guilty of such forgetfulness, the Emperor was ever ready to recall us to this plain ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... diabolic enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say to that, reader?); and yet in their behalf, we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism—for nationality it was not. Suffren, and some half dozen of other French nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the mischief they could (which was really great), are names justly reverenced in England. On the same principle, La Pucelle d'Orleans, the victorious ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... egotist—an egotist of the great type, never "a mean egotist," as he was once slanderously described—and all his faults sprang from egotism, which is in one sense, after all, only another name for greatness. So much absorbed was he in his own achievements that he was unable or unwilling to appreciate the achievements of others. I never heard him speak in high terms ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... state-Utopia of Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual—remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct—that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 'soul and body, time, health, reputation, talents,' to the divine and invisible Principle of Good, calls us suddenly to contemplate the selfishness of our own views and hopes, and awakens us from the egotism that exacts all and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reading, and we begin to indulge the hope that at least one English technical is going to try to make itself not only useful, but readable and interesting. And what is most perplexingly novel in this new manifestation, is the display of a considerable amount of egotism, which we had always supposed to be a sinful and naughty thing in technical journalism. And, as if to magnify this self-complaisance, it actually alludes to its "own extensive and ever-increasing circulation in America." Now to show how small a thing ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... not of a patriotic disposition, and did not care for the success of his school except as it might minister to his own personal vanity and gain, for he had a bet of half-a-crown on his own side. But his egotism was quite strong enough to rival the public spirit of the others, and raise his interest to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... he deceived neither himself nor the girl. She knew quite as well as he where his heart was. It was a kiss of gratitude and of good-will, and was received as such without affectation. In his masculine egotism, however, he quite overlooked any possible good or ill to her in the matter,—his consideration began and ended in the gratification of her conduct towards him. And he would have been cold indeed not to feel the friendly ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... sensation which, if adroitly used, could be of great service. It might even defeat Barode Barouche. In the first place, Carnac was young, good-looking, personable, and taking in his manner. Barouche was old, experienced, with hosts of enemies and many friends, but with injurious egotism. An interview was, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in a mighty wonder, her dark eyes open to their widest, and looking black by the extreme dilation of the pupils. So vast was her amazement at this unbounded egotism that it ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... us to treat this dreaded affection with positive and specific remedies in a most satisfactory manner, the horrible pains which characterize this trouble, and the mutilations to which it so frequently leads, only exist in quarters where egotism, the love of lucre and the absence of all conscientiousness prevents physicians from inquiring into the merits of our superior mode of treatment. Is not this ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... this hour I invite you to seek with me some principle to make our tolerance less chaotic. And, as I began my previous lecture by a personal reminiscence, I am going to ask your indulgence for a similar bit of egotism now. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Edward Braddock came over with two regiments of British soldiers, and after augmenting his force with Colonial troops and a few Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock's testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial soldiers, and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness, alienated the respect and confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory, and cost him his life. Benjamin ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... chances that the individual may come in danger in the midst of developed society. Yet no one of those factors involves just the necessity of crime. The same kinds of brains might simply show stupidity or credulity or inconsiderateness or brutality or stubbornness or egotism, and might by each of those factors decrease their chances in the community without directly running into conflict with the law. The criminal is therefore never born as such. He is only born with a brain which is in some directions inefficient and ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... take-off on musical New York. The unconscious humour and egotism are delicious, and Mr. Brady's black-and-white sketches are clever to the point ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... wisdom he conceives that he can enlighten the house with a modicum of information. The last time I heard him hold forth was as an apologist for the tumultuary loyalists at the Mansion House Meeting, when he delivered himself in a manner so heterogeneal of commonsense, and so completely in a style of egotism, as to excite the ridicule and risibility of the whole house, and discompose the gravity of even ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... insisted on from the first, obedience will come easily to the child; but woe be to both mother and child if egotism, self-will and selfishness secure a fast ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... aspect depends upon the agent. "In vain," says Sir Thomas Browne, "we admire the lustre of anything seen; that which is truly glorious is invisible." Character, not condition, is the trust of life. A man's own self is God's most valuable deposit with him. This is not egotism, but the broadest benevolence. A man can do no good to the world beyond himself. A stream can rise no higher than its fountain. A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If a man's soul is stunted and gnarled and dwarfed, his actions ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... hope that I shall escape the charge of egotism. I have endeavoured to avoid that ground of offence, whatever may have been my literary sins in other respects. It is proper for me, however, in this place, and for a single purpose, to depart from ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... his men; nor will it escape observation that the warmth, though so genuine, breathes through words whose quietness might be thought studied, were they not so transparently spontaneous. There is in them no appeal to egotism, to the gratified passion for glory, although to that he was far from insensible; it is the simple speech of man to man, between those who have stood by one another in the hour of danger, and done their duty—the acknowledgment after ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... night in 1884, nothing has befallen me worthy of a polite reader's attention. I have endured the drudgery incident to earning a living; I have enjoyed the relaxations every wise man makes for himself. But I should be guilty of unpardonable egotism if I supposed that I myself was the only, or the most, interesting subject presented in the foregoing pages, and I feel I shall merely be doing my duty in briefly recording the facts in my possession concerning the other persons who have ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... Egotism, scepticism, and selfishness are always miserable companions in life, and they are especially unnatural in youth. The egotist is next-door to a fanatic. Constantly occupied with self, he has no thought to spare for others. He refers to himself in all things, thinks of himself, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... round he grimaces. Then he smiles with his boneless mouth. All congratulate themselves through each other; they shake their own hands; they cling to themselves. After their fellowship in patriotism they are going back to their calculations and gratifications, glorified in their egotism, sanctified, beatified; more than ever will they blend their own with the common cause and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... in which you ever took part; to one single act of yourself that ever contributed to the welfare or the advancement of the working people? Can you point to one single act in your career that was ever based on any other motive than absolute egotism and selfishness; to one single utterance, act, word, or deed of yourself that was not based on selfishness and a desire to rob or misrepresent or, in some other manner, attach the earnings of the people to your coffers without effort ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... at the "Empire," a huge shingle palace in the center of Rich Bar, which I will describe in my next letter. Pardon, dear M., the excessive egotism of this letter; but you have often flattered me by saying that my epistles were only interesting when profusely illuminated by that manuscriptal decoration represented by a great I. A most intense love of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... may accuse me of egotism in confining my remarks so much to the achievements of my own vessel, I have merely to say, that in doing so, I was best able to be truthful; but that I am fully aware that to the other screw steamer, the "Intrepid," and my gallant friend and colleague, Commander J. B. Cator, there fell an equal ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... will wait till she knows me better." Instead he began telling her about himself and his own early life, his home, his loss of parents, his struggle to earn a living, and how much success he had so far met. It may be considered egotism, but it was the wisest thing he could have done, for it awakened her interest in him far more than he realized. When his recital and cigar were both at an end and it was time to go in, he said: "I may not have another chance to ask you, Miss Terry, before I ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... which had blazed for one instant in her eyes on first seeing him went out like a snuffed candle, and he did not see it or know that it had blazed. Therefore his own cruelty was hidden from him, and his part became easier to play. They shook hands, and even then, if he had not been blinded with the egotism of self-sacrifice, he might have seen. That was his last chance. For Margaret's heart cried to her, "It is over," and in believing it, suddenly, and as she thought forever, an older sweetness came ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... fair throughout my term of office. I hate dishonesty instinctively. I like the approval of my own conscience and the approval of men. This is egotism, of course. I claim nothing else for it. I am no prophet. I do not claim to be inspired. The weaknesses that all flesh is heir to, I am not immune from. I write this story not to vindicate my own wit nor to point out new paths for human thought to follow. I am a follower of the old trails, an endorser ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... circle was drawn and the usual conjurations made. For half an hour they waited in silence, and then a great trembling fell upon the physician. A deadly pallor overspread his countenance. His knees shook, he muttered wildly, and at last he sank to the ground. Gilles stood by unmoved. The insanity of egotism is of course productive of great if not lofty courage, and he feared neither man nor fiend. Suddenly the alchemist regained consciousness and told his master that the Devil had appeared to him in the shape of a leopard and had ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... perversion of this instinct, the naturalist assumes that he can violate both the human and the divine law for personal ends, and express himself in fantastic or indecent or impious ways. The older supernaturalism exalts the individualism of the Creator; naturalism the egotism of the creature. I make the contrast not merely to excoriate naturalism, but to point out the interdependence between man's apparently far-separated expressions of his spirit, and how subtly misleading are our highly prized distinctions, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... know—the impelling motives to action; the struggle in the face of opposition; the vexation under ridicule; and the despair in success too long deferred. Moreover, there is an interest in history written from a subjective point of view, that may compensate the reader in this case for any seeming egotism or partiality he may discover. As an autobiography is more interesting than a sketch by another, so is a history written by its actors, as in both cases we get nearer ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defence, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... first time that she had experienced the constraining power of his words when he was moved with passionate earnestness. Her desire to escape was due to a fear of yielding, of suffering her egotism to fail ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... evidently wanting in that impartiality which ought to characterize the historian of philosophy, and, sometimes, we are compelled to question his integrity. Indeed, throughout his "Metaphysics" he exhibits the egotism and vanity of one who imagines that he alone, of all men, has the full vision of the truth. In Books I. and XII. he uniformly associates the "numbers" of Pythagoras with the "forms" and "ideas" of Plato. He asserts that Plato identifies "forms" and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... respond to what seemed a personal demand in a new acquaintance, I quite lose myself and launch out into a lyrical disquisition which really applies more to my own experience than to yours. Will you not overlook this fault of egotism? Indeed I cannot quite promise that, if you receive many letters from me in the course of your reviewing, you may not have to make allowances more than once for a note of acrid personality, or egotism, if you please, welling up through the decorum of my editorial advisings. "If we shut nature ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... propose a reward for mere belief, and a penalty for simple unbelief; rewards and punishments being, by the way, very disproportionate. Thus they reduce everything to the scale of a somewhat unrefined egotism; and their demoralizing effects become ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... re-election, and yet compelling that result by the logic of events and by the imperious necessities of the situation. To that most desirable consummation I feel that, next to yourself, I can possibly contribute as much influence as any other one man. I say this not from egotism or vainglory, but merely as a deduction from a plain analysis of the political forces which have been at work in the country for five years past, and which have been significantly shown in two great national conventions. I accept it as one of the happiest circumstances connected with this ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of Elia's style in addressing his readers has been said to be founded on that of Sir Thomas Browne, and in a measure there can be little doubt that it was so—but only in a measure, for it is something the same egotism as that of Montaigne, is, indeed, the natural attitude of the familiar essayist who must be egotistic, not from self-consciousness but from the lack of it. In putting his opinions and experiences in the first person, we feel that Lamb did so almost unconsciously, because it was for ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... thorough, you will realize the exact worth of your knowledge and skill. You will neither suggest inferior value by quoting a cut price on your capabilities, nor demand so much as to indicate the characteristics of displeasing egotism or greed. If you know what you are truly worth, you will make the right price on your real value. Then your self-confidence in your worth will lend you power to convince the other man that your services would be a ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... the Cardinal—"Yes, WE! that is, OURSELVES;—the Church— WE think, when we hear of heresies and blasphemies that it is we who are 'suffering for righteousness' sake,' but in our egotism we forget that WE are not suffering at all if we are able to retain our faith! It is the very heretics and blasphemers whom we condemn that are suffering—suffering ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... pardon a little egotism? Every one likes a little egotism, when it takes the form, as mine does in this case, of a disgraceful confession. The thing is really a little interesting, because it shows how the merely artistic habit has bitten into men like me. It was the most intensely exciting ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... himself, he is weary of soliciting help which is never vouchsafed; and he warns Pitt that opinion is gaining ground in Hayti as to the uselessness of maintaining a struggle in which the British people take no interest. The note of egotism rarely absent from Charmilly's letters appears in his assurance that, if something is not done soon, England will lose the splendid possession which he has ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... hand, feeling in his good-natured egotism that it was probably lack of his presence which had made ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... selfishness disappears, and he is another man; but so long as he is mastered by the craving, all things on earth are blotted out for him saving his own miserable personality. So far does the disease of egotism go, that it is impossible to find a drunkard who can so much as listen to another person; he is inexorably impelled to utter forth his views with more ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... lost himself in this passion of egotism and defiance he hardly knew. He was roused from it by the servant bringing a lamp; and as she set it down, the light fell upon a memorandum scrawled on the edge of a sketch which was lying on the table: 'Feb. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me to apologize for the egotism of this Memoir, which is but an introduction to another and longer one that I hope to publish later. To write a story of paramount importance to mankind, it is true, but all about one's outer and one's inner self, to do this without seeming somewhat egotistical, requires something ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... life was the natural outcome of a romantic nature and an imaginative mind. She saw herself as the heroine of an absorbing story, the living of which story she enjoyed to the utmost, while every incident and every person contributed to its interest. Quite unconsciously, with unintentional egotism, the Schoolmarm had a way of standing off and viewing herself, as it were, through the rosy glow of romance. Yet she was not a complex character—this Schoolmarm. She had no soaring ambitions, though her ideals for herself and for others were of the best. To do her duty, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... if one's supper is too light.' Like her body, her soul was a bit untidy—careless, that is, with loose ends. Who would have guessed, for instance, the anxiety that just now gnawed her very entrails? She was a mixture of shameless egotism, and of burning zeal for others. There was a touch of ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... is the most charming thing in life, and it ought to be the main object of existence. Yet there are thousands all round us, yes, many among our friends or acquaintances, who live and die without ever having known it, because in their egotism and folly they conceive of close relations as founded on personal power, interest or the weakness of others. The only fascination which such people can ever exercise is that of the low and devilish kind, the influence of the cat on the ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Mr. Benton, throwing his head back and his chest forward, "the difference between me and these little fellows is that I have an EGO!" Mr. Benton was an interesting man, and it is a fair consideration if a certain amount of egotism does not add to the interest of any character, but at the same time the self-centred conditions shut a person off from one of the chief enjoyments to be got out of this world, namely, a recognition of what is admirable in others in a toleration ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... called it dinner, Andy observed—together, and Andy Green paid the check, which was not so small. It was after that, when they became more confidential, that Florence Hallman, with the egotism of the successful person who believes herself or himself to be of keen interest to the listener spoke in greater detail of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... together, never to part again. Oh, Cynthia," he cried, carried away by the ecstasy of this dream which he had, summoned up, "why do you resist me? I love you as no man has ever loved," he exclaimed, with scornful egotism and contempt of those who had made the world echo with that cry through the centuries, "and you love me! Ah, do you think I do not see it—cannot feel it? You love ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... distrusting all around him, audacious in design, immovable in resolution, inexorable in execution, merciless in vengeance, by turns insolent, humble, violent, or supple according to circumstances, always and entirely logical in his egotism, he is Cesar Borgia reborn as a Mussulman; he is the incarnate ideal of Florentine policy, the Italian ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... efficiency, efficacy egoism, egotism eldest, oldest elemental, elementary elude, evade emigrate, immigrate enough, sufficient envy, jealousy equable, equitable equal, equivalent essential, necessary esteem, respect euphemism, euphuism evidence, proof exact, precise exchange, interchange excuse, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... was that Drusus caught his first glimpse of that noble and sententious egotism which was a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... which influenced Melbourne and his colleagues were given by Brougham's own passionate and ungovernable temper, his impatience of all discipline, his sudden changes of mood and purpose, his overmastering egotism, and his frequent impulse to strike out for himself and to disregard all considerations of convenience or compromise, all {252} calculations as to the effect of an individual movement on the policy of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the waking of many sleeping dogs, and the stirring of many snapping fish, floating with open ears and eyes in many pools. An uneducated, blustering, obstinate man of one idea, having resentfully borne discouragement and wounded egotism for years, and suddenly confronting immense promise of success, is not unlikely to be prey easily harpooned. Joseph Hutchinson's rebound from despair to high and well- founded hope made of him exactly what such a man is always made by such rebound. The testimony to his genius ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that he looked savage, with his hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled by Storch's voice. He shuddered slightly and turned his face toward ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... in its purport, or even a little distressing if one had no belief in a sense of humour, for there were moments of absurdity about it as there is sure to be in a room filled with any type of concerted egotism. But you did not forget the raison d'etre of it all, you did not forget that when the "prince" arrived there was the spirit of true celebration about it, the celebration not only of an arrived artist, but of an idea close to the hearts and minds of those present, and you had a sense, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... even literary ambition, was a large element in his character. But having published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication. Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such as is the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free. In this respect his philosophy served ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... these strange animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps, incidentally responsible for the notorious Judaism in Music of 1850, and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable essay. Richard got his own way in most things, and the seeds were sown of the self-confidence, egotism, selfishness—call it what you will—that was to carry him through unheard-of difficulties and troubles in later life, and was often, unfortunately, to show as an objectionable, even odious, feature in his character. He still laboured at his tragedy, killing off his personages ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... to Machiavelli's standard of political morality—self-reliant, using craft and force with cold indifference to moral ends, bent only upon wringing for himself the largest share of this world's power for men who, like himself, identified virtue with unflinching and immitigable egotism. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... her with pots of money. Zora, however, walked serene, unconscious of slander, enjoying herself prodigiously. Secure in her scorn and hatred of men she saw no harm in her actions. Nor was there any, from the point of view of her young egotism and inexperience. It scarcely occurred to her that Septimus was a man. In some aspects he appealed to her instinctive motherhood like a child. When she met him one day coming out of one of the shops in the arcade, wearing a newly bought Homburg hat too small for him, she marched him back with ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... morality of such exquisite discerners of spirits. The Thersites of Homer who abuses the kings is a standing figure for all times. Blows—that is, beating with a solid cudgel—he does not get in every age, as in the Homeric one; but his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh; and the undying worm that gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... violinist who would say, "If I were not a genius, I could not play so well with such little practice." The poor fellow did not know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland Gillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... out and his comings in, of the clothes he wore, the dates of events, the names of his acquaintance. In compensation for the want of observation on the part of his own kith and kin, Milton himself, with a superb and ingenuous egotism, has revealed the secret of his thoughts and feelings in numerous autobiographical passages of his prose writings. From what he directly communicates, and from what he unconsciously betrays, we obtain an internal life of the mind, more ample than that external ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... he took the whole thing to himself, and gloated like a child over his own cleverness. I neither obtained from him thanks for my assistance nor apologies for his suspicions. It was Dawson, Dawson, all the time. Yet I found his egotism and unrelieved vanity extraordinarily interesting. As we sat together in his room waiting for the Carlisle train to come in he discoursed freely to me of his triumphs in detection, his wide-spread system of spying upon spies, his long delayed ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the foundations of imperial rule;— 'Twas well enough in normal times to sit And watch the workings of your wayward wit, But in these bitter days of storm and stress, When souls are shown in all their nakedness, Your devastating egotism stands out Denuded of the last remaining clout. You own our cause is just, yet can't refrain From libelling those who made its justice plain; You chide the Prussian Junkers, yet proclaim Our statesmen beat them ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... morals alike follow the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them." Egotism and selfishness are the bane of both. True politeness consists in considering the pleasure of others as a thing in itself, without regard to your own advantage. If an attention is paid, a gift given, a service ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... excommunicates them, a proceeding which they ignore. At the coming of the new governor, his favor is adroitly obtained by a military officer named Tomas de Endaya; and the auditors are for a time treated insolently by both. Zabalburu soon shows, however, that no one can govern him; and he displays much egotism, contemns the religious, and oppresses the Indians with exactions ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... strong prepossession in favour of Sir Raffle, in spite of his praise of John Eames. The harsh voice of the man annoyed her, and his egotism offended her. When, much later in the evening, his character came on for discussion between herself and Mrs Thorne and Emily Dunstable, she had not a word to say in his favour. But still she had been pleased to meet him, because he was the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... to let him see it without being rude; but the blindness of egotism and vast self-appreciation was upon him and he thought her only charmingly coy; probably with the intent to thus conceal ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... the discovery that she had deliberately sought out and found this stricken private was the most bitter in his life. His pride suffered a shock that appalled him; his unconscious egotism, born of hereditary conquests, revolted against the thought that his progress toward her heart was to be turned aside by the intervention of a common soldier in the ranks. Gentleman though he was, he could not subdue the feeling of exultation that came over him when she approached with her plea. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... imagination of the country "as the plumed knight," although on looking back we search in vain for any trait of knightliness or chivalry in him. For a score of years he filled the National Congress, House and Senate, with the bustle of his egotism. His knightly valor consisted in shaking his fist at the "Rebel Brigadiers " and in waving the "bloody shirt," feats which seemed to him heroic, no doubt, but which were safe enough, the Brigadiers being few and Blaine's supporters ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... character and the great difference between the viewpoints of his age and of ours make it easy at the present time to judge him with too great harshness. Apart from his selfish egotism and his bitterness, his nature was genuinely loyal, kind and tender to friends and connections; and he hated injustice and the more flagrant kinds of hypocrisy with a sincere and irrepressible violence. Whimsicalness and a contemptuous sort of humor were as characteristic ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the slight control afforded by their presence, had given full scope to the worse parts of his peculiar and complicated character. More than ever was his administration of his native island marked by unblushing egotism. Oppressive, grasping, unguarded in speech, and almost unrestrained in action, he seemed, from one point of view, the model of a sordid, short-sighted despot, making hay while the sun shone. But he had a fund ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... outside all consideration: herein lies the root of all the evil that befalls the family through degenerate love. What is commonly, but improperly, called love is either pagan fondness or simon-pure egotism and self-love. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... engulfed in the submerging of his being in the overwhelming, stinging blood that had swept him from his old security. Yet he had been so detached from the merging influences about him, his organization had been so complete in its isolation, his egotism so developed, that a last trace of his entity lingered sentient, viewing as if from a careened but still tenable deck the general submergence. His thoughts returned to the automatic operation of the consummation obliterating his person, the inexorable blind movement of the thing in which ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... troubled, and she cast a furtive glance around her before she searched him with her glance. Without knowing why, yet vaguely fearing that he did, he became still more embarrassed, and in the very egotism of awkwardness, stammered without a further salutation: "A disgraceful thing has happened last night, and I'm up early to find the perpetrator. My desk was broken ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... you speak, with what wealth of wit they will reply." Such people may be brilliant, but they can never be agreeable. You feel that they are impatient to have their own turn come, and have none of the gentle receptiveness so pleasing to our own ego that rebels against their egotism. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Hawkehurst talked pleasantly for some time, while Diana still walked silently by her friend's side, only speaking when compelled to do so. The strangeness of her manner would have been observed by any one not utterly absorbed by that sublime egotism called love; but Valentine and Charlotte were so absorbed, and had no idea that Miss Paget was anything but the most ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... you buy it dear, and it will not keep. Does not the egotism of the great take the form of glory, just as for nobodies ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... had reckoned without his Janko, always at hand to cover up a scandal. The Will he had breathed into Helene had been exhausted in the one supreme effort of her life. Sucked up again into the family egotism, kept for weeks under a regime of terror and intercepted letters, hurried away from Geneva; chagrined and outraged, too, by her lover's incomprehensible repudiation of her, which only success could have excused, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of this, and of other novels of the same kind, that there is in them an unhealthy egotism; a Byronism of personal feelings; an ingenious invention of labyrinth meandering into the mazes of the mind and of the affections, in which there is always bewilderment, and the escape is rather lucky than foreseen. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... moment when we are about to reap the fruits of our labours, it would be a ridiculous piece of silliness in you to allow yourself to be controlled by Aramis, whose cunning you know—a cunning which, we may say between ourselves, is not always without egotism; or by Athos, a noble and disinterested man, but blase, who, desiring nothing further for himself, doesn't sympathize with the desires of others. What should you say if either of these two friends proposed to you to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Moniteurs," the author of Waverley, like Lord Chesterfield's diamond pencil, produced one miracle of dulness; it might well be feared that Kinglake's volatile pen, when linked with forceful feeling and bound to rigid task-work, might lose the charm of casual epigram, easy luxuriance, playful egotism, vagrant allusion, which established "Eothen" as a classic. On the other hand, he had been for twenty years conversant with Eastern history, geography, politics; was, more than most professional soldiers, an adept in military ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... of his exalted powers: one upon Death, in considering its approach, as we are surrounded, or not, by mourners; another upon the sudden death of Mrs. Thrale's only son. Her chief motive for "almost pining" for the book, steeped as she was in egotism, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... sublime egotism disabled them from forming a judicial judgment on any question in which they were personally concerned. They never attempted to reason, to compare, to balance; their minds were filled with the vapour of tumultuous ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Herald, with an enigmatic expression on her face, and betaking herself to the skating-pond, cut grapevines with greater assiduity than ever, and with a degree of taciturnity surprising in a person usually so talkative. That she had taken the first step away from the devouring egotism of childhood was proved by the fact that at least part of the time, this vigorous young creature, swooping about the icy pond like a swallow, was thinking pityingly ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... foolish pride, waywardness, secret egotism, fell away from her. The customs of society, with what was valuable in them and what was inadequate, assumed their true proportions. It was as if her House of Life had been swept of fallacy by the besom of the mountain wind. A feeling of strength, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... one of the most handsome, most amiable, and most witty of men; but if there is one vice more than another at which his soul revolts, it is the sin of egotism. Else the world would here have become the possessor of one of the most eloquent pages in literature. It is said that artists, who paint their own portraits, make a mere copy of their image in the looking glass. For my ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... Instead of standing in a corner, listening with unctuous deference or sympathy to any who chanced to come against her, as was her wont, proffering her fan, or her essence-bottle, or in some quiet way ministering to their egotism, she now stepped freely forth upon the field of action, nodding and smiling at the young men to whom she might have been at some time introduced; whispering and jesting with some marked young lady, while she made an occasion to arrange her berthe or her ringlets, and adding herself, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... with Carlyle," Fenton continued, "besides his enormous egotism, was that he never got beyond the whim that the truth is something absolute. He could not abide the idea that it is merely a relative thing and must be treated as such. If he'd got above the mass of cloudy vapor he called truth, he might have gained a glimpse of real sunlight; but his ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round and continues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady? The man runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying forms is a craving for sympathy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... night, and he had gone through every line of them. They were as bright as sunshine, as free as air, easy, playful, forcible, full of picture, but, above all, egotistical, proud with the pride of intellectuality, and vain with the certainty of success. It was this egotism that fascinated Philip. He sniffed it up as a colt sniffs the sharp wind. There was no need to make allowances for it. The castles which his father had been building in the air were only as hovels to the golden palaces which his son's eager spirit was that night ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting irregularities, made itself felt, and found zealous advocates. From this epoch are to be dated the first ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... appears to deal in minute things, its connexion with great results is not usually suspected. The circumstantiality of its story, the changeable shadows of its characters, the redundance of its conversations, and the many careless superfluities which egotism or vanity may throw out, seem usually confounded with that small-talk familiarly termed gossiping. But the gossiping of a profound politician or a vivacious observer, in one of their letters, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... myself sported the envied 'wife-catchers' at the pattron of Moycullen. I was then as wild a blade as any in Connaught, and the 'tops' were in the prime of their beauty. In fact, I am not guilty of flattery or egotism in saying, that the girl who could then turn up her nose at the boots, or their master, must have been devilish hard to please. But though the hey-day of our youth had passed, I consoled myself with the reflection that with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... to his friends. He had been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to her; he had stifled his ambition, and underrated his own possibilities. No wonder that others had accepted him at his own valuation. Clarence Brant was a modest man, but the egotism of modesty is more fatal than that of pretension, for it has the haunting ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... not necessarily imply "egotism," though it must be confessed that in Montaigne's case, though not in Goethe's, there may have been a touch of that ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... relief to his state of tension to go on wondering, while he watched and listened, just where the mystery lurked. Perhaps, after all, it was in the fact of her blank insensibility, an insensibility so devoid of egotism that it had no hardness and no grimaces, but rather the freshness of a simpler mental state. After living, as he had, as they all had, for the last few days, in an atmosphere perpetually tremulous ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... stop long enough in his mad chase to open and shut his tail, fan-fashion, with a dainty egotism that, in the peacock, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... die when Summer shakes Her daisied locks below her hips, And naked as a star that takes A cloud, into the silence slips: Too rich is Summer; poor in needs; In egotism of loveliness Her pomp goes by, and never heeds One life the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... their writer is aware, justly incur the reproach of egotism and triviality; at the same time she did not see how this was to be avoided, without lessening their value as the exact account of a lady's experience of the brighter and less practical side of colonization. They are published as no guide or handbook for "the intending emigrant;" ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... believe, in the end, if you give her time. Lucy, I know, for I have seen it when I have been with her, has been troubled about her own removal from the arena, about her own being confined between walls so that she can't hear the people outside calling; but that is mere egotism. She can hear and see all right; she has all her senses, and she will never stop using them. It's her business to be concerned for Denis, who is blind and deaf. It's her business to use her own caring to make ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... usually begin by writing strictly true stories, and they always consider it of prime importance that they had the tale from grandmother, or that it actually occurred to John's wife's second cousin's great aunt; forgetting, in their unconscious egotism, that the reader cares only for the narrative, and nothing for the narrator. Stories told to interested listeners by "grandma," an "old hunter," or some loquacious "stranger," usually need to be so revised that ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... prisoner alone for half an hour. He has formed the opinion that there is no indication of insanity about him. He thinks the prisoner knows the difference between right and wrong. The person suffering from megalomania often imagines he is a king, divinely inspired, has the world at his feet—supreme egotism in fact. It is one of ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... him, what they really were to him, Michael, much more than man, all this Gaston came to know, as the world knew it afterwards in the Essays, often amused, sometimes irritated, but never suspicious of postures, or insincerity. Montaigne himself admitted his egotism with frank humour:—"in favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our private confession, I confess myself in public." And this outward egotism of manner was but the symptom of a certain deeper doctrinal egotism:—"I have no other end in writing but to discover myself." ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... not only by its aristocratic tranquillity, but by the grave and subdued deportment of Lady Robert Stanley, who was sauntering in one of the alleys, accompanied by a favourite dog I had often seen following her sister in former days, and looking the very picture of contented egotism. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... murmured to herself, "who could have foreseen this." And ignoring my presence with all the egotism of extreme agitation, she hurried past me to the room above, where I speedily ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... being and passing out of it, in these and other similar marvels, and in the thoughts which they evoked, a whole and ample world seemed open for inquiry. Men and their fate were interesting enough to men, but as yet the egotism of man had not attempted to isolate his destiny from the general problem of nature. {41} To the crux of philosophy as it appeared to Parmenides in the relation of being as such to things which seem to be, modernism has appended a sort of corollary, in the relation of being as such to my ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... English more selfish than we are. But they have different ways of showing it. The Englishman is exclusive, and reserved; the Frenchman egotistical. Reserve may seem dignified; but it often covers a great deal of cold self-love; while French egotism—not EGOISME—is often mingled with much naivete and bonhommie {sic}. Both nations, however, are more selfish than the Italians, or ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... contemplate. I have done some of both. But that's a monk's life, and even a monk has a cell of his own, and a bit of garden to play with; and he can think upon a God that is his very own, an Israelitish Providence; and, in his egotism, be content. Yes, with a cell and a book and a garden and an intimate God, one should be satisfied to forego even health. But I hold with old Cicero that the "whole glory of virtue is in activity," and therefore I call my ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... of an egotism that dies hard. I believe that the Reclamation Service idea is an outgrowth of the fine democracy that our fathers brought to New England. I believe that the folks that are going to inherit America can't afford to lose the idea ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of the third person must be cast aside and the regrettable egotism of the first person allowed to enter, for I was a girl, and the modest chronicle of my early educational and philanthropic adventures must be told after the manner ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... stumps and rocks. But if he dexterously regulates the movement of the outfit according to the road, observing where it is safe and where unsafe, he will proceed securely because wisely. Were he, in his egotism, to drive straight ahead, endeavoring to make the road conform to the movement of the wagon, at his pleasure, he would soon see how beautifully ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther |
