"Egotistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... changeable surface, which, through some sudden cause, betrayed its presence, was so deeply hidden, however, that it seemed impossible to fathom it completely. Was she a coquette, or simply a fashionable lady, or a devotee? In one word, was she imbued with the most egotistical pride or the most exalted love? One might suppose anything, but know nothing; one remained undecided and thoughtful, but fascinated, the mind plunged into ecstatic contemplation such as the portrait of Monna Lisa inspires. An observer might have perceived ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... diploma from Gottingen." We know, too, what a splendid impetus to Carlyle was that first letter from Goethe, a letter which he confessed seemed too wonderful to be real, and more "like a message from fairyland." It was but a brief note after all, tepid, sensible, and egotistical; but the magic sentence, "It may be I shall yet hear much of you," became for years an impelling force, the kind of prophecy which insured ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... there is a difference between us and I am glad of that difference, egotistical as ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... French politics at that time offered. But it was due, likewise, to certain characteristic qualities of the young general. In the first place, he was thoroughly convinced of his own abilities. Ambitious, selfish, and egotistical, he was always thinking and planning how he might become world-famous. Fatalistic and even superstitious, he believed that an unseen power was leading him on to higher and grander honors. He convinced his associates that he was "a man of destiny." Then, in the second place, Bonaparte possessed ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... about ourselves is what we modern-day authors have a strong objection to doing. If we literary men of the new school have one praiseworthy yearning more ever present to our minds than another it is the yearning never to appear in the slightest degree egotistical. ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... looked very needy. The man had wonderful talents and might have a rich congregation and improve himself; but he is persistent in his ideas concerning this holiness movement, and of course a large church like ours wants something to attract and interest instead of such egotistical discourses. I, for one, go to sleep under them." And Mr. Ellis drew himself up with a pompous air as he went into the library, whither his wife ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... studded with capitals, even as German is to-day. If I am wrong, perhaps some one who knows better will correct me. One thing I have often noticed is that a child's first impulse is to write 'i,' and that it is only after admonition that the aggressive and egotistical 'I' supplants the humbler form of the letter. This did not surprise M. Zola, since vanity, like most other vices, is acquired, not inherent in our natures. But in a chaffing way he suggested that one might write a very humorous essay on the English character by taking as one's ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the grave. Where hope ends despair steps in; and Philip, with reckless vehemence, flung himself, as it were, into its arms. His was an excitable nature; he had never thought of any one but himself, but labored with egotistical zeal to cultivate his own mind and outdo his fellows in the competition for learning. The sullen words in which he called himself the most wretched man on earth, and the victim of the blackest ill-fortune, fell from his lips like stones. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the gay and egotistical Pompeians busied themselves with observing the countenances and actions of their neighbors; but there was that in the lip and eye of this bystander so remarkably bitter and disdainful, as he surveyed the religious procession sweeping up the stairs of the temple, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... apologizing for being egotistical, I shall make the history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw you the subject of this letter. And, by the way, I now discover that, in order to give a full and intelligible account of the things I have done ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... he began to speak of other matters. The elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like that of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful and important hints as well as sound information; but it was never egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows. Dantes listened with admiring attention to all he said; some of his remarks corresponded with what he already knew, or applied to the sort of knowledge his nautical life ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... human creatures to awaken the emotion of love within my child's breast—so extraordinary was the veneration I had for him, that although I started out on this narrative by saying it was Paragot's story and not my own I proposed to tell, I hope to be pardoned for a brief egotistical excursion. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... been expected there from the moment I was known to be here, and how I was received on my first visit, and have been feted since (as Ichthyologus primus seculi,—so they say), would, perhaps, tire you and might seem egotistical in me, neither of which do I desire. But it will not be indifferent to you to know that Cotta is disposed to accept my Fishes. He has been at Munich for some days, and Schimper has been talking with him, and has advanced matters more by a few words than I had been able to do ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me take myself too gravely. Comprehend how I have lived much of my time in France, and loved your country, and many of its people, and all the time was learning that which your country has to teach - breathing in rather that ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little woman, she is powerless now; and I suppose the next will be like unto her. Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn't white eyes and pink hair (yellow, I mean, of course)—his style, you know, being dark and stern, he likes the downy, waxy kind. All this is shockingly egotistical; but the question is, who that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... "It is this egotistical minority," said Gabriel, having arrived at this point, "who have falsified truth, endeavouring to persuade the majority of workers that work is a virtue, and that the only mission of man on earth is to work till he perishes. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and his deportment modest, dignified, and unpretending.... Possessed of a high order of talent, enriched by stores of information, General Hayes is one of the few men capable of accomplishing much without any egotistical assertion of self." General James M. Comly had said: "More than four years' service in the same command gave the writer ample opportunity to know that no braver or more dashing and enterprising commander gave his services to the Republic than General Hayes. He was the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... this is very egotistical and unnecessary. I merely meant to say that I was in a peculiar, almost abnormal state of mind, that evening. The spirit had, as it were, been drawn outwards, and perhaps slightly dislocated, by those mesmeric passes of my cousin, and I had not succeeded as yet in adjusting it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... a fool," she ordered curtly. "We needed you, and I, for one, was not going to see your egotistical ideas about an unimportant piece of work—your cosmological chemistry—jeopardize the safety of the world. Oh, I know the government wanted you in your laboratory. But with Ludwig Leider loose on Orcon, and you the only one in our Zone who knew much ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... men; and he did not live, think, or feel like them. A singular organization was singularly and fatally deranged in its action before it could show its best quality. Marvelous analytical faculty he had; but it all oozed out in barren words. Charming eloquence he had; but it degenerated into egotistical garrulity, rendered tempting by the gilding of his genius. It is questionable whether, if he had never touched opium or wine, his real achievements would have been substantial, for he had no conception of a veritable stand-point of philosophical ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Westminster Gazette sounded its usual warning note. "Giants Beware," said the Westminster Gazette, and tried to make a point out of it that might perhaps serve towards uniting the Liberal party—at that time greatly torn between seven intensely egotistical leaders. The later newspapers dropped into uniformity. "The Giant in the New Kent ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... you are not a woman, but a brave, high-minded man. In that character you pity poor Mr. Little, but you blame him a little because he fled from trouble, and left his wife and child in it. To you, who are Guy Raby—mind that, please—it seems egotistical and weak to desert your wife and child even for the grave." (The widow buried her face and wept. Twenty-five years do something to withdraw the veil the heart has cast over the judgment.) "But, whatever you feel, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... myself with, I believe, an almost perfect detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another being, with scarce anything in common with that boastful foolish youngster whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save with that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant intimacy. Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy with nearly every reader, but ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... though very egotistical. He talked for hours about the war and what he had done to win his honours; and we noticed particularly a feature of his conversation. His memory failed him sometimes. By which I do not mean that he told us anything contrary to fact; ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... seek petty, immediate triumphs instead of earning and waiting for the big, silent approval of one's own conscience and of those who understand, is a mark of inferiority. It is also a barrier to usefulness, for an egotistical man is necessarily selfish and a selfish man ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... not a spark of sympathy for Harry—a callow, egotistical dealer in currants. He ought to have blown out his brains a year ago. He has behaved in a most unconscionable manner. How does he expect me to break the news to Carlotta? His selfishness is appalling. There he lies, comfortably dead in the South Western Hotel, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... of his case. Since he has been in jail he has never said one word about having been put out of the White House; he is lawyer enough to know he must not furnish any ground for malice. He is a miserable, malicious and worthless wretch, infinitely egotistical, imagines that he did a great deal toward the election of Garfield, and upon being refused the house a serpent of malice coiled in his heart, and he determined to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... nor telescope; they want good stout horrors easily visible. With their eyes fixed on the carnivora, they pay no attention to the reptiles; happily, they abandon to the writers of comedy the shading and colorings of a Chardin des Lupeaulx. Vain and egotistical, supple and proud, libertine and gourmand, grasping from the pressure of debt, discreet as a tomb out of which nought issues to contradict the epitaph intended for the passer's eye, bold and fearless when soliciting, good-natured ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... voyage made in such vessels, and he evinced a very marked disinclination to embark. It is related of a great warrior, whose Commentaries were the detestation of my early life, that during a very stormy passage of the Ionian Sea he cheered up his sailors with the sublimely egotistical assurance that they carried "Caesar and his fortunes"; and that, consequently, nothing disastrous could possibly happen to them. The Kamchatkan Caesar, however, on this occasion seemed to distrust his own fortunes, and the attempts at consolation came from the opposite quarter. His ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... years 1515, 1516, and 1517. Seven of them are addressed to Cardinal Ippolito and two to Lucretia. These letters are not in her own handwriting but are dictated. They disclose a powerful will, a cast of mind that might be described as rude and egotistical, and an insinuating character. They are devoted chiefly to practical matters and to requests of various sorts. On one occasion she sent the cardinal a present of two antique columns which had been exhumed in her vineyard. She also kept up her intercourse with her son Giuffre, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... received the letter; how he had responded; what was the expression of his face; if he seemed very amorous. And to all these questions poor Kitty, forced to put on a pleasant face, responded in a stifled voice whose dolorous accent her mistress did not however remark, solely because happiness is egotistical. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same characteristics; not always good, not always pleasant, not always genial, but always associated with something that declares preeminence, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... pitiful sobbing momentarily arrested, regarded Miss Bonkowski with grave wonder. "Didn't a know I are Angel?" she returned in egotistical surprise. ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... attempts to shape him to her needs, and to persuade herself that she was succeeding in doing it! She would set forth to him elaborately how much he had improved; how much gentler and more human he was—in contrast with that blind and stupid and egotistical and impossible person she had first known. And with what bitterness Thyrsis would hear this—and how he had to struggle to suppress his feeling! For he knew that those qualities which were so hateful to her, were but the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... is fickle, egotistical, capricious; she exacts adoration, and most frequently loves you for a whim ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... rulers, even as sand or as water is shaped by wind. And this submissiveness to reshaping belongs to the old conditions of its soul life,—old conditions of rare unselfishness and perfect faith. The relative absence from the national character of egotistical individualism has been the saving of an empire; has enabled a great people to preserve its independence against prodigious odds. Wherefore Japan may well be grateful to her two great religions, the creators and the preservers ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Attention easily gained and held without difficulty. Memory, for both recent and remote events, fair, with complete amnestic gaps for the stuporous periods. He shows the characteristic hysterical make-up. He is morbidly suggestible and suspicious. He is markedly egotistical; becomes easily irritated at the least provocation. Is extremely hypochondriacal and shows a marked tendency to exaggeration of actual ills. Constantly laments his fate of being compelled to stay in a place of this sort, which is a thousand times ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... prosperously, to divide her from the sisterhood of gentle ladies, walks, shrined in love and purity and conscious rectitude, amid the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last the victim of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's egotistical ambition. The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the dead man's hand, the semblances of murdered sons and husband, the masque of madmen, the dirge and doleful emblems of the tomb with which she is environed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the sceptics were greatly proud." Dr. Hitchens evidently takes this gentleman at his own estimate. That he thinks the sceptics were greatly proud of him is intelligible; it is quite in keeping with his shallow, vulgar, And egotistical nature. But the truth is "the sceptics," in any general sense, were not proud of him. He was a very young man, with a great deal to learn, who had a very brief career as a Secularist in East London. In a thoughtless moment a local Secular Society gave him office, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... "Don't think me egotistical, but I can't help looking under the surface and going to the bottom of things. So I learn more about men in Wall Street and what they are at than most. This is my thirty-fourth year of sixteen and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... signify also the life of my life-partner—is beyond the range of ordinary experience, since it is immune from the ferments which seethe and muddle the lives of the many, I am assured that a familiar record will not be deemed egotistical, I am scolded because I did not confess with greater zeal, I am bidden to my ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... thirty years of age, with straight black hair, brushed upright from his forehead; his countenance gave the idea of eagerness and impetuosity, rather than cruelty or brutality. He was, however, essentially egotistical and insincere; he was republican, not from conviction, but from prudential motives; he adhered to the throne a while, and deserted it only when he saw that it was tottering; for a time he belonged to the moderate party ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... say that it is an inevitable law that man should not be happy; but it is an inevitable law that a man, in spite of himself, should live for something higher than his own happiness. He cannot live in himself or for himself, however egotistical he may try to be. Every desire he has links him with others. Man is not a machine,—he is ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... establishment of federal authority in Don Mario, that always pompous official rose in his own esteem and in the eyes of a few parasitical attaches to an eminence never before dreamed of by the humble denizens of this moss-encrusted town. From egotistical, Don Mario became insolent. From sluggishness and torpidity of thought and action, he rose suddenly into tremendous activity. He was more than once observed by Jose or Rosendo emerging hastily from his door and button-holing some one of the more influential citizens ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lost art? That it is a lost art there can be no question. Nobody who is painfully acquainted with the rambling, egotistical pieces of dreary versification, passing for modern ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... by day nor night, but is their bride, their bosom friend, and their constant occupier. But what becomes of the ordinary man, if he is excluded from the busy regions of the world, and if his heart remains as solitary as his life? Everything dries up in him; he becomes uncouth, bigoted, selfish, egotistical, and usually ends by falling into a semi-torpid state, and by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and these I had printed and ready for distribution before the banquet commenced. I was introduced to the ducal party, which, in addition to the Marquis of Hartington, included his brother, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Lord Houghton, and others. Perhaps I shall not be thought unduly egotistical for mentioning that Lord Houghton, who is a poet of no mean order, commended ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... the greatest sympathy and admiration for your true heroine in a book; but I grant you, that in real life, in a private room, the tragedy queen would be too much for me; and the novel heroine would be the most useless, troublesome, affected, haranguing, egotistical, insufferable being imaginable! So, my dear Caroline, I am content, that you are my sister, and my friend, though I give you up ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... them back. Edwards asked my advice, and I encouraged him to go, telling him how to take and bring back his prisoners." (Reflective pause.) "You can't imagine me living alone, now, can you? Such an egotistical fellow as I am, and fond of ladies' society. You can't believe it, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... reason why the remedy would not be a proper, even if a good, one, it may well be asked, What right has a man to treat a wife as a vial of medicine? Well does Mr. Acton inquire, "What has the young girl, who is thus sacrificed to an egotistical calculation, done that she should be condemned to the existence that awaits her? Who has the right to regard her as a therapeutic agent, and to risk thus lightly her future prospects, her repose, and the happiness of the remainder ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... a most peculiar man," said Mlle. Moiseney, indignantly, to Antoinette. "He is shockingly egotistical. He has confiscated M. Larinski. The idea of employing such a man as that to play ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... all its vivacity. But Fanny was not only clever, lively, and amiable; her conduct and manners occasionally displayed traits of spirit—nay, of pride; the latter, however, of a generous rather than an egotistical description. Nothing was so certain to call it forth as any tale of meanness or oppression. One morning Miss Sharpe had been relating an anecdote of a gentleman in the neighborhood who had jilted (odious word!) an amiable and highly estimable young lady, to whom ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... by the very boot-straps in his metaphysics, to get at some foundation which will not move. He will know what he is about and what is great. He puts Caesar, Milton, and Whitfield into his crucible; but that which went in Caesar comes out a part of himself. The bold yet modest young chemist is egotistical. He cannot be anybody else but John Smith. Why should he? Who knows yet what it is to be John Smith? Napoleon and Washington are only playing his own game for him, since he so easily understands and accepts their play. A boy reads history as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... things—to accomplish an art well, and to impart it to others. I hope I may not be considered egotistical in boldly asserting that, as an instructress, I stand pre-eminent. I feel proud, most proud, in having received repeated assurances from the distinguished and numerous ladies who have placed themselves under ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself; but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... established in an incredibly short period. A cure of this kind generally requires five, seven, eleven, and fourteen days. This result is so favorable, that those who have not witnessed it, or who are too ignorant and egotistical to investigate the facts, may ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... with this question I may perhaps be pardoned if, at the risk of appearing egotistical, I indulge in a very short chapter of autobiography. My own action in Egypt has formed the subject of frequent comment in this country; neither, assuredly, in spite of occasional blame, have I any reason ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... himself that the tale of his domestic wretchedness has come. He was as manfully patient and silent as one might have expected in a man upright, firm, and self-reliant as he was tender. I do not think it is good for men, and especially for women, to indulge in egotistical sentimentality, and to believe that such a woman as Agnes Duerer could utterly thwart and wreck the life of a man like Albrecht. It is not true to life, in the first place; and it is dishonouring to the man, in the second; for although, doubtless, there ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... century the main springs of Romanticism began to show symptoms of exhaustion. The subjective and personal character of its lyric verse provoked protest. It seemed to have no other theme but self, to be a universal confession or self-glorification, immodest and egotistical. And it began to be increasingly out of harmony with the intellectual temper, which was determined more and more by positive philosophy and the scientific spirit. LECONTE DE LISLE voiced this protest most clearly (cf. les Montreurs, p. 199), and set forth the claims of an art that should ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... or mind, are egotistical. Griffith was no exception: bent on curing his own deep wound, he never troubled his head about the wound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... composer: Napoleon left no symphonies in St Helena. Send the Inca to St Helena, madam, and the world will crowd thither to see his works as they crowd now to Athens to see the Acropolis, to Madrid to see the pictures of Velasquez, to Bayreuth to see the music dramas of that egotistical old rebel Richard Wagner, who ought to have been shot before he was forty, as indeed he very nearly was. Take this from me: hereditary monarchs are played out: the age for men of genius has come: the career is ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... palace! Their union would be a prolongation of entombment, an aggravation of ruin, a repetition of the haughty wretchedness of the past, of the everlasting peevish sulking which depressed and benumbed one! She was well acquainted with the young man's character; she knew that he was egotistical and weak, incapable of thinking and acting, predestined to bury his race with a smile on his lips, to let the last remnant of the house crumble about his head without attempting the slightest effort to found a new family. And that which she desired ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... was not remarkable. In "the classical field" he describes himself "truly as nothing," and learned to read Homer in the original with difficulty. He preferred Homer and Aeschylus to all other classical authors, found Tacitus and Virgil "really interesting," Horace "egotistical, leichtfertig," and Cicero "a windy person, and a weariness." Nor did he take much to metaphysics or moral philosophy. In geometry, however, he excelled, perhaps because Professor (subsequently Sir John) Leslie, "alone ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... glance, and without fail, which ball was nearest the mark. From his judgments there was no appeal, and they were received with neither more nor less respect than those of St. Louis at Vincennes. But it must be said to his credit that his predilection for this walk was not entirely egotistical: it also led to the Marsh of the Grange Bateliere, whose black and gloomy waters attracted a great many of those dragon-flies with the gauzy wings and golden bodies which children delight to pursue. One ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... general public may suspect it, the charming, gracious, and cultured Mr. Balfour is the most egotistical of men, and a man who would make almost any sacrifice to remain in office. It costs him nothing to serve under Mr. Lloyd George; it would have cost him almost his life to be out of office during a period so exciting as that of the Great War. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... lowest to highest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever known. This is the justice of the great Creator. The king today has been in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a moment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might remember and know how 'tis himself. Men and women of thought, of great character have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from the destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... came to see him, he must play her something of his own. M. Vinteuil would have liked nothing better, but he carried politeness and consideration for others to so fine a point, always putting himself in their place, that he was afraid of boring them, or of appearing egotistical, if he carried out, or even allowed them to suspect what were his own desires. On the day when my parents had gone to pay him a visit, I had accompanied them, but they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M. Vinteuil's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... If this sound egotistical we are sorry, for it is not meant in that way. We believe that each and every individual should judge for him or herself, considering ourselves fortunate that our ideas and tastes are ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Eleanor hotly, "you can't bear me to have a friend that is not of your own choosing! My taste wasn't a thing to be shuddered at when I married you, was it? A selfish, egotistical——" ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Somewhere above, in the unknown, there is a power which guides affairs at its own will, and (here is the special point) deliberately thwarts all the efforts of the active people. According to his philosophy, the self-contained, thoroughly egotistical natures, who are wedded solely to the cult of success, generally pass through this earthly life without any notable disasters; they attend strictly to their own selfish ends, and do not attempt to sway the destinies of others from motives of humanity, patriotism, or anything ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... her was, to her own consciousness, a strange thing. It appeared to her as a kind of simplification, a return to childhood; or, rather, was it the emergence in the grown mind, tired with the clamor of its own egotistical or passionate life, of some instincts, natural to the child, which she, nevertheless, as a child had never known; instincts of trust, of self-abandonment, steeped, perhaps, in those tears which are themselves only ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... next morning I read the letters. They were filled with vague, inflated, sentimental descriptions of his inner life and feelings; entirely egotistical, and intermixed with quotations from second-rate philosophers and poets. There was, it must be said, nothing in them offensive to good principle or good feeling, however much they might be opposed to good taste. I was ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... was anxious to speak with Benedetto. She brought her companions, both male and female, with her. No longer young, but still frivolous, half superstitious, half sceptical, egotistical but not heartless, she was devoted to the consumptive daughter of her old coachman, Having heard of the Saint of Jenne and his miracles, she had arranged this excursion, partly for amusement, partly to satisfy her curiosity, and she wished to ascertain if it would be wiser to have the Saint ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... and egotistical all your ideas are! He never mentioned you, and probably never thought of you. He only took a little pains that a tired and dispirited man might see and feel the eternal beauty and freshness of nature, as one might give, in passing, a cup of water ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... thought he was about to do, he made a profound bow, and then vanished. Many other figures quite as bizarre and unnatural appeared before me. I mention these trivial circumstances to show the state of my mind. I had been so long by myself that I must be pardoned if I appear egotistical. Again all was quiet. I lay for some time, if not unconscious, with very little power of thought. I was afraid that another night would come on, and that I should have to endure my sufferings for some hours longer, if death did not put an end ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... death- unconscious brightness down to the level of the 'reality' of a mere human life? ... Nay, if you would you could not!" And now, strange to say, he felt that he COULD but WOULD NOT; and he was overcome with remorse and penitence for the egotistical nature ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... intelligent, pretty also—one of them an excellent musician, and organist to our amateur choir for week days in the chapel. By the by we have a glorious organ. How I have gone on about my miserable self—quite egotistical. "If I may be allowed the language" (the late Capt. Balne). But I thought you would like it. Good-bye. Love to Malcolm Kenmore. When do your boys come? Your ever loving ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... shells or three, we thought, would have had their courteous aspect. But without greeting of any kind from the enemy our lighter rose on the last wave and bumped against the jetty. We gathered our equipment, and with egotistical thrills stepped upon the Gallipoli Peninsula. For the first time we stood in Turkey. We felt in our breasts ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Squire carrying a Halberd, Fifteenth Century View of Alexandria, Sixteenth Century Village Feast, Sixteenth Century Village pillaged by Soldiers Villain, the Covetous and Avaricious Villain, the Egotistical and Envious Villain or Peasant, Fifteenth Century Villain receiving his Lord's Orders Vine, Culture of the Vintagers, The, Thirteenth Century Votive Altar of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... compelled to cultivate patience and good temper. Also, health and strength are conducive to equability of temper, and hence the domestic popularity of the man of brawn above the one of brain, who is not infrequently exacting and crossly egotistical in his family relations where the other would be ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... man! egotistical, proud, unobservant, Since I with man's grief dare to sympathise thus; Why scoff?—fellow-creature I am, fellow-servant Of God, can man fathom God's dealings ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... don't stick to my friends and bore them with my affairs like that egotistical hussy, Jane Bazalgette. I amuse myself, and leave them to amuse themselves; that is my notion of politeness. I am going to see my pigs fed, then into the village. I am building a new blacksmith's shop there (you ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... turns out that the words were spoken more in my own will than in the power, I feel that egotistical-I has done it, and that this self-doing has set me apart from the other members of the meeting. I am dissatisfied until again immersed in the life of the group. But if it seems that I have been an instrument of the power, I have the feeling that the power has ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... he concluded, "how irritating they all are there. They are such wretchedly small, vain, egotistical, COMMONPLACE people! Would you believe it, they invited me there under the express condition that I should die quickly, and they are all as wild as possible with me for not having died yet, and for being, on the contrary, a good deal better! Isn't ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... kind and truthful. He was dogmatic in his religious beliefs, combative by nature and never happier than when fighting the Devil in his own corner, as he expressed it. Furthermore, he was haughty, stubborn and egotistical, and these traits of character I inherited from him. But while I honestly inherited combativeness, stubbornness and egotism from my father, these characteristics became very objectionable to him when displayed by myself. So from my earliest childhood days there ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... brought her to her first communion, and tried hard, and quite in vain, to instil into her the wholesome mysticisms of the Christian faith; and the more efforts he made, the more sharply was he aware of the hard, egotistical core of the girl's nature, of Hester's fatal difference from ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... distinguished artists, and the materials for that grand undertaking which first gave an idea (incomplete though it was) of the ancient civilization of the land of the Pharaohs, were collected together. But when Bonaparte had completely given place to Napoleon, the egotistical monarch, sacrificing all else to his ruling passion for war, would no longer listen to explorations, voyages, or possible discoveries. They represented money and men stolen from him; and his expenditure of those materials was far too great ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... yet was imbued with the sense of caution that is necessary to all creatures of the wild if they are to survive. Should necessity require, Tarzan could face Numa in battle, although he was not so egotistical as to think that he could best a full-grown lion in mortal combat other than through accident or the utilization of the cunning of his superior man-mind. To lay himself liable to death futilely, he would have considered as reprehensible as to have shunned danger in time of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as a nation, are following closely this golden mean, that our wisdom has enabled us to discover that which for so many ages has remained hidden from men, were simply egotistical bombast; for it were to assert that with us human nature had lost its fallibility and human judgment become unerring. Yet we may safely assert that no system exists at the present day which so clearly tends toward the attainment of such a mean, and which contains within ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... me! I will not seek after it. Man it is that I require: these egotistical, false beings—these lords of everything! How we flatter our weaknesses and admire our virtues! Whatever serves to advance our own wishes we find to be excellent. To those who love us, we give our love in return. At the bottom, whom do I love except myself? Wilhelm? My friendship ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... must end, unless I may be permitted to supplement its meagreness by one or two personal—not to say egotistical—reminiscences. The death of Mr. Mill senior, in 1836, had occasioned a vacancy at the bottom of the examiner's office, to which I was appointed through the kindness of Sir James Carnac, then chairman of the Company, in whose gift it was. Within a few months, however, I was ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... reviewers found "The Education" egotistical. This is too strong a term. These memoirs would have no value if they were not egotistical; and if the term "egotistical" implies conceit or self-complacency or the desire to show one's better side to the public, "The Education" does not deserve it. A ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... quality of his own work, the amount of influence he could wield, and the extent of the public sympathy that he excited. He was essentially religious in temperament, though his religion was so assertive and egotistical in type that those who hold with Rosalba that where there is no modesty there can be no religion, [Footnote: Rosalba said of Sir Godfrey Kneller, 'This man can have no religion, for he has no modesty.'] might be inclined to deny its existence. From the very outset ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... I'm telling you this story myself, a story in which I am both actively and intimately interested; and how, unless I speak of my own self, are you going to learn anything about me? I have nobody to describe me, so I must be what you call "egotistical." ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and his army to the sufferings of a prolonged siege, terminated by a sad defeat. He had conceived vaster projects, and the design of annihilating the Austrian army by a single blow. Everything had to give way to the consideration of personal success and his egotistical thirst for glory. The Lombard populace received the First Consul with transport, happy to see themselves delivered from the Austrian yoke, and beguiled in advance with the hope of liberty. General Melas was at Alessandria, summoning to his aid the forces that were attacking Suchet on ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... some specimens of Monsieur de Galgenstein's sober conversation; and it is hardly necessary to trouble the reader with any further reports of his speeches. They were intolerably stupid and dull; as egotistical as his morning lecture had been, and a hundred times more rambling and prosy. If Cat had been in the possession of her sober senses, she would have seen in five minutes that her ancient lover was a ninny, and have left him with scorn; but she was under the charm ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Medici had destroyed the sense of honor and the pride of the old noble families; while the policy pursued by Lorenzo and the Popes had created a class of greedy professional politicians. The city was not content with slavery; but the burghers, eminent for wealth or ability, were egotistical, vain, and mutually jealous. Each man sought advantage for himself. Common action seemed impossible. The Medicean party, or Palleschi, were either extreme in their devotion to the ruling house, and desirous of establishing a tyranny; or else they were moderate and anxious ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... at first be nothing but a simple, egotistical and natural calculation. If you have made him laugh, if you have amused him, he will want you to begin again, he will hold out his little arms to you, crying: "Do it again." And the recollection of the pleasure you have given him ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... she because she finds what she does not seek, and you because you do not find what you do seek. Am I not right? Ah! M. de Taverney, allow human beings to be imperfect, and do not expect royalty to be superhuman. Be more tolerant, or, rather, less egotistical." She spoke earnestly, and continued: "All I know is, that I loved Andree, and that she left me; that I valued you, and you are about to do the same. It is humiliating to see two such people abandon ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... today when he came to report, "it is a truthful record of a certain kind of morbid, egotistical personality that unfortunately does exist. But I can't understand why you care to read it; for, thank God! Sally Lunn, you and ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay, his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil's tears, bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most offensively, and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he ought to return thanks for her death. The bishop ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... seemed to lie like a twisted skein in the years stretching between his going forth from his uncle's house to this night of return. He tried to understand himself, to estimate the man he was. In no egotistical sense did he do this, but sternly, deliberately, because he felt that the future demanded it. He must account to others, but first ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... ass!—to fear for his safety. Fear! As if October Copley knew the meaning of the word either for herself or any one else! "Afraid for his safety?" His cheeks were red as he spared a mirthless laugh for an egotistical idiot. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... at her in astonishment. She loved her like an egotistical mother, proud of her beauty, as a person is proud of a fortune, too pretty still herself to become jealous, too indifferent to plan the schemes with which they charged her, too clever, nevertheless, not to have full ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... support, which they must enter into at any price. Conversely, a large portion of the men look upon marriage from a purely business standpoint, and from material view-points all the advantages and disadvantages are accurately calculated. Even with those marriages, in which low egotistical motives did not turn the scales, raw reality brings along so much that disturbs and dissolves, that only in rare instances are the expectations verified which, in their youthful enthusiasm and ardor, the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... understand. But I knew a man who went blind; a good fellow, too, before—mind that, before! But a year after! You couldn't have recognised him. He had narrowed down into the most selfish, exacting, egotistical creature it is possible to imagine. I don't wonder; I hardly see how he could help it; I don't blame him. But it wouldn't make life easier for a wife, would it? A helpless husband who can't cross a road without his wife at his elbow is bad enough. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the lady of his delight staidly discussing the relative merits of lemonade and gingersnaps and two pounds of "broken mixed" candy, as evening refreshments, and carried away a troubled heart. He wrote Julia, at least twice a week, shyly affectionate and honestly egotistical letters, but it was some months before he saw ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... to Hamilton at that time, and was not favorable to his promotion; and he was strongly inclined to place Knox at the head of the military staff, Pinckney second, and Hamilton third. This inclination produced some dissentions in his cabinet, when the jealous irritability of his temper, and his egotistical reliance upon his own judgment, made him resolve to change the order of the major-generals. When this subject, and the fact that the president intended to appoint an adjutant-general without the chief's ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script, and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a much ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... listeners in the world. Could they speak, I fear me they would only tell us about their puppies, or of their new bone, or of the rat they worried to death the last time they scampered through the wood. Cats are far more egotistical, and consequently far more human. They can't talk, it is true; neither can they listen. By their manner we know exactly what interests them at the moment, and if they appear to sympathise with us, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... confound the new and the old, and, in noting a new arrangement, is often led to consider the whole as new. It is, therefore, necessary to exercise a proper discrimination lest injustice be done to the various laborers in the same field of invention. I trust it will not be deemed egotistical on my part if, while conscious of the unfeigned desire to concede to all who are attempting improvements in the art of telegraphy that which belongs to them, I should now and then recognize the familiar features of my own ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... on men battling for causes no higher nor holier than this, yet neither has fire been able to wither nor water to quench their honest zeal. But this good soul on being sprinkled laid down his arms; he was commonplace. Moreover, he was guilty of something beside cowardice. He let a small egotistical pique sully as well as betray a great cause. "The justices have thrown cold water on my remonstrance—very well, gentlemen, torture your prisoners ad libitum; I shall interfere no more; we shall see which was in ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... wanted the suspect's photograph and a specimen of his writing. I knew no better place to look for them than in his own room in Mr. Fairbrother's house. I accordingly got the necessary warrant and late last evening undertook the job. I went alone I was always an egotistical chap, more's the pity—and with no further precaution than a passing explanation to the officer I met at the corner, I hastened up the block to the rear entrance on Eighty-seventh Street. There are three doors to the Fairbrother ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... exaltation and return? It is the most monstrous, the most atrocious travesty of the truth that ever was perpetrated by the superstitious ignorance and audacity of the human mind. It is a direct transference into the Godhead of the most egotistical and hateful feelings of a bad man. No good man who had been ever so grossly misconceived, vilified, and wronged, if he saw his enemies prostrate in submissive terror at his feet, perfectly powerless before his authority, could bear to trample on them and wreak vengeance ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... circumstance of my present office, is, that I can do its duties unseen by those for whom they are done. You did not think, by so short a phrase in your letter, to have drawn on yourself such an egotistical dissertation. I beg your pardon for it, and will endeavor to merit that pardon by the constant sentiments of esteem and attachment, with which I am, Dear Sir, your sincere friend ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... warm, there was a large screen drawn across the room, for a barrier against the heat of the fire. It seemed as if somebody on the other side of this screen had been insinuating doubts of Mr Groves's prowess, and had thereby given rise to these egotistical expressions, for Mr Groves wound up his defiance by giving a loud knock upon it with his knuckles and pausing for a reply ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... with the scope and antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. He contributed paragraphs of general information and Nestorian opinions to the New Orleans Picayune, and signed them "Mark Twain." They were quaintly egotistical in tone, usually beginning: "My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans," and reciting incidents and comparisons dating as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... vexed if you had gone through Copenhagen and I had not known it." He sat down, and I had a delightful hour's chat with him. One sees the man so plainly in his works, that his readers may almost be said to know him personally. He is thoroughly simple and natural, and those who call him egotistical forget that his egotism is only a naive and unthinking sincerity, like that of a child. In fact, he is the youngest man for his years that I ever knew. "When I was sixteen," said he, "I used to think to myself, 'when I am twenty-four, then will I be old indeed'—but ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... ancient races. The career of Aurangzeb is strikingly like that of Philip II. of Spain, and his character was similar to that of Louis XIV. of France, who was his contemporary. Both were unscrupulous, arrogant, egotistical and cruel kings; both were religious devotees and endeavored to compensate for a lack of morals by excessive zeal in persecuting heretics, and in promoting what they considered the interests of their church; and both created disaffection and provoked rebellion among ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... in a day's travel. But unless Jolly Roger gave him a signal, or he was hungry, he would pass a snowshoe unconcernedly. This phase of Peter's development interested Jolly Roger greatly. The outlaw's philosophy had not been punctured by the egotistical "I am the only reasoning being" arguments of narrow-gauged nature scientists. He believed that Peter possessed not only a brain and super-instinct, but also a very positive reasoning power which he was helping to develop. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... confirm her feeling that however fanciful she might be about him his appearance would always give some further food for her imagination; and presently, for though she was the least vain person in the world she was the most egotistical, began to compare the large correctness of his features with the less academic spontaneity of her own. "Lord! Why has everybody but me got a straight nose!" she exclaimed to herself. "But it's all blethers to think that an indented ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... foregoing confession is made more significant by the author's subsequent comment on it. 'Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... degree. He has a thick silly lip, an eager credulous eye, an obstinate nose, and a loud confident voice. A young man without fear, without reverence, without imagination, without sense, hopelessly insusceptible to the Napoleonic or any other idea, stupendously egotistical, eminently qualified to rush in where angels fear to tread, yet of a vigorous babbling vitality which bustles him into the thick of things. He is just now boiling with vexation, attributable by a superficial observer to his impatience at not being promptly attended to ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... the last already," he sighed. "And it's better not to have it all of one sort. After awhile a woman doesn't produce pleasant or profitable reactions in my soul. Yes, I know," he added, as he noticed her look of wonderment, "I am selfish and supremely egotistical. Every artist is; his only lookout, however, should be that his surroundings don't become stale. Or, if you prefer to put it more humanely, an artist isn't fit to marry; it's criminal for him to marry ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... felt that Adriance had divined the thing needed and had risen to it in his own wonderful way. The letter was consistently egotistical, and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was just what she had wanted. A strong realization of his brother's charm and intensity and power came over him; he felt the breath of that whirlwind of flame in which Adriance passed, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... altogether became, so much degraded from his original self; as he enjoyed for a time the lustre attending the progress and termination of his enterprise. Those who thought they discerned in his subsequent conduct an insensibility to the distresses of his followers, coupled with that egotistical attention to his own interests which has been often attributed to the Stuart family, and which is the natural effect of the principles of divine right in which they were brought up, were now generally ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... one consolation that I will bring into exile, if I may so call that house of misery—a clear conscience, a heart whose still small voice tells me that I have done no wrong to upbraid myself with. This is the consolation that I have,—that my conscience is clear. I know it appears somewhat egotistical for me to speak thus, but it is a source of consolation for me that I have nothing to upbraid myself with, and I will now say in conclusion, that if my sufferings can ameliorate the wrongs or the sufferings ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... off as a spectator of her emotionalism, to examine these new feelings. Were they more egotistical than compassionate, more defiant than gentle? Among them, at any rate, there was gratitude. She had found an object in life, had splendidly emerged from her old sensations of incompleteness and ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... first week to his long, egotistical harangues, with tolerable patience, hoping that the theme of self would soon be exhausted, and the Frenchified dandy condescend to remember that he was an Englishman; but finding him becoming more arrogant and ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... excuse she would listen to about Harry's marriage. Its hurried and almost clandestine character deeply offended her; and the young wife during her visit had foolishly made a point of exhibiting her power over her husband, while both of them seemed possessed by that egotistical spirit which insists on their whole world seeing how vastly superior their love is to any other love that ever had been. Undoubtedly the young couple were offensive to everyone, and Mrs. Hatton said they had proved to her perfect satisfaction the propriety and even ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... denoted honest pride—a very different feeling to vanity. "There is nothing in my history which I wish to conceal. On the contrary, I would rather have it as widely known as possible, though the fear of being considered egotistical has prevented me talking about myself. For this reason alone I have hitherto, even to you, never spoken about my early days, and now you put the question to me, I can scarcely otherwise account for my ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... and out of the second fact, as we shall see, spring some of his most characteristic traits. He is a man vexed, at one and the same time, by delusions of grandeur and an inferiority complex; he is both egotistical and subservient, assertive and politic, blatant and shy. Most of the errors about him are made by seeing one side of him and being blind ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... devotees of the Mother, you may put the garland on this bodily temple, as offering to Her who dwells within." His vast nature lacked space in which any egotistical ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... considered Kathleen's feelings as to his personal conduct so delicately? Well, since yesterday he did feel it, and a sudden sense of pity sprang up in him—vague, shamefaced pity, which belied the sudden egotistical flourish with which he put his monocle to his eye and tried futilely to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 given her a little needed confidence in ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... and austere, and so ponderous, and egotistical, and calm—yes, you are hatefully calm and placid, aren't ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... "They're so beastly egotistical. Still his theories are ingenious and far more interesting than those terribly dull long letters of Henry Goldsmith, which you ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... not said that I am one, Judge Temple. As I told you before, say nothing egotistical. But a discovery has been made, and you ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Wordsworth met this proposal indicated the limit of his absorption in himself—his real desire only to dwell on his own feelings in such a way as might make them useful to others. For he rejected the plan as too egotistical—as emphasizing the succession of moods in the poet's mind, rather than the lessons which those moods could teach. His objection points, at any rate, to a real danger which any man's simplicity of character incurs by dwelling too attentively on the changing ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... I were to follow my own inclinations, I should never meet any one of that set again, not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him; but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart. I care not for white Busts—and many a glorious thing when associated with him ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to the publication of sporting adventures—they always appear to deal not a little in the marvellous; and this effect is generally heightened by the use of the first person in writing, which at all events may give an egotistical character to a work. This, however, cannot easily be avoided, if a person is describing his own adventures, and he labours under the disadvantage of being criticised by readers who do not know him personally, and may, therefore, give ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a customer or 'kid him along' for the amusement of a by-stander or a fellow clerk. This is a common practice in some clothing stores. The offender is usually a self-satisfied clerk who has had just enough success as a salesman to make him egotistical. ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... fact, if the poor child, who had so much good taste as alone to have chosen to dress herself in white amidst all her companions—if that dove's heart, so easily accessible to painful emotions, had been touched by the cruel words of Madame, or the egotistical cold smile of the king, it would ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Wells Fargo Agent rightly interpreted as meaning that the posse had failed to catch their quarry. At first a glint of satisfaction shone in Ashby's eyes: not that he disliked Rance, but rather that he resented his egotistical manner and evident desire to overawe all who came in contact with him; and it required, therefore, no little effort on his part to banish this look from his face and make up his mind not to mention the subject in ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... in the distance, an intense feeling of misery crept over me, as I reflected that perchance I had left those most dear to return to them no more. But I forget; a description of private feelings is, to uninterested readers, only so much twaddle, besides being more egotistical than even an account of personal adventures could extenuate; so, with the exception of a few extracts from my "log," I shall jump at once from the English Channel to the more exciting ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... already in all the newspapers! I was extremely chagrined at this intelligence; but, from that time, thought it all too late to be the herald of my own designs. And this, added to my natural and incurable dislike to enter upon these egotistical details unasked, has caused my silence to my dear M- -, and to every friend I possess. Indeed, speedily after, I had an illness so severe and so dangerous, that for full seven weeks the tragedy was neither named nor thought of by ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Larry. The big painter, in his full-blooded, boyish fashion, fairly gasconaded over the success of his exhibit. Larry smiled at the other's exuberant enthusiasm. Hunt was one man who could boast without ever being offensively egotistical, for Hunt, added to his other gifts, had the divine gift of being able ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... that you wanted to know. But, in a way, it must have sounded rather egotistical. In fact, the thing wasn't as easy as ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess A—— had by no means a bad heart, but she was capricious, like a woman who had been spoiled by the world, as well as being avaricious and egotistical, like all old people, who have seen their best days, and whose thoughts are with the past, and not the present. She participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls, where she sat in a corner, painted ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... was not thinking of the army at all as you spoke of retiring. My thoughts were more egotistical, and I was thinking how much you reminded me of my dear father, by your experience, wisdom, and suitableness to take his place as the head of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... becoming absorbed in his own thoughts, he grew more silent as the signs of refinement and civilization about him revived memories long stifled. Fraser, on the contrary, warmed by the wine, blossomed like the rose, and talked garrulously, recounting marvellous stories, as improbable as they were egotistical. He monopolized his hostess' attention, the while his companion became more preoccupied, more self-contained, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... reign. Then, really, several great nobles were richer than the king. They knew it, used it, and never deprived themselves of the pleasure of humiliating his royal majesty when they had an opportunity. It was this egotistical aristocracy Richelieu had constrained to contribute, with its blood, its purse, and its duties, to what was from his time styled the king's service. From Louis XI.—that terrible mower-down of the great—to Richelieu, how many families had raised their heads! How many, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
