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Self-interested   Listen
adjective
Self-interested  adj.  Particularly concerned for one's own interest or happiness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Self-interested" Quotes from Famous Books



... on the Happiness of my dear Country, in that Liberty there enjoy'd, where none are oppress'd by Force, or allured by Bribes, to give up their native Freedom; where a self-interested and designing Minister is sure to answer for his Administration to a Parliament freely chosen, consisting of Gentlemen of publick Spirits, Honour, known Probity and Wisdom; whose Fortunes put them above a servile Dependence; who have an Eye to nothing but the publick Good, and exact from the Ministers ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... interpreted ultimately as a war of self-interest. The statesmen who make wars always carefully reckon the probabilities of loss or gain; but the lads who kiss their sweethearts good-bye require reasons more vital than those of pounds, shillings and pence. Few men lay down their lives from self-interested motives. Courage is a spiritual quality which requires a spiritual inducement. Men do not set a price on their chance of being blown to bits by shells. Even patriotism is too vague to be a sufficient incentive. The justice of the cause to be fought for helps; it must be proportionate to the ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... it must present also vast quantities of accurate and indispensable facts, the news of literature. And one prerequisite I have felt it unnecessary to dwell upon. Unless its intent is honest, and its editors independent of influence from any self-interested source, the literary tournament of criticism becomes either a parade of the virtues with banners for the favorites, or a melee where rivals seek revenge. Venal criticism is the drug and dishonest criticism the poison ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... Not that I deny the cloak story to be a very pretty story; perhaps it justifies, taken alone, Elizabeth's fondness for him. There may have been self-interest in it; we are bound, as 'men of the world,' to impute the dirtiest motive that we can find; but how many self-interested men do we know who would have had quickness and daring to do such a thing? Men who are thinking about themselves are not generally either so quick-witted, or so inclined to throw away a good cloak, when by much scraping and saving they have got one. I never met a cunning, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... Isles, was an insinuating self-interested Man, had little Fortune of his own, but resolved to raise himself which side soever got upmost: He run with every Stream, kept fair with every Side, spoke smoothly to all, meant Service to none, his ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... himself petitioned the Regent that he might be beheaded, but Law, who exercised more influence over his mind than any other person, with the exception of the notorious Abbe Dubois, his tutor, insisted that he could not in justice succumb to the self-interested views of the D'Horns. The Regent had from the first been of the same opinion, and within six days after the commission of their crime, D'Horn and Mille were broken on the wheel in the Place de Greve. The other assassin, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... tyranny of sin, a slave to vicious habits, at enmity with God, a fugitive from thy own conscience? Oh, how idle the disputes whether the listening to the dictates of prudence from self-interested motives be virtue, when the not listening is guilt, misery, madness, and despair! The most Christian-like pity thou canst show is to take pity on thy own soul. The best service thou canst render is to show ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... incurable. I can't account for it, but it is there. How you could have been so stupid as to think I could remain with both you and Romer in the house with this knowledge between us, I simply can't understand. How could I help contrasting his generosity with your self-interested selfishness? I am not angry any more about Miss Walmer. I'm quite indifferent. If you married her to-morrow it would give me no pain. The only kind thing you can do for me now, and the one thing I implore, is to go away on any pretext you like ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... present war has brought many proofs that there is no small amount of truth in this indictment, and most unfortunate of all, neutral countries too accept Germany's version that Britain is unorganized, self-interested, inefficient and effete. And to just the same degree they are convinced that Germany is thorough. They love Britain's humanitarian idea, but admire German efficiency—although they fear ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... men—women who toiled and slaved for their husbands or children, or both, who gave way to relatives or friends in crises or crucial moments, because it was right and kind to do so—but somehow these stories did not appeal to him. He preferred to think of people—even women—as honestly, frankly self-interested. He could not have told you why. People seemed foolish, or at the best very unfortunate not to know what to do in all circumstances and how to protect themselves. There was great talk concerning morality, much ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... trade. But the colonists, especially those in New England, who had advanced to such a degree of strength as rendered troops unnecessary for their defence, were too much soured in their tempers, to allow that Great Britain had any other than self-interested views in her whole conduct towards them. They murmured and complained, and resolved on a plan of retrenchment with respect to the purchasing of British manufactures; but still they presumed not openly to call in question the authority of the British ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... bulk of our hearts lies torpid and immovable, until He lays His loving finger upon them, and then they rock at His will. There is no keeping of Christ's commandments without love. That makes short work of a great deal that calls itself Christianity, does it not? Reluctant obedience is no obedience; self-interested obedience is no obedience; constrained obedience is no obedience; outward acts of service, if the heart be wanting, are rubbish and dung. Morality without religion is nought. The one thing that makes a good man is love to Jesus Christ; and where that is, there, and only there, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... her. And at the moment of his death, all who spied on him, distrusted and condemned him, are convinced of his fidelity. Even before he dies, his devotion to his ideal aim, his absolute unselfishness, have won over and ennobled all the self-interested characters which surround him—Puccio, the general who is jealous of him; Domizia, the woman who desires to use him as an instrument of her hate to Florence; even Braccio, the Macchiavellian Florentine who thinks his ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... war. Doubtless he hoped to do great good to the wild population, and bring them into the same order as the English; but the flaw in his title made this impossible; the Scots regarded his soldiery as their enemies and oppressors, and though the nobles had given in a self-interested adhesion to the new government, they abhorred it all the time, and the mutual hatred between the English garrisons and Scottish inhabitants led to outrages in which neither party ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... respects to Mr. Hamilton. His has been a trying but not a thankless task. He has addressed himself to the right class of men all over the country, winning them to his sound and enlightened views, giving them courage, consolidating them against the self-interested advocates of State sovereignty. That he has so often neglected a legal practice which must bring him a large income, as well as sufficient personal glory, out of a sincere pity for and patriotic interest in this afflicted country, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... the dance, and had come out of the ball-room between dances. There was a good deal of nervous talk, politely subdued among them; but it was not the note of unearthly rapture which Mrs. Brinkley's conventional claim had implied; it was self-interested, eager, anxious; and was probably not different from the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid it might look calculating and self-interested—" ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... the other estates tenaciously held them intact. The people regarded Bellomont as a sincere and ardent reformer, but the landed men and their following abused him as a meddler and destructionist. Despairing of getting a self-interested assembly to act, Bellomont appealed to the ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... be any who—from self-interested motives—oppose themselves to the deliverance of their country, let such be assured that the naval and military forces which have driven the Portuguese from the South, are again ready to draw the sword ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... year 1840 to bother my head about the conundrums set by our office-seekers, "place-hunters" as the Americans call them. While they were amusing themselves with the fancies, envious, irreligious, unhealthy, and above all self-interested, which they posed as deducing from the principles of 1789, a far more terrible revolution than the French one—for it was to strike the poor as well as the rich—was shortly to burst upon us; the revolution brought ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... deprecated their growth as a manifestation of discontent, whereas contentment was the virtue then most regularly inculcated upon the lower classes; philanthropists, who had more faith in what should be done for than by the workingmen, distrusted their self-interested and vaguely directed efforts. Those who were interested in England's foreign trade feared that they would increase prices, and thus render England incapable of competing with other nations, and those who were influenced by the teachings ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney



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