"Egotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at. A wasted and inactive life not only palls in itself but deprives men of the very real and definite pleasure that naturally arises from the healthful activity of all our powers, while a life of egotism excludes the pleasures of sympathy which play so large a part in human happiness. One of the lessons which experience most clearly teaches is that work, duty and the discipline of character are essential elements of lasting happiness. The pleasures of vice are ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Like most men in their twenties, he had the character of a chameleon, and adapted himself to his surroundings with almost uncanny facility. At college he had been an ardent member of a dozen cliques, even falling under the egotism of the men who dabbled in Spiritualism, but a clarity of thought and a strain of Dutch ancestry kept his feet on the earth when the rest of him showed ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... given this statement, Mrs. Fabian hurried from the room to laugh quietly to herself at the egotism of youth. Later when Mr. Ashby was told the story, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... hobbies advanced and expanded, and the dream of the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" served, exaggerated and garbled. His favourite narrative—that of his duel with Rathbone Culbertson—was not omitted, and it was delivered with more fire, egotism, and gusto than the major ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... vehemently; "for I once regarded that nation of traders as a nation of men, heroes, and profound diplomatists. But I was terribly undeceived. Those selfish shop-keepers amused me with fair but false promises; they care neither for my welfare nor for that of Europe, but only for their commerce. The egotism of Great Britain is equalled only by her narrow-minded avarice. I asked the British cabinet to guarantee a Russian loan, and they were impudent enough to refuse me, although they knew very well that I wished to negotiate it for the sole purpose of equipping an army, with which I intended to take ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... weakness. And what we call masculinity is only the sense of strength, which may belong to women as well as to men under the same conditions. The men on the square had just witnessed a miracle, never seen before in this world—the rise of egotism in the feminine portion of the community, which caused every one of them to enter that zone of man on an equal footing with men in consciousness. And naturally the men did not understand that. They were so dazed that they could not even discuss it with one another. What they had experienced was too ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... dignity in her clothes. She seemed just as stiff and shy as a girl ought to be, Lady Palsworthy thought, neither garrulous nor unready, and free from nearly all the heavy aggressiveness, the overgrown, overblown quality, the egotism and want of consideration of the typical modern girl. But then Lady Palsworthy had never seen Ann Veronica running like the wind at hockey. She had never seen her sitting on tables nor heard her discussing theology, and had failed ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... seems to be in the glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and proclaim ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Bosworth Field, while my ghosts of the departed, rise up before me, and while I think pityingly of poor Cyril and many more, let me also remember the deserved cut I gave Sir Edward Hatherton, when he laid his insignificant title, his supreme vanity and egotism, with his mean heart at my feet, while boasting of his broad acres, making too sure he had but to ask, and be accepted with thanks. Yes, though I have hurt some brave manly hearts, I have given a check to the vanity of that man that will send him into the corner to think that there are ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... perfectly fused than in {170} the comedy which preceded it. Here there are two distinct groups of characters, on the one hand riotous old Sir Toby and his crew leading the Puritanical steward Malvolio into the trap baited by his own egotism; on the other, the dreaming Duke, in love with love rather than with the beautiful Olivia whom he woos in vain, and ardently loved by Viola, whose gentle nature is in touching contrast with the doublet and hose ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... those who were attached to him; and it might be said that his ruling passion was the desire of continual change. No man was ever characterised by greater levity or inconstancy of mind. In all things he looked only to himself, and to this egotism he sacrificed both subjects and Governments. Such were the secret causes of the sway exercised by Fouche during the Convention, the Directory, the Empire, the Usurpation, and after the second return of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to determine who are the authors of some of the books. The narrative of events proceeds, for the most part, as if the author had never existed. How naively and perspicuously everything is told, without the colouring of prejudice, or an infusion of egotism on the part of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his character, such dignity of manner and rectitude of feeling—his temper so even and kindly—his courage so heroic—that he is unquestionably the most amiable and interesting of the dramatis personae, preferable to D'Artagnan, to whom premature worldly wisdom gives a hardness bordering upon egotism. While Aramis is sighing sonnets to his mistress, and Porthos parading on the crown of the causeway in all the glory of gold lace and embroidery, Athos sits tranquilly at home, and says, like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... were the all of whom she spoke, but he could not do it without an egotism which would be distasteful to him. "I can hardly tell;—but I don't think I shall be asked ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... figure of the story, is essentially a self-made man, who has made himself a power to be reckoned with. He is a man of great natural force, immense egotism, insatiable greed for notoriety and unswerving adherence to his own standards of morality. He has two devouring ambitions: First to become one of the inner circle that controls high finance and second to become one ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... common-sense morality, and leads us, under the pretext of a mystic and symbolic religion, to the confessional, the very hothouse of mischief. Satan in all his shapes and forms as he rules the world has been described by Goethe as Egotism. Selfishness is his element and real nature. Selfishness not yet realizing the divine, because so entirely humane command—"Do unto others as you wish that they should do unto you." Selfishness is the only essence of evil. Selfishness has divided ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... in her diary. All college girls write notes in diaries, and sometimes they take to free verse. Of course writing in a diary is only a form of egotism, precisely like writing on a geyser formation. They both ought to be illegal, and one is. Maw knows all about that. Sometimes, even now, she will tell me how she came to be fined by the United States commissioner ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... sympathizing in the progress of great events?—That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... one thing; she was bad at answering questions. Morally she was not quite so great an egotist as himself, but intellectually a greater. Her volubility was all egotism. She could scarcely say ten words, except about herself. So, when Bassett questioned her about Sir Charles and Lady Bassett, she said "Yes," or "No," or "I don't know," and was off at a tangent to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Mr. Dale liked it," he remarked, smiling. "They are not bad fellows at heart, but they've got the poison in their systems which seems, somehow or other, to become part of the equipment of the politician—self-interest, over-egotism, contraction of interest. It makes one ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conversation was of other lands and distant nations, and, while there was an entire absence of that ostentatious braggardism and dropsical egotism which unfortunately attacks the majority of travellers, his descriptions of foreign scenery were so graceful and brilliant, that despite her ungracious determination and premeditated dislike, she became a fascinated listener; and, more than once, found herself ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... actual performances. But I am, nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings at bottom to egotism. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... 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 help. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Memoirs, which afford a sample of much heat and prejudice, and which have, in upholding Lord George Murray, done an injury to the memory of Charles Edward, of which the adversaries of his cause have not failed to take advantage. To many errors of character, and to some egotism, the Chevalier Johnstone, as he came to be called in after-life, united a kind heart and an enthusiastic disposition. He acted for a considerable time as aide-de-camp to Lord George Murray, and afterwards in the same capacity with the Prince. But his liveliest admiration appears to have ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... express it more romantically; and if Pepys shared with them this childish fondness, did not Rousseau, who left behind him the CONFESSIONS, or Hazlitt, who wrote the LIBER AMORIS, and loaded his essays with loving personal detail, share with Pepys in his unwearied egotism? For the two things go hand in hand; or, to be more exact, it is the first that makes the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eyes tenderness and courage. The lower part of the face, on the other hand, suggests a good deal of animalism: the finely cut nostrils show egotism—another word for selfishness; the nose itself, vanity; the lips, sensuousness and love of luxury. I wonder what sort of woman she really is." He laid the photograph ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 been a ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... constantly, in Coleridge's curious phrase, 'to a clear transparency.' Things seen were an open window into the Infinite; but with us, heaven knows, that window is so thick filthy with selfhood, so cobwebbed and begrimed with passion and egotism and individualism and all the smoke and soot of the brain-mind, that given an artist with a natural tendency to see through, he has to waste half his life first in cleaning it with picks and mattocks and charges of dynamite. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... I trust there is no unpardonable egotism in mentioning, in a work intended for young people, that one of my chief motives for bringing these Fragments of my life and adventures before them, is the hope of imparting to others, similarly circumstanced, a portion of that spirit ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... humanity. The art editor, with abundant sarcasm, had no more humor than the publisher, and was an easy prey in the manager's hands; but when he had been led on by Fulkerson's flatteries to make some betrayal of egotism, he brooded over it till he had thought how to revenge himself in elaborate insult. For Beaton's talent Fulkerson never lost his admiration; but his joke was to encourage him to give himself airs of being the sole source of the magazine's prosperity. No bait of this sort ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pertness, arrogance, egotism, impudence, sauciness, assumption, forwardness, indiscretion, self-conceit, assurance, frankness, loquaciousness, self-sufficiency, boldness, freedom, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... joy. And now, lying back in his chair, her eyes closed, violet shadows showing beneath the black line of her lashes, she saw herself, momentarily, as a trivial thing—a mere tangle of nerves, perversity, and egotism—flung aside without hesitation, perhaps even with relief, at the first call of the larger life, the larger loyalty. Two tears stole out on to her lashes, and slipped down her check. Mere concessions to overwrought feeling, and she knew it; knew, in the depths ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in proverbs, and Hawthorne in parables. The finest sketches in this collection are parables. "The Birth Mark," "Rappacini's Daughter," "A Select Party," "Egotism," and "The Artist of the Beautiful." "The Celestial Railroad" is an allegory, a variation ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... humored the wishes of the worthy Mendez, for never was simple egotism accompanied by more generous and devoted loyalty. On the following morning, the crew was assembled, and the proposition publicly made. Every one drew back at the thoughts of it, pronouncing it the height of rashness. Upon this, Diego Mendez stepped forward. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... you please! But no matter! To their last day Jenkins's clients went about, showed themselves, cheated the devouring egotism of the crowd. They died on their feet, as became men ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... places and times. But this sentiment, like gravitation, diminishes in the ratio of the square of the distance, and at any considerable remove can no longer be reckoned upon as a counter-balance to the lawlessness of egotism. Athenians could be passably just, or at least not disastrously unjust, to Athenians; Spartans to Spartans; but Sparta must needs oppress the other cities of Laconia, while Athens was at best a fickle ally; and when Grecian liberty could be strong only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the man at this time of day, I find that he was a true Frenchman, but a Frenchman in the better acceptation of the term. He was fairly well educated, and fulfilled his duties to us conscientiously, but he had the peculiar features of fickle egotism, boastfulness, impertinence, and ignorant self-assurance which are common to all his countrymen, as well as entirely opposed to the ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... she thought "There's a difference somewhere." Being a supreme egotist Ardita frequently thought about herself; never having had her egotism disputed she did it entirely naturally and with no detraction from her unquestioned charm. Though she was nineteen she gave the effect of a high-spirited precocious child, and in the present glow of her youth and beauty all the men and women she had known were but driftwood ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong and active prejudice, in favor of their own vocation, always working upon their minds and influencing their action." Let us be thankful for that laughable egotism which is born with us, and within us, and which, in this natural and unobtrusive affair of contentment, becomes a true anchor, holding ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... and the prime ingredient of my specific against getting stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote, the very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... chain of adverse circumstances as the combined result of parental egotism and pedantic, pedagogical ignorance, is it wonderful, I would ask, that the ghastly record of the hideous sacrifice of child-life is what it is, and that the young lives which do by chance escape the horrible holocaust, still reap the prevailing harvest of prolific ills of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... taste, and many other fooleries, in imitation of their betters, and had a very decided and becoming horror of anything which could, by possibility, be considered low. He was hospitable from ostentation, illiberal from ignorance, and prejudiced from conceit. Egotism and the love of display induced him to keep an excellent table: convenience, and a love of good things of this life, ensured him plenty of guests. He liked to have clever men, or what he considered such, at his table, because it was a great thing to talk about; but he never could endure ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the leaves. As he had expected, it was the current diary—that on which Thornton Lyne had been engaged at the time of his murder. Tarling opened the book in a spirit of disappointment. The earlier books had yielded nothing save a revelation of the writer's egotism. He had read Lyne's account of the happenings in Shanghai, but after all that was nothing fresh, and added little to the sum of the ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... illustration, we might say, "Suppose I were to lose my way in a wood"; or, "Suppose you were to lose your way in a wood"; or, "Suppose one were to lose one's way in a wood." All these forms are used, but, as a rule, the last is to be preferred. The first verges on egotism, and the second makes free with another's person, whereas the third is indifferent. "If one's honesty were impeached, what should one do?" is more courtly than to take either one's self or the person ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... George had perforce to be abandoned. This was one of the occasions when the President's impulsiveness burst out through his cold exterior, when his strength of purpose, his grim determination to fight for justice were undermined by his egotism. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... civilized world. Nelson himself was not satisfied. "Not one of the French vessels would have escaped," he said, "if it had pleased God that he had not been wounded." This was rather a slur on those who had given their best blood and really won the battle. Notwithstanding the apparent egotism of this outburst, there are sound reasons for believing that the Admiral's inspiring influence was much discounted by his not being able to remain on deck. The sight of his guiding, magnetic figure had an amazing ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 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 rendered, these should be done solely for the recipient's ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... heart at the thought of losing her; but that he unselfishly felt that Van Reypen, as a man of the world, was more fitting for pretty Patty than himself. He knew he was Western, and different from Patty's friends and associates, and he was so lacking in egotism or in self-conceit that he couldn't recognise his own sterling merits. And, too, though he was interested in some mining projects, they had not yet materialised, and he did not yet know whether the near future would bring ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... President he lost the reputation he had gained as Congressman. His enemies accused him of being a bad judge of men, of clinging to old unpopular notions, and of having little control over his temper. They also ridiculed his egotism, which they declared to be inordinate. He lived, however, to see the prejudice against his administration give place to a juster estimate of his great worth and exalted integrity. As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... valor. Let those who have done more for human freedom, denounce him as the enemy of mankind, and erect for themselves a standard of moral action, which shall rise to the stupendous height of their own boundless egotism! ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... recognising acquaintances. Later they would drink freely and gamble, and perhaps fight. Toward all but those whom they recognised they preserved an attitude of potential suspicion, for here were gathered the "bad men" of the border countries. A certain jealousy or touchy egotism lest the other man be considered quicker on the trigger, bolder, more aggressive than himself, kept each strung to tension. An occasional shot attracted little notice. Men in the cow-countries shoot as casually as we strike ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... else shall we admire Mr. Gladstone? Walter Bagehot, alluding to his egotism, wrote of him in his lifetime, 'He longs to pour forth his own belief; he cannot rest till he has contradicted everyone else.' And what was that belief worth? 'He has scarcely,' says the same writer, 'given us a sentence that lives in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... most insolently secure. What matters the triumph of an hour? What matters it that by concentrating all your means of action, availing yourselves of every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and restored the former order of things? Can you restore men's faith in it, or think you can long maintain it by brute force alone, now that all faith in it is extinct? Threatened and undermined ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... as he walked on with proud step. Sardi followed, and, taking him by the arm, guided him quietly into a less frequented street. But Mansana paid no heed, and with loud voice and vigorous gesticulations, gave his secretly wounded egotism vent. ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... a thousand things, touching them, and leaving them, and coming back, but always keeping within the circle of their relation to themselves. They flattered one another with the tireless and credulous egotism of love; they tried to tell what they had thought of each other from the first moment they met, and tried to make out that they neither had ever since had a thought that was not the other's; they ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Circle that I first broached the new conceptions that were developing in my mind. I count the evening of my paper the beginning of the movement that created the BLUE WEEKLY and our wing of the present New Tory party. I do that without any excessive egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's production; it was my reaction to forces that had come to me very large through my fellow-members; its quick reception by them showed that I was, so to speak, merely the first of the chestnuts to pop. The atmospheric quality of the evening stands ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... egotism, in our shame of what we ignorantly regard as the lowliness of our origin we are always seeking alleged lofty spiritual explanations of our doings, and overlook the actual, quite simple real reason. One of the strongest factors in Susan's holding herself together ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... fine 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... who 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 ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... co-adjutors; not one who rewarded adherents with flattery and hurled invectives at dissentients; not one to whom personal flattery was acceptable or personal prominence desirable; not one whose writings betrayed egotism, self-inflation or bombast. Such was their honest aversion to personal publicity, it is now almost impossible to trace the work each did. Some of their noblest arguments for Freedom were published anonymously. They made no vainglorious ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the mid-twenties—that age when the egotism and rather narrow enthusiasms and prejudices of the girl shade off into the graciousness and savoir-vivre of womanhood. She could look back on more than one foolishness, from whose results she had providentially escaped, with an uneasy shudder, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... and the logic of events, egotism and false charity say, " 'Not so, Lord;' it is wise to [30] cover iniquity and punish it not, then shall mortals have peace." Divine Love, as ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organised, and to be highly organised is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence. Besides, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... his natural foe, King Ferdinand, whose grand-daughter, Isabella of Aragon, had married Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, and was now the rightful Duchess of Milan. When the Florentine ambassador at Milan asked him how he had the courage to expose Italy to such peril, his reply betrayed the egotism of his policy: "You talk to me of Italy; but when have I looked Italy in the face? No one ever gave a thought to my affairs. I have, therefore, had to give them such security ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... can be tempted and brought under virtual control much more easily by ordinary means than by hypnotism. The man who "overpersuades" a business man to endorse a note uses no hypnotic influence. He is merely making a clever play upon the man's vanity, egotism, or good nature. ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... accepted sense of pure selfishness, will scarcely be made against the Japanese of the next century. Even the compositions of students already reflect the new conception of intellectual strength only as a weapon of offense, and the new sentiment of aggressive egotism. "Impermanency," writes one, with a fading memory of Buddhism in his mind, "is the nature of our life. We see often persons who were rich yesterday, and are poor to-day. This is the result of human competition, according to the law of evolution. We are exposed to ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... wide, beautiful, weather-worn land—big and grand in its freedom of all that was narrow and sordid, and it was cutting and scarring it, harnessing it to the petty uses of a class he despised with all the frank egotism of a man who loves his own outlook; giving it over to the "nester" and the "rube" and burying the sweet-smelling grasses with plows. It was—he could not, even in the eloquence of his utter despair, find words for all ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... patriots in their hearts, although they are attempting revolution, and are looked upon as the enemies of good order. Joseph Hume may be a patriot, so may O'Connell, so may —; but never mind; I consider that if in most cases, in all countries the word egotism were substituted it would be more correct, and particularly so ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Ingersoll, he stood before the 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 many. But where on the Nation's statute book do you find ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... rottenness of a mind that could even admit such thoughts as those which he had been entertaining. So wrought upon was he by the welter of his emotions, by that fierce strife between his conscience and his egotism, that he came abruptly to his feet, a cry upon ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... spite of its defects, the Roman administration was far superior to the kingdoms and commonwealths it had supplanted. The time for sovereign municipalities had long gone by. Those little states had destroyed themselves by their egotism, their jealousies, and their ignorance or neglect of individual freedom. The ancient life of Greece, all struggle, all external, no longer satisfied any one. It had been glorious in its day, but that brilliant democratic Olympus of demigods had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... heard spoken of, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with sneers, as the hot-bed of Jesuitism. Those who sneer say that the Jesuit fathers who left Spain under Martin Garcia formed this colony in the River Plate entirely in accordance with the principles their egotism and love of power dictated. It may be so; it is possible that the Jesuits were wrong in the conclusions they came to as regards the governing or guiding of human nature; all I can say is, that the perfect order reigning ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... to me. Your novel interests me more than all mine. Impersonality, a sort of idiocy which is peculiar to me, is making a noticeable progress. If I were not well, I should think that it was a malady. If my old heart did not become each day more loving, I should think it was egotism; in short, I don't know what it is, and there you are. I have had trouble recently. I told you of it in the letter which you did not receive. A person whom you know, whom I love greatly, Celimene, [Footnote: ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... cold egotism, raved about her niece endangering her life, and the lives of those around her, by going to infected houses, the Captain's general answer was—"Let the child alone, Dorothy; a good angel watches over her—God will take ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... odd look," she admitted, after a moment of troubled hesitation. "The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a display of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent me for what I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one I have ever received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what extent you rated my help ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... egotism.] Think of me ... not of anyone else. [He draws her from the window; then does not let her go.] May ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... light is all." Revelation is "an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life." In moods of exaltation, and especially in the presence of nature, this contact of the individual soul with the absolute is felt. "All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God." The existence and attributes of God are not deducible from history or from natural theology, but are thus directly given us in consciousness. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was equally mordant when he turned his attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully impartial. He hated the English for "their idle curiosity, bedizened awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant delight in all melancholy objects." As for the French, they are "les comediens ordinaires du bon Dieu;" yet "a blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Grundy's objections, before she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine—he confounds my ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he had lived on the fancy of getting home, of being honored and loved, of being given some little meed of praise and gratitude in the short while he had to live. Alas! this fancy had been a dream of his egotism. His old world was gone. There was nothing left. The day of the soldier had passed—until some future need of him stirred the emotions of a selfish people. This new world moved on unmindful, through ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... to put your hand on them as soon as possible," retorted Sweetwater. "I will confine myself to going over the ground you have already investigated." And with a sudden ignoring of the others' presence, which could only have sprung from an intense egotism or from an overwhelming belief in his own theory, he began an investigation of the room that threw the other's more commonplace efforts entirely ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members, is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the redemption of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Plato, who never imitates either himself or any one else; reminiscences of the Republic and the Laws are continually recurring in them; they are too like him and also too unlike him, to be genuine (see especially Karsten, Commentio Critica de Platonis quae feruntur Epistolis). They are full of egotism, self-assertion, affectation, faults which of all writers Plato was most careful to avoid, and into which he was least likely to fall. They abound in obscurities, irrelevancies, solecisms, pleonasms, inconsistencies, ...
— Charmides • Plato
... reserved and industrious, preferring study to any kind of amusement, delighting in good authors, diligent in the abstract sciences, caring little for the others,[11] thoroughly trained in mathematics and geography; quiet, fond of solitude, capricious, haughty, extremely inclined to egotism, speaking little, energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in repartee; having much self-esteem; ambitious and aspiring to any height: "the youth is worthy of protection." There is, unfortunately, no documentary evidence to sustain the genuineness of this report; but whatever its origin, it ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... by this prologue, which seemed to spring partly from the egotism of a self-made man, partly from an instinctive unwillingness to embark upon the confession to which he was committed. However, he was far from being bored. "I'm about thirty myself," he remarked, "and I'm worth about thirty cents. But that's ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... want you to know the truth," Helen went on swiftly. "Perhaps it is just egotism on my part, and I have really no right to tell you all about myself in this way; and perhaps you will scorn me when you come to know the whole truth. But I cannot help telling you about it, so that you may advise me what ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... their daughter's home and their own. That this seemed out of the question was owing to the fact that at the outset of his married life Sir Nigel had allowed himself to commit errors in tactics. A perverse egotism, not wholly normal in its rancour, had led him into deeds which he had begun to suspect of having cost him too much, even before Betty herself had pointed out to him their unbusinesslike indiscretion. He had done things he could not undo, and now, to his mind, his only resource was to treat them ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better colour to his own character? Because he is too good an actor to over-act, or to assume a moral garb which it would be easy to strip off. In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject with which his own character and interests are not identified: but by the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time, he has ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with a lady of French extraction. Not one drop of East Anglian blood was in the veins of Borrow's father, and very little in the veins of his mother. Borrow's ancestry was pure Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly French. But such was the egotism of Borrow—perhaps I should have said, such is the egotism of human nature—that the fact of his having been born in East Anglia made him look upon that part of the world as the very hub of the universe. East Anglia, however, seems to have cherished a very ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... critical reader will perceive. But since stereotype plates will not reflect our growing sense of perfection, the lavish praise of friends as to the merits of these pages will have its antidote in the defects we ourselves discover. We may however without egotism express the belief that this volume will prove specially interesting in having a large number of contributors from England, France, Canada and the United States, giving personal experiences and the progress of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hurried out into the garden; and in surrendering herself to the superbly unconscious egotism of childhood, found passing respite from the torment of her own thoughts. But it was some time before Mrs Conolly returned ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... other to terrify the Acadians; yet not without cost to the French Government; for they had learned the value of money, and, except when their blood was up, were slow to take scalps without pay. Le Loutre was a man of boundless egotism, a violent spirit of domination, an intense hatred of the English, and a fanaticism that stopped at nothing. Towards the Acadians he was a despot; and this simple and superstitious people, extremely susceptible to the influence ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 26th of February, Mr. John Randolph spoke on the Missouri question in the House of Representatives between three and four hours, on which speech Mr. Adams observed: "As usual, it had neither beginning, middle, nor end. Egotism, Virginian aristocracy, slave-purging liberty, religion, literature, science, wit, fancy, generous feelings, and malignant passions, constitute a chaos in his mind, from which nothing orderly can ever flow. Clay, the Speaker, twice called him to order; which proved useless, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... stunted or disordered by this stoppage of the natural play of the faculties. There are kinds of illness, especially those of the nervous system, which seem to invade the seat of the will and soul itself, to irritate the temper and sap the resolve and foster a self-centring egotism, by a power that is literally irresistible. Before such experiences as this one thought rises: it is part of mankind's business to lessen, and so far as possible to extirpate, these maladies. The individual sufferer must meet as best he can the conditions thrust upon ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Chateaubriand, the satirical genius; there, Thiers, skill, wrestled with Guizot, strength; there men have mingled, have grappled, have fought, have brandished evidence like a sword. There, for more than a quarter of a century, hatred, rage, superstition, egotism, imposture, shrieking, hissing, barking, writhing, screaming always the same calumnies, shaking always the same clenched fist, spitting, since Christ, the same saliva, have whirled like a cloud-storm about thy serene ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... 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. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 say, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... would fain have followed it, but for the present I forbade such impulse. The first page of the sheet was occupied with the lines I had overheard; the sequel was not exactly the writer's own experience, but a composition by portions of that experience suggested. Thus while egotism was avoided, the fancy was exercised, and the heart satisfied. I translate as before, and my translation is nearly ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... for a moment, in the hope that I may be permitted to make mention of my own works, without incurring the charge of undue egotism. Let me, however, by way of apology for calling public attention to the series of forty small Water-Color Drawings, (painted con amore, and with no idea of gain,) which are now before the public, mention the fact, that the commencement of their ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... that of the neurotic, not the primitive. It is megalomania and egotism and the pride of the man in the Bible that waxed fat and kicked. But the results are the same. She wants to destroy and simplify; but it isn't the simplicity of the ascetic, which is of the spirit, but the simplicity of the madman ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... firmly maintain, however, that I was never an enthusiastic votary. It would be more to my credit, I suppose, if I had been. More would be forgiven me if I had loved a little more, if into all my folly and egotism I had put a little more naivete and sincerity. Well, I did the best I could, I was at once too bad and too good for it all. At present, it's far enough off; I have put the sea between us; I am stranded. I sit high and dry, scanning the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... them. His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. 'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher—the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... not wholly due to egotism. Their "exchanges," both city and country, had shown considerable interest in the "Millville Experiment," as they called it, and only a few days before the leading journal of a good-sized city had commented at length on the "girls' ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... be but factors in the statement of a gigantic problem. An enormous bulk of the sincerer writing of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries falls together now into an unanticipated unanimity; one sees it as a huge tissue of variations upon one theme, the conflict of human egotism and personal passion and narrow imaginations on the one hand, against the growing sense of wider necessities and a possible, more ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... truths, by the innate imperfections of the same. Both 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
... know more. Edwardes had not even laughed when Ham declared with naive conviction: "None of them men ever did anything I couldn't do, if I got the chance." It was impossible to laugh, though listening to such boundless egotism, in the face of so deep a sincerity and such an implicit self-belief as shone from those ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... you when I am at home, I don't care,—I mean—" said Gerald, conscious of the egotism he was committing, "I mean you don't like it half so well, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... arrested," he said. "See, that octogenarian, old West. He wheeled ill-oiled, squeaking barrows and hacked at the garden paths when I was a Harchester boy. He wheels the one and hacks at the other even yet—a fact nicely lowering to one's private egotism, when you come to consider it. Why, then, my good friend, perjure yourself or strive to mince matters? The work of the world will be done whether I'm here to direct the doing of it or not.—Granted I am tough and in personal knowledge of ill-health a neophyte. My luck throughout ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... that reduces all men to a common level, that touches everybody with its potent magic and brings to the surface the deeply underlying nobody. The effect for some temperaments, for consciousness, for egotism, is admirable; for curiosity, for hero worship, it is rather baffling. It is the spirit of the street transferred to the drawing-room; indiscriminating, levelling, but doubtless finally wholesome, and witnessing the immensity of the place, if not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... evidently constitutional, runs through his poetry, and, considering how little he produced, the number of personal allusions in his verses is undoubtedly large. But he is entirely free from that egotism which we have had frequent occasion to blame as the prevailing vice of modern poetry. For whereas the modern poet thrusts his private feelings into prominence, and finds a luxury in the confession of his sorrows, Gray's references to himself are introduced on public ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... all the people;" nor those in Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were on the face of the earth." It has been said, indeed, that Moses was directed by inspiration to say such things about himself; but I do not believe that egotism is a supernatural product; men take that ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... pleasant to individual self-love. Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity, even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... for her he never failed to endeavor to impress on his hearers the idea of his own immense superiority to her and to everybody else. There is hardly anything in fiction so touching, so pitiful, so painful, as this exposition of a naked, brutal, yet not quite selfish, not wholly unloving, egotism. The Queen did not die on the Wednesday. Thursday and Friday passed over in just the same way, with just the same incidents—with the King alternately blubbering and bullying, with the panegyrics of the dying woman, and the twenty times told tale of "his old storm." ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... live and we want to hinder him. In that sense it does become a moral question, as regards ourselves, since we have begun to examine those errors on our part which do harm, and infringe the rights of others. Moreover, our own egotism is concealed beneath our errors of treatment; what we really resent in the child is that he gives us trouble; we struggle against him in order to protect our own comfort, our own liberty. How often at the bottom of our hearts we have felt that we have been unjust, but have stifled ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... influence him. He regards a human creature as a fact or a thing, but not as an existence like his own. He feels no more hate than love. For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... one of the stops, an inspector arrives who remembers having seen Panov when a young man. The old man goes over the history of his life, which has been marked with constant success, with pleasure. He shows the vagabond his little son, and with cruel egotism boasts of his happiness. Standing before him, his back bent, and a sad light in his eyes, Panov listens to the story. He feels vaguely that he has not lived and that he lacks personality. There is nothing in store ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... in a mere idol of the dandies, like Brummell, or a mere irresistible buck and lady-killer, like Lauzun. In these latter men the force is wholly destructive; they are animated by a feline vanity, a tiger-spirit of egotism. Against the story of Nash and the Duchess of Queensberry, so wholesome and humane, we put that frightful anecdote that Saint-Simon tells of Lauzun's getting the hand of another duchess under his high heel, and pirouetting on it to make the heel dig deeper into the flesh. In all ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... scriptures and all acts) through dutiful services rendered to his preceptor, endued with forgiveness of disposition, engaged in the worship of the deities, possessed of a tranquil soul, pure (in body and mind), enlightened, observant of all duties, and freed from every kind of egotism, that man who makes a gift of a cow unto a Brahmana, certainly attains to great merit through that act of his, viz., the gift, according to proper rites, of a cow yielding copious milk. Hence, one, with singleness of devotion, observant ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean only the petty candles, the household torches, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the egotism of my language, but I have none, sir, in my heart, for I feel beyond all encouragement from myself, and I hope for ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... escape the malicious criticism of Settle, who, besides noticing the extravagant egotism of the hero, questions, with some probability, whether Abdalla would have chosen to scale Almanzor's fate, at the risque of the personal consequences of having all his men piled on his own ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... all the papers, which discussed Your wedding plans, shall turn your cake to crust, Publish your letters and your photographs, And trail your Egotism in the dust! ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... smile crossed his face as he thought of what a fool she was to think that he cared for her. His self-assurance led him to believe that the reason that Eva was not consenting to his proposal was indeed because of her father's condition, for he little dreamed, nor would his egotism permit him to believe, that anything else could be ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... individual experiences that makes up the influence of a journal like The Nation, and one may therefore be pardoned the egotism necessarily arising from a relation of one's own contact with it. In 1866, while a student at the University of Chicago, I remember well that, in a desultory talk in the English Literature class, Professor William Matthews spoke of The Nation and advised the students ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... never known real mental anguish; heartaches in others had always afforded him mild amusement and contempt. It was one thing, he reflected, to write about human emotions; it was entirely another thing to live and act them. He saw that his past had been full of egotism and selfishness, but he also saw that his selfishness was of the kind that has its foundation in indifference and not in calculation. The voices went on down stairs, but he ceased to pay any attention ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... "You must forgive this egotism in me because it is necessary that I should make this explanation and you, who are in the main police officers of considerable experience and discernment, should appreciate the fact that as I was able to get inside the minds of the fictitious ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... were 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
... on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine auditor. One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar charm to her conversation. She had no petty egotism, no spirit of contradiction; she never talked for effect. A happy thought well expressed filled her with delight; in a moment she would seize the thought and improve upon it—so that common people began to feel themselves wise in her presence; and perhaps years after she would remind them, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... materialism of this age is to be followed by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau, the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and progress so taught to be the law of individual man, that, whether going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the gallows, his tendencies are still ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington |
