"Self-love" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of defrauding, of stealing, of acting cruelly, indeed, in the worst men, of blaspheming the holy things of the church and of inveighing against God. The fountainhead of those enjoyments is the love of ruling from self-love. They come of lusts which obsess the interiors of the mind, from these flow into the body, and excite uncleannesses there which titillate the fibers. The physical pleasure springs from the pleasure which the mind ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... clean as white folks.' The mode in which they have learned to accept the idea of their own degradation and unalterable inferiority, is the most serious impediment that I see in the way of their progress, since assuredly, 'self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.' In the same way yesterday, Abraham the cook, in speaking of his brother's theft at the rice island, said 'it was a shame even for a coloured man to do such things.' ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Here personal satire seems to have absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... manifested towards him from all quarters, aggravated the sorrow of his wife by a silly vanity. He endeavoured to persuade her that these reports had their origin only in the wish of the public that he should have a child, so that these seeming consolations offered by self-love to Josephine's grief gave force to existing conjugal alarms, and the fear of divorce returned with all its horrors. Under the foolish illusion of his vanity Bonaparte imagined that France was desirous of being governed even by a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... good of him . . . The Lord pity the proneness of his heart to comply with the men who have the power . . . Lord, he is unsound and double in his heart, politically crafty, selfish, not savouring nor discerning the things of God . . . Let not self-love, wit, craft, and timorousness corrupt his mind, but indue him with fortitude, patience, steadfastness, tenderness, mortification . . . Shall I expose myself and my family to danger at this time? A grain of sound faith would solve all my questions.' 'Die Dom. I stayed ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Chesterton, with his usual felicity of phrase, hits the nail on the head when he says that upon this principle "the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person;" certainly it should be clear that on this assumption, as there can be no return of affection from a God whose love is only self-love, so the effect of prayer can only be that which is produced upon the soul by its consciousness—supposed to be elevating—of being an infinitesimal fraction of an infinite totality. We say that this consciousness is supposed ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... seen. He had stolen in, thrown his apple of discord, and stolen forth again like a ghost. None knew or understood better than he the wayward character of Vendome, and that never was the prince capable of acting with decision unless his self-love were hurt. So he had made his plan, and acted, and now stood in the shadow of a pillar in the courtyard waiting for the prince. He had not long to wait, for Vendome came storming out, almost on his ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... starvation. Deny it as we may, we are hopelessly given over to fetichism, and each one of us ties around her stone image some beguiling orthodox label. Leo, yours is pride, masquerading in the dun garb of 'religious duty'. Mine is self-love, pure and simple, the worldly weal of Alma Cutting; but nominally it is dubbed 'grateful requital of a life of devotion' in my lover! You grieve over my heartlessness? That is the one compensation time brings, when men and women have killed the best in our natures. Teeth ache ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... you all my mind, without reserve, on your resolution not to have this vilest of men. You gave me, in your's of Sunday the 23d, reasons so worthy of the pure mind of my Clarissa, in support of this your resolution, that nothing but self-love, lest I should lose my ever-amiable friend, could have prevailed upon me to wish you to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... man to whom she thus devoted herself was not wholly worthy of her. He had infinite spirit; but he was coldly calculating, profoundly selfish, meanly ambitious. He measured others by himself. He was naturally as subtle in evil, as she was disposed spontaneously to virtue. Full of finesse in his self-love and in the pursuit of his own interest, he was, in reality, the least chivalrous of his sex, although he affected all the appearance of the loftiest chivalry. In his liaison with Madame de Longueville he made love the ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the manner of the old man, and an impressiveness in the tone of his voice, that completely subdued his auditor. He felt rebuked and humbled, and went away more serious than he had come. But though serious, his mind was not free from anger, his self-love had been ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... property is acquired and improved for the reason that each one of us by himself has his own home and wife and children. From this, self-love springs. For when we raise a son to riches and dignities, and leave an heir to much wealth, we become either ready to grasp at the property of the State, if in any case fear should be removed from the power which belongs ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... stage of spiritual training one must take into account that with the strengthening of the forces of the soul a degree of self-love and egoism appears with such intensity as is quite unknown in the ordinary life of the soul. It would be a mistake for anyone to think that it is only a case of ordinary self-love at this point. Self-love becomes so strong at this ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... everyone is naturally a lover of himself, and that it is right that it should be so. This is a mistake; for in fact the cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved, so that he passes a wrong judgment upon what is just, good, and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honour what belongs to himself, in preference ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... Father Alexis was an excellent man; but unfortunately, he had too decided a taste for the pleasures of the table. He could also be accused of having a strong ingredient of vanity in his character; but his self-love was so ingenuous, that the most severe judge could but pardon it. Father Alexis had succeeded in persuading himself that he was a great artist, and this conviction constituted his happiness. This much at least ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... dubious proposition in words, you oblige him to commit it to writing. Not necessarily to be used against him afterwards, but for this reason—and I can almost quote my papa's phrase on the occasion—in the homage of his self-love, a man will rarely write himself such a knave as he will dare to own when he is talking, and in that act of weakness is the gain of the other party to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... and absurd diction. It depends upon a great variety of causes, but upon none, perhaps, more than its influence in impressing a notion of the peculiarity and exaltation of the Poet's character, and in flattering the Reader's self-love by bringing him nearer to a sympathy with that character; an effect which is accomplished by unsettling ordinary habits of thinking, and thus assisting the Reader to approach to that perturbed and dizzy state of mind in which if he does not find himself, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... irresistible impulse. Steadily magnetized by the spirit of the "wild, sweet thing" who had withstood him at the price of his hand, yearning had once more conquered pride, and again he had returned, again an astonishment to himself. In view of such abasement of his self-love, he had, truth to tell, expected to find Carlisle fully ready for the immediate rejoining of their lives. But perhaps there had lingered in him a doubt of the quality of his reception, born of the manner of their parting; and her hesitation, while it ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of the family to which his memory recurred with such unflagging interest, none more frequently engaged his thoughts than Miss Arundel. Her conversation, which stimulated his intelligence while it rather piqued his self-love, exercised a great influence over him, and he had omitted no opportunity of enjoying her society. That society and its animating power he sadly missed; and now that he had before him the very drawings about which they ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... marriages, of secret societies, of intemperance, and the indulgence of self-love in ardent and enthusiastic youth, find here the record of their fatal influence on social life, reflected through the medium of historical facts. Therefore we present to the young a chapter of warning—a tale of the past with a deep ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... days." Deacon Carver, probably from being on shore, was not here named. In a note appended to the memoir of Robert Cushman (prefatory to his Discourse delivered at Plymouth, New England, on "The Sin and Danger of Self-Love") it is stated in terms as follows: "The fact is, that Mr. Cushman procured the larger vessel, the MAY-FLOWER, and its pilot, at London, and left in that vessel." The statement—though published long after the events of which it treats and by other than Mr. Cushman—we know to be substantially ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... trampling under foot." This man imagined that he "was singled out alone to give his testimony for Christ, discovering Antichrist's marks." "If any," he cried out, "will be faithful for Christ, they must witness against Antichrist, which is self-love, and lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. The witnesses are now slain, but shortly they will rise again," &c. He tried to get up "private Christian meetings," to run an opposition to "pulpit preaching." After going about from ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... express!" she murmured, with the pride in him which implied that there were no thoughts worth expressing to which he could not give a monumental utterance. Her adoration flattered his self-love to the same passionate intensity, and to something like the generous ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... raised by servitude: To balance fortune by a just expense, Join with economy, magnificence; With splendour, charity; with plenty, health; Oh teach us, Bathurst! yet unspoil'd by wealth! That secret rare, between the extremes to move Of mad good-nature and of mean self-love. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... shielded themselves, or tried to shield themselves, in an armour of stoical indifference—of utter selfishness, being sure that at all events there was one friendship in the world which could neither change nor fade—Self-love. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Mozart as the founder of the forms of modern opera, an equally high place must be given to Rossini for the vigor and audacity with which he made these available, and impressed them on all his contemporaries and successors. Though Rossini's self-love was flattered by constant adulation, his expressions of respect and admiration for such composers as Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, and Cherubini display what a catholic and generous nature he possessed. The judgment of Ambros, a severe critic, whose bias was against Rossini, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... but loathe Things base or mean, I must confess I'd very freely take my oath, Self-love's a fault ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... In the faces of the weaker ones it showed offensively; the stronger hid it, but Evan was none the less conscious of it. His self-love suffered a ghastly wound. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... These measures, as far as they have been confided to my care, have all succeeded; but, as I have stated (p. 79) in a printed report, a copy of which will be sent to you, they have neither flattered the vainglory of any particular nation, nor enlisted on their side the self-love of any influential class or powerful individual, and they have, in consequence, been attended with little eclat. They have, however, tended to secure to the Government the gratitude and affection of the people of India, and are measures of which ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... "She appears to me true, and capable of making sacrifices! but is not she also very different from all the others? How often have I not heard Sophie laugh at her for it—look down upon her!" And Otto's better feeling sought in vain for a shadow of self-love in Louise, a single selfish ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... peculiarity. Not but that I have had disagreeable truth told me often enough, but heretofore people have done it out of spitefulness; but Mr. ——, who is the kindest-hearted of mortals, never dreams that his merciless frankness can possibly wound one's self-love. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... but incapable of perceiving the subtle medium which intervenes— too delicate for its limited sense to comprehend, but too strong for its limited power to pass. But though Tom felt satisfaction at that moment, he had too good feeling to wound the self-love of the vain creature before him; so, instead of speaking what he thought, viz., "What business have you to attempt literature, you conceited fool?" he tried to wean him civilly from his folly by saying, "Then come back to the country, James; if you find jealous rivals ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... were true, I confess that I am so indifferent to what many Americans glory in that it would not distress me, or wound me in the sort of self-love which calls itself patriotism. If it would at all help to put an end to that struggle for material prosperity which has eventuated with us in so many millionaires and so many tramps, I should be glad to believe that it was driving our literary men out of the country. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... strength and becomes less restless and unquiet and more independent. Soul and body become better balanced and nature no longer asks for more movement than is required for self-preservation. But the love of power does not die with the need that aroused it; power arouses and flatters self-love, and habit strengthens it; thus caprice follows upon need, and the first seeds of prejudice and obstinacy ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... so do my friends: 'A mild, obliging, gentle, amiable person, with many fine traits of character; timid in nature, fond of society, loving peace and quietude, delighting in warm and close friendships. There is much that is firm, steadfast and industrious, some self-love, a good deal of diplomacy, a little that is subtle, or what is called finesse. You are reserved with those you dislike. There is a serious and sad side to your character; you are very thoughtful and contemplative when in these moods. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... N. selfishness &c. adj.; self-love, self- indulgence, self-worship, self-interest; egotism, egoism; amour propre[Fr],&c. (vanity) 880; nepotism. worldliness &c. adj.; world wisdom. illiberality; meanness &c. adj. time-pleaser, time-server; tuft-hunter, fortune-hunter; jobber, worldling; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... trust to his generosity to exonerate him from the false charge, which Mary, in her waywardness or madness, had fixed upon him. Judging his cousin's mind by his own, he felt that he was secure—that, however painful to Godfrey's self-love, he would never suffer him to bear the reproach of a ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... am come to lead you into the way of justice. I bid you follow; not in passion and blind excitement, but as men firm in heart and bent upon service. For the way of self-love is easy, while the way of justice is hard. But some will follow, and their numbers will grow; for the lives of men have grown ill beyond enduring, and there must be a new birth of the spirit. Think upon my message; I shall speak to ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... smiled. "No, not I, little one. The guest's name is Humility." He waited a moment and then proceeded. "You are entertaining two guests now who are eating you out of house and home; devouring your substance literally. Their names are Vanity and Self-love. Vanity has a thin skin, is very easily injured. The other one whispers to you to hate your aunt and uncle, and to be jealous of Edna Derwent. They can't stay where Humility enters. Take her in. Listen to her. She will whisper to you that it isn't ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... foundations of a righteous character. If any moral proposition is self-evident, it is that such a code as this, which exalts God to the throne of the human soul and humbles man beneath his feet, is not the offspring of human self-love. If any one would know the difference between the Bible and a human code of morals, let him read Cicero's treatise on Duties, perhaps the best system of ethics which pure heathenism ever produced, but from which man's relation to deity is ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... with thy money hath tempted one man to slay his fellow, and then, blinded with self-love, instead of blaming and punishing thyself, art thirsting for more blood of guilty men, but ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... in everything the question of interest, the question of self-love. It is a very fine title, that of captain of the musketeers; but observe this: we have now the king's guards and the military household of the king. A captain of musketeers ought to command all that, and then he would absorb a hundred thousand ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... perfect sincerity. Do that, and make it a complete, continuous act, and you need no help from me or any creature. I wish to provoke you to do it. That is my whole aim and desire. Just in proportion as we harbor pride, vanity, self-love—in a word, self-hood—just so far we fail in integrally resigning ourselves to God. Were we wholly resigned to God He would change all in us that is in discord with Him, and prepare our souls for union with Him, making us one with Himself. God longs for ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... unless some providence intervenes, the genius of destruction will again carry the day over the genius of preservation. The assailants, who have nothing to lose and all to gain, understand each other thoroughly; whereas their rich adversaries will not make any sacrifice either of money or self-love ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of 'Endymion' in the Quarterly. It was severe,—but surely not so severe as many reviews in that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... poor and miserable ignorant. Those that are the best men of war against all the vanities and fooleries of the world, do always keep the strongest guards against themselves, to defend them from themselves; from self-love, self-estimation, and self-opinion. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... broken-hearted. A new race of constitutional expounders had arisen around him. Brother justices, with modern constructions, and more liberal notions of national law, were by his side. In many decisions he was now a sole dissenter. His pride was invaded; his self-love tortured; his adoration of certain legal constructions which he had deemed immutable in their nature, was desecrated. And, for many years previous to his decease, he had contemplated resigning from the federal judiciary, and living alone ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Wouldst thou plant for eternity? Then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart. Wouldst thou plant for year and day? Then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-love, and arithmetical understanding, what will ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... preceding engagements, and made his will and pleasure the sole rule of government. Those lofty ideas of monarchical authority, which he has derived from his early education, which are united in his mind with the irresistible illusions of self-love, which are corroborated by his mistaken principles of religion, it is in vain to hope that, in his more advanced age, he will sincerely renounce from any subsequent reflection or experience. Such conversions, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... there, living to God, one with us, fellows of our life and love. So let us address ourselves afresh to the spiritual race, the course of faith. Let us, as athletes of the soul, strip all encumbrance off, "every weight" of allowed wrong, all guilty links with the world of rebellion and self-love; "the sin which doth so easily beset us," clinging so soon around the feet, like a net of fine but stubborn meshes, till the runner gives up the ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and somebody must pay ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... much teaching may disagree with the reader. It is apt to harden the heart, wearying the attention, and mortifying the self-love. Such disturbances of the system interfere with the ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... suffering; such ones have the heart to laugh at the shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering. These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are, in their eyes, harmless, and slight pricks which they themselves, by a coarseness of nature, or a fine moral health, would endure ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... self-love of M. Bonaparte to be seized by history, if perchance, and truly one would imagine so, he cherishes any illusion as to his value as a political miscreant, let him ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... rather not selfishness, but self-love. Selfishness means not only a desire for our own happiness, but injustice towards others. It would have been wrong for me to have appealed to Dwight's selfishness, as that would have been encouraging a bad passion; but it was right for me to appeal to his self-love, that is, to shew him how his ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... parson was not a bargaining man, every impulse of his heart went to confirm this arrangement. It was flattering to his self-love, if not to his principles, to have apparent sanction to his prejudices against French forms of speech; and the "New Papa" on the lips of this young girl touched him to the quick. Wifeless men are more easily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... indeed asks of you your heart, Francesca; but He also claims your whole self as an oblation, and therefore your will that He may mould it into entire conformity with His own. For works may be many and good, my daughter, and piety may be fervent, and virtues eminent, and yet the smallest leaven of self-love or self-will may ruin the whole. Why do you weep, Francesca? That God's will is not accomplished, or that your own is thwarted? Nothing but sin can mar the first, and in this your trial there is not the least shade of sin. As to your own will, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb, Of his self-love to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime; So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live, remember'd ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... passionate; indeed so very easily irritated when inebriated, that Mary was continually in dread lest he should frighten her mother to death; her sickness called forth all Mary's tenderness, and exercised her compassion so continually, that it became more than a match for self-love, and was the governing propensity of her heart through life. She was violent in her temper; but she saw her father's faults, and would weep when obliged to compare his temper with her own.—She did more; artless prayers rose to Heaven for pardon, when she was conscious ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... builds a house from vanity, or makes a party from vanity, or gives a present from vanity, or writes a book from vanity, or seeks an office from vanity,—then, as certainly as the bite of an asp will poison the body, will the expected good be turned into a bitter disappointment. Self-love cannot be the basis of human action without alienation from God, without weariness, disgust, and ultimate sorrow. The soul can be fed only by divine certitudes; it can be enlarged only by walking according to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice of art. To struggle, to face nature, to find fresh solutions, and give expression to facts which have not yet been adequately or not yet elegantly expressed, is to run a little upon the danger of extreme self-love. Difficulty sets a high price upon achievement; and the artist may easily fall into the error of the French naturalists, and consider any fact as welcome to admission if it be the ground of brilliant handiwork; or, again, into the error of the modern landscape-painter, who is apt ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that man to life—power, honors, wealth, all the magnificence that surrounded him—must have seemed to him to be already far away in an irrevocable past. It required courage of a very exceptional temper to resist such a blow without the slightest outburst of self-love. No one was present save the friend, the physician, the servant, three intimate acquaintances, who were familiar with all his secrets; the lights being turned low left the bed in shadow, and the dying man could have turned ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... was possessed by this dead fool, Nir-jalis, and yet, lo!—how the Silver Nectar doth make havoc on the sinews of adamant, the nerves of steel, the stalwart limbs! Tried by the touchstone of Death, ye are, with all your vaunted intelligence, your domineering audacity and self-love, no better than the slain dogs that serve vultures for carrion! ...—moreover, ye are less than dogs in honesty, and vastly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... taking the most obvious means of remedying the evil, and employing the natives of the place, who appeared to be tractable and teachable enough, abused and threatened to beat the unfortunate people, convicted of what self-love styles "ingratitude." ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... inhabitants, with whom, during this period of happiness she could easily dispense, as if they were a forgotten world. There was no one in her native city whom she seriously missed or to whom she was strongly drawn. That she, too, offered these people little, and was of small importance, self-love had never permitted her to realize, and therefore she felt an emotion of painful surprise when she perceived the deep gulf which separated her from her fellow-citizens of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which strain the bond to the breaking point. There is often a good deal of selfishness in the affection, which asks for absorption, and is jealous of other interests. Jealousy is usually the fruit, not of love, but of self-love. Life is bigger than any relationship, and covers more ground. The circles of life may intersect, and part of each be common to the other, but there will be an area on both sides exclusive to each; and even if it were possible ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... an angel, Violet!" he cries, with actual humility. "You are never jealous or hurt, you praise so generously, you are always thinking how other people must be made happy. You give away everything! I am not worth so much consideration," the crust of self-love is pierced for a moment and shows in the tremulous voice, "but I mean to make myself more of a man. And I can never ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sufferings and failings of their brethren, a consideration in the colony, to which they were entitled neither by their rank nor their reputation. Nor was this reflection always without reason: in strange forgetfulness of the natural operation of self-love, the upper classes of New South Wales expected multitudes, often of greater wealth than themselves, to walk humbly in their presence. Such claims the emancipists met with defiance. The false morality of their journals will be largely ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... we preach of God in terms of the drawing-room, as though he were some vast St. Nicholas, sitting up there in the sky or amiably informing our present world, regarding with easy benevolence His minute and multifarious creations, winking at our pride, our cruelty, our self-love, our lust, not greatly caring if we break His laws, tossing out His indiscriminate gifts, and vaguely trusting in our automatic arrival at virtue. Even as in philosophy, it is psychologists, experts in empirical science and methods, and sociologists, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... never threatening; in doing but not saying; in promoting the retreat of an enemy and never stepping, as the saying is, on the tail of the serpent; and in avoiding, as one would murder, the infliction of a blow to the self-love of any one lower than one's self. An injury done to a person's interest, no matter how great it may be at the time, is forgiven or explained in the long run; but self-love, vanity, never ceases to bleed from a wound given, and never forgives it. The moral being is actually ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... latter of what is acceptable and well-pleasing to God. These two persons,(971) so unlike one another, are the first two and chief citizens of two different cities, built on different motives, and with different principles; the one, self-love, and a desire of temporal advantages, carried even to the contemning of the Deity; the other, the love of God, even to the contemning of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the primary laws of existence in the physical world is self-love; that is, an instinct in every creature to procure its own good, even at the expense of others, so that the preservation of one is attended with the destruction of some others. All nature is in a perpetual struggle within itself, and every component part receives the elements of its own life and ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... not itself. We can only love God at the sacrifice of all self-love. When man possesses the love of God there is no self-praise, nor seeking of honor; there is no setting self forward, but the lowliest seat ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... First you convict me of vanity—now of self-love. Let me do as I please, Franziska. You, too, shall do as ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... all society. First comes the principle of self-care and self-love. Each man is given charge of his own body and life. By foresight he is to guard against danger. By self-defense he is to ward off attack. By fulfilling the instincts for food, for work and rest he is to maintain the integrity of his being. Upon each individual rests the solemn obligation ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Spain than in the rest of Europe. Conviviality, candour, and great simplicity of manner, unite the different classes of society in the colonies, as well as in the mother-country. It may even be said, that the expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... lady accomplished much to her satisfaction and to that of her friends; and so blind and deaf is self-love, our hero neither heard nor saw that he was the object of derision. William, however, was rather more clear-sighted; and as he could not bear to see his cousin make himself the butt of the company, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... stumbling at every step, without energy to confront these dangers, without the will or power to comprehend that to become King of Italy he must first of all forget that he was King of Piedmont. Despotic from rooted instinct, liberal from self-love, and from a presentiment of the future, he submitted alternately to the government of Jesuits, and to that of men of progress. A fatal disunion between thought and action, between the conception and the faculty of execution, showed itself in every act. Most of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... he would banish by shunning the society of all those who could call them forth. Their candid acknowledgment of having deserved his displeasure, and submission to his will, however, so soothed his self-love, his fondness for absolute power, that he permitted them to have vent with but little restraint. Agnes might have been the wife of a traitor, but he was out of Edward's way; the daughter of a traitress, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... come back to the spirit and temper of Voltaire from the fussy self-love and neurotic introspections of our modern egoists. The new fashionable doctrine among the "intellectuals" is that one is to live in one's ivory tower and let the world go; live in one's ivory tower while brutal and detestable ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... He was irritated by the audacity of the enemies of the Republic, and he saw plainly that the majority of the councils had an evident ill-will towards him. The orators of the Club of Clichy missed no opportunity of wounding his self-love in speeches and pamphlets. They spared no insults, disparaged his success, and bitterly censured his conduct in Italy, particularly with respect to Venice. Thus his services were recompensed by hatred or ingratitude. About this time he received a pamphlet, which referred to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Erasmus writes, "is the just preference you have given Budaeus over me; I confess you are even too economical in your praise of him, as you are too prodigal in mine. I thank you for informing me what it is the learned desire to find in me; my self-love suggests many little excuses, with which, you observe, I am apt to favour my defects. If I am careless, it arises partly from my ignorance, and more from my indolence; I am so constituted, that I cannot conquer my nature; I precipitate ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... veils off men's hearts. It will reveal to them a great deal that they do not know, but it will not give the faculty of beholding the glorified Christ in such fashion as that the beholding will mean transformation. 'Every eye shall see Him,' but it is conceivable that a spirit shall be so immersed in self-love and in godlessness that the vision of Christ shall be repellent and not attractive; shall have no transforming and no gladdening power. And I beseech you to remember that about that vision, as about the vision of God Himself, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... attentions to the only titled young ladies in the room, he had throughout the evening a sense of being snubbed, and of being a person no longer of much importance at Rawdon Court. And the reasoning of wounded self-love is a singular process. Mostyn was quite oblivious of any personal cause for the change; he attributed it ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... by M. du Chatelet, discerned in him the superior qualities lacking in the men of their own sect, and the insurrection of self-love was pacified. These ladies all hoped to succeed to the Imperial Highness. Purists were of the opinion that you might see the intruder in Mme. de Bargeton's house, but not elsewhere. Du Chatelet was fain to put up with a good deal of insolence, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... does not try to tell lies to God, and, attempting to deceive Him, really deceives only the self-righteous sinner. Whosoever opens his heart to God, makes a clean breast of it, and without equivocation or self-deception or the palliations which self-love teaches, says, 'I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' to that man the Psalmist thinks ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... view his case in a somewhat clearer and more natural light. Apparent enough was it now that the red moccasins had deceived him, mocked him, laughed at him—in short, made a fool of Sprigg completely. This discovery brought a twinge to his self-love, far more severe than any pain of conscience he felt at the thought of the foul lie he had told, or of his shabby flight from home; even while he could not help but be aware of the grief and shame and distressing apprehensions he must thereby be causing his dear father and mother. In a ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... I shall use for the favour of the public is, that I have as great a respect for it as most authors have for themselves; and that I have sacrificed much of my own self-love for its sake, in preventing not only many mean things from seeing the light, but many which I thought tolerable. I would not be like those authors who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole poem, and vice versa a whole poem for the sake of some particular ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... another paper under his father's nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was marked "Legal Considerations." Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing or shielding his son. In fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by their offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him up to a certain point, for the good of both. He therefore opened the paper, expecting something worse than what he had hitherto seen, despite its formal heading, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... egoism; his ready tact, social charm, and power of psychological analysis, subtle sophistry and self-deception; his warmest affection, disguised self-love; his finest qualities perverted lead ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... together, and know almost by heart the work they are executing. Even then, the inattention of a single player may occasion an accident. Why incur its possibility? I know that certain artists feel their self-love hurt when thus kept in leading-strings (like children, they say); but with a conductor who has no other view than the excellence of the ultimate result, this consideration can have no weight. Even ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... is offered to them in the word, have been much puzzled, as if they were not believers at all: on the other hand, many secure and impenitent sinners, who have not yet believed the Lord's holiness, nor abhorrence of sin, nor their own ruined state and condition, do from self-love imagine, without any warrant of the word, that they are beloved of God, and that the foresaid description of faith agrees ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... scrupulousness of care from error in this direction, and can be content, and even happy to give more affection than we receive—can make just comparison of circumstances, and be severely accurate in drawing inferences thence, and never let self-love blind our eyes—I think we may manage to get through life with consistency and constancy, unembittered by that misanthropy which springs from revulsions of feeling. All this sounds a little metaphysical, but it is good sense ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Claire; and perhaps, after all, she best comprehended the nature she dealt with. Certainly no tirade of accusing scorn could have so wounded the self-love of the selfish, conscienceless man as ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and surrounded by an impalpable effulgence which distinguished them from all others of the sex throughout the world. Whatever was of the South was superlative. To be Southern-born was to be prima facie better than other men. So the self-love of every man was enlisted in this sentiment. To praise the South was to praise himself; to boast of its valor was to advertise his own intrepidity; to extol its women was to enhance the glory of his own achievements ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... as little of the justice or injustice of his cause as those of the gang of the robber; the people of his capital hailed the return of the victorious prince who had contributed so much to their wealth, to his booty, and to their self-love by his victory. The village community received back the robber and his gang with the same feelings: by their skill and daring they had come back loaded with wealth, which they were always disposed to spend liberally with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... fashion did the great masters of tune and tone Discourse to Barty through Father Louis's well-trained finger-tips. They always discourse to you a little about yourself, these great masters, always; and always in a manner pleasing to your self-love! The finger-tips (whosesoever's finger-tips they be) have only to be intelligent and well trained, and play just what's put before them in a true, reverent spirit. Anything beyond may be unpardonable impertinence, both to the great masters ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... trimmings? As to his body there can be no dispute, but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you will find them all contribute in their order towards furnishing out an exact dress. To instance no more, is not religion a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a surtout, vanity a shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, though a cover for lewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipped down for the ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... question, whether a poet can judge well of his own productions? and determines very justly, that, of the plan and disposition, and all that can be reduced to principles of science, the author may depend upon his own opinion; but that, in those parts where fancy predominates, self-love may easily deceive. He might have observed, that what is good only because it pleases, cannot be pronounced good till it ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... had just contracted, or was just contracting, a mortal sickness of the mind which should yet carry her towards death and despair. Had it been a doctor of psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of childish vanity, self-love IN EXCELSIS, and no more. It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing the inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used too strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a day of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... observed, no one could think the cottage of Head well furnished with a paper so poor and thin,—you could almost see the bricks through it. Matty was, however, well pleased; and even, in the blindness of self-love, had some hopes of the silver crown. Pride flattered her skill and her quickness, and was always a welcome guest at her cottage as well as in Dick's. Neither the brother nor the sister yet knew the evils that might arise from their using the ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... from a disturbed state of mind. Something in the discourse had struck at the foundations of self-love and self-complacency. ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... that their error flattered his self-love, and believing that he had the best right to the title, he allowed them to deceive themselves, and to address him and speak of him ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... you curse the same noise from another. The feeling is as powerful, almost, as that of a mother, who thinks her own ugly cub a cherub compared to others, and its squallings the music of the spheres. It is because there is no being that administers so much to the self-love of his master. He submits, with humility, to the blows inflicted in the moment of irritation, and licks the hand that corrects. He bears no revengeful feelings, and is ready to fondle and caress you the moment that your good humour returns. He is, what man looks in ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in nations, and this is due precisely to the fact that patriotism as a feeling and impulse necessarily lacks in the group consciousness the mechanisms for externalization, except indeed in war. War is an escape, for a people, from a kind of subjectivism, from the evils of a self-love to perhaps ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... fellow of his caste! The girl was angry and indignant. At first she considered it a joke; then she became annoyed, and finally she ridiculed the idea. At last she became used to Garnet's attentions, and it pleased her self-love to be a subject of adulation, which she unmercifully snubbed in return. But Santos was pertinacious in his courtship. With the persistence of a fly which dashes against glass, trying a hundred times to pass through the obstruction, neither repulses, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... of excitement which pervade a gay and well arranged mansion in the country, unstrings the nervous system. For a week or so, we have done nothing which was not agreeable, and heard nothing which was not pleasant. Our self-love has been respected; there has been a total cessation of petty cares; all the enjoyment of an establisnment without any of its solicitude. We have beheld civilization only in its favoured aspect, and tasted only the sunny side ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... one?" she made answer. "Love is an angel, Annora: it is self-love that is of the Devil. When man helps man to sin, that is not love. How can it be, when God is love, and God and sin are opposites? Tarry until my tale be ended, and then shalt thou be judge thyself how far Roland's love ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... much easier, and more pleasant, to obtain needed information from him. As regards the intellectual character of his mind, however, I do not think it was of the highest stamp. Of all practical things he had a decided opinion. His judgment was sound. Not marred by prejudice, nor warped by self-love, or self-praise, or self-aggrandisement, he was enabled coolly to exercise his powers of mind in forming a just estimate of men and things. He possessed strong common sense, which, being balanced by a high moral tone, and refined sensibilities, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... Infinite, Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... she received the bourgeoisie of Provins at her house in the Upper town. This intelligent young woman of twenty had not as yet made a single blunder or misstep on the slippery path she had taken. She gratified everybody's self-love, and petted their hobbies; serious with the serious, a girl with girls, instinctively a mother with mothers, gay with young wives and disposed to help them, gracious to all,—in short, a pearl, a treasure, the pride ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... ever step down from his ridiculous pinnacle of wounded self-love. Favourite daughter though she had been, Mr. Barrett never forgave her, held no communication with her even when she became a mother, and did not mention her in his will. It is needless to say anything more upon this subject. What Mr. and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be a ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The maxim of self-love simply advises; the law of morality commands. There is a vast difference between what we are advised and what we are obliged to do. No practical laws can be based on the principle of happiness, even on that of universal happiness, for the knowledge ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Rationalist and Republican was slowly seethed in molten lead, the fate of each being, of course, a just judgment of heaven on those who presumed to differ from the author. Thus the voice of morality is confounded with that of tyrannical petulance and self-love. Not only is Scott not personal, but we cannot conceive his being so. We cannot think it possible that he should degrade his art by the indulgence of egotism, or crotchets, or petty piques. Least of all can we think it possible that his high and gallant nature should use art as a cover for striking ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... maiden rent by the horns of the bull or torn by the claws of beasts. His cruelty, his deformed imagination, and deformed desires found a kind of delight in such spectacles. And now the people wanted to rob him. Hence anger appeared on his bloated face. Self-love also would not let him yield to the wish of the multitude, and still he did not dare to oppose it, through his ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror,—it is his nature, and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere, and perhaps, also, he would ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... truth, and truth in a friend so much, that I must tell you, that so far from taking your sincerity ill, I had much rather you should act with your native honest sincerity than say you was pleased with my manuscript. I have always tried as much as is in human nature to divest myself of the self-love of an author; in the present case I had less difficulty than ever, for I never thought my Life of Mr. Baker one of my least indifferent works. You might, believe me, have sent me your long letter; whatever it contained, it would not have made a momentary cloud between us. I have not only ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable impression it made might not be always 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 ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... distress, similar to this, aggravated by unkindness! Moroseness on the one part, and undutifulness on the other, excite the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law; whereas reason, religion, and even self-love, require a different conduct. The poverty of Naomi was no objection to Orpah and Ruth to accompany her in her departure from Moab; but at once, abandoning every minor or selfish consideration, they prepared to attend her unprotected way. They would not suffer her to drink alone of the bitter ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... He had never heard any woman speak in this way before, except his mother; the clever way in which Nitetis acknowledged, and laid stress on, his right to command her every act, was very flattering to his self-love, and her pride found an echo in his own haughty disposition. He nodded approvingly and answered: "You have spoken well. A separate dwelling shall be appointed you. I, and no one else, will prescribe your rules of life and conduct. This day the pleasant palace on the hanging-gardens shall be prepared ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... young smarting soul went through in that half-mile of listening is better guessed than analysed. There are certain moments of shame, which only women know, and which seem to sting and burn out of youth all its natural sweet self-love. A woman may outlive them, but never forget them. If she pass through one at nineteen her cheek will grow hot over it at seventy. Her companion's measured tone, the flow of deliberate speech which came from him, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to his lackey. "Lad, let us love only ourselves. Self-love is always true to us. We will spend our gold and play the butterfly while the summer lasts. It will be cold soon, and then . . . pouf! To-morrow you will take the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... first part of this obligation, it is useless to ask what it is in our neighbour we are to love as ourselves, until we know what it is in ourselves we are to love. In what sense is a man to love himself? Because there is a radical difference between self-love as taught and practised in the world, and the love of self sanctioned and regulated by the Royal Law. Love of self is a right anxiety to secure the things we need in this world. It is based upon the principle that life is not to be unclothed but clothed ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... keep disgrace and death from her, and the love for his own life, a life which could be made bright and beautiful, that the great struggle was over. It seemed to him then that he had fought his last battle and had won it. Duty had overcome self-love. But it seemed as nothing compared with the issues which now stared him ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... but at least we must have Brussels and brocatelle,—it would not do not to. And so we go on getting hundreds of things that we don't need, that have no real value except that they soothe our self-love,—and for these inferior articles we pay a higher proportion of our income than our rich neighbor does for his better ones. Nothing is uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls; and yet a young man just entering business will spend an eighth of a year's income to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... continued, "is now arrived when reflections of this sort cannot too seriously occupy me; the errors I have observed in others, I would fain avoid committing; yet such is the blindness of self-love, that perhaps, even at the moment I censure them, I am falling, without consciousness, into the same! nothing, however, shall through negligence be wrong; for where is the son who merits care and attention, if Mortimer from his parents deserves not ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... affectionate, how honest; but yet how jealous! Were I to say that he is unforgiving I should belie him. Without many thoughts he could forgive the man who had robbed him of his fortune, or his health. But it is hard for him to forgive that which he considers to be an offence against his self-love." ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... of human faculties, holding a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our self-love, must be the happiest and most durable epoch. The more we reflect on it, the more we find that this state was the least exposed to revolutions and the best for man; and that he can have left it only through some fatal chance which, for the common advantage, should never have occurred. The example ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... of pride, selfishness, ignorance, and human will, and put in their place love, humility and truth. This step taken, there will flow into the human consciousness the qualities of God himself, giving powers that mortals believe utterly impossible to them. But hatred must go; self-love, too; carnal ambition must go; and fear—the cornerstone of every towering structure of mortal misery—must be utterly cast out by an understanding of the allness of the Mind that framed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... away with a barbed arrow in my self-love, and a hard, resentful pain at my heart, on my mother's account. Fierce tears scalded the inside of my eyelids as I recalled her weeks of loving preparation for our school life, the thousand of stitches set by her dear hands, the gentle ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... every kind, it should ever be remembered that their master's interest sometimes possesses only the second place in their hearts. Self-love, with such, will be the ruling principle of action; and no fidelity whatever will prevent a person from bestowing a good deal of thought upon his own concerns. But this must, of necessity, break in ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... in response to them—and by the mother, whose flattery always seemed involuntary. The two women were so kind and friendly to him, he was so sure of pleasing them, they ruled him so delightfully by holding the thread of his self-love, that he soon passed all his time ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... laughing; "I cannot conceive how the hope of a virtuous immortality can produce a vicious self-love. But if the hope and the consciousness of happiness now exercise any influence at all, your argument proves too much; and there is a simple impossibility of being ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... pondered deeply if she in any way deserved them. She knew that the lesson of self-knowledge is never entirely learnt; and she knew too, that an enemy may say that in ill-will or malice which may have some foundation, though our friends, aided by self-love, may have hidden the truth from us. Deeply did this noble woman think on her plan of conduct; severely she scrutinized its every motive, and she was at peace. Before entering upon it she had implored the Divine blessing, and she felt that, in the case of Emmeline and Ellen, her prayers for guidance ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... She had shared his hopes very bravely, brightening the studio with her housewifely activity; but now she sat down, discouraged, when she saw him powerless. At each picture which was refused she displayed still deeper grief, hurt in her womanly self-love, taking that pride in success which all women have. The painter's bitterness soured her also; she entered into his feelings and passions, identified herself with his tastes, defended his painting, which had become, as it were, part of herself, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola |
