"Selfishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should be dismissed with disdain. If a young man will not determine to do right because it is right, his motives are sordid; and the probability is very great that so soon as some stronger incentive appeals to his selfishness, he will forget his vows and promises and relapse into ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... exterior, I suspect our Frattino to be a very worthless, as well as a very unhappy being. While he pleases, he repels me. There is a want of heart about him, a want of fixed principles—a degree of profligacy, of selfishness, of fickleness, caprice and ill-temper, and an excess of vanity, which all his courtly address and savoir faire cannot hide. What would be insufferable in another, is in him bearable, and even interesting and amusing: such is the charm of manner. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... huckster-like avowal Is made continually, behind the bar. It means—though rather "laid on with a trowel"— A Trade with Public Spirit quite at jar. The "mercenary politician," making A pocket-business of a patriot's task, Recently put your Press in a great taking; But sordid selfishness here doffs all mask! Which with a patriot's conscience plays most tricks? Which most the venal virus has betrayed,— The man who makes his Trade his Politics, Or he who makes his Politics ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... it—you do not understand me; and yet it is not selfishness on my part. I would marry a man in the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... unhappy country was the scene of the most violent party struggles; during which the heads of the parties conducted themselves with the most revolting selfishness, and an entire forgetfulness of all political consequences and of their own moral responsibility. The fanaticism of the bishops of Cracow and Warsaw refused to the dissidents the restoration of their rights; and Russia thus acquired the first pretext for intermeddling ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... better feeling soon prevailed. "Poor fellow!" he said to himself; "why shouldn't he rest and forget all his troubles for a few hours? It is only selfishness ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... the third proposition—"Without holiness no man may see the Lord"; or, as it is expressed positively in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Sensuality and selfishness are absolute disqualifications for knowing "the things of the Spirit of God." These fundamental doctrines are very clearly laid down in the passage from St. John which I read as the text of this Lecture. The ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... once that a mistake had been made, that some difficult conditions had pushed this troubled creature into his presence, and his interest was enlisted. Here sympathy sprang to the rescue, but it was not unmixed with selfishness. He wanted to win Carrie because he thought her fate mingled with his was better than if it were united with Drouet's. He envied the drummer his conquest as he had never envied any man in all the course of ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... civilization has consisted largely in the raising of what is called "the standard of living," or, in other words, the multiplication of the things deemed necessary for personal comfort, and, as this raising of the standard has always been begun by the few, the many have always fought against it as a sign of selfishness or affectation until they themselves were ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... and you are able to contemplate, with calm emotion, the untold bliss into which the unfettered spirit has entered, do you not feel as if it were cruel selfishness alone that would denude that sainted pilgrim of his glory, and bring him once more back to earth's ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... mind. No intimation at all here of the part which a perverted will may play in the entanglements of life; no intimation of the immense force of the emotional side of life; no intimation here of the immense part which sheer selfishness plays. Mrs. Eddy's sin is far too simple. There is, once more, a sound reason for that. Mrs. Eddy is twice-born, if you will, but the struggle from which she finally emerged with whatever measure of victory she attained was not fought out with conscience ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in this place, I do not see your faces more clearly than I see those of my father and my mother. Her I only knew as a mere babe-child. He was my teacher and my companion. A more guileless soul than he, a more honest one, more free from envy, from jealousy, and from selfishness, I never knew. Though he thought he was great by his theology, everybody else knew he was great by his religion. My mother is to me what the Virgin Mary is to a devout Catholic. She was a woman of great nature, profound as a philosophical thinker, great in argument, with a kind of intellectual ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... believe that God has given to me or to any one else what only a few can have. I do not want anything, I will not have anything that any one cannot have. If there is one thing rather than another that inspiration is for, it is that when I have it I know that any man can have it. It is necessary to my selfishness that he shall have it. If a great wonder of a world like this is given to a man, and he is told to live on it and it is not furnished with men to live with, with men that go with it, what is it all for? If one ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... have testified. Her first experiments had been very serious, with urgent recommendations of hard physical labor; but this proved unsatisfactory. Then she attacked it from an ethical angle and suggested social service as a means of destroying the selfishness which she honestly believed to be one of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... sensualist, he was perforce an egotist, and the smallest of his desires became the star by which he laid his course. Through stress of appetites, as powerful as they were gross, he had grown sharp to calculate, and quick to see. He was controlled and hurried down by currents of a turbid selfishness; nor would he have stopped at any cruelty, balked at any crime, when prompted of what brute hungers kept his soul awake. He might have wept over failure, never from remorse. And Storri had set ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... letter through to the end, and it is possible (for women are blind in such matters) failed to perceive the selfishness in every line of it. Then, with the message of happiness in her hand, she returned to the chair she had just quitted, with a vague wonder in her mind, and the very human doubt that accompanies all possession, as to whether ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... consists in the eloquence, vividness, and sincerity with which a given problem in human life or character is presented. Human nature is made up of all sorts of traits—selfishness, cupidity, self-sacrifice, courage, loyalty. All life is made up ... of a compromise between elements in the struggle for happiness. These elements make for the story, happiness being the chief factor for which humanity ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... could not vibrate unseen. Hugh was very weak, very nervous, too, and turning his head away so that she could not see his face, he let the hot tears drop upon his pillow; slowly at first they came, but gradually as everything—his embarrassed condition, Rocket's loss, 'Lina's selfishness, and Alice's generosity, came rushing over him—they fell in perfect torrents, and Alice felt a keen pang of pity, as sob after sob smote upon her ear, and she knew the shame it must be to him thus to ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... the two opposite qualities were blended, or who were of a neutral moral tint. The good were those who loved their fellow-creatures, especially their relations, and were kind to them in word and deed. The bad were those who gave pain to others by their brutality and selfishness, by untruthfulness and deceit, and by speaking unkind and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... ultra-Calvinism is Gospel gentleness and Pauline sobriety compared with Wesley's Arminianism in the outset of his career. But the main and most noticeable difference between Leighton and the modern Methodists is to be found in the uniform selfishness of the latter. Not "Do you wish to love God?" "Do you love your neighbour?" "Do you think, 'O how dear and lovely must Christ be!'"—but—"Are you certain that Christ has saved 'you'; that he died for 'you—you—you —yourself'?" ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... forgetting their relative positions. This runs through society in general: and as no one can well be polite without some good-nature (for politeness, frivolous as it may appear, is a strong check upon those feelings of selfishness too apt to be indulged in), it leads to a general feeling of good-will towards others. This has naturally been practised by Frenchmen wherever they may be; and the consequence is that the slaves are treated with more consideration, and, in return, have warmer feelings of attachment ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... in my cages. No serious strife ever takes place among them, nothing beyond a little rivalry in the matter of food. I hand in a piece of pear. A Grasshopper alights on it at once. Jealously she kicks away any one trying to bite at the delicious morsel. Selfishness reigns everywhere. When she has eaten her fill, she makes way for another, who in her turn becomes intolerant. One after the other, all the inmates of the menagerie come and refresh themselves. After ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Frances had always been her favourite granddaughter, but she had never been blind, clear-sighted old lady that she was, to the little leaven of easy-going selfishness in the girl's nature. She was pleased to see that Frances had ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conscience apart from that of the Community. Every community has its errors in its laws. No human laws, how skilfully soever framed, but give to a national character defects as well as merits, merits as well as defects. Craft, selfishness, cruelty to the subdued, inhospitable frigidity to neighbours, make the defects of the Spartan character. But," added Alcman, with a kind of reluctant anguish in his voice, "the character has its grand virtues, too, or would the Helots not be the masters? Valour indomitable; ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... to inspire you with confidence, extols him as a prudent man who thoroughly understands his own interest, and is so indefatigably active that he lets slip no opportunity of advancing it; lastly, lest you should be afraid of finding a vulgar selfishness in him, praises the good taste with which he lives; not seeking his pleasure in money-making, or in coarse wantonness, but in the enlargement of his knowledge, in instructive intercourse with a select circle, and even in relieving the needy; while as to the ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... and who were consequently not exactly pestered with offers of employment. And a man who could see the difference between doffing his ragged cap to a dissolute squire or parson, and saluting his better on parade, could also see the selfishness of leaving an honest girl to languish for him. Brown could not get a living in England. So he told his girl to get a better man, swung his canvas bag across ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... whispering to Mr. Rupert that he would come back later. He went out on tiptoe, as from the presence of an angel. His selfishness had dropped away from him. The evening wore on, and in the little back room a woman's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... learning patience, for his life was wrapped up in the person of his girl-wife. She was so infinitely lovable even when least comprehending his man's nature and holding herself aloof. Again, her charm was indescribable when, with adorable grace, she offered compensation, sorry for her uncomprehending selfishness; and he eternally rejoiced that, by the law of marriage, she was irrevocably his till death should them part, a bondage which he endeavoured to make her Eden, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... greatest merit towards you is, that he is not one of those old fools who fancy they are in love in their dotage. I have no such vagary; though I am not sorry that some folks think I am so absurd, since it frets their selfishness. The Mackinsys, Onslows, Miss Pelham, and Madame de Cambis have dined here; and to-morrow I shall have the flamptonians and other Richmondists. I must repeat it; keep in mind that both of you are delicate, and not strong. If you return in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... case of Renfield grows more interesting the more I get to understand the man. He has certain qualities very largely developed, selfishness, secrecy, and purpose. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... for harmony, out of fear of fight, out of lassitude, out of family considerations for the salaries of relatives in office, out of speculations on vacancies in the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or out of that unmitigated selfishness that causes the average bourgeois to be ever inclined to sacrifice the interests of his class to this or that private motive. The Bonapartist Representatives belonged from the start to the party of Order only in the struggle against the revolution. The leader of the Catholic party, Montalembert, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... nothing left for which to be a citizen and an owner of lands. Even the old Roman longing (which was also a sacred duty) of leaving an heir to perpetuate his name, and serve the state as his fathers had before him—even that was gone. Nothing was left, with the many, but selfishness, which could rise at best into the desire of saving every man his own soul, and so transform worldliness into other-worldliness. The old empire could do nothing more for man; and knew that it could do nothing; and lay down in the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... with her brave and honest eyes. "Is this selfishness, Maskull?" she asked, "or are you drawn by ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... upon the ruined remnants of this great plane hanging in its lofty sepulcher and hazard vain guesses and be filled with wonder; but they would never know; and I could not but be glad that they would not know that Tom Billings had sealed their death-warrants by his criminal selfishness. ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of seminal pleasures and corrupt passions men are always miserable. The influence of the Gospel of Christ is the only remedy for such diseases. It saves men from aggravating selfishness and holds in check their fierce passions until they are extinguished. Virtuous affections are invariably the great sources of human happiness. They are fountains of living waters, which purify ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... they detested his conduct, thought him "every inch a King." Lord Shaftesbury, noting in his diary for the 19th of May 1849 the attempt of Hamilton upon the Queen's life, writes:—"The profligate George IV. passed through a life of selfishness and sin without a single proved attempt to take it. This mild and virtuous young woman has four times already been ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... be truly said, with regard to those who imbibe the spirit of their Master, "no man liveth to himself." Nothing can be more remote from genuine Christianity, than that selfishness which is characteristic of a worldly disposition, and which with an uniform and undeviating assiduity, seeks its own interests and purposes: while nothing can so fully comport with its nature, and evince ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... unpopular with the mass of the people. At present the disapprobation is confined to the educated classes. We cannot bear to be deprived of the power of speaking or of writing. We cannot bear that the fate of France should depend on the selfishness, or the vanity, or the fears, or the caprice of one man, a foreigner by race and by education, and of a set of military ruffians and of infamous civilians, fit only to have formed the staff and the privy council of Catiline. We cannot ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... undersell the French eight per cent., and it is as certain that the French undersell the English as much—it has been said—eleven per cent."[43] So that although the English manufacturer was unable to compete with the Frenchman abroad, his narrow selfishness would not permit Ireland to do so, although she was in a position to do it with advantage ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... clamor on any subject, braving it more than once by his votes in the legislature. He was evidently willing to take any risk involved in waiting for the sober second thought of the people. He was as free from ordinary ambition as from selfishness: when there was a call from several parts of the State for his nomination as governor, he said quietly, "I prefer work for which I ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... and Chouteau had disgusted him by their trickiness and low selfishness, stealing whatever they could lay hands on and never dividing with their comrades, while no good was to be got out of Lapoulle, the brute, and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... laying aside thy pride. Struck with these weapons, men always yield up their lives. Indeed, these weapons have other means corresponding with the eight passions, such as lust, wrath, covetousness, vanity, insolence, pride, malice, and selfishness. Struck with them, men are confounded, and move about frantically deprived of their senses. Under their influence, persons always sleep heavily, cut capers, vomit, pass urine and excreta, weep, and laugh incessantly. Indeed, that Arjuna is irresistible in fight, who hath for his friend ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that displeased me. You are not only a Polish patriot; you are an idealist, a true disciple of Plato, and you do not know how I always have detested this man. In all these sixty years that I have been in this world, I have seen nothing but selfishness, and grasping after self-gratification. Twice during dinner you spoke of an ideal world. What is an ideal world? Where is it situated? You speak of it as of a house whose inhabitants you are well acquainted with, whose key is ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... stood in the wizard's chamber, and glanced round it with a feeling of discomfort rather than sorrow—of annoyance at the trouble of which it had been for him both fountain and storehouse, rather than regret for the agony and contempt which his selfishness had brought upon the woman he loved; then spying the door in the furthest corner, he made for it, and in a moment more, his curiosity, now thoroughly roused, was slowly gyrating down the steps of the old screw stair. But Malcolm had gone to his own room, and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... certainly will do so, if they can. The same instinct of self-preservation, the same love of accumulation, which tempts individuals to over-reach their neighbors, inclines government to preserve, increase, and consolidate its powers. Therefore, as individual selfishness requires to be held in check by government, so government ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... treatment I had received, I was now to a certain degree hardened to it, and my feelings certainly were not so acute as when, the first time, I had received a lesson of what I might expect through life from the heartlessness and selfishness of the world; but in the present case there was a difficulty which did not exist in the former—I was going away without knowing where I was to go. After a little thought, I determined that I would seek Madame Gironac, and ascertain whether she could not ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... much to your ladyship, I have been such a pensioner on your bounty ever since I can remember anything, that mere selfishness alone, if no higher motive be allowed me, must always prompt me to feel an interest in the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... submit a suggestion to those who are disposed to criticise very closely and to condemn in strong terms the delinquencies of the Negro. Allow the Negro two hundred and fifty years of unselfish contact to offset the two hundred and fifty years of Caucasian selfishness, and be as assiduous in his regeneration as you were ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... shown humanity at the wedding, he was impressed by her curious insensibility. It seemed to him peculiarly feminine to take an interest in such a scene, and most of the women he knew would have looked on with tremulous sympathy. Was this mere instinctive selfishness on her part? If he vaguely condemned her attitude in this matter, he appreciated her father's conduct the more by contrast. Somehow he guessed that the bishop did not altogether like him, but he felt that no matter what the future might bring forth in their relationship, he could never forget ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Sammy, and his anxious mother, that which the most earnest desire to obey orders would have failed to accomplish was brought about by the native selfishness of poor humanity, for, the first burst of welcome over, Alice began an elaborate account of her Dolly's recent proceedings, which seemed to consist of knocking her head against articles of furniture, punching out her own eyes and ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... one telling the same story: Miss Pomeroy's abilities were good, even above the average, but her disinclination to learning was so great—such was the delicately expressed formula in which they made known to the General Zillah's utter idleness and selfishness—that she (the governess) felt that she was unable to do her justice; that possibly the fault lay in her own method of imparting instruction, and that she therefore begged to resign the position of Miss Pomeroy's ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... let's have it out," she said. "I'm perfectly powerless to do anything, because she detests me, and you've got to help her and help me, and drop your selfishness. Before I came here, she used to run you all, and give you treats like going to her tableaux and listening to her stupid old Moonlight Sonata, and talking seven words of Italian. And then I came along with no earthly intention except to enjoy my holidays, and she got it into ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Spectator exasperates me with its d—d cold- water cure for all enthusiasm. When I see these beautiful mountain glens, I quite long to build myself a little den in the middle of them, and say good-bye to the world, with all its lies and its selfishness, till other times. I have still one great consolation here, and that is the rage and fury of the sqireens at the poor rates; six and sixpence in the pound with an estate mortgaged right up to high-water ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... steel with which the needle-maker draws his every breath! The sea's work makes a man, and leaves him with his duty nobly done, a man at the last. Courage, loyal obedience, patient endurance, the abnegation of selfishness,—these are the lessons the sea teaches. Why must the shore make such diabolical haste and try such fiendish ingenuity to undo them? The sea is pure and free, the land is firm and stable,—but where they meet, the tide rises and falls, leaving a little belt of sodden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... and with it new and wonderful sensations that dispelled her sorrows; the ferry, the olive-green river rolling in the morning sun, alive with dodging, hurrying craft, each bent upon its destination with an energy, relentlessness, and selfishness of purpose that fascinated Honora. Each, with its shrill, protesting whistle, seemed to say: "My business is the most important. Make way for me." And yet, through them all, towering, stately, imperturbable, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cordially, and assured her that he bore her no ill-will; that he fully understood her conduct—and that he had never accused her of selfishness. This was all very well and very gracious; but, nevertheless, Lady Arabella felt that the doctor kept the upper hand in those sweet forgivenesses. Whereas, she had intended to keep the upper hand, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... metal of a Golden Deed is self-devotion. Selfishness is the dross and alloy that gives the unsound ring to many an act that has been called glorious. And, on the other hand, it is not only the valor, which meets a thousand enemies upon the battlefield, or scales the walls in a forlorn hope, that is of true gold. It may be, but often ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and being unknown there, had been removed to the Princess Mary Cottage Hospital. The dozen beds of the men's ward were full, and he had been placed in the private ward. He lay now on the narrow bed, sleeping heavily, the white, bright light of the spring morning showing mercilessly the havoc selfishness and reckless self-indulgence had wrought upon a once sufficiently handsome face. The emaciation of his long form was plainly seen through the single scarlet blanket which ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... him to be other than himself. By an unconscious process of elimination he had excluded from the world everything of which he did not feel a personal need: had become, as it were, a climate in which only his own requirements survived. This might seem to imply a deliberate selfishness; but there was nothing deliberate about Arment. He was as instinctive as an animal or a child. It was this childish element in his nature which sometimes for a moment unsettled his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he was simply ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... doubtless the domesticated animals like the horse, which are now of such service to man, are the result of these experiments in which the men of those days acted in co-operation with the Manu and his ministers. But the co-operation was too soon withdrawn. Selfishness obtained the upper hand, and war and discord brought the Golden Age of the Toltecs to a close. When instead of working loyally for a common end, under the guidance of their Initiate kings, men began to prey ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... ethics are as follows: In sin the love to God created in us has left us and self-love has transgressed its limits; pride has delivered us over to selfishness and misery. Our nature is corrupted, but not beyond redemption. In his actions worthless and depraved, man is seen to be exalted and incomprehensible in his ends; in reality he is worthy of abhorrence, but great ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... aroused; and though she pressed the matter no further (indeed, her father was already seen returning), it by no means left her thoughts. At one moment she simply resented the selfishness of a man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate language on her joy; for there is nothing that a woman can less easily forgive than the language of a passion which, even if only for the moment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we prove that our real nature is none other than the dictate of our highest and most nobly trained reason, and if we can establish the fact that every deed of cruelty, of shame, of lust, or of selfishness, is essentially contrary to our nature—then we may say with Bishop Butler, that the precept to "follow Nature" is "a manner of speaking not loose and undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly just and true." But how complete must be the system, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the baseness of the mere weighing of such a choice; but he was engulfed in his overmastering egotism; his sense of obligation was dulled by the supreme selfishness of a lifetime, of a lifetime of unbridled temper and appetite, of a swaggering self-esteem which the remorseless operation of fate had ignored, had passed indifferently by, leaving him in complete ignorance of the terrible and grim possibilities ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... feel ourselves alone—as it were abandoned in the immensity of the universe. We live in a world, hard, savage, full of hatred; whose one cruel law is the struggle for existence, and in which we are no more than those natural elements, let loose to war with each other in fierce selfishness, without pity, with no appeal beyond, no hope of final justice. And above us, in place of the good God of our happy youth, nothing, any more! or worse than nothing—a deity, barbarous and ironical, who cares nothing ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Murat, was the most base and dastardly. To be sure, during the whole of this long and bloody war, carried on by the despots and tyrants of the earth, their conduct was one continued exhibition of treachery, falsehood, selfishness, and deception. This abandoned race of Sovereigns, Kings and Emperors, who assume a divine origin, and set up a claim of divine rights, have, by their acts, unequivocally proclaimed to the whole world that no reliance can be placed in their words, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the common gymnasium as an institution of organized selfishness. In its very structure it practically ignores woman. As I have intimated, it provides for young men alone, who of all classes least need a gymnasium. They have most out-door life; the active games and sports are theirs; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the past there is much to deplore, the blunders of English ministers, the want of judgment on the part of governors, the selfishness of "family compacts," the arrogance of office-holders, the recklessness of Canadian politicians. But the very trials of the crisis through which Canada passed brought out the fact, that if English statesmen had mistaken the spirit of the Canadian ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... nothing surprisingly characteristic in any nation. Given its history, everything appears natural; each people's wealth and misery seem in direct proportion to its freedom and its prejudices, and in consequence, in proportion to the self-sacrifice or selfishness of its progenitors." ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... to the matrimonial intentions between the correspondents, but treated only of church services, Sunday-schools, sewing circles and missionary matters, until the young man, famishing for a word of affection, with pardonable selfishness, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... any prospect of real advantage, they will attempt to change the application of words. In the case before us, they have actually found, that benevolence is no more than a species of self-love; and would oblige us, if possible, to look out for a new set of names, by which we may distinguish the selfishness of the parent when he takes care of his child, from his selfishness when he only takes care of himself. For, according to this philosophy, as in both cases he only means to gratify a desire of his own, he is in both cases equally selfish. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... that you must go away—for awhile. It's only selfishness that has blinded me to that all along. I'm killing all the best in you ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... than anybody else Effort to get on common ground with an inferior He buys my poverty and not my will Honest selfishness Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate Less intrusive than if he had not been there Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign Only one of them was to be desperate at a time Reconciliation ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... counselors, never engage in unnecessary war, but when you are involved in war be strong and brave. Love peace even better than your own personal interests. Remember that the counts of Hapsburg did not attain their heights of reputation and glory by fraud, insolence or selfishness, but by courage and devotion to the public weal. As long as you follow their footsteps, you will not only retain, but augment, the possessions and dignities ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Catholic, but even so, we will not sit by and see her life ruined, and we have called to assure you that we shall use all our influence, every adroit argument, to bring our parents to a more reasonable frame of mind. They have already risen above the first natural impulse of selfishness, and would consent to the inevitable separation were you only a Catholic. I have also talked with the Governor—we arrived at midnight—and he flew into a terrible temper—the poor man is already ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... with a most abrupt rejection of the compromise offered by the insurgents and with the opening of a war of prosecutions, in which the most passionate defenders of patriotic selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those who were suspected of having counselled moderation and seasonable concession. On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered on his office on the 10th of December ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... visit, a month—isn't it?" I hedged, smiling at the details that seduced me, and ashamed of my man's selfishness, yet knowing that Frances expected it of me. "There are points about it, I admit. If you're set on my going with you, I could manage ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... composition, and veracity. Mr. Rees must have been very ignorant of Mr Bradlaugh's writings and intellectual character, or else he was deliberately inventing or trusting to mere hearsay, when he stated that Mr. Bradlaugh was made an Atheist by the bigotry or selfishness of certain Christians. "I think I may almost say" is a strange expression. What is it to "almost say" a thing? Is it almost said when you have said it? And what a jumble of "hims" in the fourth sentence! It would really ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... is a grain of true and genuine friendship in the relation of man to man, though generally, of course, some secret personal interest is at the bottom of them—some one among the many forms that selfishness can take. But in a world where all is imperfect, this grain of true feeling is such an ennobling influence that it gives some warrant for calling those relations by the name of friendship, for they stand far above the ordinary friendships that prevail amongst mankind. ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... death. Then, if a criminal is at peace, is he not to be pitied and brought back to life? Or, are you afraid to do this lest he suffer, trample on your pearls of thought, and turn on you and rend you? [20] Cowardice is selfishness. When one protects himself at his neighbor's cost, let him remember, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it." He risks nothing who obeys the law of God, and shall find the Life ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... creature of her maker's misogyny. She is a bitter, barren woman of suffragette type, whose marriage and career as a doctor have been alike failures, and who has alienated herself from all, even her mild father, by her selfishness and discontent. It is she who has brought Miss Clare Farquhar into her father's home to render him those services in his pursuit of heraldry and genealogy that were irksome to her, and so she herself is responsible for his dependence on his secretary, which, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... now the chief anxiety of our farmer, and selfishness formed no part of his character. When he had left home, a short time before, his niece Jean was at work in the dairy, Ramblin' Peter was attending to the cattle, Marion Clark and her comrade, Isabel Scott were busy with domestic affairs, and old Mrs. Mitchell—who never quite recovered ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... that I could not frame a reply. He left me thinking over what he had said. Whatever was the soundness of his logic or the moral tone of his philosophy, his argument greatly impressed me. I could see, in spite of the absolute selfishness upon which it was based, that there was reason and common sense in it. I began to analyze my own motives, and found that they, too, were very largely mixed with selfishness. Was it more a desire to help those I considered ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... respectability; but let him not be very complacent over the decorous and conventional veneer which masks him from the world. If one imagines that he can corrupt his own soul and make it the abiding-place of foul thoughts, mean impulses, and shrivelling selfishness, and yet go forward very far in God's universe without meeting overwhelming disaster, he ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Argyle, a nobleman of shining qualifications for the senate and the field, whose character would have been still more illustrious, had not some parts of his conduct subjected him to the suspicion of selfishness and inconstancy. He was succeeded in that title by his brother, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... that did it—diabolical persecution and selfishness. That was the worst day the college ever knew. At the funeral, when the provost read, 'For that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world,' Big Wallington, the wildest chap among the grads, led off with a gulp in his throat, and we all followed. And ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... punishment of this world and awaiting the punishment of the next. Lest some may fancy I do not believe this,—thinking that if I did I could not so have acted,—let me say there is no moral restraining power in fear. Fear is essentially selfish, and selfishness is at the bottom of all crimes, my own among the rest. I leave behind me none who will mourn me, and have but one satisfaction, viz.: the knowledge that I shall be regarded as an artist in crime. I take this occasion to bid the public an adieu not altogether, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... ago. But never mind about that. I believe in you, my boy. You have not seen the world and grown corrupted; you are still capable of a disinterested attachment; and may it be long before the thoughtlessness of some, and the treachery of others, and the selfishness of all, convince you that there is no such thing as a true friend." And the old drummer gave his mustache a fierce jerk, as if he had some grudge ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... is one of the most generous-hearted of children. Selfishness is not at all a trait of hers, and she knows the value of making sunshine, not alone in her own heart, but for her neighborhood and ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... elderly chaperon of Theresa's had been brought up in a convent, and had come out into the world with an exaggerated estimate of her acquirements and position. But ten or fifteen years' experience of the selfishness and crude egoism of youth had tended to dissipate such sentiments, and she eventually took a situation as a sort of superior companion in an aristocratic family. Slights and humiliations were inevitable in her position, but she bore them in silence, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... of the epistle Jude himself gives in explicit terms (verses 3, 4). It is to guard believers against the seductions of false teachers, corrupt in practice as well as doctrine; whose selfishness, sensuality, and avarice; whose vain-glorious, abusive, and schismatic spirit, he describes in vivid language, denouncing upon them at the same time the awful judgment of God. The apostolic portraiture has not yet become antiquated in the history of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... them by their Christian names, Wingrave and Lumley—shared a somewhat extensive hunting box in Leicestershire. They were both of good family, well off, and fairly popular, Lumley the more so perhaps. He represented the ordinary type of young Englishman, with a stronger dash than usual of selfishness. Wingrave stood for other things. He was reticent and ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of earnest and devout believers meet together for special intercession and worship, we do not tax them with selfishness if they exclude unbelievers. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... wherein was the efficacy of grim words about British tenacity? The great new Somme offensive was not succeeding in the North. Was victory possible? Was victory deserved? In his daily labour he was brought into contact with too many instances of official selfishness, folly, ignorance, stupidity, and sloth, French as well as British, not to marvel at times that the conflict had not come to an ignominious end long ago through simple lack of imagination. He knew that he himself had often failed in devotion, in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... being bloody and barbarous, would have been holy, perfect, artistic, and surely success would have crowned our efforts. But no intelligence would support me, I encountered fear or effeminacy among the enlightened classes, selfishness among the rich, simplicity among the youth, and only in the mountains, in the waste places, among the outcasts, have I found my men. But no matter now! If we can't get a finished statue, rounded out in all its details, of the rough block we work upon ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... that Jack returned to his hut in which Jacob had been invited to take up his quarters. The two warm-hearted sailors had so many qualities in common that they had been especially drawn to each other, though they probably were not aware of the cause. Utter freedom from selfishness was the chief characteristic of them both. No sooner had Jacob Halliburt discovered Harry's love for May than he was ready to sacrifice even his own life if it were necessary for May's sake, to preserve ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... I am old, and know that I have not long to live, that I am so little affected. My grief, however," added he with an air of pride, "is pure and free from all selfishness. The generosity of Count de Mediana has left me enough to pass the remainder of my days in tranquillity. But I should pass them all the more happily if I could only see avenged the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the conversational powers of our small society were limited. Very often some selfishness mingled with my sincere compassion for the prostrated sufferings of my Philadelphian friend of the tug-boat; for whenever his weary aching head would allow of the exertion, he could talk on almost any subject, fluently and well. He was returning from a long visit to ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... neither the Catiline nor the Jugurthine war are histories; they are chapters of history, containing two interesting biographies. Scattered through the writings of Tacitus, are to be found numerous caustic and profound observations on human nature, and the increasing vices and selfishness of a corrupted age: but, like the maxims of Rochefoucault, it is to individual, not general, humanity that they refer; and they strike us as so admirably just because they do not describe general causes operating upon society as a body—which often make little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... before he had set foot upon the pavement that his life was blasted, that his chance of success and Helen's love were gone, forfeited by his own egotism, his insane selfishness; but it was only a half-surrender; something very stark and unyielding rose within him, preventing his return to ask forgiveness. The scorn, the contempt of Hugh's words, and the lines of loathing appearing ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... words and looks of sympathy. This practice she did not even now give up, for it came under the head of her religious duties; but she relaxed it. She often sent to places where she used to go. Until George went she had never thought of herself; and so the selfishness of those she relieved had not struck her. Now it made her bitter to see that none of those she pitied, pitied her. The moment she came into their houses it was, "My poor head, Miss Merton; my old ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... certain points of great importance. In the first place, Gloria had not really the world before her. Her little sphere was closely limited by her father's morose selfishness, which led him to keep her in Rome because he liked the place himself, and to keep away from his countrymen, whom he detested as heartily as Britons living abroad sometimes do. On the other hand, a vague dread lest the story of his marriage ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... according to his own labor."—1 Cor. 3:8. Let this blessed teaching be a comfort to some hearts: the redeemed loved ones who have died are "present with the Lord" which "is far better." Then it is cruel selfishness to wish them back. ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... an idle life in the very best clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man's absorbing selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable claim upon him and whom he could never regard ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... continuous and frequent fits of anger that gather together in the soul by degrees, like a swarm of bees or wasps, are generated within us by selfishness and peevishness, luxury and softness. And so nothing causes us to be mild to our servants and wife and friends so much as easiness and simplicity, and the learning to be content with what we have, and not to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Flint and Mary Adams. The character of Mary Adams was admittedly a difficult one to explore; her mother, a cloud of nurses and a company of governesses had been baffled completely by its dark caverns and recesses. One clue, beyond question, was selfishness; but this quality, by the very obviousness of it, may tempt us to believe that that is all. It may account, when we are displeased, for so much. It accounted for a great deal with Mary—but not all. She ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... say!" he protested. "You don't call this being kind, do you? I assure you it's just pure selfishness. I should have spent my evening alone if we hadn't met—and I hate being alone; I bore myself stiff in five minutes. I'm just—honoured that you should have allowed me to eat my supper with you. If you knew how ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... — N. covetousness, ravenousness &c adj.; venality, avidity, cupidity; acquisitiveness (acquisition) 775; desire &c 865. [greed for money or material things] greed, greediness, avarice, avidity, rapacity, extortion. selfishness &c 943; auri sacra fames [Lat.]. grasping, craving, canine appetite, rapacity. V. covet, crave (desire) 865; grasp; exact, extort. Adj. greedy, avaricious, covetous, acquisitive, grasping; rapacious; lickerish^. greedy as a hog; overeager; voracious; ravenous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... inevitables. The heredity of the internal secretions determines that the offspring of these women are bound to be pituitary unstable, the least desirable of endocrine instabilities because of the concomitant mental effects. Even from the purely selfish point of view, the standpoint of enlightened selfishness, the post-pituitary type must beware of excesses. For disturbances of menstruation, psychic fears, anxieties, states of suspicion and obsession, various pains are among ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... selfishness they tried all they could. But he is too proud to watch. If you and I were hatching treason against him in the dark, and chance had brought him there, he would stop his ears with his fingers. He is all trust, even when he knows that he is being deceived. He is honour ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... steadily, her scornful mouth firm as his own. "I am what you have made me," she said slowly. "Why quarrel with the result? You have brought me up to ignore the restrictions attached to my sex; you now round on me and throw them in my face. All my life you have set me an example of selfishness and obstinacy. Can you wonder that I have profited by it? You have made me as hard as yourself, and you now profess surprise at the determination your training has forced upon me. You are illogical. It is your fault, not mine. There was bound to be a clash some day. It has ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... wasn't meaning just that, but,—why, what am I thinking of! Of course I must materialize him. Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the usurper's heir out of the way. But you'll forgive that momentary weakness, and forget it. Don't ever remember it against me that Mulberry Sellers was once mean enough to think the thought that I was thinking. I'll materialise ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by Collie's eyes that had seemed so listless, so indifferent, so weary. She had hoped to cheer him. His indifference affected her more than his actual physical condition, which seemed to be the cause of it. Louise recognized in herself a species of selfishness in feeling as she did. Like most folk of superabundant health she was unable to realize the possibilities of sickness. She longed for his companionship. She had not dared to ask herself whether or not she loved him. She was glad that he should love ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... good that comes to us, somehow, seems to spring from women like yourself, while we give you nothing but trouble in return. Even this last misery, which my selfishness has brought to you, lifts me ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... separates him from men of the stamp of Theodore Parker. For, says Lessing, the appeal to unearthly rewards and punishments is after all an appeal to our lower feelings; other-worldliness is but a refined selfishness; and we are to cherish virtue for its own sake not because it will lead us to heaven. Here is the grand principle of Stoicism. Lessing believed, with Mr. Mill, that the less we think about getting rewarded ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... nature where unity underlies all differences, where soul is bound to soul more than star to star; where if one falters or fails the order of all the rest is changed; the duty of any man who perceives this unity is clear, the call for brotherly action is imperative, selfishness cannot any longer wear the mask of wisdom, for isolation is folly and shuts us out from the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... selfishness made her repeat once more the same old exclamation—"How fortunate that you are a foreigner! . . . What a relief to know that you are safe from the dangers ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... United States could know for a surety of the avarice, the selfishness, the cynicism which have marked every step of the negotiations relative to the settlement of the Near Eastern Question, if they were aware of the chicanery and the deceit and the low cunning practised by the European ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the cars on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad a few evenings ago— for I am not going to say anything of my trip further east— I saw as great an exhibition of selfishness as one often meets in travelling. This was in the rear car, the others being all crowded. The seats were spacious, and had high backs for night travelling. A gentleman entered the car and proposed to sit in a seat in which was only one child, but he was informed by a feminine voice in the rear ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... of his expressions, made nearly the same declarations of his resolution, by which his mother had been so much surprised and offended. Lord Clonbrony seemed more embarrassed, but not so much displeased. When Lord Colambre adverted, as delicately as he could, to the selfishness of desiring from him the sacrifice of liberty for life, to say nothing of his affections, merely to enable his family to make a splendid figure in London, Lord Clonbrony exclaimed, "That's all nonsense!—cursed nonsense! That's the way we are obliged to state the thing to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... which I will try to grow here in my cell, and which will help me to beguile those long weary hours when I cannot see you. I confess to you I have very little hope for the latter one, and I look beforehand on this unfortunate bulb as sacrificed to my selfishness. However, the sun sometimes visits me. I will, besides, try to convert everything into an artificial help, even the heat and the ashes of my pipe, and lastly, we, or rather you, will keep in reserve the third sucker as our last resource, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... secretly Kit had always considered personal ambition a little private form of selfishness. As she ransacked her mind now, trying to find her own ambition and get it safely on a pin for examination like one of Billie's specimens, only her old-time love of forestry ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Every attempt at reform the parent of worse scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties; every persecutor silenced, only to enable others to persecute him in their turn: every devil who is exorcised, returning with seven others worsethan himself; falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion seven times confounded, Satan casting out Satan everywhere—from the emperor who wantons on his throne, to the slave who blasphemes ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... In our selfishness, we never thought that other people might have a fondness for shellbarks as well as ourselves. So, after a little more pleading on Ned's part, I gave in, and we agreed to meet down at the foot of our orchard, as soon as dinner was over, for Ned lived right across, on the next ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... weeks at conscientious introspection. The blow years before at Andover had landed on his personal unpleasantness; the workman of his college days had jarred the snobbishness out of his system, and Marjorie's husband had given a severe jolt to his greedy selfishness. It threw women out of his ken until a year later, when he met his future wife; for the only sort of woman worth while seemed to be the one who could be protected as Marjorie's husband had protected her. Samuel could not imagine his grass- widow, Mrs. De Ferriac, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Marchesino's stratagem on the preceding night. Although she was gay and fearless, she was exquisitely sensitive. Peppina's confession had roused her maidenhood to a theoretical knowledge of certain things in life, of certain cruel phases of man's selfishness and lust which, till then, she had never envisaged. The Marchesino's madness had carried her one step further. She had not actually looked into the abyss. But she had felt herself near to something that she hated even more than she ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... nature which might otherwise achieve. To prevent such waste from inner weakness and to "encourage excellence in each individual," to use Doctor Small's fine phrase, we need a childhood saturated with the sense of personal values on the plane of affection. Selfishness may indeed pollute this mainspring of personal power, and selfishness sometimes reaches its acme in motherhood's partiality for its own. The ideal of social solidarity and the claim of all upon each one ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the personality and the original designs of Cinna than regarding those of any other party leader in the Roman revolution. The reason is, to all appearance, simply that this man, altogether vulgar and guided by the lowest selfishness, had from the first no ulterior political plans whatever. It was asserted at his very first appearance that he had sold himself for a round sum of money to the new burgesses and the coterie of Marius, and the charge looks very credible; but even were it false, it remains nevertheless ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... moments!—frightful! yet worthy to be recalled. How often did I weep in Bendel's bosom, after I recovered from the first inebriety of rapture! how severely did I condemn myself, that I, a shadowless being, should seal, with wily selfishness, the perdition of an angel, whose pure soul I had attached to me by lies and theft! Now I determined to unveil myself to her; now, with solemn oaths, I resolved to tear myself from her, and to fly; then ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... Albert. Please, not them. I'll run out of the house if they come. They've defeated me so often. That terrible wall they erect—out of flesh that bleeds every time I try to climb it. They've killed me with the selfishness of their love, those two. They put me body and soul into Chinese shoes the day I was born. I've never ceased paying up for being their child. Suppose they did sacrifice for me—clothe me—feed me—what does parenthood mean but that? Don't you ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... spirit, to seize on this great political crisis and to mature the offspring of chance to the designs of wisdom. William the Silent devoted himself, a second Brutus, to the great cause of liberty. Superior to a timorous selfishness, he sent in to the throne his resignation of offices which devolved on him objectionable duties, and, magnanimously divesting himself of all his princely dignities, he descended to a state of voluntary poverty, and became but a citizen of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... again told. If you don't mind me, the bears will come and eat you up, says the petulant nurse or maid-servant. Thus, in one way or another, and at one time or another, every motive—love, fear, selfishness, pleasure, &c.—is appealed to in the education of the young, except that which should be chiefly appealed to—viz., self-approbation, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... each other, or playing at cards or draughts. Our entrance appeared to excite little attention; after having raised their eyes to indulge their curiosity, they continued their pursuits. I have often thought what a feeling of selfishness appeared to pervade the whole of them. At the time I was shocked, as I expected immediate sympathy and commiseration; but afterwards I was not surprised. Many of these poor fellows had been months in the prison, and a short confinement will produce that indifference to the misfortunes of ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... selfishness of the bank officials, he induced his mother to withdraw the money—shrunk to eight thousand dollars—from the bank, and allow him to take it to Boston, where, in a larger and safer bank, it would draw interest, and on which she could write checks ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... a large estate, although it was often suggested to me, I never considered myself justified in asking any lady to share—the prospective estate. I think now that the real reason was that I never cared sufficiently for any lady, since otherwise my selfishness would probably have overcome my scruples, as it does to-night. Benita, for I will call you so, if for the first and last ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a semblance ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... "History" say: "The laws affecting woman's civil rights have been greatly improved during the past thirty years, but the political demand has made but questionable progress, though it must be counted as the chief influence in modifying the laws. The selfishness of man was readily enlisted in securing woman's civil rights, while the same element in his character antagonized her demand for political equality." If it was his selfishness that procured woman civil rights and ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson |
