"Unselfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her face in hot rivulets as she sat in her saddle, struck inactive by the great admiration, the boundless pride, that this unselfish deed woke in her. She never had, in her life of joyousness, experienced such a high ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... soon told, and it is easy to understand that it did not lessen Lady Iltyd's pleasure. She had been glad to find her boy capable of real effort and determination—she was still more glad to find that the new motive which had prompted these was unselfish ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... expression to these emotions we wish to develop. Expression means the probability of the recurrence of the emotion, and gradually an emotional habit is formed. An unselfish disposition is cultivated by performing little acts of kindness and self-denial whenever the opportunity offers. The expression of a desirable emotion, moreover, should not stop merely with an experience of ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The inmost texture of his being is propulsive, and there is nothing more intimately bound up with his success than mobility and devotion to transcendent aims. If there is a transitive function in knowledge and an unselfish purpose in love, that is only because, at bottom, there is a self-reproductive, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... treasure sordid and blood-stained, it would seem shabby to overlook the fate of hapless Joe Hawkridge marooned along with the hands of the Revenge who were suspected of plotting mutiny. His behavior was courageous and unselfish, for he could have fled back into the swamp when Blackbeard's wily attack threw the camp into tumult. From a sense of duty he flung himself into the fray. What friends he had in the ship were those of the decenter sort who were tired of wanton brutalities ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... pledge has been faithfully kept. As high and sacred an obligation rests upon the Government of the United States to give protection for property and life, civil and religious freedom, and wise, firm, and unselfish guidance in the paths of peace and prosperity to all the people of the Philippine Islands. I charge this Commission to labor for the full performance of this obligation, which concerns the honor and conscience of their country, in the firm hope that through ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... party, although those days of constant toil and suffering in that grave of nature, the Arctic, might well have tried the constitution of a Sandow and the patience of a Job! And I may add that no leader of an expedition could wish for three more courageous and unselfish companions than the Vicomte de Clinchamp, George Harding, and last, but not least, the Cossack Stepan Rastorguyeff, whose invaluable services throughout this journey will, I am informed, be suitably rewarded by ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... wretched story they had to tell of lives thrown away through carelessness and negligence, unredeemed, as far as their story went, by any heroism or unselfish courage. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Lord, with piety, purity]; and to godliness brotherly kindness [which means that kind and loving disposition that exists and should exist between those who are really brothers]; and to brotherly kindness charity," or love which means an unselfish desire to do good and doing good to others even at a sacrifice ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... regretted, though for very different reasons. Lee was thinking that for Melissy's sake he should have made a friend of the man he hated, since it was on the cards that within a few days she might be in his power. The girl's feeling, too, was unselfish. She could not forget the deep hunger for friendship that had shone in the man's eyes. He was alone in the world, a strong man surrounded by enemies who would probably destroy him in the end. There was ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... merely sensed that there was something different, somewhere—maybe on the road ahead. And so she wept over the woes of star-crost lovers, and sentimentalized over husky heroes utterly unlike any male beings known to nature, and believed she didn't believe that disinterested and unselfish love existed in the world. As she hadn't the faintest gleam of self-knowledge, in all this she was ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... perfect reasonableness of this. Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes—his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black police—and ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... helplessness, only made their burden more unendurable; for they comprehended to the full the knowledge of what was past, and what must come in the future unless help came quickly. They had the strength of devotion, the strength of unselfish love. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... charlatans, like the Prussians, to advance the sort of claims which they did. In commonplace words, it was expected then that governments, as against each other, would be self-seeking. To-day decency demands that they should be, as men must be, unselfish. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... was holy and unselfish. I don't think so any more. She says she wants to do what Papa wants and what we want; but she always ends by doing what she wants herself. It's all very well for her. As long as she's got a garden to poke about in she doesn't care how ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Darling, who marries more than once and simply cannot live without some one to love and to be an echo to, is "not half bad" to look at. But she is ludicrous even when most unselfish and adoring—especially when she rubs with eau-de-Cologne her little, thin, yellow-faced, coughing husband with "the curls combed forward on his forehead," and wraps him in her warm shawls to an accompaniment of endearments. "'You're such a sweet pet!' she ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... bravely onward, spite of endless rattling falls. And to be a first-rate sportsman, not a man who merely "rides," Is to be a perfect gentleman, and something more besides; Fearing neither man nor devil, kind, unselfish he must be, Born to lead when danger threatens—type of ancient chivalry. When you hear a "houndman" jeering at the "customers" in front, Saying they come out to ride a steeplechase and not to hunt, You may bet the "grapes are sour," the fellow's smoked his nerve away; Once he went as ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... has been done; she might thus have gratified some tastes that were incapable of appreciating Raphael. But this could be done only by lowering the standard of art to the comprehension of the spectator. She chose the better and loftier and more unselfish part, laying her individual hopes, her fame, her prospects of enduring remembrance, at the feet of those great departed ones whom she so loved and venerated; and therefore the world was the richer for this ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had been away so long, the house looked diminished. Mother was in the door, crying when she put her arms round me; she could not speak. I know now there should have been no higher beatitude than to live in the presence of an unselfish, unasking, vital love. I only said, "Oh, mother, how gray your hair is! Are you glad to see me? I ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... and our religion are changing; hence it is more and more difficult to use the old terms to describe moral conduct. We say, for instance, that America's action in entering the war has been "unselfish." But this merely means that we have our own convictions concerning the ultimate comfort of the world, the manner of self-realization of individuals and nations. We are attempting to turn calamity into good. If this terrible conflict ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... its mirth. Her hands were very thin and long, and so were her feet,—by no means models as were those of her friend Lady Eustace. She was a little, thin, quick, graceful creature, whom it was impossible that you should see without wishing to have near you. A most unselfish little creature she was, but one who had a well-formed idea of her own identity. She was quite resolved to be somebody among her fellow-creatures,—not somebody in the way of marrying a lord or a rich man, or somebody in the way of being a beauty, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... hand hard. "It's not that. That's all wrong. I'm not far above you at all. You're much better than I am. You're marvellously unselfish and... and kind and simple. I'm none of those things. You don't know me. I'm the most awful character," said Anne. "Please don't interrupt. And besides, that's not the point. The point is"—she shook her head—"I ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... the dangers that encompassed her, would have been a thousand deaths to him. Oh! how his bad angel toiled and struggled to fix that divorce upon his mind, as the best and only means of saving her. But the heart that swelled so tumultuously in his bosom, was honest and unselfish. He took hold of the temptation, firmly wrestled with, and hurled it aside, facing the right with ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... prospects of commercial gain were not in contemplation. The one idea was to contribute in every conceivable manner to the attractiveness of the exposition and add to its educational possibilities. The invitation was looked upon by the Siamese Government as a compliment, and the unselfish manner in which its acceptance was shown proved conclusively ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... said, 'how foolish it is when they talk of love being unselfish. In what can there be more selfishness? I feel as if I could hold you to your promise at any cost, though you have made me understand that you regard our engagement as your great misfortune. I have felt it for weeks—oh, for months! But I couldn't ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... resolution began to flag. She felt that the contest was unequal—that she was unable to put forth her best efforts. As she was an unselfish person, she could not fight so well in her own battle as in that of someone whom she loved and to whom she was devoted. Edgar saw the relaxing of the muscles of face and brow, and the almost collapse of the heavy eyelids which seemed tumbling downward in sleep. Lilla made gallant ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... still among a thousand shadows. Your beauty was truth, hers was unselfish love. The important thing is to know you still live, not with regret and selfish grief, but with that joy and sure conviction which makes the so-called separation a temporary test, perhaps, but never a final blow. What are the few years of ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... of our Christian mothers, many of them gone into glory?—or of that woman mentioned in the Scriptures, who put her all into the Lord's treasury?—or of Jephtha's daughter, who made a demonstration of unselfish patriotism?—or of Abigail, who rescued the herds and flocks of her husband?—or of Ruth, who toiled under a tropical sun for poor, old, helpless Naomi?—or of Florence Nightingale, who went at midnight to stanch the battle ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... eager gaze, and he hears the rustling of the myriad leaves as they close and clasp, only to make his spirit more abject, his vanity more ravenous, his hatred of rivals more rancorous and mean. That grand unselfish love of truth, and joy in its discovery, by whomsoever made, which characterize the true seeker and seer of science and creative art, alone can keep the mind alive and alert, alone can make the possession of truth a means of elevating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... and sword, where the power of rival cities and proud knights allied, had failed, the love and high influence of these noble ladies of the middle age most wonderfully succeeded. Memorable for its beneficent and permanent effects, the treaty was unique for its high and unselfish spirit of conciliation, and the final words of exhortation which stilled the waters tossed by two centuries of storm have the sacred accent ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... the unerring instinct of his own unselfish passion, understood all that the tiny hand ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the other day in a legend of the Greek Church which is worth repeating. That Church has two favourite saints—St. Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth, Cassianus?' 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him?' 'No.' 'Why ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... to-day a letter from G. Morris with the latest mischief from the North. Aaron Burr is going West, but with, I warrant you, no thought of the setting sun. The Ancient Iniquity in Washington smiles with thin lips and pronounces that all men and Aaron Burr are unambitious, unselfish, and peace-loving—but none the less, he looks askance at the serpent's windings. The friends of Burr are not the friends of Jefferson. There are Federalists—'tis said they increase in numbers—who do not wish the former ill; myself I am not of them. Colonel Burr desired that ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... congratulating look of approval which Cicely met in Humfrey's eyes when he had heard all from his father. He could exult in her, even while he thought sadly of the future which she had so bravely risked, watching over her from a distance in his silent, self-restrained, unselfish devotion. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... education. But she shall be brought back, even if I have to ask the assistance of every sovereign in Europe. This is the end. And I had planned such a pleasant evening at cards!" The duke was not wholly unselfish. ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... of the golden petals of a daffodil, had become Marjorie's adorer and slave. She it was who had escorted Marjorie to the Lincoln Grammar School and seen her triumphantly through her first week there. She had thrilled with unselfish pride to see how quickly the other little girls of the school had succumbed to Marjorie's charm. She had felt a most delightful sense of pardonable vanity when, as the year progressed, Marjorie had preferred her above all the others. She had clung to Mary, even ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... the rest through, but then collapsed himself. He was seized with dysentery, and was long in great danger. But even in this prison-city he was to find a friend. A Turkish officer had been struck by his unselfish conduct, and when he saw Abdul Baha brought so low he pleaded with the governor that a ḥakîm might be called in. This was permitted with the ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... Lord Granville asked the sculptor of Prince Albert's statue at South Kensington "Whether the Queen, who was so well pleased, could do anything for him"—suggestive, no doubt, of a knighthood—the dear unselfish Durham replied, "Thank you, my Lord,—if her Majesty's pleased, I'm satisfied." So that chance for a title was thrown heedlessly away,—but we always called him "Sir Joe" ever after: specially among the "Noviomagians," a band ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was ready and dared to encounter any risk for himself, so that he could insure the safety of those fleeing from bondage. It was this heroic purpose to protect the weak and helpless at any cost, this fearless unselfish action, not stopping to weigh the contingencies of individual gain or loss, that constitutes his best title to the gratitude of those he served, and to the admiration and respect of all who can appreciate independent conduct springing from pure and lofty motives. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a question of how far they will prove able to get out of the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... that he who always knew That being lovely was a duty, Should have gold halls to wander through And should himself inhabit beauty. How like his old unselfish way To leave those halls of splendid mirth And comfort those condemned to stay Upon the bleak ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... she abated her severity to the extent of thanking the Count with tears in her eyes for the service that he had done her in tearing off this viper's disguise. Naturally, the Count was charmed by Ma-dame Carthame's energetic indignation. He perceived that his unselfish investigations of the actions of Monsieur Jaune were bearing excellent fruit. Already, as he believed, the way toward his own happiness was smooth and clear. As the Count retired from this successful conference, he laughed softly to himself: nor did he pause in his unobtrusive ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... indulgence beyond the others. The rare qualities of that young officer showed themselves brilliantly in this frightful peril. It was due to his skill and careful management that they were not swamped a dozen times; tireless, unselfish, cheerful, unsparing of himself, without him they would have died. The men bore their sufferings, when all food and water failed them, with the sturdy resolution of British sailors; Desborough his, with the courage of the hero ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... every dress she had she would instantly have bestowed upon that worshipful creature who was capable of adding another marriage to the world. I hope the reader finds nothing vulgar or unbecoming in this, for I do not; it was an enthusiasm, pure and simple, a beautiful and unselfish abandon; and I am sure men ought to be sorry that they are not worthier to be favored by it. Ladies have often to lament in the midst of their finesse that, really, no man is deserving the fate they devote themselves to prepare for him, or, in other words, that ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... and quivering throat, and the convulsive sobbing and gasping which would not cease tearing the wasted frame until death should bring the only possible help. It made him sick at heart to think that the gentle unselfish girl who was even then forgetting herself in her care for others would be seized by those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to her. He was setting out for the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts at Hunter's Island, and in the excitement of that adventure even the movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie also could be unselfish. With a heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a gesture which might have been interpreted to mean ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... Quixote. The main original authority on the matter is Haedo, who writes on the evidence of witnesses who knew Cervantes in Algiers, and who one and all spoke with enthusiasm and love of his courage and patience, his good humour and unselfish devotion (Watts, i. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... centre pile. Whoever has the card matching this, takes it, lays it face down on his card repeating the prophecy, "I will be the first to wear false teeth." The next in turn gives a characteristic, "Who has the worst temper?" or "Who has the most unselfish disposition?" This process continues around, until all the centre cards are matched. Then the memory test comes in. Every player in turn tries to remember and repeat all the prophecies and characteristics which have fallen ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... things went on as hitherto. Kirsty was in no danger of tiring of the even flow of her life. Steenie's unselfish solitude of soul made him every day dearer to her. Books she sought in every accessible, and found occasionally in an unhopeful quarter. She had no thought of distinguishing herself, no smallest ambition of becoming learned; her soul was athirst to understand, and what she understood found ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Robert Southey, and, as he and Coleridge married sisters, you may claim a distant relationship with him. His personal character was beautiful and unselfish, and his dwelling at Keswick was the home that for years sheltered ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... would not accept complete vindication. There must be exact justice meted for an outraged law. Father can await his boy's final clearance from guilty suspicions in patient abeyance to public weal. Mother will approve—her high sense of duty must—so unselfish were her plans—yes, it will be ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... many. A flower cannot sing bird-songs, but its sweet beauty and gentle fragrance make it a blessing wherever it is seen. Be like a star in your peaceful shining, and many will thank God for your life. Be like the flower in your pure beauty and in the influence of your unselfish spirit, and you may do more to bless the world than many who talk incessantly. The living sacrifice does not always mean active work. It may mean the patient endurance of a wrong, the quiet bearing of a pain, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... with vociferous plaudits, had they received and adopted another Resolution, wherein they declared "That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism and the unswerving fidelity to the Constitution and the principles of American Liberty, with which Abraham Lincoln has discharged, under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, the great duties and responsibilities of the Presidential Office; that ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... very beautiful, and the most unselfish person I ever saw. She was perpetually trying to lighten my labor. She insisted on taking an oar and trying to row. She bore up most uncomplainingly against our hardships. In fact, she acted like a regular brick. Of course, before I had talked ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... think anything about Bigley Uggleston in these days, only that he was overgrown and good-tempered, and never ready to quarrel; and it did not seem to strike either of us that he was about the most unselfish, self-denying slave that ever lived. I know now that we were perfect tyrants to him, while he, amiable giant that he was, bore it all with the greatest of equanimity, and the more unreasonable we were, the more patient he ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... reflected in her pure face, on the different dispositions of all the young men; and she, perfectly unconscious of it, smiled at them, and conversed gaily,—little knowing as she talked, in her own sweet and unaffected way, that the most profound resolutions were being formed, and the most noble and unselfish deeds, were being planned in the souls of her listeners,—all forsooth! because one fair, innocent woman had, in the clear, grave glances of her wondrous sea-blue eyes, suddenly made them aware of their own ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... came to her a vision of the years that might be. If she were ever rested again, if little Derry were again his sunny, resolute self, if Warren and she were reunited, then what an ideal of fine and simple and unselfish living would be hers! How she would cling to honor and truth and goodness, how she would fortify herself against the pitfalls dug by her own impulsiveness. She and Warren had everything in life worth while, it was not for them ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... well-earned rest, of patient, submissive superannuation. At the end of her long day's work she might have been placed there to enjoy this dim prevision of the peaceful river, the gleaming shores, of the paradise her unselfish life had certainly qualified her to enter, and which, apparently, would so soon be opened to her. After a while she said, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... there's no kindness in it," returned my cousin. "I do not offer you Dorothy's hand from an unselfish motive. I have told you one motive, but there is another, and a little condition besides, Malcolm." The brandy Sir George had been drinking had sent the devil ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... sins, and sometimes lose by our virtues." Power of a kind can be, and very often is, obtained by egoists through their egoism. He discussed that power, showed its value and the glory of it. Then he contrasted with it the power which is only obtained by those who, completely unselfish, know not how to think of themselves. He enlarged on this theme, on the Kingdom which can belong only to those who are selfless. And then he drew to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... and said: "I guess you're right, as usual. After all, it is a shame that I should take her to my poor log-cabin when she might have a mansion in Boston and all that money can buy. If I were an unselfish man, I should release my claims to her." A silence of several moments ensued, during which Billy drew the leather trunk from under the bed and took a fresh letter from the musty package we have already seen. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... negative and occasionally almost negligent fashion Mr. Brumley had been living up to his impassioned resolve to be an unselfish lover of Lady Harman. He had been rather at loose ends intellectually, deprived of his old assumptions and habitual attitudes and rather chaotic in the matter of his new convictions. He had given most of his productive hours to the writing of a novel which was to be an entire departure from ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... but he was a Friend one degree removed. Sentimental and emotional he must have been, or he could never have persuaded a daughter of Dr. Arnold to marry him. Pure gold, without a trace of base metal; honest, unselfish, practical; he took up the Union cause and made himself its champion, as a true Yorkshireman was sure to do, partly because of his Quaker anti-slavery convictions, and partly because it gave him a practical opening in the House. As a new ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... and comely things about the people they had met. The two women, in particular, had been charmed out of themselves by the sight of a young girl surrounded by her admirers; all evening, it appeared, they had been triumphing together in the girl's innocent successes, and to this natural and unselfish joy they gave expression in language that was beautiful by its simplicity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dismasted, and perhaps sinking ship. The incident created an intense interest, and was calculated to bring out the finer feelings of the students. They were full of sympathy for her people, and the cultivation of noble and unselfish sentiments, which the occasion had already called forth, and was likely to call forth in a still greater degree, was worth the voyage over the ocean; for there are impressions to be awakened by such a scene which can be garnered in ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... he was until middle age a busy, working man, whose leisure moments were occupied with writings that have found little favor, except the Femmes de la Regence and the pretty child's story of M. le Vent et Mme. la Pluie, which latter has been translated. He was the devoted, unselfish friend and mentor of Alfred, to whose juniority and genius he extended an indulgence of which he needed no share for himself: in fact, he was the elder brother of the Prodigal in everything but want of generosity. A more amiable portrait cannot be imagined than the one to be drawn of him from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... for Market Hilton, where Colin Camber and Ah Tsong were detained and where the body of Colonel Menendez had been conveyed for the purpose of the post-mortem. I had volunteered to remain at Cray's Folly, my motive being not wholly an unselfish one. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... ever know. There are a few of us who do know something of these things, and this fellowship of his suffering knits our hearts in loving memory to him who excelled us all, and the fragrance of whose name and unselfish devotion to his work met us almost everywhere, although years had passed away since James Evans had entered into his rest. "He being dead yet speaketh." To write about him and his work is a labour ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... believe, in your secret soul, Agatha—I take the liberty of using your Christian name because I wish to be very solemn—do you really believe that any human being was ever unselfish enough to love another in ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... bias. With him it was a question of social science, general human happiness and welfare. With us, however, where it has become a practical question touching domestic, social, and professional interests, its complications multiply, and it is exceedingly difficult for the most honest and unselfish occupants of place or privilege, to look at it without touching, in some of its intricacies, the question, "Does not space for her to bourgeon," imply restricting me ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... all odds the greatest of these is the outlet through prayer. The power of a life touches just one spot, but the touch is tremendous. What is there we think to be compared with a pure, unselfish, gently strong life. Yet its power is limited to one spot where it is being lived. Power through the lips depends wholly upon the life back of the lips. Words that come brokenly are often made burning ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... though I was still far from rich in the world's goods. I believe I was very happy during my eight years out there. I liked the people. There was a hearty frankness, a simplicity in their mode of life, an unselfish intimacy in their social relations that attracted me. They were new people—unharrowed and uncultured like the land they lived on—but they were earnest and honest and strong. But the ague shook us out of the State. My wife's health gave out and we ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Gordon was such an athlete of the heart that all who knew him saw well what exercise he must have gone through before he was subdued in his high mind and proud spirit to be so humble, so meek, so silent, so unselfish, and so full of godliness and brotherly kindness—what a world of inward exercise all that bespoke! Alexander Gordon's patience under wrong, his low esteem of himself and of all he did, his miraculous power over himself in the forgiveness ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... philanthropy, but was dictated and carried out by an active benevolence. She felt in her inmost heart the duty which she there professed, of exerting herself to promote the happiness of the people, and was far too unselfish to desire to keep to herself the whole of the delight her gardens were calculated to afford. The Trianon was a possession exactly calculated to gratify her taste for innocent rural pleasure. As she said herself, at Versailles she was a queen; here she was a plain country lady, superintending ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... selfishness. Only then it opens by and by into the largest and noblest works of men, in which they most manifest the richness of their human nature and appropriate the strength of God. Those are great and unselfish acts. We know it at once if we turn to Him who represents the fulness of the ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... Kind soul to good men fallen on pain! Brave friend who lendest such unselfish aid! Thy greatest toil to save me was in vain, For fate would not. Thy duty now is ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... about the most unselfish thing I ever heard of any one doing!" exclaimed Miss Wardropp. "Thank you very much, I'm sure. No good my refusing now, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for himself, but pleaded most earnestly for the little charge committed to his care, telling how all his relatives had been murdered, and begging them to spare his life. Perhaps it was those earnest, unselfish words, perhaps it was the boy's gracious mien and winsome face, that moved the crowd; for one of the village Boxers stepped forward, saying: "I adopt this boy as my son. Let no one touch him. I stand security for ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... reached the house he had gone. Amy felt that with the night a darker shadow had fallen upon her happy day. The deep sadness of a wounded spirit touched her own, she scarcely knew why. It was but the law of her unwarped, unselfish nature. Even as a happy girl she could not pass by uncaring, on the other side. She felt that she would like to talk with Webb, as she always did when anything troubled her; but he, touched with something of Burt's old ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... find such a dear, unselfish little woman, eh? No, no, Mary, put all that out of your head. We have not loved one another for twenty years for a trumpery title to come between us now! And you need not fear being too well off for the position. ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all very well. Franziska is an excellent girl, as I have told you often—frank, kind, well educated, and unselfish. But you cannot have fallen in love with her ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... which burns in so much of the abler literature of our time is an unselfish revolt, or non-selfish revolt: it is an outcome of that larger spirit which conceives the self to be a part of the general social organism, and it is therefore neither egoistic nor altruistic. It finds a sanction in the new intelligence, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... "It's very unselfish of you to propose that, honey," replied her mother. "But, perhaps, such a sacrifice as the curtailment of your education will ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... entirely she has convinced me that I was wrong, shamefully wrong, in thinking of her as I did. She sees that you dislike her, and yet she speaks so nicely of you. 'Your clever friend enjoys your society,' she said; 'pray accompany me when I take him to see the church.' How unselfish!" ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... humanity." The lure of war is losing its magnetic power and the brotherhood of man becoming more and more an international reality. A sentiment for universal peace is sweeping the world, and behind the defenses of advancing civilization, armed with the strength of a lofty and unselfish purpose, stands an army of America's young men, mustered from the nation's colleges, enlisted to serve for an eternity, and invulnerable in the protection of a ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... Haunted Man, "a gay drawing-room. I see my old friends of the club, of the college, of society, even as they lived and moved. I see the gallant and unselfish men whom I have loved, and the snobs whom I have hated. I see strangely mingling with them, and now and then blending with their forms, our old friends Dick Steele, Addison, and Congreve. I observe, though, that these gentlemen ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... he hastened to the rich merchants and factory lords. The rich man went begging for his hungry brethren, and his pride did not feel itself lowered by the petition. No one could resist his impetuous eagerness; every one was carried away by his unselfish and impulsive magnanimity. For the moment, even earthly treasures lost their value, for more valuable possessions were at stake, namely, liberty and honor. Every one gave ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in His sight.' That is the voice that has learned: 'He that is greatest among you, let him be your servant'; and that the dominion founded on unselfish surrender for others is the only dominion that will last. Brethren! that is the spirit in which alone England will keep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... asked herself, while her heart pumped boisterously. Was he magnanimous enough to be thinking of accepting a compromising situation to save her? What he had said sounded very unselfish. Of course, she couldn't allow him to. What a pity he was not an American—or something quite ordinary. Then ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Master. Such a person may or may not be spiritually developed, for the two forms of advancement do not necessarily go together, and when a man is born with psychic powers it is simply the result of efforts made during a previous incarnation, which may have been of the noblest and most unselfish character, or on the other hand may have been ignorant and ill-directed or even entirely unworthy. Such an one will usually be perfectly conscious when out of the body, but for want of proper training is liable to be greatly ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... heritage that could come only out of pioneer life. Such courage to face sacrifice, such devotion to God, such loyalty to government, such consecration to the task of conquering an unpromising and forbidding desert, such determination to secure the advantages of education, such unselfish devotion to the welfare of their fellows—where could we turn for such inspiration to one ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... the race is its moral uplift. The man or woman who has a noble or kindly thought, who has consecrated life to unselfish ends and has spent constructive effort for the common good, is the true prince among men. He may be a leader upon whom the common people rely in time of stress, or only a private in the ranks—he is a hero, for his ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... demanding so much of her attention, she exhibited in a gentle way a warmth of temperament which endeared her to him more than ever, while she argued with him and tried to laugh him out of his fears. He was tempted sorely, but he loved her in a sufficiently unselfish way to resist. He even sought to conceal his depth of feeling under a disguise of lightness. He admitted that in his present frame of mind he ought to be with her as much as possible, as then, if ever, he stood in need of a sure antidote for the blues, and with a half-hearted ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Beltane, how all thy days I have taught thee to love all fair, and sweet, and noble things, for they are of God. 'Twere a fair thought, now, to live out thy life here, within these calm, leafy solitudes—but better death by the sword for some high, unselfish purpose, than to live out a life of ease, safe and cloistered all thy days. To live for thine own ends—'tis human; to die for some great cause, for liberty, or for another's good—that, my son, were God-like. And there was a Man of Sorrows Whose word was this, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... who had been representing "honest taxpayers" and "innocent owners" of corrupt stock and bonds all his life understood perfectly. "It's hardly human to be as unselfish as you and I are, Davy," said he. "Well, I'll go in and do a little telephoning. You go ahead and draw up your statement and get it to the papers—and see Hugo." He rose, stood leaning on his cane, all bent and ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... in which unselfish love is described in terms at once just and noble cannot be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a man with a chronic tendency to fluctuations ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... from her face and might not have been wholly unprejudiced. Aunt Rebecca was a gentle, sweet-faced woman, if her portrait told the truth, possessed of all the virtues save self-assertion and dominated by habitual, unselfish kindness to others. She could not have been discourteous even to Claudius Tiberius, who at this moment was seated in state upon the sofa ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... these days, had none of the ordinary slow, smiling, philosophical Wallencamp shuffle. He brought to my weariness and dejection such an atmosphere of vigorous, tireless life; he was so confident, helpful, unselfish; I was so faithless and disheartened a burden-bearer; that I grew almost unconsciously to find for myself a certain rest in his strength, which, whatever high and heroic qualities it may have lacked, developed, at least, rare resources of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... but your soul was as white as the driven snow that covers the desolate land of your people. Your features are shrunken with starvation and suffering, but still they are beautiful, for they reflect the beautiful, unselfish soul which they ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... is," said she to herself. "To look at her now, one would think that a serious thought never entered her head, and yet how full of good and unselfish thoughts that little head is, ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... there as quietly as if no change of time or place could make her unhappy. For her discontent with herself had by no means passed away. It had rather deepened as her study of the Bible became more earnest, and the strong, pure, unselfish life of which she had now and then caught glimpses seemed more than ever beyond her power to attain. When she tried most, it seemed to her that she failed most; and the disgust which she felt on account of her daily failures had been gradually deepening into a sense of sinfulness that would ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... a beautiful bride was almost sweeping him into generous thought, he had listened for upward of an hour to the eloquence of a life insurance agent. Then the agent, misled by Gower's effusively generous and unselfish expressions, had taken a false tack. He had descanted upon the supreme satisfaction that would be felt by a dying man as he reflected how his young widow would be left in affluence. He made a vivid picture; ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... unselfish than Mr. Mackenzie. He would rather suffer extreme hardship than accept a doubtful favour. Even in regard to kindly and reasonable offers of help, he was morbidly sensitive (as mentioned on page 298 of his "Life and Times"); and yet, looking at the conduct of many men in like circumstances, he ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... easy though sad—sad, I mean, in the eyes of mourning friends. But, alas! I have no friends, now that my husband is gone. I never dreamed of him going first. He loved me: indeed he did, though you will hardly believe it; but I always took it as a matter of course. I never saw how beautiful and unselfish he was till he was gone. I have been selfish and stupid and dull, and my sins have found me out. A great darkness has fallen upon me; and although weary of life, instead of longing for death, I shrink from it with horror. My cough will not let ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... changed hands; and sitting side by side in an affectionate bunch, the girls read the happy news that granted the cherished wish of one and gave the other real unselfish pleasure ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... three motives—fear of punishment, hope of reward, and sense of right or the principle of duty. The first of these is the lowest, but often the most effectual; the second is higher, and appeals to hope and the love of happiness; the third, the highest of all motives, pure and unselfish as the love of truth, as in mathematics, acts on noble minds with great power. Men of real conscientiousness love the right for its own sake. They are just from love of justice; pure from a sense and love of purity. They love good, and God as the source of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Let any one who has any doubts on this point read some of the documents published in the Blue-books on the reforms—petitions from low-caste communities imploring Government not to commit the defence of their interests to the Hindu Brahman, but to continue to them the direct and unselfish protection which they have hitherto enjoyed at ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... even sentences helped to dispel the stupor of amazement which had made her dumb. And the first reasoned thought which came to her was that the Spanish doctor had treated her with the kindness of an indulgent parent, for Elsie was far too unselfish not to be alive to the unselfishness ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... teaching of Christ what appeared to be the purest and simplest attempt ever made to formulate unselfish affection. No teacher of morals had ever reached the point of inculcating upon men the belief that it was the highest joy to spend the energies of life in contributing to the happiness of others. Though he saw in the system of Christ, as popularised and interpreted, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... admirably with the temper of the commercial England which rallied round him, with its energy, its self-confidence, its pride, its patriotism, its honesty, its moral earnestness. The merchant and the trader were drawn by a natural attraction to the one statesman of their time whose aims were unselfish, whose hands were clean, whose life was pure and full of tender affection for wife and child. But there was a far deeper ground for their enthusiastic reverence, and for the reverence which his country has ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... services. This will not only, as Dr. Taylor makes clear, stimulate many men in the establishment whose men go on to take the places of those who are promoted, but will also be a great inducement to other men to come into a place that they feel is unselfish and generous. ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... spend my Christmas at home with Pakenham, although I cannot, nor do I wish to, fill up his feeling of the blanks in this house. There is something mournful, yet pleasingly painful, in the sense of the ideal presence of the long-loved dead. Those images people and fill the mind with unselfish thoughts, and with the salutary feeling of responsibility and constant desire to be and to act in this world as the superior friend would have wished ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... a man never truly loves but once. And somewhere in Scotland there is a mound above the gentle, tender and heroic Helen Mar, where lies buried the first love of my soul. That mound, O lovely and loyal Helen, was watered by the first blinding and unselfish tears that ever sprang from my eyes. You were my first love; others may come and inevitably they go, but you are still here, under the pencil pocket ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... 750 years during which the stranger sway has blighted Ireland her people have never had occasion to welcome an unselfish or generous deed at the hands of their rulers. Every so-called "concession" was but the loosening of a fetter. Every benefit sprang from a manipulation of our own money by a foreign Treasury denying us an honest audit of accounts. None was yielded as an act of grace. All were the offspring of constraint, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... spirit of co-operation and harmony between the two bodies. Otherwise the University could not have become what it is. While the Regents for the most part have not been men primarily interested, or trained, in educational matters, they have taken their duties seriously and have been unselfish in their service for the institution, with no reward for their labors save the honor inherent in their office. They have sought earnestly to understand the problems before them, and, in whatever measures they took, to keep always before them the welfare of the University as a whole. With the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... the art of demonstrating falsehood plausibly; there is nothing respectable in the military profession except the manual—which is now losing importance in the eyes of advanced theorists. All men are liars—a few are unselfish ones. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... sternly on its application, though we can never create a patriotism akin to that based on affinity of race or community of language, we may perhaps foster some sort of cosmopolitan allegiance grounded on the respect always accorded to superior talents and unselfish conduct, and on the gratitude derived both from favours conferred and from those to come.[8] There may then at all events be some hope that the Egyptian will hesitate before he throws in his lot with any future Arabi The Berberine dweller on the banks of the Nile may, perhaps, cast no ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... he ensconced himself by false pretences and with the full intention of gaining the niece for himself. Abelard seems to have exercised an irresistible fascination for men and women alike, and his plot succeeded to admiration. Stricken by a belated remorse, he finally married Heloise against her unselfish protests and partly to legitimatize his unborn child, and shortly after he was surprised and overpowered by emissaries of Canon Fulbert and subjected to irreparable mutilation. He tells the story with perfect ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... was wrong of me, and I conquered it. In the night, after I had seen you both like that, I fought it out with myself. I recognised that it was hateful egoism that made me grudge you your happiness, and that my love for you should be quite otherwise—more unselfish. From thenceforth Marie Falkenhein became dear to me; it was as though I were you,—I felt an involuntary yearning towards her, warmer, apparently, than your own. I would have liked to endow her with all that you found clever ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... first year of Her Majesty's reign that we find Father Mathew, the Irish Capuchin friar, initiating his vast crusade against intemperance, and by the charm of his persuasive eloquence and unselfish enthusiasm inducing thousands upon thousands to forswear the drink-poison that was destroying them. In two years he succeeded in enrolling two million five hundred thousand persons on the side of sobriety. The permanence of the good Father's immediate work was impaired by the ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... for her brother, and her unselfish devotion to his interests, is a precedent unparalleled in French history until the time of Madame de Sevigne. In all her letters we find the same tenderness, gentleness, passion, inexhaustible emotion, sympathy, and compassion that distinguished ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty. And Amy, in her exile, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Golly, is! We all miss you so much, deary, though we don't miss so many little things as when you were here. My dear, conscientious, unselfish little girl! You don't say where John Gale is. Is he still protecting you—he-he!—you giddy, naughty thing! People wonder on the island why I let you go alone to London—they forget your dear mother was a Frenchwoman! ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... themselves the necessary taxes for schools, highways, and officers of the law. They formed self-governed communities, who selected for rulers their ablest and fittest men, marked for their integrity and intelligence,—grave, austere, unselfish, and incorruptible. Money was of little account in comparison with character. The earliest settlers were the picked and chosen men of the yeomanry of England, and generally thrifty and prosperous. Their leaders had had high social positions in their English homes, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... people who do not count too rigorously, that the world gets on. The most beautiful acts of service and the hardest tasks have generally little remuneration or none. Fortunately there are always men ready for unselfish deeds; and even for those paid only in suffering, though they cost gold, peace, and even life. The part these men play is often painful and discouraging. Who of us has not heard recitals of experiences wherein the narrator regretted some past kindness he had done, some trouble he had ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... and Russia's concessions on several occasions brought the plenipotentiaries on the verge of rupture. With the single-mindedness born of an unselfish purpose, President Roosevelt exerted all the personal influence he could bring to bear upon czar and emperor with the result that the victor gave the world an astounding lesson in magnanimity. Japan made peace ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... story of one of Nelson's captains, he of whom Nelson wrote as "the gallant and good Riou"—high meed of praise gloriously won at Copenhagen—but Riou, eleven years before that day, performed a deed, now almost forgotten, which, for unselfish heroism, ranks among the brightest in our brilliant naval annals, and in the sea story of ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... justice to James T. Fields. This truly is a grievous accusation. Fields was Hawthorne's publisher and would seem to have taken a personal and friendly interest in him besides, but we cannot look on it as a wholly unselfish interest. It was not like Hillard's, Pierce's, and Bridge's interest in Hawthorne. If Fields had not been his publisher, it is not probable that Hawthorne would have made his acquaintance; and if his son has not enlarged on Fields's good offices in bringing "The Scarlet Letter" before the public, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... TRUEBRIDGE. I do not mean to liken him to CHARSLEY, for no more unselfish and kind-hearted being than JOHNNIE ever breathed. But was there ever a stone that rolled more constantly and gathered less moss? Yet no stroke could subdue his inconquerable cheerfulness. Time after ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... shall write of my husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons living can throw upon his character, and so noble a character cannot be blazoned forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and, when my love grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here to witness to-morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He has built too stoutly and too surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon shall it be thrust back from off prostrate humanity. When the word goes forth, the labor hosts of all the world shall ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... their heaven-soaring songs he set one sweet name, and in the magical radiance over land and sea had that momentary vision of a beloved face which the second-sight of Memory sometimes grants to a pure, unselfish love. Then with a joyful song nestling in his heart, he went rapidly forward. And the night was as the day, for the moon was full and the rosy spears of the Aurora were charging the zenith from ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... development of the whole nature which means the highest life. He says also that Browning is one of the most eloquent expounders of the doctrine of the reality of a future life, in which those who live a noble and unselfish life will get their reward in an existence ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... words of Nathan Hale have been repeated again and again since that time. They have been cut in bronze and in marble, they have been taught in our schools. They are noble words, because they are simple and brave and unselfish. He could have had no idea that they would ever be heard beyond the little group of people about him when he died, but it so happened that General Howe had occasion to send a letter to Washington late that evening about an exchange of prisoners, and the bearer of the letter was Captain Montresor, ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... nature implanted the germs within us? Is it weak to indulge a sentiment so productive of happiness as this, so essential to the wellbeing of the holiest bond on earth? Love is not a folly; in its purity, it is a noble, unselfish thing, the inspirer and friend of moral excellence. When I see a young woman pining over a hidden grief, which might have been spared, had she imparted her feelings to a friend; when I witness the mental powers tried, and at length overcome, by the struggles ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... be a lady is to have a heart of gold, which never thinks one unselfish thought, she is one, Mrs. Fordyce,' said ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... city of about nine hundred beings. The civilization of Mars was older than that of Earth, but it was a dying one. This was what remained of it: one city, nine hundred people. They were waiting for Earth to make contact, for a selfish reason and for an unselfish one. ...
— Earthmen Bearing Gifts • Fredric Brown
... "And will ye know the fine things from the dross, child? That wealth is more times what ye give, aye, than what ye get? It's rich ye are of your fine things if the heart of you is unselfish—" ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... THE DAUGHTERS OF VETERANS OF THE U. S. A. was organized and chartered in 1885, to perpetuate the memories of the fathers and brothers, their loyalty to the Union and their unselfish sacrifices for its perpetuity; to aid them and their widows and orphans, when helpless and in distress; to inculcate a love of country and patriotism among women; to promote equal rights and universal liberty, and to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... be supposed that Grind, in giving his client advice that was to prevent an appeal to law, did so from any unselfish friendliness. Nothing of the kind. He saw a great deal to gain, beyond; and, in his advice, regarded his own interests quite as much as he did those of Jasper. He was not, however, at this interview, able to induce the merchant ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... of Ulster, Irish commerce was allowed to flourish for a while; the revenue of the crown doubled; and statesmen should have been convinced that an unselfish policy was the best for both countries. But there will always be persons whose private interests clash with the public good, and who have influence enough to secure their own advantage at the expense ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... and freedom was prompted by a deep and unselfish love of his race. He was descended from a soldier of the Revolutionary army, and inherited that indomitable will, strong patriotic impulses, and native talents, which had characterized his ancestry for several generations. His mental qualities were of a lofty type. He was a linguist who, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... well that you gave up your own cozy bedroom, like the dear, unselfish little girl you are," Grey said, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... deal to say for Imperialism. Imperialism is a very difficult ethic; it is not easy to say whether it is a selfish or an unselfish policy. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the way to win his approval. A pure, unselfish life must gain the respect of every honest soul, soon or late," Mrs. Larkum said, with ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... this digression through the desire to give an approximate idea of the good, rather vacant, unselfish, and yet self-contented, if not ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... fact, Nikky was not altogether unselfish. He would visit the roof again, where for terrible, wonderful moments he had held Hedwig in his arms. On a pilgrimage, indeed, like that of the Crown Prince to Etzel, Nikky would visit ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very shortly burnt up, it is then folly to exert ourselves for such objects. To the dead man, (it is said,) the cases are but one. This is to the purpose, if self absorbs all our heart; away from the purpose, if we are to work for unselfish ends. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman |
