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More "Selfishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't know," she answered. "I am afraid that my kindness is only another form of selfishness. I am rather a lonely person, you know. Lord Redford is beckoning to you. I am going to break ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his colleagues sought to check the practice of forestalling. But, as usually happens in a struggle with human selfishness, success was doubtful. More fruitful was the expedient of attracting foreign corn by granting large bounties on imports. As if this were not enough, British warships sometimes compelled neutral corn-vessels, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "Well-beloved;" but by the middle of the century they so detested him that he dared not pass through Paris, lest the mob should execrate him. He had not the vigor of the true tyrant; but his langour, his hatred of all effort, his profound selfishness, his listless disregard of public duty, and his effeminate libertinism, mixed with superstitious devotion, made him no less a national curse. Louis XIII. was equally unfit to govern; but he gave the reins to the Great Cardinal. Louis XV. abandoned them to a frivolous mistress, content ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... that we owe the ideal of human brotherhood, but to evolution. It is because altruism is better than selfishness that it has survived. It is because love is stronger and sweeter than greed that its influence has deepened and spread. From the love of the animal for its mate, from the love of parents for their young, sprang the ties of kindred and the loyalty of friendship; ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... to correct this fatal tendency, or to encourage it from a notion that it weans men from political passions and thus wards off revolutions, they might eventually produce the evil they seek to avoid, and a time might come when the inordinate passions of a few men, aided by the unintelligent selfishness or the pusillanimity of the greater number, would ultimately compel society to pass through strange vicissitudes. In democratic communities revolutions are seldom desired except by a minority; but a minority may sometimes effect them. I do not assert that democratic nations are secure from ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... shall reap our reward. Let this be a consolation to us in all our troubles and disappointments when we have been strenuously endeavouring to do some important good, and find all our plans and projects defeated by the selfishness, the ignorance, the obstinacy of others, perhaps of the persons we would benefit, till at last we are inclined to exclaim: "What is the use of attempting to do good in this world? Do all I can, I cannot succeed." We do succeed—we can succeed; often, very ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... faith in the better things that shall be, its trust in God, its generous self-abandonment to men, passes like a breath of inspiration, bringing shame at once and strength with it. Before such an one, not only does selfishness hold its peace, and cynicism forget to be sarcastic, but a new vigour steals into the irresolute will, a fresh power of self-sacrifice takes possession of the heart. The kingdom of God no longer seems a dimly glorious dream, far off in a new strange world, but an ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... you never think. You never think of anything but your own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think to pity us and save us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forced to confess that he had found this father of his vastly different from the man he had been led to expect. He had looked to find a debauched old rake, a vile creature steeped in vice and wickedness. Instead, he found a weak, easy-natured, commonplace fellow, whose worst sin seemed to be the selfishness that is usually inseparable from those other characteristics. If Ostermore was not a man of the type that inspires strong affection, neither was he of the type that provokes strong dislike. His colorless nature left ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... plainly preponderant. And, even then, there is a wide margin between the acts which we praise for their heroism, or generosity, or self-denial, and those which we condemn for their baseness, or meanness, or selfishness. It must never be forgotten, in the treatment of questions of morality, that there is a large number of acts which we neither praise nor blame, and this is emphatically the case where the competition is between a man's own interests and those of his neighbours. We applaud ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... to complete the round of homely happiness in our little rural centres; how is it that we do not properly encourage the things which, albeit childlike, are essential, which sweetly recreate? It is not merely the selfishness of those who are well placed and prefer to live for themselves, or who have light but care not to shed it on those who are not of their class. Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in men of all races. It is not selfishness, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... temporarily. Brotherhood is unquestionably an instinct of the soul, an inheritance from that sunrise era when mutual interdependence was as imperative as it was automatic. The complexities of civilization have overlaid it, and almost but not wholly replaced it by national and individual selfishness. But the world as yet is only about one-third civilized. Centuries hence a unified civilization may complete the circle, but human nature and progress must act and react a thousand times before the earthly millenium; and it cannot be ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... you drive selfishness and coldness to that extent," said Madame, "that you would let this unhappy young man continue to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... or madman had locked the door, and so fastened him to the sinking ship, at a time when, in the bustle, the alarm, the selfishness, all would be apt to forget him and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... pleasant fibs, the latter generally having the best of it. The contest finally settled down into the Victorian compromise, which was tacitly accepted by even the best of the imaginative writers of the period. The understanding was that brutality, lust and selfishness were to be represented as being qualities only of "bad" people, plainly labelled as such. Under this compromise some magnificent works were produced. But inasmuch as the compromise involved a suppression of a great and all-important fact about the human soul, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... lust and natural affection may seem to render it unavoidable; yet there are other particulars in our natural temper, and in our outward circumstances, which are very incommodious, and are even contrary to the requisite conjunction. Among the former, we may justly esteem our selfishness to be the most considerable. I am sensible, that generally speaking, the representations of this quality have been carried much too far; and that the descriptions, which certain philosophers delight so much to form of mankind ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... will, before he is forced to—such a person simply schemes to betray us. There are gentlemen in plenty who would be glad to stop your mouth by kissing you! If you become dangerous some day to their selfishness, to their vested interests, to their immorality—as I pray heaven every day, my dear friend, that you may!—it will be a grand thing for one of them if he can persuade you that he loves you. Then ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... remember. But I lied. I was punishing myself because I had been selfish about you. But I didn't believe what I was saying—not deep in my heart. I wanted you to say you wouldn't go—but I didn't want you to look back ever and blame me for my selfishness. You see now how wicked and wrong and weak I am. I didn't want the world to take you away from—from us up here: from the woods and the plain folks. You'll hate me now. But I have to be truthful with ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and who will not give his vile carcass burial, for fear of pollution. Is our prejudice against persons of color more rational or more just? The plain fact is, our prejudice has the same foundation as that of the Mahometan—both are grounded in pride and selfishness. A law has lately passed in Turkey, imposing a fine upon whoever shall call a Christian a dog. Let us try to keep pace with the Turks in candor and benevolence.—[Massachusetts ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... arisen within him, in what way we need not now inquire, that higher powers exist who can, if they will, defend and prosper him, in this way he has religion, he keeps up intercourse with higher powers. And thus religion is not necessarily, even in its most primitive form, a manifestation of mere selfishness. Though gifts are offered which are expected to please the higher beings, and though benefits are asked of which the worshipper is urgently in need, such transactions are not necessarily sordid any more than similar applications between human beings, between two ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... sit among the lazy saints, Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset, Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness? Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!) The world of pain were better, if therein One's heart might still be human, and desires Of natural pity drop upon its fires Some cooling tears." Thereat the pale monk crossed His brow, and muttering, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... a heavy task for one so young, particularly in Priscilla's case, for, besides a father, mother, brother, and sister, in whom she could not but discern many and serious failings, she possessed an aunt who was addicted to insincerity, two female cousins whose selfishness and unamiability were painful to witness, and a male cousin who talked slang and was so worldly that he habitually went about in yellow boots! Nevertheless Priscilla did not flinch, although, for some reason, her earnest and unremitting efforts had hitherto failed ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... me, whom they claimed to respect as kinsman redeemer and whose decisions would seal their fate for good or ill, that there were other survivors from the Great Wars. I was also shocked by their selfishness, for while they fought pettily amongst themselves over how they would change their lands for the better, a seemingly important question about past and future, they completely ignored the sufferings of other humanoids, to whom their way of living no doubt ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... to the world, probably saw the selfishness of Pope's friendship; and, resolving that he should have the consequences of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis, by Steele, that he was sorry for the insult; and that, whenever he should think fit to answer his remarks, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... perilous time, and his agony of mind was terrible, for just then it seemed to him that he had, to gratify his own selfishness, brought the son of his old friend—a lad weak and wasted from a long illness—into a peril which might have been avoided. There they were, perfectly unconscious of danger in this direction; and as soon as the party had finished their whispered consultation he felt ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... self-sacrifice, mutual help, lofty thoughts, love, un-selfishness, joy in the success of others, humanity, justness, are the elements which slay those already enumerated as the sun slays the microbes, and restore ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... she said breathlessly. "There is a nobler happiness than one secured at the expense of selfishness and ingratitude. I tell you, as long as I live, I will not have them know or suffer because of my disgraceful escapade with you! You probably meant well; I must have been crazy, I think. But we've got to endure the consequences. If there's unhappiness and pain to be borne, we've got ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... repeated these words, because he approved of them. The poison of selfishness began anew to work within him; and the words of Verkhoffsky, which he looked on as treacherous, poured like oil on flame. "Hypocrite!" said he to himself; "your hour is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... very sorry for his sister, and at first bad feelings rose in his heart; but he had learned how to conquer them; so he talked to her, and told her how much happier they were than Mary Day, and how disagreeable she made herself, with her selfishness and her vanity; and then he told her that he had read in a book somewhere, that it was better to live in a mud hovel, with a kind heart, and a cheerful temper like hers, than to live in a ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... is the Son of God come to do the works of his Father. Where, then, is the healing of the Father? All the world over, in every man's life and knowledge, almost in every man's personal experience, although it may be unrecognized as such. For just as in certain moods of selfishness our hearts are insensible to the tenderest love of our surrounding families, so the degrading spirit of the commonplace enables us to live in the midst of ministrations, so far from knowing them as such, that it is hard for us to believe that ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... nobler than law or custom: they felt convictions which, but for such intercourse, could not have been afforded, that, as in the practice of their pastor, there was no guile, so in his faith there was nothing hollow; and we are warranted in believing, that upon these occasions, selfishness, obstinacy, and discord would often give way before the breathings of his good-will, and saintly integrity. It may be presumed also—while his humble congregation were listening to the moral precepts ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... bright than Marann Fluker. Simeon had not cordially indorsed the movement into town, though, of course, knowing it was none of his business, he had never so much as hinted opposition. I would not be surprised, also, if he reflected that there might be some selfishness in his hostility, or at least that it was heightened by apprehensions personal ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... not answer. The mountain girl's words had revealed to him the selfishness of his own consideration of his problem so clearly that he was stunned. Why had he not, in his thinking, remembered the dear old gentlewoman who had saved him ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... buckle under to the social conditions of England in those days, 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
... as the past unhappiness, was quite as much her fault as his, and the act of separation more so—he having been the passive and consenting party, did not consider it specially incumbent on him to make things easy for his wife. In his irritation and disgust at her heartless selfishness, he half determined to make them very much the reverse. He was not surprised at his wife's communication; he knew perfectly well that she would seek a divorce sooner or later, as the liberality of the world in such matters ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... was the moral law of the Church, establishing its great fundamental principles but leaving details to the working out of life itself. Behind the sin of Abelard lay his intolerable spiritual pride, his selfishness and his egotism, qualities that society at large did not recognize because of their devotion to his engaging personality and their admiration for his dazzling intellectual gifts. Their idol had sinned, he had been savagely punished, he had repented; that ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... and it was not till a month after his removal to Metaxata that intelligence from these gentlemen reached him. The picture they gave of the state of the country was, in most respects, confirmatory of what has already been described as his own view of it;—incapacity and selfishness at the head of affairs, disorganisation throughout the whole body politic, but still, with all this, the heart of the nation sound, and bent on resistance. Nor could he have failed to be struck with the close ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... outward danger an inward ferment was in ceaseless activity; and the effect of the situation on the character of the ruler was generally of the most sinister kind. Absolute power, with its temptations to luxury and unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was exposed from enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably into a tyrant in the worst sense of the word. Well for him if he could trust his nearest relations! But where all was illegitimate, there could be no regular ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... intellectual life. Either one of these diagonally opposed interpretations of the time is too extreme. The truth is in neither view. As a matter of fact, behind the seething mass of human forms was the age-old motive of human selfishness; and while here and there some lofty soul may have glimpsed in his fervid imagination a United Germany, based on a "German national faith," in which the rights of each citizen should be no more or no less than the rights of all others, with each man working for all men and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... pointed to a large white gull, skimming the main at some distance. Disgusted with her selfishness, I vouchsafed her no farther notice at the time, and her crooning went on during the whole period of the bitter death-struggle of that poor sufferer, whose name I never knew, but whose little, deformed waif, the orphan of the raft, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... be sheer, downright selfishness for you to die. It will be your one unworthy act. You have no disease: you have only to comply with the conditions of life ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... endeavour to do good to others, rather than evil, and that therefore I look to my departure from this world with awe indeed, but still with satisfaction. But I cannot look with satisfaction to a condition of life in which, from my own imbecility, I must necessarily retrograde into selfishness. It may be that He who judges of us with a wisdom which I cannot approach, shall take all this into account, and that He shall so mould my future being as to fit it to the best at which I had arrived in this world; still I cannot but fear that a taint of that ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. It deserves the indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. And the spirit which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,—the spirit which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust, intemperance and covetousness,—this animating spirit of evil which works against the Divine will and mars the peace and order of the universe is the great Adversary against whom we must fight for our ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... the irreparable blow dealt to the Jacobite cause by the stupid selfishness which impelled Charles Edward's younger brother to become a Romish priest and a cardinal, appears to have definitively decided the extraordinary change in the character of the Young Pretender. During the many years of skulking, often completely lost to the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... angel of all men, no longer came each day to teach Charles patience and amiability, and he fell into the ways of short temper and selfishness. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the butchery told by the student. As a German, and not generally known to be a Protestant, he managed to escape the fate of his Huguenot friends, but he witnessed, and was forced to appear to applaud, the most revolting exhibitions both of cruelty and of selfishness. His favorite professor, the venerable Francois Taillebois, after having been twice plundered by bands of marauders, was treacherously conducted by the second band to the Loire, despatched with the dagger, and thrown into the river. "The last lecture, which he gave on Monday at ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Anglo-Saxon man, developed under purely American conditions, maturing slowly, keeping close to facts, dying, like the old English saint, while he was "still learning," had none of the typical hardness and selfishness of the Anglo-Saxon. A brooder and idealist, he was one of those "prophetic souls of the wide world dreaming on things to come," with sympathies and imagination that reached out beyond the immediate urgencies of his race and nation to comprehend ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... day more amiable; she is now in the full tyranny of her charms, at the age when the mind is improved, and the person in its perfection. I every day see in her more indifference to her lover, a circumstance which gives me a pleasure which perhaps it ought not: there is a selfishness in it, for which I am afraid I ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... before leaving finally for America, than in quite an honest and enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail the sad fate of such poor wretches as have to forsake their native land, and to accuse the aristocracy of the country of every act of selfishness, and to charge the government with a shameful indifference. But Sheila brought him up suddenly. In the gentlest fashion she told him what she knew of these poor people, and how emigration affected them, and so forth, until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... tent, but till the stars waned he had been awake, and in the white light of the moon he had seen the beginning of the path. Men were said to be selfish. People, especially women, often talked as if selfishness were bred in the very fiber of men, as if it were ineradicable, and must be accepted by women. He meant to prove to one woman that even a man could be unselfish, moved by something greater than himself. Up there on Drouva he had definitely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Meekness, Self-denial, Heavenly mindedness, Zeal for GOD, and Charity towards Men: But as there is even untill now, a great contempt of the Gospel, a great Barrenness under it; So a deep Security under our sin and Danger, a great want of Piety toward God, and Love towards Men, with a woful Selfishness, every one seeking their own things, few the things of Christ, or the publick Good, or one anothers welfare: And finally, the most part more ready to Censure the sins of others, than to Repent ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... the initiative ability of a designer, but she could appreciate the crashing music of gorgeous colours met together on the right notes. Love of colour was in her Jewish blood, and she was a shrewd business woman also, animated with too vital a selfishness to let any opportunity of advancement go. She seized the new girl's idea at a glance, realized its value and its possible meaning ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... aside the accidents of birth and fortune, immeasurably my superior. In that thought—I mean the thought that the man she selects deserves her more than I do, and that in his happiness she will blend her own—I shall find comfort, so soon as I can fairly reason down the first all-engrossing selfishness that follows the sense of unexpected and irremediable loss. Meanwhile you will think it not unnatural that I resort to such aids for change of heart as are afforded by change of scene. I start for the Continent to-night, and shall not rest till I reach Venice, which I have not yet ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinction he ever met who never reminded him, by word or manner, of his color; he was as just and generous to the rich and well-born as to the poor and humble—a thing rare among politicians. He was tolerant even of evil: tho no man can ever have lived with a loftier scorn of meanness and selfishness, he yet recognized their existence and counted with them. He said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of a La Rochefoucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meanness for the public good. He never asked ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... have gone alike, the wheat of honest endeavour and hardship well borne, and the tares of class hatred and selfishness. Had ever reaper nobler task in front of him than the burning of those tares and the gathering of that wheat into the nation's ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... help him in the matter of sensual and heart-steeling self-indulgence. And the surreptitious fame thus acquired, instead of working in him for good, merely serves to procure him larger means and larger license for pampering his gross animal selfishness. His thoughts dwell not at all on the Prince's act of magnanimity, which would shame his egotism and soften his heart, but only on his own ingenuity and success in the stratagem that led to that act. So that the effect is just to puff ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Symonds Dodd to do anything toward squaring a wrong he had committed except when he gave Kate Kilgour a fine position in his office. And there are those who say that he was only showing more of his selfishness when he hired her; he wanted the prettiest girl in the city ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... I ask, my girl. But if I did not believe it was germinating in your heart, and that it would come pouring over me in a torrent some glad day, I doubt if I could allow you to go, Ruth! I am like any other man in selfishness and in ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right and the left and sees old soldiers - men of twelve years' service, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... in the dust of gross selfishness which clings more or less to all of us, we bow worshipping before the gods, into which we elevate the meanest qualities of our own nature, apotheosizing sinful lusts of hate and vengeance; and while we vow reckless tribute and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... wondered most at their selfishness and their generosity. They had so much of both! And I believe that as men they lose none of ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... short, like the hens, these cats held up a mirror to human nature. They showed what men and women would be, if they were—cats; which they would be, if a few modifying qualities were left out. They exhibit selfishness and greed in their pure forms, and we see and ought to shun the unlovely shapes. Evil propensities may be hidden by a silver veil, but they are none the less evil and bring forth evil fruit. Let cats ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... think me—and I am, I am, and I can't tell him I don't really mean to be," and then her tears burst forth, and she cried, and cried until all the bitterness and selfishness were washed from her heart, and ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... than to the body, and though it has its seat in the heart and in the emotions, it has to do principally with the will. 'Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then when lust has conceived it bringeth forth sin.'[6] The essence of sin is selfishness. It is the deliberate choice of self in preference to God—personal and wilful rebellion against the known law of righteousness and truth. There are, of course, degrees of wrongdoing and undoubtedly extenuating ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... just the point in which I see him likest the common run of men, while in his home relations he was worse. It is my conviction that such an act of open disgrace as he had been guilty of, may be the outcome of evil more easy to cast off than that indicated by home-habits embodying a selfishness regarded embodied in families, and which perhaps are as a mere matter of course. There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... infuriated them, but it served to pique. He wasn't actually as unconcerned as he appeared, but he had early learned that effort in their direction was unnecessary. Nick had little imagination; a gorgeous selfishness; a tolerantly contemptuous liking for the sex. Naturally, however, his attitude toward them had been somewhat embittered by being obliged to watch their method of driving a car in and out of the Ideal Garage doorway. His own manipulation ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... tones in which the phrase was uttered grated on Raphael's ears; it fell on them like an indiscreet remark let slip by some man in whose friendship we would fain believe, a word which reveals unsuspected depths of selfishness and destroys some pleasing sentimental illusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the cool inscrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called a servant, and, when ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Wundt, as follows. First of all, he had, on the previous day, met the funeral procession of an acquaintance. Again, he had read of cholera breaking out in a certain town. Once more, he had talked about the particular lady with this friend, who had narrated facts which clearly proved her selfishness. The hastening to flee from the infected neighbourhood and to overtake the procession was prompted by the sensation of heart-beating. Finally, the crowd of red bier-followers, and the profusion of nosegays, owed their origin to subjective visual sensations, the "light-chaos" which often ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... side to all this: the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the lust for power ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... have harbored the thought you attribute to us, Thorwald. After all you have told us of your freedom from trouble, of the dethronement of selfishness and the reign of love, of your great achievements in every art, and of your ideal life in general, we shall always look upon you as a perfect race. How is it possible to rise to a higher plain? Can you express in terms suited to our comprehension ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish with her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered, her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings of Eileen's heart. She was not capable of understanding ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... it was unavoidable for one of so generous and self- sacrificing a nature. I may add, that my aunt Lily is much touched, and thoroughly approves, and my uncle Jasper says imprudence is better than selfishness." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly less adoring Claire—the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving herself "airs"—are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of delicatesse. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig; selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain that his way as a transgressor ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... official as love-making or wine-bibbing seem to a strait-laced parson. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should never avert by his words any ill-will naturally caused by his acts; that he should never soothe disappointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He was an adept in alienation, a novice in conciliation. His magnetism was negative. He made few friends; and had no interested following whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his behalf; no band worked for him ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... a heathen, and had suffered much for the faith, and with that I was satisfied. Indeed you do not seem very ready to speak of those long past days. Our neighbor should be as dear to us as our self, and who is nearer to me than you? Aye, self and selfishness! There are many gulfs ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... found, were considered as the theme of a priest, and my desire to detach her from such empty pursuits as the selfishness of a lover. She was even offended at my freedom, and warmly affirmed that no one had a right to arraign her conduct. I mentioned Major Sanford, who was then in town, and who (though she went to places of public resort with Mr. and Mrs. Sumner) always met and gallanted her home. She rallied me ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... with them the better, and hence a large grant was acknowledged in the treaty of peace. The acts of England toward the United States after acknowledging their independence indicate that the fixing of the western boundary on the Mississippi had as much selfishness as liberality, if indeed it was ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... a feather in the public scale. It is better for me to mind my own affairs, and leave these higher attempts to more competent hands.' This is the language, not of reason and modesty, but of sloth, of selfishness, and of pride. The amount of it is, 'I cannot do every thing, therefore I will do nothing,' But you can do much. Act well your part according to your faculties, your station, and your means. The result will be honorable to yourself, delightful ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... for the Southland. A few months later, supposing him to be possessed of a faith in the country, he returns with a wife to share with him in that faith, and incidentally in his hardships. This but serves to show the innate selfishness of man. It also brings us to the trouble of 'Scruff' Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before the country was stampeded and staked by a tidal-wave of the che-cha-quas, and when the Klondike's only claim to notice was ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... She had grown, as she often told herself, to be a hard, cautious, selfish, successful woman, without any interference or assistance from such pleasure. Might there not be yet time left for her to try it without selfishness,—with an absolute devotion of self,—if only she could find the right companion? There was one who might be such a companion, but the Duke of Omnium certainly could not be ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... to the lowly cottage which he had occupied to the time of which we write. He became a settled misanthropist, whose only aim in life seemed to be the acquirement of wealth, and whose once genial and generous nature had now become warped into the selfishness and avarice ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... centuries—the damning crime to which all men have been subjected. I leave it to metaphysicians to determine the precise moment when wisdom and experience leap into existence, when, for the first time, the mind distinguishes truth from error, selfishness from patriotism, and passion from reason. It is sufficient for me that I am understood." This was Garrison's first experience with "gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston. It was not his last, as ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and public renunciation of the royalist principles of Charles de Buonaparte. It contains also the last profession of morality which a youth is not ashamed to make before the cynicism of his own life becomes too evident for the castigation of selfishness and insincerity in others. Its substance is a just reproach to a selfish trimmer; the froth and scum are characteristic rather of the time and the circumstances than of the personality behind them. There is no further ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... her did not occur to him. Mr. M'Vie held the non-contagion theory, and helpless selfishness excluded all thoughts of keeping his daughter at a distance. He clung to her as he used to do in former days, before Camilla had taken possession of him, and could not bear to have her out of reach. In the sick-room she was of disappointingly little use. The nurse was ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that does away with impatience; 'and is kind,' that makes us neighborly; 'love envieth not,' that saves from covetousness; 'vaunteth not itself,' that does away with self-conceit; 'seeketh not its own,' that kills selfishness; 'is not provoked,' that shows we are forgiving; 'rejoiceth not in unrighteousness,' makes us love only what is pure; 'covereth [Footnote: Marginal rendering.] all things,' that leaves no room for scandal; 'believeth ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... current through the world, sacred as his oath—more binding than his bond; fair, manly dealing is at an end; and he who would mount the ladder of fortune, must be prepared to soil his hands if he hope to reach the top. Legitimate trading is no longer profitable. Selfishness is arrayed against selfishness—cunning against cunning—lying against lying—deception against deception. The great rogue prospers—the honest man starves with his innate sense of honour and integrity. Is it possible to enter cheerfully ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... all her servants; and she knew that, while his enemies were exclusively attached to their own interests, Cecil was attached also to the interests of his prince, his country, and his religion; that while others,—with that far-sighted selfishness which involves men in so many intrigues, usually rendered fruitless or needless by the after-course of events,—were bent on securing to themselves the good graces of her successor, he was content to depend on her alone; that while others were the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... improvement is often absent when it is most needed. A vast multitude of inferior people are perfectly content with themselves in a selfish life, wholly absorbed in providing for their own wants, or, if possessed of wealth, using it only in selfishness and ostentation,—content in believing themselves as good as their neighbors, doing nothing to benefit society, unless under the coercion of public opinion, leading such lives that the world is certainly no better, and perhaps a little worse, for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... have lost the 'inherited wisdom' since the Reform Bill; they maintain a coarse and violent selfishness and the ignorance ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... of a German invasion has haunted far too exclusively the imagination of the English people, and has diverted their attention from another danger far more real and far more immediate. With characteristic naivete and insular selfishness, some jingoes imagine that if only the naval armaments of Germany could be stopped, all danger to England would be averted. But surely the greatest danger to England is not the invasion of England: it is the invasion ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... latter's intention to visit her father's family. Mrs. Feldt, however, whose attitude toward Linda had been negatively polite, now displayed an animosity carefully hidden from her husband but evident to the two girls. The elder never neglected an opportunity to emphasize Linda's selfishness or make her personality seem ridiculous. But this Linda ignored from her wide sense of the inconsequence of ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... providing gratification for its unlawful desires at the expense of the higher part of a man, indulging the animal propensities which in their excess are sinful. "Sowing to the flesh" is scattering the seeds of selfishness, which always must ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... before him as his lode-star—"Our Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven;" and asking even for his daily bread for that purpose and no other, would find selfishness and self-seeking die out of him, and active benevolence grow up in him. He would find past sorrows and falls turned unexpectedly to practical use for his own and other's good; and discover to his delight, that his Father had been educating him, while he fancied he was educating ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... some show of right he could blame his ministers and advisers for his own mistakes and misdeeds. He was so selfish that he would make concessions here and there rather than "embark again upon his travels." In fact, pure selfishness was the basis of his policy in domestic and foreign affairs, but it was always a selfishness veiled in wit, good humor, and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the life and comfort of them all.... The place is looking beautiful, and your mother's garden was never so lovely. It is pleasant in all these sorrows and trials to see a family so united in affection, and so totally without feelings or objects that partake of selfishness or ill-will. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... 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 ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... of the association. This singular society is purely French, a creature of French virtues, and possibly of French defects. It cannot be imitated by the English. The roughness, the impatience, the more obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent friendships of the Anglo-Saxon, speedily dismember such a commonwealth. But this random gathering of young French painters, with neither apparatus nor parade of government, yet kept the life of the place upon a certain footing, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a fine, serious, though uncultivated nature. A genuine lover of the wilderness, he had reached that time of life when love is cleansed of its devastating selfishness, and his feeling for the lonely woman of the Shellfish held ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... who was twelve years the Chevalier's senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person, deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his knowledge about the prince, did ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... road, he thought, must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... Castle" is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... fringe of that frantic, swaying, cursing crowd, and cynically watched its proceedings. The scene upon which he gazed was precisely what he had expected from the moment when those three ill-omened lights had burst through the fog and told him that the Golden Fleece was a doomed ship. Here was selfishness supremely triumphant, beating down and eradicating in a moment every nobler instinct of humanity. It was "Every man for himself" with a vengeance; women and children were struck out of men's way with horrid curses and savage, murderous blows; men were fighting ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... subsidiary reasons. For, first, there is, in our drunken land, a certain privilege extended to drunkenness. In Scotland, in particular, it is almost respectable, above all when compared with any "irregularity between the sexes." The selfishness of the one, so much more gross in essence, is so much less immediately conspicuous in its results, that our demiurgeous Mrs. Grundy smiles apologetically on its victims. It is often said—I have heard it with these ears—that drunkenness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a weazened little man, all out of drawing, in a black velvet doublet, satin breeches and silk stockings. At his side is a rudimentary sword. The man's face is sallow, and shrewdness and selfishness are shown in every line. He looks like a baby suddenly grown old. The two friends in the pit have seen this man before, but they have never met him face to face, because they do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... judged them at first sight. She had resolved that they were just selfish, inconsiderate, characterless people. On reflection, she determined that they were not. And even if they had been, why should Peg have been their accuser? And after all, is there not an element of selfishness in every nature? Was Peg herself ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... exclaim when they read such things about the Chinese. Yes, it is selfishness; but life in China is not like ours—a struggle for luxuries—but a struggle, not for bread and rice as many suppose, but for cornmeal and cabbage, or something else not more palatable. This is the life to which most Chinese children ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... reproachful to myself, because I have retained my love for thee a secret from her. A secret from Nisida! Oh! I have been cruel, unjust, not to have confided in my sister long ago! And yet," he added more slowly, "she might reproach me for my selfishness in bestowing a thought on marriage soon, so very soon, after a funeral! Flora, dearest maiden, circumstances demand that the avowal which accident and opportunity have led me this day to make, should ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Lord, whom the God of all the world has made Lord and Christ; and so if you are meek and gentle, when something wrong tempts you to be passionate and proud, if you are kind and helpful to others, when selfishness tempts you to please yourself, you are acknowledging this blessed Master as yours. Is not this a happy thought, my Arthur? and do you not like to give pleasure to the One who loves you so, and who did for you what ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... to this disregard of vital details, there was a tinge of selfishness in everything which Rhodes undertook and which gave a personal aspect to matters which ought to have been looked upon purely from the objective. The acquisition of Rhodesia, for instance, was considered by him as having been accomplished for the aggrandisement ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... remarkable people the Jews are! We find them all over the world (barring Scotland) successful in almost everything they undertake, a prolific race, and good citizens, yet carrying with them in very many cases the characteristics of selfishness, greed and ostentation. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... impels; and all would smile or stare, could they know the aching and measureless wishes, the sad apprehensiveness, which make me pause and strain my almost hopeless gaze to the distance. What wonder if my present conduct should be mottled by selfishness and incertitude? Perhaps you, who can make your views certain, cannot comprehend me; though you showed me last night a penetration which did not flow from sympathy. But this I may say—though the glad ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Then all selfishness passed away in turn, and the word enemy dropped out of his being as the true English boy shone out of his eyes in compassion for a lad who had evidently passed through some ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... lofty nature. He had given the arbitrament of war a trial, and had realised that in that way he could make no head against us. He might, indeed, have continued the futile struggle, but he was the sort of man to recognise the selfishness of that persistency which would involve ruin and death to the devoted people who would not desert his cause while he claimed to have a cause. When historians write of Afghan treachery and guile, it seems to have escaped their perception that Afghan treachery was but a phase of ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... virtue, from a parent's lips, with a few excellent books, to lift the noble kindlings of the soul, the flame could not ascend to what was heavenly and just; but with inverted point, struck downward to selfishness and vice. Men of this character, though enlisted in the war of liberty, were not her soldiers, felt not her enthusiasm, nor her consolations. They did not walk the camp, glorying in themselves, as men called to the honor ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... acknowledge it, follow Mr. Gryce and the trembling, swaying figure of Eleanore Leavenworth down-stairs. Not that I felt the least relenting in my soul towards guilt. Crime had never looked so black; revenge, selfishness, hatred, cupidity, never seemed more loathsome; and yet—but why enter into the consideration of my feelings at that time. They cannot be of interest; besides, who can fathom the depths of his own soul, or untangle for others the secret cords of revulsion ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... humanity—he, of all men, most helped forward the terrible change in the soldiers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,[15] helped to change loyalty into license, protection into plunder, truth into treachery, chivalry into selfishness; and, since his time, the purest impulses and the noblest purposes have perhaps been oftener stayed by the devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other base name ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... stiff beard which was allowed to grow beneath the angle of his massive jaw, the rest of his face being clean shaven. The eyes were deep-sunk and of a clear, cold blue. His mouth broad, with firm, solid lips. Dogged resolution, unconquerable will, cold-blooded selfishness, and a keen hog-cunning showed in his face, while his short, stout form—massive but not fleshy—betrayed a capacity to endure fatigue which few ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... will bring shame and misery on all the rest. The world is full of troubles; but I do not think that we often find, even among those of our own nature, men, women, boys, and girls, not related to us, a person with so little selfishness as to be always sorry and sad when we are so, and because we are so. When we meet with any one so kind-hearted, we love that person, and would do a great deal to serve or ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the child that this was too good to be true. The country, in her imagination, was the source and foundation of all real happiness. There was nothing in cities,—nothing but dust and crowds, and human selfishness and universal hardness of heart, and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... to her hips—gracefully posed there, as became an actress—Belle regarded him fixedly. "My Gawd!" she whispered, owning defeat before that invulnerable selfishness of Duke's. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... questions, such as the protective tariff and the need of raising it, the sad decline of the morality of the working man, the spread of syndicalism and the lack of Christianity in the labour class, and the awful growth of selfishness among the mass ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... is in general commensurate with selfishness of feeling: men old and hackneyed in the ways of the world ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to grow continually better. All the doctrines are practical, and are used as motives to purity, love and beneficence. All the promises are given to support and cheer people in the faithful discharge of their duty. All the warnings are to keep men from idleness, selfishness and sin. The Church and all its ministries; the Scriptures and all their revelations; Providence and all its dispensations; nature and all her operations, are all presented as means and motives to a life of holy love and usefulness. The Bible has ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... She was not a bad-hearted girl in reality, but she had been spoiled by those who should have known better; and although every now and then, at moments such as this, her better nature would assert itself, it was gradually becoming choked and crushed by selfishness, conceit, and carelessness. Marjory had been inclined to envy the baker's daughter her privileges, but in reality Mary Ann was to be pitied rather than envied, for she had no one to guide and help her. Her parents' chief care was that she should be better dressed and better ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... way with books of travel. The chateaus and castles, with all their atmosphere of story and romance which she had always longed to visit, interested him not a jot. In his opinion they were, one and all, bloody monuments of greed and selfishness; the sooner they were razed to the ground and forgotten, the ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... hard sinners could often be brought to a good life more surely, and be enabled more certainly to persevere, by forcibly emphasizing the Incarnation and its benefits than by any other method. Their blindness and selfishness hinder hard sinners from easily appreciating our Lord's sufferings as borne on their account. Father Hecker regretted that the idea of redemption was so often presented in a way to give the impression that atonement ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... expand, may thus not only be permitted but encouraged to contract, and the exercise of that studious ingenuity, which perhaps leads the world to admire the achievements of learning, thus deceive us into a state of existence little better than cold selfishness itself. Sir Isaac Newton, who soared so high and travelled so far on the wing of abstract thought, gathering light from the stars that he might convey it in intelligible shape to the world, seems to have thought, high as the employment was, that it was not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... me,' I observed, roused by what I took to be his selfishness, 'it always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life, when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity—two of the best qualities that Heaven gives them—and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... He was a young man of eighteen, and he had not yet become familiar with the grossness and selfishness of this calculating world. He was rather offended at the patronage which the Senator had proposed to bestow upon him, and he even regretted that he had so readily given ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... views on these subjects. He was therefore sent to the Hague. Heinsius was at that time suffering from indisposition, which was indeed a trifle when compared with the maladies under which William was sinking. But in the nature of William there was none of that selfishness which is the too common vice of invalids. On the twentieth of February he sent to Heinsius a letter in which he did not even allude to his own sufferings and infirmities. "I am," he said, "infinitely concerned to learn that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out of the window towards the garden, and the dry ground, and all the trees and garden vegetables seemed to be drinking in the rain with delight. That made him think of the vast amount of good the rain was doing, and he saw his own selfishness in a striking point of view. In a word Rollo was now beginning to be really penitent. The tears came into his eyes; but they were tears of real sorrow for sin, not ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... had gone, 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this hypocrisy, this intrigue, this selfishness and dissimulation, there was something more pure and good. It was love, pure and simple, binding the thoughts and hearts of Mattie Chapman and young Tite. That love which forgets everything else in its truth and purity, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton, and others of the Royalist exiles, there were particulars of selfishness in it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in her determination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, and nowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, with Charles; and since July the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... asked Prescott. He always had a feeling of repulsion toward Mr. Harley, his sounding talk, his colossal vanity and his selfishness. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Fitzgerald not to tell the great secret then and there; but his caution whispered warningly. There was no knowing what effect it would have upon the impulsive girl at his side. And besides, there might have been a grain of selfishness in the repression. All is fair in love or war; and it would not have been politic to make ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... But the most complete, compact, and exclusive world in existence, perhaps, is a ship at sea—especially an emigrant ship—for here we find an epitome of the great world itself. Here may be seen, in small compass, the operations of love and hate, of wisdom and stupidity, of selfishness and self-sacrifice, of pride, passion, coarseness, urbanity, and all the other virtues and vices which tend to make the world at large—a mysterious compound ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... loves and hates what it hates; why it is faithful when it could be unfaithful and faithless when it should be true; how civilized man can fight single handed against the ages that were his lower past—how he can develop self-renunciation out of selfishness and his own wisdom out of surrounding folly,—all these are questions that mean more and more. My work is but beginning and the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... How starved she had felt—starved of little intellectual coteries with their huge intellectual sensations—starved of new books and old pictures and music, of moss roses and primroses and bluebell woods, starved even into the selfishness of coming home, urged away by Robert, who did not know how to be selfish. Thinking of him made her feel very tender and very small. His iron public spirit, his inevitable devotion to duty, unconscious and instinctive and uncensorious, combined with a guilty sense that her ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... month to month in one of the big hotels at the West End; and he dined at his club, or at the House, when he was not dining with a friend. It was an expensive and a luxurious mode of life,—and one from the effects of which a man is prone to drift very quickly into selfishness. He was by no means given to drinking,—but he was already learning to like good wine. Small economies in reference to cab-hire, gloves, umbrellas, and railway fares were unknown to him. Sixpences and shillings were things with which, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... imposing jewel it would not wear, lest it might subtract something from that homage which it prefers should be paid to the wearer. It is all selfish—thoroughly selfish—but not after the world's fashion of selfishness. It hoards nothing, and gives quite as much as it asks. What does it ask? What? It asks for love—devoted attachment; the homage of the loved one and the friends; the implicit confidence of all around it! Ah! can anything be more exacting? Cruelly exacting, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... paralysis of various muscles and organs, profuse perspiration, cholerina, jaundice, sudden decay of teeth, fatal anaemia, skin diseases, erysipelas, and eczema. Passion, sinful thought, avarice, envy, jealousy, selfishness, all press for external bodily expression. Even false philosophies, false theology, and false conceptions of God make their unwholesome influence felt in every bodily tissue. By infallible law, mental states are mirrored upon the body, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... YOU know of it?—My real nature!—I'll tell you what it was," she went on passionately. "It was to be revenged on you all for your cruelty, your heartlessness, your wickedness to me and mine in the past. It was to pay you off for your slanders of my dead father—for the selfishness that left me and Jim alone with his dead body on the Marsh. That was what sent me to Logport—to get even with you—to—to fool and flaunt you! There, you have it now! And now that God has punished me for it by crushing my brother—you—you expect me to let ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... my selfishness! With six remaining to be looked after, that is counting Barbara if she still lives, I dare to ask to be relieved of the burdens of the flesh! Pitiful Christ, visit not my wickedness on me or on others, and O Thou that didst raise the daughter of Jairus, ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... found her, and brought her to his cabin in the garden. He did not claim to be the father of Poia, but was delighted, as are all Polynesians, to find a mate and, with her, certainty of a little one. They have not our selfishness of paternity, but find in the assumed relation of father all the pride and joy we take only with surety of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... four or five years older than Maggie, and had a full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied without persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some happiness into Maggie's life,—seeking this even more than any direct ends for himself. He could give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not the slightest promise of love toward ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... that refuses Trust in an altruist aim; Every specious plea that excuses Greed in necessity's name; Studied indifference; scorn that amuses; Cleverness, shifting the blame; Selfishness, pitying trust it abuses— Treason and these are the same. Finally, when the last lees ye shall turn from (E'en intellectuals flinch in the end!) Ashes of loneliness then ye shall learn from— All that's worth keeping's the faith ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the farmer, with a pleased smile, opened a door in his dwelling-house, and pointed out a heap of pease. "You have seen the straw and hay already," he said, "but here are the pease which I hid from the steward, thinking they belonged to you. Indeed, there was some selfishness in it," continued he, candidly, "for we were so placed that we got nothing, and I was obliged to think of some way of keeping the farm going in case the winter brought ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... conditions of England in those days, 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
... cowardice but selfishness—the disease, more or less, of us all. Do you think yon gentleman a coward? Then you do not know the man. I saw him once, empty-handed, in the forest, face the white stag and beat it off a hunter it was goring to death, and they say he never blenched when the bonnet was shot ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... stamp, and general fitness? You would be in possession of a station where your interest would be as independent as your spirit. Nothing could have been more brilliant, or flattering, or more cordial than his offer. I argue against my natural selfishness for your welfare. I don't wish to part with you, but ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... inhalation of pulverized 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
... of Knollys, separated by but a few yards of space, there lay another woman, thinking also of this convict behind the prison bars. But this was a woman of another and a nobler mold. Into the heart of Catharine Knollys there came no mere mad selfishness of desire, yearn though she did in every fiber of her being since that first time she felt the mastering kiss of love. There was born in her soul emotion of a higher sort. The Lady Catharine Knollys prayed, and her ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... The idealist is always face to face with a great expectation. Perhaps to-night he may realise it; certainly in the morning it will be much nearer; and as for the third day, it will be realised in some great festival of delight. There is, too, a subtle selfishness in this quest after the ideal—the Holy Grail of the imagination. The artist keeps the secret from his brother artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon unsuspecting and slumberous minds. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... if his history were probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of Polonius to Laertes—advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of money-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... in such transitional moments of a nation's history that it needs the cool prudence, the sensitive selfishness, the quick perception of what is possible, which distinguished the adroit politician whom the death of Cnut left supreme in England. Originally of obscure origin, Godwine's ability had raised him ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... guiding the conduct of its members, religion has often put a restraint on reason, guiding the individual in racially profitable paths. What is to happen when religion gives way? Unbridled selfishness too often takes the reins, and the interests of the species are disregarded. Religion, therefore, appears to be a necessity for the perpetuation of any race. It is essential to racial welfare that the national religion should be of such a character as to appeal ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... everything good about him, and to extol his virtues to the skies. Indeed, it was likely that during their short acquaintance Macaulay had only seen the best points in his cousin's character; for the principal sins imputed to Patoff were his violence of temper and his selfishness, and it appeared to me that he had done much to overcome both since I had last seen him. It is probable that in the last analysis, if this reputation could have been traced to its source, it would have been found to have arisen ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... very soon pleased—and the ballad, gone the way of all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do wish I could send you some kind of news that would interest you; but you see scarcely any except all this selfishness is in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of us more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest Mrs. Martin, remember how deeply and unchangeably I must regard you—both ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... you two also smarting under a sense of the inconsiderateness and selfishness of the rest of the world—both misunderstood—everything expected from you, and no ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... return. Did they attempt to descend the stream in boats and go to wreck among the rapids? Were they swept into eternity by a freshet? Did they lose their provisions and starve in the desert? Did the Indians revenge themselves for brutality and selfishness by slaying them at night or from an ambush? Were they killed by banditti? Did they sink in the quicksands that led the river into subterranean canals? None will ever know, perhaps; but many years afterward a savage told a priest in Santa Fe that the regiment had been surrounded ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... piece of veal, which she cooked for me. It seemed to be my lot now to eat no meat but veal. As I sat down to this dish and a bottle of wine, two men at another table were eating boiled potatoes, without plates, and drinking water. The contrast made me uncomfortable. There is some reason in the selfishness that avoids the sights and sounds and all suggestions of other people's poverty and pain; but those who take such base care of themselves never know human life. I could not offer these men wine without running the risk of a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... had not also been bold and conceited. He had large dark eyes set off by long curling black lashes, black hair that crinkled close to his head in satiny sleek sheen, well-chiselled features, all save a loose-hung, insolent lip that gave the impression of great self-indulgence and selfishness. He was dressed with a careful regard to the fashion and with evidently no regard whatever for cost. He bore the mark at once of wealth and snobbishness. Howard, in spite of his newly-acquired desire to look upon all men as brothers, found himself disliking him with a vehemence that was out of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... her brother when at home, and very happy at school, where she was a general favorite. She was impulsive, high spirited, and occasionally gave Miss Virtue some trouble, but her disposition was frank and generous, there was not a tinge of selfishness in her disposition, and while she was greatly liked by girls of her own age, she was quite adored by little ones. The future that she always pictured to herself was a little cottage with a bright garden in the suburbs ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... encourage him in nothingness. What's more, I want extra brains and hands. It's not altogether a pleasant thing, is it ... the selfishness of ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... This is the kind of calculation which the missionaries in our own day are only too well accustomed to hear from the lips of barbarous potentates like those of Uganda and Fiji. A conversion thus effected brings no honour to any church, and the utter selfishness and even profanity of the transaction disgusts the devout souls of every communion. Still the conversion of Clovis was not in its essence and origin a hypocritical scheme for obtaining the support ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... bread and cheese with those hungrier than herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her new associates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke—the little world which ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... lordships to lay restraints upon virtue and prudence, but to consider how seldom virtue and authority are found together, how often prudence degenerates into selfishness, and all generous regard for the publick is contracted into narrow views of private interest. I am endeavouring to show, that since laws must be equally obligatory to all, it is the interest of the few good men to submit to restraints, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... by the Queen, and the sudden elevation of that friend to the highest station in the royal household, could not fail to alarm the selfishness of courtiers, who always feel themselves injured by the favour shown to others. An obsolete office was revived in favour of the Princesse de Lamballe. In the time of Maria Leckzinska, wife of Louis XV., the office of superintendent, then held by Mademoiselle de Clermont, was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... amiable canoness, who (to speak rather Hibernically) ought to have been her mother but wasn't, because the actual mother was so much richer. She bears no malice, however, even to the father who, well preserved in looks, manners, and selfishness, is Great Chamberlain ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of these questions except perhaps the last. As to that, I appeal to our consciousness, to our innate conviction that there does exist something, some virtue, some sentiment, however undefinable in terms, holding men together in society despite their natural selfishness, and without which they would fall apart. It is this virtue, this ligament of society, that we call justice. We feel that the word is not a mere word, but that it connotes a vital reality in human relationship. ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... another character in the comedy of the day, a salmon fisher of some repute for skill, but disliked for his selfishness, cynicism, and overbearing assumption of mastership in the theory and practice of fishing. As he was ever laying down the highest standards of sport much was forgiven him. The men who used phantom, prawn, and worm, however much and often they ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... false praises; we wear feint smiles over our tears, and deceive our children—deceive them, do we? Even from the exercise of that pious deceit there is no woman but suffers in the estimation of her sons. They may shield her as champions against their father's selfishness or cruelty. In this case, what a war! What a home, where the son sees a tyrant in the father, and in the mother but a trembling victim! I speak not for myself—whatever may have been the course of our long wedded life, I have not to complain of these ignoble ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course, another side to all this: the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the lust for ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... disappointments of 1845 were added the vexations caused by private injustice and ill-treatment. He turned fiercely on those who, as he thought, had wronged him, and he began to distrust men, and to be on the watch for proofs of hollowness and selfishness in the world and in the Church. Yet at this time, when people were hearing of his bitter and unsparing sayings in Oxford, he was from time to time preaching in village churches, and preaching sermons which both his educated and his simple hearers thought unlike ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... carefully replaced the plank, then, staggering under the weight of the load, made their way to a gulch, buried the sack, and marked the hiding-place with a stone. With a righteous sense of having acted as instruments of Providence in punishing selfishness, they returned to town to follow such whims as seized them under the stimulus of a bottle of Mr. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... it, Nora? Do leave her alone for a moment, wife," said the Squire. "There is something behind all this. I never saw Light o' the Morning give way to pure selfishness before." ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... competition in his seeming zeal for the public welfare. The softness of his manners—his profuse liberality—his generosity even to his foes—the splendid qualities which induced Cicero to compare him to Julius Cesar [226], charmed the imagination of the multitude, and concealed the selfishness of his views. He was not a hypocrite, indeed, as to his virtues—a dissembler only in his ambition. Even Solon, in endeavouring to inspire him with a true patriotism, acknowledged his talents and his excellences. "But for ambition," said he, "Athens possesses ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Friar Francis. "Thou mistakest pious zeal for sinful selfishness. Full wroth am I to hear how that this devil walketh to and fro, using a sweet and precious booke for the temptation of holy men. Shall so righteous an instrument be employed by the prince of heretics to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... minds of the century has thrown a ray of light on this gloomy picture by tracing the origin of woman's slavery to the same principle of selfishness and love of power in man that has thus far dominated all weaker nations and classes. This brings hope of final emancipation, for as all nations and classes are gradually, one after another, asserting and maintaining their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... letters in ages yet to come may bring light the history of this shore or of this day. I am sure, Ludlow citizens, that whoever shall hereafter read it will perceive that our pride and joy are dimmed by no stain of selfishness. Our pride is for humanity; our joy is for the world; and amid all the wonders of past achievement and all the splendors of present success, we turn with swelling hearts to gaze into the boundless future, with the earnest conviction ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... full liberty to gratify all his appetites, disguised under the appearance of pious zeal. And besides the strange corruptions engendered by this spirit, it eluded and loosened all the ties of morality, and gave entire scope, and even sanction, to the selfishness and ambition which naturally adhere ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... strangely popular. The people, though 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 ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... threw new light on the character of Welbeck. If accident had given him possession of this treasure, it was easy to predict on what schemes of luxury and selfishness it would have been expended. The same dependence on the world's erroneous estimation, the same devotion to imposture, and thoughtlessness of futurity, would have constituted the picture of his future life, as ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... for speech. She moved swiftly across to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and inadequate weapons are all—even the most gallant—reduced to fighting death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... said Howard, shocked at the selfishness which Holloway showed—"and what do you want me to do? why do you ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... congratulation he had received, her mother's heart thawed within her as it had not done for long. Her ears told her that he was still vain and a boaster; her memory held the indelible records of his past selfishness; but as he walked beside her, his fair hair blown back from his handsome brow, and eyes that were so much younger than the rest of the face, his figure as spare and boyish now as when he had worn the colors of the Charterhouse ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were poor, had great difficulty in restraining his generosity. He would give away his school-books and the very buckles off his shoes. Both his fearlessness and universal sympathy are remarkable through the whole of his after-life. Not even his enemies could point out one trait of cowardice or selfishness in anything he ever did, or said, or wrote. There are some pertinent remarks on the combination of these two qualities, sympathy with others and courage, by the author ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... more and more hurried on by the diminution of his patrimony, and by his consciousness of guilt; both which evils he had increased by those practices which I have mentioned above. The corrupt morals of the state, too, which extravagance and selfishness, pernicious and contending vices, rendered thoroughly depraved,[47] furnished him with additional incentives ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... stringing them that not one might be lost; which proved that, where her own gratification or interest were concerned, Okotook's illness was not suffered to interfere. This anecdote shows, in a strong light, that deep-rooted selfishness, which, in numberless instances, notwithstanding the superiority of Iligliuk's understanding, detracted from the amiability of her disposition. The fact was, that she did not feel inclined so far to exert herself as to comply with Captain Lyon's request; and the slight degree of gratitude ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... never yet known what it was to have anything of the pleasure of love. She had grown, as she often told herself, to be a hard, cautious, selfish, successful woman, without any interference or assistance from such pleasure. Might there not be yet time left for her to try it without selfishness,—with an absolute devotion of self,—if only she could find the right companion? There was one who might be such a companion, but the Duke of Omnium certainly could not ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... hands Have met for death such myriad myriad bands, Such wolf-like fury, and such greed of gore:— No natural kindly touch, no check of shame: And no such bestial rage Blots our long story's page; Such lewd remorseless swords, such selfishness of aim ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... look at everything with as much indifference as the swinging! But it is all selfishness. It is as easy to be selfish for one's own good as for one's own pleasure; and I dare say, the first is as bad as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... And think of all the babies who die! Poor innocent little babies, condemned in the very hour of their birth!...)—That Woman who had taken upon herself the sorrows of others, the blameless creature who of her own free will expiated the crimes of human selfishness—how do you think she was judged, Christophe? The evil-minded public accused her of making money out of her work, and even of making money out of the poor women she protected. She had to leave the neighborhood, and go away, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured one has no other idea of friendship than that of a loyalty in which she shares but is not sharing. Of course, woman is born to such selfishness as the sparks fly upward; but if I should ever meet with a man who isn't I will just give myself up to him—body and soul and belongings—unless he has a wife or other encumbrance already and is booked for this world, and in ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... us. The enjoyment from this source has given rise to the formation of 'harmonies' and 'colonies,' with some. Such establishments are favorable to social enjoyment, no doubt; but it is to be feared that segregation in that form may engender feelings akin to selfishness, and dwarf the higher impulses to general good. But the favorable regard in which we may be held should not be sought as a consideration of the first importance. To serve and please the Lord should be the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... The strain on her is too great, and now for almost a week she has not been out of the house; Mrs. Borden bewails it for the childrens' sake. She thinks only of them with a mother's selfishness, and she doesn't give Marilla credit for these pretty ways or their intelligence. She is just their nurse girl. It is a cruel waste of ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... will agree that each is to pursue his separate course as best he may. This is to be the end of war. Through a long series of years you may waste your strength, distress your people, and yet at last must come to the position which you might have had at first, had justice and reason, instead of selfishness and passion, folly and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... reasonably true, if you'll honestly try for as much of it as you can get. That's the prescription, anyhow. Give up nobility and all the heroic poses that go with it and practise a little enlightened selfishness instead. Perhaps by force of example you may persuade John Wollaston to abandon about half of his conscience. Then you ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the morality was built on the ruins of that chivalrous ambition and romantic affection. He saw his friend Cinq Mars sent to the scaffold, himself betrayed by men whom he had trusted, and the only reason he could assign for these actions was intense selfishness. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... for good that mental influence is exerting over the race today, raising up the sick, strengthening the weak, putting courage into the despondent, and transforming failures into successes. But, on the other hand, the hateful selfishness and greed of unprincipled persons is taking advantage of this mighty force of nature, and prostituting it to the hateful ends of such persons, without heed to the dictates of conscience or the teaching of religion or of ordinary morality. These people are sowing a baleful wind, which ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... do anything. But this I do say to you, Joel—and I've said it to myself every day for this last year or more, and had you in mind all the time, too—if I had made a great fortune, and I sat about in purple and fine linen doing nothing but amuse myself in idleness and selfishness, letting my riches accumulate and multiply themselves without being of use to anybody, I should be ASHAMED to look my fellow-creatures in the face! You were born here. You know what London slums are like. You know what ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... man saw this, and he concluded that this mien and demeanor were natural to Paula at all times patrician haughtiness, cold-hearted selfishness, the insolent and boundless pride of the race he loathed—noble by birth alone—stood before him incarnate. He hated the whole class, and he hated this specimen of the class; and his aversion increased tenfold as he remembered what woe this cold siren had wrought for the son of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be a noble man, Ranald—a man with the heart and purpose to do some good in the world, to be a blessing to his fellows; and it is a poor thing to be so filled up with selfishness as to have no thought of the honor of God or of the good of men. Louis LeNoir has done you a great wrong, but what is that wrong compared with the wrong you have done to Him who loved ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... 'Generous and free from all selfishness and meanness, but without political experience, adroitness and knowledge of men, he aspired to a task which surpassed his strength.' —Ihne. 4-6. By the Sempronian Laws of C. Gracchus 123 B.C. exclusive judicial rights ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... said the little Pilgrim. "If I have died as you say—which is so strange and me so living—if I have died, they will have found it out. The house will be all dark, and they will be breaking their hearts. Oh, how could I forget them in my selfishness, and be happy! I so ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... that he should be able to do such a thing, and at the same time angered by the colossal selfishness of the Indian, Smoke gave the signal. Nor was Cultus George any less astounded when he felt the noose tighten with a jerk and swing him off the floor. His stolidity broke on the instant. On his face, in quick succession, appeared ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... at the thought of it. From time to time she caught herself wishing that she could devise some means of punishing him, only to berate herself afterward for the selfishness that ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... millionaire son-in-law, Larry desperately attempted to free himself, but Mrs. Shuster "persuaded" him to stick to his bargain. How she managed I don't know, but there are lots of ways, and Larry with all his faults is a gentleman. He even has a chivalrous vein which, though lying deep under selfishness, crops up near the surface occasionally. I wish he'd been chivalrous with his daughter, while there was time for it to do good, instead of at the last moment with this silly middle-aged woman who wants to get ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... them. But so shall it not be among you; but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever of you will be chiefest, shall be servant of all." In other words, through the selfishness and pride of mankind, the maxim widely prevails in the world, that it is the privilege, prerogative, and mark of greatness, TO EXACT SERVICE; that our superiority to others, while it authorizes us to relax the exertion of our own powers, gives us a fair title to the use of theirs; that "might," ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... slowly down and stopped under a great tree opposite the house where he'd formerly lived. Young had the place now, and Tess lived there and his boy. Ebenezer's insinuations hurt him. His jealousy of Deforrest revived. Remorse for his criminal selfishness burned him, an ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... rebellious, and his sworn subject undutiful and refractory. So the lamp was out in Castlewood Hall, and the lord and lady there saw each other as they were. With her illness and altered beauty my lord's fire for his wife disappeared; with his selfishness and faithlessness her foolish fiction of love and reverence was rent away. Love!—who is to love what is base and unlovely? Respect!—who is to respect what is gross and sensual? Not all the marriage oaths sworn before all the parsons, cardinals, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... in Napoleon which call out the severest reprobation, and which make him an object of indignation and intense dislike among true-minded students of history. His egotism was almost superhuman, his selfishness was most unscrupulous, his ambition absolutely boundless. He claimed a monopoly in perfidy and lying; he had no idea of moral responsibility; he had no sympathy with misfortune, no conscience, no fear of God. He was cold, hard, ironical, and scornful. He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... hear the voice that upbraids you so tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father's prophetic voice sounded ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... of admiration from my eyes which the selfishness of passion made bitter indeed. My mind reacted and I felt that she did not love me enough even to wish for liberty. So long as love recoils from a crime it seems to have its limits, and love should be infinite. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and that was Isom Chase's reason for wanting him. Isom wanted him because he was strong and trustworthy, honest and faithful. And she had bargained him in selfishness and sold him in cowardice, without a word from him, as she might have sold a cow to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... food—it is because he spent all in the service of the King. He needed not to commit any act of treachery or villany to obtain wealth— he had an ample competence in his own possessions. For Markham Everard— he knows no such thing as selfishness—he would not, for broad England, had she the treasures of Peru in her bosom, and a paradise on her surface, do a deed that would disgrace his own name, or injure the feelings of another—Kings, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... next; and many a man, had fear or impotence not withheld him, would have done murder a thousand times. But sometimes the demon leaps up and masters impotence and fear. The man is drunk with immeasurable selfishness,—greater than the universe can satisfy; which would fain make one victim after another, till all the human race should be destroyed; and then would it turn against Heaven and God. Save for man's mortal frailty, the population ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... royal princesses. The historical reader must strike a sort of balance for himself in getting at an estimate of Hervey's character. No man has been more bitterly denounced by his enemies or more warmly praised by his friends. Affectation, insincerity, prodigality, selfishness, servility to the great, contempt for the humble, are among the qualities his opponents ascribe to him. According to his friends, his cynicism was a mere affectation to hide a sensitive and generous nature; his bitterness arose from his disappointment ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... sophistry in palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and powerful, with the meanest and most contemptible of the species. What can be more convincing than the arguments used by these would-be politicians, to shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters? The exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath, "Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if you had married a lord," ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... in dealing with the memory of the dead—we turn to the writings of his contemporaries who knew the man, his character appears in a very different light. They describe him as one who was stainless in his honour, pure in his faith, wise in council, resolute in action, and utterly free from that selfishness which disgraced the Scottish statesmen of the time. No one dares question his loyalty, for he sealed that confession with his blood; and it is universally admitted, that with him fell the last hopes of the reinstatement of the house ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... was forgotten, and somehow he knew the look he would get if she should see him. It would be contempt and scorn that would burn his very soul. It is only a maid now and then to whom it is given thus to pierce and bruise the soul of a man who plays with love and trust and womanhood for selfishness. Such a woman never knows her power. She punishes all unconscious to herself. It was so that Margaret Earle, without being herself aware, and by her very indifference and contempt, showed the little soul of this puppet ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... found it in his pocket than if I had found it in a barrel on the high seas. I killed him to prevent his killing me. Precisely the same motive, though in your case neither so reasonable nor so justifiable, as that on which, in the name of justice, which means only the collective selfishness of my fellow-creatures, you design in cool blood to put me publicly to death. 'Tis only that you, gentlemen, think it contributes to your safety. That's the spirit of human laws. I applaud and I adopt it in my own case. Pray, Sir' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... concerned); but to what end? Some higher and more glorious state? So one might have said a few years back. Not so in these days. The telos teleion of secular education, when divorced from religious or moral training, is—I say it deliberately—the purest and most unmitigated selfishness. The world has seen and tired of the worship of Nature, of Reason, of Humanity; for this nineteenth century has been reserved the development of the most refined religion of all—the worship of Self. For that, indeed, is the upshot of it all. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... near alliance to over-balance of mind—but counter-balancing, antiseptic, salt. There is abundant if not exactly omnipresent common-sense; excellent manners; an almost total absence in that part of the letters which we are now considering of selfishness, and a total absence of ill-nature.[23] It is no business of ours here to embark on the problem, "What was the dram of eale" that ruined all this and more "noble substance" in Cowper? though there is not much doubt ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Association: types of a dying feudalism, disposed to believe nothing advantageous to the community if it conflicts with any privilege of their class. Under the name of Junker, the Conservative landowners of the region of Prussia east of the Elbe, they have become everywhere a byword for pride, selfishness, in a word—reaction. They and men of their kidney are to be distinguished from the German "people" in the English sense, and hold themselves vastly superior to the burghertum, the vast middle class. They dislike the "academic freedom" of the university professor, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... This conception finds its highest expression in the quietism and indifferentism of the old Brahmanic religion (if such it can be called), in which holiness was to be obtained by speculative contemplation, which seems to me the quintessence of selfishness. In the reformed Brahmanism called Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure a compassionate sympathy for others. Asceticism was not put aside, but regulated and ordered, wrought into a communal system. It was purged of some of its selfishness ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... With us it was hardly so; many good judges think that but for the "Lusitania" outrage and the Zeppelins, part of the population would have been half-hearted about the war, and we should have failed to give adequate support to our allies. The cause is not selfishness but ignorance and want of imagination; and what have we done to tap the sources of an intelligent patriotism? We are being saved not by the reasoned conviction of the populace, but by its native pugnacity and bull-dog courage. This is not the ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... love, family affection! I have tried it. Why should my son be more to me than any other man's son, but for an extended selfishness? I have cut loose all nearer ties than those which hold all men as brothers, and Antony comes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... exercise to the benevolent feelings of the amiable nun, became every day more dear to her. Far from having the selfishness of a favourite, Victoire loved to bring into public notice the good actions of her companions. "Stoop down your ear to me, Sister Frances," said she, "and I will tell you a secret—I will tell you why my friend Annette is growing so thin—I found ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... give you an honest account of my feelings I shall write myself down as the poor-spirited creature I suppose I am. There wasn't, I swear, at the moment, a grain of selfishness, of personal reluctance, in my feeling. I worshipped every hair of her head—when we were together I was happy, when I was away from her something was gone from every good thing; but I had always looked on our love for each other, our possible relation to each other, as such situations are looked ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... attempts to control economic conditions by interference with the natural working out of economic results as the resultant of opposing pressure of individual interests. And do not call me a brute if I reach the conclusion that human selfishness is the hope of ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... has tended to make you value an atmosphere of diffused tranquillity too much. If one is sensitive to the censure or the displeasure of others, it may not be unselfish to give up things rather than provoke it—it may only be another form of selfishness. Some of the most unworldly people I know have not overcome the world at all; they have merely made terms with it, and have found that abnegation is only more comfortable than conquest. I do not know that you are doing this, or have done it, but ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... anything which one man has done it is impossible that he should do. Let me enumerate them very briefly. Remember, to begin with, that all sins are at bottom but varying forms of one root. The essence of every evil is selfishness, and when you have that, it is exactly as with cooks who have the 'stock' by the fireside. They can make any kind of soup out of it, with the right flavouring. We have got the mother tincture of all wickedness in each of our hearts; and therefore do not let us be so sure that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... wants to give a dance on peace night. I'd settled to give a big affair with some perfectly new departures, and all the nicest people I wanted have said, "Sorry, dearest, but I'm giving one myself that night." I've no patience with the silliness and selfishness of everybody. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... over there a few days, and I shall be so glad if, before I leave, I hear your search has been crowned with success, or, a least, that you have been put on the right track. Although I was born and raised in the midst of slavery, I had not the least idea of its barbarous selfishness till I was forced to pass through it. But we lived so much alone I had no opportunity to study it, except on our own plantation. My father and mother were very kind to their slaves. But it was slavery, all the same, and I hate ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... insisted upon; you felt so much at home there that you could ask for supper. The sisters corresponded as they pleased, and quietly read their letters by their mother's side; it never occurred to the Baroness to interfere in any way; the adorable woman gave the girls the full benefits of her selfishness, and in a certain sense selfish persons are the easiest to live with; they hate trouble, and therefore do not trouble other people; they never beset the lives of their fellow-creatures with thorny advice and captious fault-finding; nor ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... mind, That is to every generous impulse blind, Offspring of nature's callous, cold and stern, Where selfishness and censure reign ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... ardent letters of counsel to the brother who had succeeded him among his Indians, and likewise to give his friends the assurance of his perfect peace and joy. He said that he had carefully examined himself, and though he had found much pride, selfishness, and corruption, he was still certain that he had felt it his greatest happiness to glorify and praise God; and this certainty, together with his faith in the Redeemer, had calmed all the anguish he ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Thebans themselves to be independent. Now, if the maintenance of friendship be an object, it is no use for people to claim justice from others while they themselves are doing all they can to prove the selfishness of their aims." ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with books of travel. The chateaus and castles, with all their atmosphere of story and romance which she had always longed to visit, interested him not a jot. In his opinion they were, one and all, bloody monuments of greed and selfishness; the sooner they were razed to the ground and forgotten, ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... into motive and the faith in goodness which are shown by Browning, are read by us as utterances of a past age. We have grown used to a presentment of human life such as Ibsen's in which the customary morality is regarded as a thin veneer of convention which hardly covers the selfishness in grain, or to the description of life as a tangled mass of animal passions,—a description which, in spite of the genius of Zola, does not fail to weary and disgust,—or perhaps as only a spectacle in which what men call ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... of our nature; but they do not possess the importance that is assigned to them, and their limits are soon reached. They are unequal in their distribution; they are partial and capricious in their action; and they are disturbed and counterbalanced by the opposite impulse of selfishness, which is just as much a part of our nature, and which is just as generally distributed. It must be a very one-sided view of the case that will lead us to deny this; and by such eclectic methods of observation ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... resolved that she should be his wife, to work for him and do his bidding. This man had been married before and, if the reports were true which had been told, it was likely that his wife had died because of his cruelties to her. So he resolved, in his selfishness, to take Waubenoo from caring for her brothers and sisters to be his wife, and to hunt and fish for him, that he might ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... owned, that 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 Paris, and a rapid ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... too long living, Madame!" replied the Duke, becoming more animated; "but his measureless ambition, his colossal selfishness can no longer be endured. All those who have noble hearts are indignant at this yoke; and at this moment, more than ever, we see misfortunes threatening us in the future. It must be said, Madame—yes, it is no longer time to blind ourselves to the truth, or to conceal it—the King's illness is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of any suspicion of philanthropy, Sir Robert. I give you credit for pursuing a policy of intelligent selfishness. You must know by this time that I will not purchase my life, nor let it be purchased, on the terms which you propose. Well then, I confess it puzzles me to guess what amusement you find in such a hole ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... but the truth which I uttered seemed to plague very much the person who supplies the missionaries with wagons and oxen. (They were bad ones.) My subject was the necessity of adopting the benevolent spirit of the Son of God, and abandoning the selfishness of the world.' Each student at Ongar had also to conduct family worship in rotation. I was much impressed by the fact that Livingstone never prayed without the petition that we might imitate Christ in ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... composure after the last interview with her cousin, and to think of her best course in view of what seemed his dangerous knowledge, a truth, kept back thus far by solemn and absorbing scenes, suddenly became dear to her. The spirit of all- consuming selfishness again manifested by Whately, revealed as never before the gulf of abject misery into which she would have fallen as his wife. "If it hadn't been for Lieutenant Scoville I might now have been his despairing bond slave," she thought; "I might have been any way if ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Hiros['e] had been a naval attach['e] at St. Petersburg, and had made many friends in Russian naval and military circles. From boyhood his life had been devoted to study and duty; and it was commonly said of him that he had no particle of selfishness in his nature. Unlike most of his brother officers, he remained unmarried,—holding that no man who might be called on at any moment to lay down his life for his country had a moral right to marry. The only amusements in which he was ever known to indulge were physical exercises; and he was acknowledged ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... seemliness, This model of a child is never known To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er As generous as a fountain; selfishness May not come near him, nor the little throng Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path; The wandering beggars propagate his name. Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun, And natural or supernatural fear, Unless it leap upon him in a dream, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... tossed her head and spoke with emphasis. "Marcia's selfishness and thoughtlessness and indifference toward one who should be the dearest thing on earth to her is very hard to bear, very; but I am not made of the stuff that could break under an affliction of that kind. ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... oblivion. Nevertheless, with their eyes open they will fight on manfully to the end and take the final leap into the dark without flinching. They are very apt to add that their philosophy is the only unselfish one; that the desire of men for any sort of help from conceptions about the Divine is selfishness where it is not sentimentalism. It is fair to say that such doctrines seldom meet large response. The reason is not that men selfishly seek out a God for the sake of material reward that may come to them, but that they seek him ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... should have infuriated them, but it served to pique. He wasn't actually as unconcerned as he appeared, but he had early learned that effort in their direction was unnecessary. Nick had little imagination; a gorgeous selfishness; a tolerantly contemptuous liking for the sex. Naturally, however, his attitude toward them had been somewhat embittered by being obliged to watch their method of driving a car in and out of the Ideal Garage doorway. His own manipulation ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... betrayed the utter selfishness of her soul, and yet her father listened with a fixed smile ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... DOROTHY DAINTY 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 ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... true-hearted man, but more wrapped up in his love for my mother than it is well for any man to be who would look at life largely and do right by all. For such love, though natural to women, is apt to turn to something that partakes of selfishness, and to cause him who bears it to think all else of small account. His children were nothing to my father when compared to my mother, and he would have been content to lose them every one if thereby he might have purchased back her life. But after all it was a noble infirmity, for he thought ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... prompts him to act, he said what he did from a desire to give his mother pleasure, and not pain. As to the secret motive, which might have been his ultimate end, that lay too deeply concealed for him to be conscious of it. And we ourselves too often act from the influence of hidden impulses of selfishness, the existence of which we are wholly unconscious of, to judge him too harshly for ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... hope you will have many years of youth yet. I think I must tell you in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said, or part of it at least. He said you had the playfulness of a lamb without its selfishness. I think that perfect as far as it goes. Of course my Susie's wise and grave gifts must be told of afterwards. There is no one I know, or have known, so well able as you are to be in a degree what my mother was to me. ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
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