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Altruism   /ˈæltruˌɪzəm/   Listen
Altruism

noun
1.
The quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others.  Synonym: selflessness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Altruism" Quotes from Famous Books



... made the greatness of the people, or the people—precisely because of its greatness—made the Torah; whether we have a case of natural election or artificial election to study, it is not in any self-sufficient superiority or aim thereat that the essence of Judaism lies, but in an apostolic altruism. The old Hebrew writers indeed—when one considers the impress the Bible was destined to make on the faith, art, and imagination of the world—might well be credited with the intuition of genius in attributing to their people a quality of election. And the ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... Sly Aversion Capital Meerschaum Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare Unction Starve Naughty Speed Cunning Moral Success Decent Antic Crafty Handsome Savage Usury Solemn Uncouth Costume Parlor Window Presumption ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... ideal and real are so far {269} apart that their conjunction seems quite hopeless. To eat our cake and have it, to lose our soul and save it, to enjoy the physical privileges of selfishness and the moral luxury of altruism at the same time, would be the ideal. But the real offers us these terms in the shape of mutually exclusive alternatives of which only one can be true at once; so that we must choose, and in choosing murder ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... an hereditary chief, so that the community realise that their efforts, instead of being directed to the protection of the personal interests of some chief, are as a matter of fact directed to the protection of their own interests, and their altruism has become self-interest, since self-sacrifice of a community for the sake of the community is a contradiction in terms. In the religious sphere a like development has been shown. Early religious ideals have no relation to the material betterment of mankind. The early Christian thought ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have to-day produced their full harvest of human waste, of inequality and inefficiency, were fully recognized in the last century at the moment when such ideas were first put into practice. Readers of Huxley's attack on the Salvation Army ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... detail to him and piloting him to England, Mr. Palford did not hold himself many degrees responsible. His theory of correct conduct assumed no form of altruism. He had formulated it even before he reached middle age. One of his fixed rules was to avoid the error of allowing sympathy or sentiment to hamper him with any unnecessary burden. Natural tendency of temperament had placed no obstacles in the way ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of Europe, magnified the wonderful deeds of that prince who had been instrumental in securing their release, and the massacre of the Tunisians was conveniently ignored. Charles had defeated Barbarossa and expelled him from Tunis; he had now displayed his magnanimity and altruism by the terms which he imposed on the miserable Muley Hassan. As far as that individual was concerned, he certainly deserved nothing better; but, as a finale to an expedition blessed by the Pope, and looked upon almost in the light of a modern ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... survives. Natural selection is, then, active in social evolution as well as in general organic evolution. But the distinctive principle of social evolution is coperation. In other words, it is sympathetic feeling, altruism, which has made the higher ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... designed his suicide with considerable care, and a quite remarkable altruism. His passionate hatred for Miriam vanished directly the idea of getting away from her for ever became clear in his mind. He found himself full of solicitude then for her welfare. He did not want ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... strayed dreamily through the mind of Prince Michael, as he smiled under the stubble of his polychromatic beard. Lounging thus, clad as the poorest of mendicants in the parks, he loved to study humanity. He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his station and all the grosser sweets of life had given him. It was his chief solace and satisfaction to alleviate individual distress, to confer favours upon worthy ones who had need ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... fine specimen of script or a deftly turned couplet. It is, nevertheless, difficult to believe that these enthusiasts confined themselves to the superficialities of Chinese learning. The illustrations of altruism which they furnished by abdicating in one another's favour may well have been inspired by perusing the writings of Confucius.** However that may be, the reign of Junna, though not subjectively distinguished, forms a landmark in Japanese history as the period which closed the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... this would be true only in a very superficial and strictly qualified sense. In reality, just as there is eternal conflict between egoism and altruism, so there is conflict between the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... fortunate, however, that his altruism had detained him no longer for before he reached the spot where the dogs were to be quartered he heard a chorus of sharp yelps and saw what appeared to be a dozen dogs coming across the lawn accompanied by Mrs. ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... shall prevail. One who really prays that this kingdom come will strive to hasten its coming by living according to the law of God. His effort will be to keep himself in harmony with the order of the kingdom, to subject the flesh to the spirit, selfishness to altruism, and to learn to love the things that God loves. To make the will of God supreme on earth as it is in heaven is to be allied with God in the affairs of life. There are many who profess belief that as God ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Socialist vicars, and a plague on dear good women!" thought the doctor, knocking out his pipe. "What with philanthropy and this delicate altruism that takes the life out of women, the world becomes a kind of impenetrable jungle, in which everybody's business is intertwined with everybody else's, and there is nobody left with primitive brutality ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Mantak al-Tayr (Colloquy of the Flyers) the Birds, emblems of souls, seeking the presence of the gigantic feathered biped Simurgh, their god, traverse seven Seas (according to others seven Wadys) of Search, of Love, of Knowledge, of Competence, of Unity, of Stupefaction, and of Altruism (i.e. annihilation of self), the several stages of contemplative life. At last, standing upon the mysterious island of the Simurgh and "casting a clandestine glance at him they saw thirty birds[FN250] in him; and when they turned their eyes to themselves the thirty birds ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... have laid down the law. Those who find themselves tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have wives and children; they have only one profession, they have been unfitted for any other by a life-time of study of dead things, as well as by the practice of altruism. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... in an opportunity that made criticism pertinent rather than impertinent. It was not that he prided himself on knowing or doing better, he was not naturally a theorist, nor didactic; but education had awakened his mind, not only to difficulties in the path of faith, but to a higher standard of altruism than ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... exchange for intellectual or manual labor furnished to society, will be assured of his daily bread and will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoism will have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself than solidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitiless maxim—homo homini lupus—will cease to be true—a maxim which, whether we admit it or not, poisons so much ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... more refined and thoughtful form which safeguards their social dignity while protecting them against inheritance from their legal fathers. English philosophy, as I have shown, suffers by the fact that Herbert Spencer was too busy to permit himself any such romantic altruism—just as American literature gains enormously by the fact that Walt Whitman adventured, leaving seven sons behind him, three of whom are now well-known American poets and in the forefront ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... atmosphere children learn the graces and virtues that make social life wholesome and attractive. Welcomed in the home, they receive the care and instruction of both parents and become socialized for the larger and later responsibilities of the social order. In the altruism thus developed lie the roots of morals and religion. It is well agreed that the essence of each is the right motive to conduct. Love to men and to God is an accepted definition of religion, and ethics is grounded on that principle. Love is the ruling principle of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... he succeeded in bringing about seemed to him a direct proof of his alliance with God. As Diderot has said, it is sometimes only necessary to be a little mad in order to prophesy and to enjoy poetic ecstasies; and in the case of Schlatter the flower of altruism which often blossoms in the hearts of such "madmen" was manifested in his complete lack of self-seeking and in his compassion for the poor and suffering which drew crowds around him. As to his miracles, we may—without attempting to explain them—state decisively ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... subordinated to some extent to the needs of the clan,—those are the ones which would prevail in the struggle for life. In this way you gradually get an external standard to which man has to conform his conduct, and you get the germs of altruism and morality; and in the prolonged affectionate relation between the mother and the infant you get the opportunity for that development of altruistic feeling which, once started in those relations, comes into play in the more general ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske

... introduced. It will be seen that the duty of a man to lead a wise life, to be prudent, to make the most of his powers, to maintain a good name, is not a duty to himself, merely an enlightened selfishness, as it is now called, but a genuine form of altruism, a duty to others, as truly as if those others bore different names instead of succeeding to his name. It will be seen that a man's duty to his later selves is like the duty of a father to his helpless children: to provide for their ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... a much larger class than is commonly understood. All who attain mature years with fixations are to be regarded as children. All individualists belong here unless their individualism is merely a stepping stone to altruism. Indeed, we see in all men a desire to place themselves on a pinnacle. This craving seeks expression in a thousand acts. Even if outgrown it may assert itself in times of stress. It is of benefit at times when individuals espouse just but unpopular causes. What ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... desires. He has neither the passions nor the vices that attach us to life. He is solitary and pure. Endowed with strong virtues, he becomes conceited. He lives among miserable people. He sees suffering. He has devotion without humanity. He has that sort of cold charity which is called altruism. He is not human because he is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... gratification of the curiosity to know, but for the betterment of man's lot. And for the same reason he insisted on the pre-eminence of the sympathetic affections over the intellect. The reason, he declared, must ever be the servant, though not the slave, of the emotions. Altruism, or the service of others (a word of his own coining), must be made to prevail over egoism or selfishness. There could not be a nobler conception of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... nineteenth century. The unification of the Empire with its era of material prosperity and progress strengthened the roots of national consciousness; the gospel of the superman with its absolute ego-cult stimulated individual self-assertion; the wave of altruism which swept across the world at the same time roused the slumbering sense of social responsibility. These three forces—national consciousness, individual self assertion, social responsibility—profoundly affected the character of the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... had been always dissipated, however, when she recalled, as she did so often, David as he stood before Nahoum Pasha, his soul fighting in him to make of his enemy—of the man whose brother he had killed—a fellow-worker in the path of altruism he had mapped out for himself. David's name had been continually mentioned in telegraphic reports and journalistic correspondence from Egypt; and from this source she had learned that Nahoum Pasha ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of our hierarchy. It is always observed that with these patients certain actions have disappeared, that certain acts executed formerly with rapidity and facility can no longer be accomplished. The patients seem to have lost their delicacy of feeling, their altruism, their intelligent critique. The stopping of tendencies by stimulation, the transformation of tendencies into ideas, the deliberation, the endeavor, the reflection; in one word, both the moral effort and the call upon ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... deficiency on my part, but since then I have decided that it was for want of preparation. I had no proper basis. Only Spencer and myself know how hard I hammered. But I did get something out of his Data of Ethics. There's where I ran across 'altruism,' and I remember now how ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... apperceptions in art is correlative to the inner ego? That simple postulate granted, it will be unquestioned that the true focus of vision should co-ordinate the invisible. Faith we must have, or we faint by the roadside of the intelligible. The only altruism is that which can defy the cold brutality of things as they are, and convince us with things as they are not. Thus alone can the contemplation of art bring us back to primal infelicity, and restore in our souls the perfect vacuity of infants and cows. Thus only can we achieve ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... peace plead four greater considerations: against personal glory, the economic cost of militarism; against the moral education of war, the higher heroism of peace; against class interests, the sanctity of human life; and against national egoism, the deeper spirit of national altruism. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... the Diplomatic Service and of the country I think not," replied Arthur reflectively. "I feel that it is a case where true altruism ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... growth of altruism or humanitarianism in the last thirty years, with the application of sincere sympathy as one of the possible solvents of the mystery of misery, it is strange that this book should have passed from the minds ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... and undesirable for him to attempt to fix the wages paid by his employer. We may in a thousand or more years reasonably expect that the employee will be so far civilized and become sufficiently sensible to know that strikes and threats and mob violence can never improve his condition. Altruism is nonsense, craziness. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... here with the extremes of extrospection and introspection, it is safe to say that in the vast majority of people there is a definite and unassailable interest in both of these directions. Interest in others is not altruism and interest in the self is not self-interest or egoism. But, on the whole, they who are not interested in others never become philanthropists; they who are not interested in things never become ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... thirteen. He loved with the same radiant enthusiasm that he gave to his music, and while some of his flirtations were of the utmost frivolity, such as his hilarious courtship of his pretty cousin, the "Baesle," he was capable of the completest altruism, and could turn aside from the aristocracy to lavish his idolatry upon the fifteen-year-old daughter of a poor music copyist, whose wife took in boarders. For this girl, Aloysia Weber, he wanted to give up his own career as a concert pianist; he wanted to give ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... invented for Christianity. The Inner Light theory has vitriol sprayed upon it. Marcus Aurelius, it is explained, acted according to the Inner Light. "He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats leading the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games in the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land." The present writer does not profess any ability to handle philosophic problems philosophically; it seems to him, however, that if Chesterton had been writing a few years ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... litanies, tonsures, holy water, fasts, and confession. Barring confession, the extreme antiquity of which has been attested, the other rites and ceremonies are, it may be, borrowed, but not the high morality, the altruism, the renunciation and effacement of self, which Buddhists no longer very scrupulously observe, perhaps, but which their religion was ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... with Nietzsche that individualism is the only salvation of the race. My husband, Mr. Vibert, believes in altruism, self-sacrifice and all the old-fashioned flummery ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... seems as forlorn as that of the Israelites against the walls of Jericho. But they are forlorn and immeasurable only because, and so long as, we let our selfish personal interests govern and mold our public and social action. Altruism will not heal the inward sore, but at best only put on its surface a plausible plaster which leaves the inward still corrupt; for altruism is a policy and not an impulse, proceeding not from the heart but from the intelligence—the policy ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... possibilities of the measure, and warned the PRIMATE that if the Bill became law he would have signed the death-warrant of the Establishment. Coming from a Presbyterian who helped to disestablish the Church in Wales, this showed the heights of altruism to which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... politics of his own day, or to busy himself with problems or economics? To us personally, of course, it is a matter of indifference how the historians of the twentieth century conduct themselves; but ought not our altruism to bear the strain of a hope that at least one of the band may avoid all these things, and, leaving political philosophy to the political philosopher and political economy to the political economist, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... one of the greatest curiosities I had ever seen. I followed him about and listened to him talk to the passengers. And I learned that, like most of our young men, he had entered the practice of medicine under the pressure of dollars rather than altruism. Money is still the determining factor in the choice of a profession by our young men. And success and fortune in the medical profession, more than in any other, depend upon the credulity of the ignorant and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... jungles, encountering natives armed with assegais, and in other ways risking his valuable life, all for the sake of his fellow-creatures, and in the hope of ultimately opening up the country. Was there ever a man more strongly actuated by the spirit of altruism? ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... of and interviews with the leading characters. People who had thought that only ferries and docks lay south of Twenty-third Street penetrated to the heart of the great East Side and went home again full of an altruism which lasted three days. And on the last night of the "run" of three nights, Jack Burgess brought Albert Marsden to witness it. Other spectators had always emerged dumb or inarticulate from the ordeal but the great actor was not one of them. He was blusterous and garrulous and, to Burgess' amazement, ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... he designates that distinguished body of men, the Army Service Corps. A prolonged diet of plum-and-apple jam has implanted in the breasts of the men in the trenches certain dark and unworthy suspicions concerning the entire altruism of those responsible for the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... and of his promise to her,—a promise deeply recalled to him by the message of her tear-worn eyes,—to steady his mind to the task of friendly helpfulness, was to put aside the accompanying memory of eyes, lips, gold hair on a background of flowering laurel, was to re-enter, through sane, kind altruism, his old, normal state of consciousness, and to shut the door on something very sweet and wonderful, to shut the door—in Imogen's phraseology—on his soul, but, in doing that, to be loyal to the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... coffee house, prototype of the bewildering club life of our own day. The eighteenth century coffee house, where the men of fashion and affairs foregathered to exchange social news over their glasses, was an organization naturally fostering altruism; at least, it tended to cultivate ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... read the riddle of Matheson's motive at that crucial interview in the financier's office on the Rue Laffitte. He had failed to realize that a man might be as eager to give as to grasp. He had failed to reckon on altruism as a possible dominating factor in the decisions of a successful man ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... cut out of the silver disc of the moon. It is only full-orbed when in well-doing, and as a very large constituent element of it, there is included the doing good to others. That is too plain to need to be stated. We hear a great deal to-day about altruism. Well, Christianity preaches that more emphatically than any other system of thought, morals, or religion does. And Christianity brings the mightiest motives for it, and imparts the power by which obedience to that great law that every man's conscience responds ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... individual. The ethnic form of society. The territorial group. The national group founded on race expansion. The functions of new groups. Great society and the social order. Great society protects voluntary organizations. The widening influence of the church. Growth of religious toleration. Altruism and democracy. Modern society a machine of great complexity. Interrelation of different parts of society. The progress of the race based on social opportunities. The central idea ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... the senses should be drawn by a disciple of Feuerbach, Max Stirner,[1] in whose work, The Individual and His Property, the virtues of egoism are extolled, and contempt is poured upon all disinterestedness and altruism. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... stone's throw from home and what led him to turn the other way, pass into Beaver Street, and go south toward Orient Avenue he could not have told. Possibly he was still thrilling with newly awakened altruism and was not yet ready to have his roseate dreams disturbed. Or he may have been pondering so deeply how to put his impulses into action that he failed to heed just where he was going. At any rate before he realized it there he was in the fashionable section of the ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... daily occupations. This organization of the most numerous section of the Irish democracy into co-operative associations, as it develops and embraces the majority, will tend to make the nation one and indivisible and conscious of its unity. The individual, however meagre his natural endowment of altruism, will be led to think of his community as himself; because his income, his social pleasures even, depend on the success of the local and national organizations with which he is connected. The small farmers of former times pursued a petty business of barter ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... each individual by an appeal to his own self-interest, to make himself as useful as possible to the community. In the second place, it would leave him perfectly free to labor in the service of the community for altruistic reasons, if there was any altruism in his nature. In the third place it would exercise a beneficial selective influence upon the stock or race, because the useful members would survive and perpetuate their kind and the useless and criminal members would ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... race-preservation together constitute the law of life, just as Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy constitute the Law of Substance in Haeckels Monistic Philosophy, and the severest altruism will permit man to follow his highest self-interest in obedience to these laws. It is only a perverted and vicious self-interest that would ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... over the question whether any, or all, or only two or three of his books are to last. The matter has, I believe, been definitely decided so that posterity, whatever other responsibilities it has, will at least not have that one; and anything that we can do to relieve the future of its burdens is altruism worthy the name. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... philosophy and of positive politics, only the first was adopted by the learned world,—that part which justifieth, on new promises, the existent evil of human societies; but the second part, treating of the moral obligations of altruism, arising from the recognition of mankind as an organism, was regarded as not only of no importance, but as trivial and unscientific. It was a repetition of the same thing that had happened in the case of ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... as a scourge of the unrighteous—she probably read up on Jael and Charlotte Corday and women like that. Her brain cracked. I'm not romancing, either. History is full of cold-blooded murders committed from motives of altruism. Common enough, both the cause and effect. Anyway, we have Janet's full confession coming to us—" He broke off short at an involuntary movement on the part of his friend—and abruptly a fear crept into his eyes. "Krech—what ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... clever writer in a recent magazine [Footnote: Katherine Fullerton Gerould, in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, p. 135.] speaks of "factitious altruism"; with this "altruism of the Procrusteans" who would reduce every one to the simple life-she has "little patience." "Thousands of people seem to be infected with the idea that by doing more themselves they bestow leisure ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... was made up of some very noble attributes. He was brave, but not reckless like Custer; a veritable exponent of Christian altruism, and as true to his friends as the needle to the pole. Under the average stature, and rather delicate-looking in his physical proportions, he was nevertheless a quick, wiry man, with nerves of steel, and possessing an indomitable will. He was full of ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... not recognize this truth is a shame to their perception. Ancestral lesions should bulk for them no bigger than any slightest taint of keyhole lassitude. For it is by thinking of ourselves that we die. It leads to rheums and indigestions and off we go. And even an ignoble altruism would save us. I know one old lady who has been preserved to us these thirty years by no other nostrum than a knot-hole appearing in ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... her shoulders petulantly, admitting defeat but resenting it. There came a time, months later, when she understood Grim's peculiar altruism and respected it, but she was a long way just ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... ceases to be essential, "Self-sacrifice," writes the author of a thoughtful book on the sexual life, "is acknowledged to be the basis of virtue; the noblest instances of self-sacrifice are those dictated by sexual affection. Sympathy is the secret of altruism; nowhere is sympathy more real and complete than in love. Courage, both moral and physical, the love of truth and honor, the spirit of enterprise, and the admiration of moral worth, are all inspired by love as by nothing else in human nature. Celibacy ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... simply by preaching it. To preach anything is to give it away. First, the egoist calls life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To preach egoism is to practise altruism. But however it began, the view is common enough in current literature. The main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers; they are makers. They say that choice is itself the divine thing. Thus Mr. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... college will be far from discharged unless it makes provision for laboratory religion where there is a working place for each member. Religion is a life and the college should be a society where this life may be lived in its fullest extent, encouraging practical altruism and giving the protection which an ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... in Hongkong afford an illustration of a different order, proving the truth of my contention that, excepting as a sphere for the exercise of altruism, the acquisition of new territories is an illusive gain. When Hongkong was ceded to Great Britain at the conclusion of a war in which China was defeated, it was a bare island containing only a few fishermen's huts. In order to make it a trading port ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... too tender-hearted. A woman cannot bear to hurt a man's feelings by letting him know that he is killing her by his stupidity. And even if she did, in the noble spirit of altruism, rather than selfishness, the next woman, with one reproachful glance at her, would pick up the mutilated remains of the man's vanity and apply the splints of her respectful attention and the balm of her admiration, partly to add a new scalp to her belt, and ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... had those stirrings of altruism, a ready sympathy, an instinct to help. Only he saw very clearly that he could not be of any benefit to even a limited circle of his fellow men when at every turn of his hand economic pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual. He began to see that getting ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... rapidly, and is illustrated by exciting incidents of river freshets, shipwreck on one of the great lakes, and a prairie fire. Love is shown to be no respecter of persons, but is found faithful, pure, and delicate, in people who never heard of cosmic philosophy, or the term "altruism," who knew not the classics, who went sadly astray in grammar. Without direct preaching, the story shows that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that the hardness is ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... whereon no trace of envy appeared, caught Hubert's attention as he gathered up the reins, and he thought how her altruism contrasted with the passionate egotism of ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh—the laugh of the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others—I want you!" such was its message. And against this paradoxical wish ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... mission to awaken Europe to war against greed and avarice, hypocrisy and theft, robbery and violence? Lands which have slept and dreamed for centuries, do not easily awake. And a part of Europe still dreams deeply under the hypnotic influence of English cant and altruism, or at least of her ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... thing for America than for us. Mind you, I don't say we need America to help us to make war, but we do need her help if war is to be averted; and any move of such a nature on her part demands what you author fellows would call "a high degree of altruism." How's that, Durwent, for a chap who never reads ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... know, that there is a beneficent magic in the relationship between men and women; the evil man, at war with all but himself, cannot but admit that for his supremest pleasure he depends on one other than himself, and by his gratitude to her is tainted with altruism and is no longer single-minded in his war on others. Such men uphold prostitution because it exorcises sex of that magic. It is not a device to save sensuality, for love with a stranger is like gulping new spirit, and love with a friend is drinking old wine. Its purpose is indeed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... individuals) always hide enmity and jealousy. We cannot expect, therefore, to create a moral spirit in the relations of peoples to one another by teaching alone. We cannot hope to change individualism to altruism merely by exciting feeling. Our main effort must be directed toward establishing ethical relations, rather than to stimulating ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... pockets, fishes out an envelop, and inspects it deliberate. It's sealed; but he makes no move to open it. "My next assignment in altruism," says he, holdin' it to the light. "Rich man, poor ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... original, but intrinsically weaker, impulse toward association, which instinctively leads him to seek the society of his fellows without reflection on the advantages to be expected therefrom, and a moderate degree of benevolence. As altruism conflicts with egoism, so the reason, together with the impulse to get ahead, which can only be satisfied through labor, is in continual conflict with the inborn disinclination to regulated activity (especially to mental ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... Mab preferred to hurry past these dangerous-looking engines of Altruism, and they continued their survey. They came next to a company of umbrellas who were also barometers, and found out when it was going to rain in time for their masters to take them out. This, Mab said, was ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... defence, and still more nearly always toward the praise of the woman in the case. And yet, the whole effort and viewpoint of the work will be found, I think, to be based upon a deep belief that one love is better than two, and that earnestness and honesty and altruism are more blessed and blissful, even with poverty and suffering, than any wealth of money, or of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... who christened it knew that it was the god-energy in the human machine. Without its driving force nothing worth doing has ever been done. It is man's dearest possession. Love, friendship, religion, altruism, devotion to hobby or career—all these, and most of the other good things in life, are forms of enthusiasm. A medicine for the most diverse ills, it alleviates both the pains of poverty and the boredom of riches. Apart from it man's ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... worship of Humanity. In his religion, which must not be confounded with his philosophy, there are many festivals, a calendar of saints, nine sacraments, and a caricature of the Holy Trinity. His philosophical system is based on altruism, a word meaning much the same as the Biblical command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... of Mr. Ruskin's economic gospel are, unfortunately, not so sane and beneficent. His altruism knows no bounds, as his philanthropy and zeal have but few restraints. After the fashion of his mentor, Carlyle, he is carried away by his humanitarianism and his unreserved acceptance of the doctrine of the equality and brotherhood of man. Hence come his economic heresies ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Egyptian archaeologist, Mr. Arthur Weigall. Akhnaton, or Amenhotep IV., has an interest for the whole world as the first Messiah. Like Our Lord, he was of Syrian parentage—on the mother's side. Interest in him is undying, because underlying his Sun-symbolism we have the first foreshadowings of the altruism of Christianity. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... other respects human nature may be, all human endeavor must finally be measured by the principle of Altruism and must stand or fall by the measure in which it inspires ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... surcharged with feeling help to create the crowd-atmosphere. Examples: liberty, character, righteousness, courage, fraternity, altruism, country, and national heroes. George Cohan was making psychology practical and profitable when he introduced the flag and flag-songs into his musical comedies. Cromwell's regiments prayed before the battle and went into the fight singing hymns. The French corps, singing the Marseillaise ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... to add that these men claim no especial merit for their altruism and unselfishness. They do not pose before the world as philanthropists. They do not strut about and preen themselves as who would say: "See what a noble man am I! See how I sacrifice myself for the welfare of society!" The attitude of cant and pose is entirely alien ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... am. But, Dion, I'm seeing a longish way to-night, farther than I've seen before. Love's a great business, the greatest business in life. Ambition, and greed, and vanity, and altruism, and even fanaticism, must give place when it's on hand, when it harnesses its winged horses to a man's car and swings him away ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... best scholar in the class, and because you're a blessed philosopher with leanings toward altruism. A poor helpless little millionaire with no one to lean on must certainly excite your pity. You're just the man for the job, I tell you. And if you said you'd do it, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... the altruism of Peter's motives when he told her about Harmony. But as the recital went on she found herself rather touched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She scolded and lauded Peter in one breath, and what was more to the point, she promised to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... suppression of injustice. The same archives show us also that he found time for deeds of beneficence which endeared him to the people, who everywhere hailed him as their deliverer from thraldom. It would not be wise to join in the chorus of those who appear to have taken Cesare's altruism for granted. The rejection of the wild stories that picture him as a corrupt and murderous monster, utterly inhuman, and lay a dozen ghastly crimes to his account need not entail our viewing Cesare as an angel of deliverance, a divine agent almost, rescuing a suffering people ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... you who believe in altruism; who believe in the giving of one's self for others; who believe in fixedness of purpose; who have in any wise pinned your faith to that man Ensal—let all such prepare yourselves for evidence of the utter frailty of man. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... of violent counteraction, some continual intervention and providence, if it is to be kept in check. After all, this is only a dressing-up of the old platitude that a holy life means continual warfare and straining of the spirit against the flesh, of the moral order against the physical order, of altruism or the true egoism against selfishness or the false egoism. Of course an ideal civilization would help and not hinder religion; but the chances against civilization being ideal are so large as to make it historically true that, advance in civilization ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... broader liberty and more liberal meed of justice for her mean a higher civilization, and the solution of weighty and fundamental problems which will never be equitably adjusted until we have brought into political and social life more of the splendid spirit of altruism, which is one of her most conspicuous characteristics. I believe that morality, education, practical reform, and enduring progress wait upon her complete emancipation from the bondage of fashion, prejudice, superstition, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... criminal practices of Gorman Purdy had amassed, Ethel becomes the idol of the people, not only of Wilkes-Barre, but of the entire country. She gives substantial proof of the sincerity of her promise made at the grave of her father. This act of altruism does much to avert any reaction of the turbulent elements ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... permanent, and to the kind of morality that arose in them. Since then, naturalists have often insisted upon the importance of various forms of symbiosis. Kropotkin in Mutual Aid has chosen to enumerate many examples of altruism furnished by animals to mankind. Geddes and Thomson went so far as to maintain that "Each of the greater steps of progress is in fact associated with an increased measure of subordination of individual competition to reproductive or social ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... have, it is our very selves. Think of a mistress's shame if her lover were to tell her that he loved her because she wished to be beloved, because he thought it would give her pleasure to be loved—she would hate him for such altruism, and deem him unworthy of her. She would certainly think like this, and turn her face from him for a while until some desire of possession would send her back to him. We are always thinking of ourselves directly or indirectly. I was thinking of myself when shame prevented ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... adopted their foreign cousin out of pure altruism. Far from it. Like Japanese in general, they resented the intrusion of a "tanin" (outside person) into their intimacy. They took her for what ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... proportion of our modern great properties, tramway systems, railways, gas-works, bread companies, have been created for their present owners the debenture holders and mortgagers, the great capitalists, by the unintentional altruism of that voluntary martyr, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... boy that self-reliance which is so essential in the making of a life, that faith in others which is the foundation of society, that spirit of altruism which will make him want to be of service in helping other fellows, that consciousness of God as evidenced in His handiwork which will give him a basis of morality, enduring and reasonable, and a spirit of reverence ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... confidence; where none are kept isolated from the interests of the others; but each possesses full freedom for his own personal interest; where none trenches on the rights of others; where all are willing to help one another when necessary,—in this atmosphere egoism, as well as altruism, can attain their richest development, and individuality find its just freedom. As the evolution of man's soul advances to undreamed-of possibilities of refinement, of capacity, of profundity; as the spiritual life of the generation ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... years of living for himself and to himself, Andrew Malden had tried to be square with the world. Business was business with him. He made no concessions to any man; pity and altruism were not in his vocabulary. Unconsciously to himself, he had grown to be a very hard man, and the heart within him found it difficult to make itself felt through the calloused surface of his life. But with it all Andrew Malden had been honest. His word ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... inability to 'ang about all day for parties to make up their minds—the usurper's plea, by-the-by, for a coup d'etat—so perhaps some emissary might be found, to drop round to the shop to leave word. This young man was anxious to oblige, but altruism had its limits. Just then a knock at the door below led to Dave receiving instructions to sift it and make sure it wasn't a mistake, before a senior should descend to take it up seriously. It was not a mistake, but a lady, reported by Dave, returning out of breath, to be "one ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... obscure writers are now about in magazines? They are vindicating the cosmic forces, whitewashing Mother Nature after Huxley's Romanes lecture! He told the truth, and Nature loved him for it; but now come hysterical religious ciphers who squeak boldly forth in print that Nature is the mother of altruism, that self-sacrifice is her first law! One genius observes that 'tis their cruelty and selfishness have arrested the progress of the tiger and the ape! Poor Nature! Never a word of shotguns in all this drivel, of course. Cruelty ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... out as the basic principle which should guide the actions of your people the maxim that: 'Resistance to aggression is not simply justifiable but imperative, nonresistance hurts both Altruism and Egotism.' ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy

... mention of vice, as at the remembrance of the tortures of Regulus, but will the Cain type ever become extinct, like the dodo, or the ichthyosaurus? When will the laws of heredity, and the by-laws of agnation result in an altruism, where human ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... had looked year upon year before his birth. He wondered how it was that it had had no prenatal influence on himself. He wondered how it was that all their devotion had ended with themselves, that their altruism had died when Corinna Meecham's soul had passed-away and Rufus Hallett, like another Stephen, had fallen on his knees beneath the missiles of the villagers to whom he was coming with relief. They had spent their lives in the service of others; he ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... all the way what her wild altruism was, ashamed of her ignorance. She looked in her dictionary, but it was an old cheap one, and the strange word was not in it. Perhaps Mary had coined it. As to that she would consult ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... politics. Here they mingle with State and regional and local loyalties and private self-interests into a fine American soup of eagerness and reluctance, faith and apprehension, awareness and befuddlement, chicanery and square dealing, altruism and frank greed, rage and reasonableness, that is as real as any mountain in the Basin and as inevitable a consideration for realistic planning as the river's own characteristics of flow. For any proposal or set of ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... show us that, bad as we may be, collectively, we are infinitely superior in love-affairs, as in everything else, to those primitive peoples; and thus we are encouraged to hope for further progress in the future in the direction of purity and altruism. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... again. The wild rose looked at simply as a thing of beauty and perfume becomes yet more interesting to the child who watches the bee gather its golden pollen and its luscious nectar. There is a bond of union now between the fragile flower and its winged guest that begets an altruism which later becomes normally the corner-stone of character. When the graceful tribute of the bee to the flower is presently understood, and the child learns that the seeds of the flower have to thank the bee for their life, the mind expands yet more, and glows at the thought of ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... large there are no measures, and there is, therefore, not so much competition to achieve these ideals. For the difference between the higher and the lower motives is not, as men often assert, a difference between altruism and selfishness. [Footnote: Cf. Ch. XII] It is a difference between acting for easily understood aims, and for aims that are obscure and vague. Exhort a man to make more profit than his neighbor, and he knows at what to aim. Exhort him to render more social service, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... find no difference between the egoism of the will to power and the altruism of the will to fellowship. They assert that if egoism is given a wider range, so that the ego includes others, you have altruism, which therefore is only an egoism of a larger ego. However true this may be logically, for all practical purposes we may separate these ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... Waterside Sketches with the word "scarce" against it. I already possess three copies, one the gift of the author, but I very nearly wrote off for a fourth because one cannot have too much of so good a thing. What restrained me really was honest altruism. "Hold," I said to myself, "there must be some worthy man who has no copy at all. Let him have a chance." For it is a melancholy fact that Red Spinner's books have been out of print an unconscionable while, only to be obtained in the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... road, steam railway, and bicycle path, ebbs and flows the middle-class population. And in the same direction lies the remedy for the tenement evil. In the cleansing country air the slum cannot exist. Improvement in road-beds and the means of locomotion, a tremor of altruism, a little legislation, and the city by day will sleep in the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... their mothers are stimulated by a practical interest in public affairs. I do claim that that nation will be the strongest in which the economic conditions are the most nearly just to all, and in which co-operation and altruism are the most completely incorporated in the lives of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... known friends but mysteriously from the ravens. To-day, however, the high cost of living has set up a very serious obstacle, and debt and failure seem inevitable unless five hundred pounds can be collected quickly. Any reader of Punch moved to bestow alms on as sincere and deserving a a work of altruism as could be found is urged to send a donation to Miss CHARLES, Santa Claus Home, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various

... stubborn hardness of the middle-class society in its typical representative is unable to meet a crisis; and by the banishment, or the condemnation to suicide, of its most promising members, this society pronounces its own doom. Altruism is contrary to the custom, that is, to the morals of this community, and for that reason is forbidden ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... May we who read the following pages catch somewhat of the deep earnestness and enthusiastic spirit breathing through them, and may the joy of service dissipate all meaner, motives, taking as our watchword also the only key to true growth, the very heart of altruism, that exhortation he never wearied ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... rebellion against the God who stood forth as the acknowledged creator of the miserably unhappy race of men. The eternal question:—if God be only Omnipotent Good, why the existence of evil?—he asked in ever-growing bitterness, till so-called altruism became to him a mockery; and he took a painful delight in twisting his wisdom into the most fantastic forms, which he also made the sport and butt of formal logic; knowing always, in his own heart, the evil that was ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... little surprising now she looked back on it, but it had not astonished her at the time. Of course, there, there was something concretely to be done, an injustice to be averted from a possibly innocent head. She doubted though if it had been pure altruism. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... Disinterestedness. — N. disinterestedness &c. adj.; generosity; liberality, liberalism; altruism; benevolence &c. 906; elevation, loftiness of purpose, exaltation, magnanimity; chivalry, chivalrous spirit; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... approaching Noyon, the birthplace of Calvin. This is one of the few towns the Hun spared in his retreat; he spared it not out of a belated altruism, but purely to serve his own convenience. There were some of the French civilians who weren't worth transporting to Germany. They would be too weak, or too old, or too young to earn their keep when he ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... of human institutions. Passion can be dominated by reflection, and by the deliberate encouragement of gentle and altruistic sentiments. The business of politics is to destroy the opposition between self-interest and altruism, and to make a world in which when a man seeks his own good, he need no longer infringe the good of others. A great share in this moral elevation would come from the destruction of the inequality of the sexes, which Condorcet preached in France while Mary Wollstonecraft ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... "My terrible altruism once more," she sighed. "I had meant not to speak another serious word, and yet I must. Maggie is very clever, amazingly clever, I sometimes think, but if she had the brains of all of her sex rolled into one, she would still be facing ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... world philosophy has come out of them by rude methods of correction and purification, and "great principles" have been deduced which now control our life philosophy; also ethical principles have been determined which no civilized man would now repudiate (truthfulness, love, honor, altruism). The traditional doctrines of philosophy and ethics are not by any means adjusted smoothly to each other or to modern notions. We live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies: the ethical policy taught in the books and the schools, and the success ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... get a job and take care of her. And then he let her discover that he was suffering torments; he could not live without her. He played upon her sympathy, he played upon her childish innocence, he played upon that pitiful, weak sentimentality which caused her to believe in pacifism and altruism and socialism and all the other "isms" that were jumbled up ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... private opinion was nicely calculated to produce the maximum of human discomfort: and from a conversation between Hyde and Jack Bendish she had learnt that Hyde was all of her own view. There was no nonsense about him—none of that sweet blind altruism which, as Isabel saw it, only made the altruist and his family so bitterly uncomfortable without doing any good to the poor. The poor? She knew intuitively that servants and porters and waiters would far ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... they feel that possibly by means of that very ten shillings Nature has approximated a little more closely to the desired animal. Supporters of Hunting, again, will tell you, speaking from inside knowledge, that "the fox likes it," and one is left breathless at the thought of the altruism of the human race, which will devote so much time and money to amusing a small, bushy-tailed four-legged friend who might otherwise be bored. And the third member of the Triple Alliance, which has made England what it is, ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... nor indeed would it be proper to do so; suffice it to say, that I progressed beyond my Ushas' most sanguine expectations. And here I would remark, that I found my chief stimulus to exertion to be one which had been completely wanting in my former experience. It consisted simply in this, that altruism had been substituted for egotism. Formerly, I made the most herculean spiritual effort to tide myself over the great period of danger—the middle of the fifth round. "That," as Mr Sinnett correctly ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... he was fired by a passionate desire to aid; nor when occasion had arisen had he hesitated to sacrifice self for another's good. But such altruism was born of impulse and never considered. The spectacle of the universe absorbed him, and listening for the Pythagorean music of the spheres he sometimes became deaf to the voices of those puny lives about him. His attention being called to them, however, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... strongly rebuilt Lamia, and several independent Space Viking ships, among them the Damnthing of his friend Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan, who had volunteered to stay and help in the defense. This, of course, was not pure altruism. If Viktor attacked and had his fleet blown to Em-See-Square, Xochitl would lie open and unprotected, and there was enough loot on Xochitl to cram everybody's ships. Everybody's ships who had ships when the Battle of ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... are to change our standard of reality we must change it, first and foremost, in the school. The way to do this is quite simple. We need not give lessons on altruism. We need not teach or preach a new philosophy of life. All that we need do is to foster the growth of the child's soul. When the growth of the soul is healthy and harmonious, the cultivation of all the expansive instincts having been fully provided for, the communal ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... same way these pseudo philosophers have attacked the Christian religion, 'tearing the soul of Christ into silly strips labelled altruism and egoism. They are alike puzzled by His insane magnificance and His ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... and the human universality. All intermediaries, like the family and the state, are organised groupings,[61] subject to change, and they do actually change with changing customs; they are not natural organisms. Egoism and altruism, the two powerful sentiments which give life to our moral world, acting therein like the contrasted forces of positive and negative electricity, are the respective expressions of the individual and of the collectivity. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... Altruism, therefore, is not a virtue. It is a means of self-preservation—without this degree of initiation into the boundless area of universal, or cosmic consciousness, we may not escape the ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... whom this society was named, was a French priest born in 1576, who was noted for his great altruism, philanthropy, and executive ability; he founded various charitable orders, notably the Lazarists and the Sisters of Charity. He died in 1660, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... and effeminate peace. But the Christian nations of the earth were weighed in the balance of Divine wrath and found wanting. Wallowing in hypocrisy and ignorance, wanting in courage and valour; behind a pretence of altruism they cloaked their ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... good of the species—as existing in an animal which is not conscious of a self, these appetites will neither be selfish nor unselfish in the sense in which we apply these terms to man. Where there is no ego there can be no alter-ego, and therefore neither egoism nor altruism. The idea of the self as a permanent unity to which all the different tendencies are referred, and the rise in consequence of a new desire of pleasure, distinct from the desires of particular objects, are essential to egoism. The idea of an alter-ego, i.e., of a community with others which ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... most uncompromising opponent of State action, even education and public sanitation coming in for his condemnation. Moreover, he holds that if the social organism be let alone it will tend to a future state of society in which social altruism will be so developed that the individual will voluntarily sacrifice himself ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy simulacra. In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy to determine the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Spence cottage it was impossible not to read all this and more in the sensitive, hungering nature of the man who had worked beside him. Love and parenthood in its smaller and more specific sense had passed Willie Spence by, but in their place there had sprung into life a broader altruism and a larger creative impulse. The children his mind begot were as much of his blood and marrow as if they had actually been born of his own flesh; and to have one of them go victoriously forth into that moving current that reached so far beyond his own humble door would be like sending a child ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... Filipino volunteers for federal service and presented destroyers and a submarine to the United States Navy; it oversubscribed its quota in Liberty bonds and gave generously to Red Cross and other war work. America was criticised and even ridiculed for her altruism in dealing with this problem. The idea of training tropical people for independence was thought to be idealistic and impracticable. The result was quite to the contrary. Once more idealism has been shown to be the moving force in working out the destinies of nations. That ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... Doctor fell flat in the market. Most of the newspapers spoke contemptuously of it. One reason given was its loose construction, there being no plot, and the two love stories being thrust in towards the end to explain the doctor's altruism and the vicarious paternity ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... spreading figment from Our sight. Thou art so far back toward The primal autocrat whose wish, hyena-like, Was his religion, that, appearing as thou dost On an horizon new flushed in the first Uncertain ray of Altruism, thou seem'st More ghost than human. Yet thou lovest, loving ghost, And thy fierce parent flame thyself snuffed out Scarce later than the dark'ning of the fire Thou gav'st to be eternal vestal of Thine Antony's spirit. Thou didst ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... has been told elsewhere.[1] A combination of two ideas—high-minded altruism and a vindictive desire to humiliate a proud people for partisan advantage—wrought mischief which has not been repaired in nearly half a century. It is to be doubted, however, whether Reconstruction actually ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... after she was considering if she should go to Ellen and propose that she, Mildred, should offer to marry Ralph, but not seriously, only just to help him to get well. If the plan succeeded she would persuade Ralph that his duty was to marry Ellen. And intoxicated with her own altruism, Mildred's thoughts passed on and she imagined a dozen different dramas, in every one of which she appeared in the character of ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... may be looked for near by. The red-winged blackbird is a mormon in very fact, and often a solitary male bird may be seen guarding a colony of three or four nests, each with an attending female. A sentiment of altruism seems indeed not unknown, as I have seen a female give a grub to one of a hungry nestful, before passing on to brood ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe



Words linked to "Altruism" :   egoism, selflessness, unselfishness, altruist



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