"Altruism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gold river, we get half the loot, see? Forget the altruism of it—an old sea-dog has no business with a word like that, anyway. I know Houten, and I'll answer for his motives. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... growth is altruism; and altruism, the inclination to think more of others than of yourself, came into the world through ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... customs, also are recorded evidences of the social condition of the people, the affection in which friends and kindred are held, the very beginnings of altruism ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... 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 wrought in ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... background, and since these three States now recognized that if they try to swallow more of the late Austro-Hungarian monarchy they will suffer from chronic indigestion, we need not be suspicious of their altruism. It is perfectly true that the first impulse which moved the creators of the Little Entente was not constructive but defensive; their great Allies did not appear, in the opinion of the three Succession States, to be taking the necessary precautions against the elements of reaction. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... share was that of the final deciding factor. A nation unjustly titled the "Dollar Nation," believed by Germany and by other countries to be soft, selfish and wasteful, became over night hard as tempered steel, self-sacrificing with an altruism that inspired the world and thrifty beyond all precedent in order that not only its own armies but the armies of the Allies might ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... history she has made war upon a would-be despot of the Continent, treating the 'Balance of Power' as a principle for which no sacrifice could be too great. In these struggles she assisted the small Powers, less from altruism than because their interest was her own. She supported Holland against Philip II of Spain and against Louis XIV; against Napoleon she supported not Holland only, but also Portugal and, to the best of her power, Switzerland ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... 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
... 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, Cholmeley ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... appearing to find pleasure in it Should like better to do an immoral thing than a cruel one So well satisfied with his reply that he repeated it twice That if we live the reason is that we hope That sort of cold charity which is called altruism The discouragement which the irreparable gives The most radical breviary of scepticism since Montaigne The violent pleasure of losing Umbrellas, like black turtles under the watery skies Was I not warned enough of the sadness of everything? ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... Meyerbeer's 'good-nature,' of which he had once spoken, and he recalled with a smile the extraordinary questions I had put to him at the time. He was, however, quite alarmed when I gave him a very lucid explanation of the disinterestedness and conspicuous altruism of Mendelssohn in the service of art, of which he had spoken enthusiastically. In a conversation about Mendelssohn he had remarked how delightful it was to find a man able to make real sacrifices in order to free himself from a false position that was of no service ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... proportions; features take on definite characteristics. 6. Brain structure has matured. 7. Self-awareness. 8. Personal pride and desire for social approval. 9. Egotism. 10. Unstable, "hair-trigger," conflicting emotions. 11. Altruism, sincere interest in the well-being of others. 12. Religious and moral awakening. 13. New attitude. 14. Aesthetic awakening. 15. Puzzle to everybody. 16. Desire to abandon conventionalities, struggle for ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... one's neighbour, and no tedious sermons about any subject at all. In those ideal days, he tells us, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, or writing to the newspapers about it. They were upright, and yet they never published books upon Altruism. As every man kept his knowledge to himself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kept his virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people's business. They lived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food and raiment ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... self-control and virtue. Human character itself will change with the amendment 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 ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... 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 ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... 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 Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... his conversations is selfish and worldly-wise to a degree, with nowhere the slightest suggestion of ideality or altruism. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... than is to be found among the ultramontane peasantry of the Tyrol." In politics Ibsen had now become a pagan; "I do not believe," he said, "in the emancipatory power of political measures, nor have I much confidence in the altruism and good will of those in power." This sense of the uselessness of effort is strongly marked in the course of the next work on which he was engaged, the very brilliant, but saturnine and sardonic tragi-comedy of The Wild Duck. The first sketch of it was made during the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... get too excited over the sorrows of the world, my friend," drawled the young man under the tree. "It doesn't do any good; and then somebody calls you names. I was something like you once. But I've changed my philosophy. I have hypnotized my altruism. Now ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... I marry him? I have asked myself that a hundred times, my dear. I wish I knew. I have told you what I see in him to-day; but tomorrow—why, to-morrow I shall see him an altogether different man. He will be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to his friends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear, why ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... that, where I would have suspected too much protestation of altruism. Rakhal tossed ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... 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 ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... egoism. That, indeed, was simpleminded enough; for Nietzsche denied egoism 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. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men's ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... defective in 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 and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Our altruism, such as it is, has nothing abstract about it. The successful man does not bother himself about things he cannot see. Do not talk about foreign missions to him. Try his less successful brother—the man who is not successful because you can talk over with him foreign missions ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... good cause, 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, is Beer, and in support of Beer there is also a clich ready. Talk to anybody ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... might have been much more closely approached. Yet if the better side of this human nature had been further developed at the cost of darker and sterner qualities, the consequence might have proved unfortunate for the nation. No people so ruled by altruism as to lose its capacities for aggression and cunning could hold their own, in the present state of the world, against races hardened by the discipline of competition as well as by the discipline of war. The future Japan must rely upon the least [462] amiable qualities ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... He managed to convince everybody of his altruism, integrity and wisdom," Walter said. "It was almost blasphemous to say anything against him. I really don't ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... and acquired only through those peculiar necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed upon all alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an impression which there is little in the entire work capable of modifying. Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of altruism; his cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not offset by any visible sympathy with human pain;—he never compassionates: you may seek in vain through all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of gentle Pre Du Tertre, who, filled with ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... been 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... scheme of altruism that arose from the War was, as readers of Punch will no doubt remember, the sudden establishment of the St. Nicholas Home for child victims of the air-raids. So sudden was it that within seven days of the inception of the idea a house ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... bookseller's catalogue your 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, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... their gods, the drying up of their sources 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 Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... with a burst of altruism, "it's this way. Gladys is as shallow as a pie-tin and a big cry baby and all that, but if she hadn't been like that her father wouldn't have wanted her to be a Camp Fire Girl and we never would ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... about the world's future than one cares where the passengers in a train are going to, when we get out at a station. Who, on arriving at home, can lose himself in wondering where his fellow-travellers have got to? We have better things to do than that! That is the sham altruism. It is as if a boy at school, instead of learning his own lesson, spent his time in imploring the other boys to learn theirs. That is what we are whipped for—for ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and chilled Mr. Ferriday. He worked none the less for her and himself and he tried in a hundred ways to surprise the little witch into an adoration complete enough to make her forget herself, make her capable of that ultimate altruism to which a woman falls or rises when she stretches herself out on the altar ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... recognition of individual rights 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 is omnipotent, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... 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, you'd put ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... and anxious to be gone, perpetually and apprehensively peering this way and that, and myself whimpering softly and sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk, and yet his conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, I take as a foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeship that have helped make man the ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... always a little toward the 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 fame, or ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... paled his 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
... from which I drew strength and happiness amid all outer struggles and distress. And I shall ever remain grateful for the intellectual and moral training it gave me, for the self-reliance it nurtured, for the altruism it inculcated, for the deep feeling of the unity of man that it fostered, for the inspiration to work that it lent. And perhaps the chief debt of gratitude I owe to Freethought is that it left the mind ever open to new truth, encouraged the most unshrinking ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... together, the physiological element of incipient sexuality, the psychical element of the tenderness natural to this age and sex, the element of occasion offered by the environment, and the social element with its nascent altruism. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 young generation growing up in the newly ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... 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 ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... an obsession. She began to picture herself 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
... picture do you get of Whitman in this account? What qualities of Whitman's do you think most endeared him to the soldiers? Was Whitman's carefulness about his personal appearance an evidence of egotism or altruism? Compare this estimate of Whitman with the "Appreciation of Lincoln." Are there any points ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Christ, and have never been superseded. And since ethicists have nothing better to propose in the domain of conduct than what we find in the Gospel—since the "higher law," as formulated by Mr. Salter, reduces itself to altruism versus living for self—there is nothing harsh in saying that the ethical movement proposes merely to take over Christian morality minus its Christian setting. If a simile may be allowed, we should say that this new firm has no goods of its own manufacture; it intends ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... remarkable 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
... in common with the Church, Buddhism has saints, censers, 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
... imaginative of individuals—the man of germs, poet, dreamer, and experimentalist, absorbed in the pursuit of the unattainable, concerned with the ultimate structure of organic life, baffled, yet toiling on for love of his work, while the sick of the world believe in him as an angel of altruism. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... thing to teach. I am never more complimented than when some one addresses me as "teacher." To give yourself in a way that will inspire others to think, to do, to become—what nobler ambition! To be a good teacher demands a high degree of altruism, for one must be willing to sink self, to die—as it were—that others may live. There is something in it very much akin to motherhood—a brooding quality. Every true mother realizes at times that her children ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... us made us bond-servants of matter and force from birth to death though they drew back a little from the consequences of their own creeds and sought to save a place for moral freedom and responsibility and a defensible altruism. It is doubtful if they succeeded. Materialism affected greatly the practical conduct of life. It offered its own characteristic values; possession and pleasure became inevitably enough the end of action, and action itself, directed toward ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... — N. disinterestedness &c. adj.; generosity; liberality, liberalism; altruism; benevolence &c. 906; elevation, loftiness of purpose, exaltation, magnanimity; chivalry, chivalrous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... are immeasurable; the hope 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 of enlightened selfishness. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... a generous handicap, as the younger son of a wealthy and aristocratic Scottish laird, he had, during a Colonial race of forty years, daily committed himself by actions which shut him out from the fine old title. He was in the gall of altruism, and in the bond of democracy. Amiable demeanour, unmeasured magnanimity, and spotless integrity, could never carry off the unpardonable sin in which this lost sheep-owner wallowed—the taint, namely, of isocratic principle. When a member of the classes ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it would, he was braced by a high altruism. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... labours and sufferings are to help to bring about. If the doctrine is held in an extreme fatalistic form, then our duty is to resign ourselves cheerfully to sacrifices for the sake of unknown descendants, just as ordinary altruism enjoins the cheerful acceptance of sacrifices for the sake of living fellow-creatures. Winwood Reade indicated this when he wrote, "Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... eminent a philosopher and psychologist as Spencer tells us: "Of self-evident truths so dealt with, the one which here concerns us is that a creature must live before it can act ... Ethics has to recognize the truth that egoism comes before altruism." This is true for ANIMALS, because animals die out from lack of food when their natural supply of it is insufficient because they have NOT THE CAPACITY TO PRODUCE ARTIFICIALLY. But it is not true for the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... calm, statuesque face, 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 ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... and the task most frequently before them is that of giving a patriotic and virtuous appearance to whatever the proletariat is to believe. They do this, of course, to the tune of deafening protestations of their own honesty and altruism. But there is really no such thing as an honest newspaper in America; if it were set up tomorrow it would perish within a month. Every journal, however rich and powerful, is the trembling slave of ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... 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 ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... 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
... that punishment should be a means of awaking in the offender the consciousness of a self which can and should hold itself to account despite the magnitude of its temptations is of special usefulness, in the years when a broadening altruism (and we might add, a tendency to self-pity) is likely to lead to loose notions of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... only because such a vast section of the modern world is out of sympathy with the serious democratic sentiment that this statement will seem to many to be lacking in seriousness. Democracy is not philanthropy; it is not even altruism or social reform. Democracy is not founded on pity for the common man; democracy is founded on reverence for the common man, or, if you will, even on fear of him. It does not champion man because man is so miserable, but because man is so sublime. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... I 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 ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... He could afford to have them, and he considered it a duty as well as a glorious privilege to pour his individuality into a new being. It was Nature's way from a true and healthy egoism towards altruism. But she travelled on another road and made jackets for the babies of strangers. Was that a better, a nobler thing to do? It stood for so much, and yet was nothing but fear of the burden of motherhood, and it was ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... 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 was exacted ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... people have 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 ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... 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 to buy his release at her expense. He had not the remotest intention of leaving ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... appreciate she had managed to extricate herself from the lion—like embraces of Peter the Great—to what purpose? To perform an odious social duty; to waste a fair morning in simulating grief for the death of a woman whom she loathed like poison. Nobody would ever understand what a trial in altruism had been. Nobody, in fact, ever gave her credit for a grain of self-abnegation. And yet she was always trying to please people—denying herself this and that. How harshly ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... 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 ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... 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 ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... Chinese classics. Junna had less ability, but his admiration was not less profound for a 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in Delhi is one of about a dozen already discovered and preserved in North India. And it is, perhaps, the most fully inscribed of all that have been found. And of the fourteen Asokan edicts inscribed, most of them inculcate a high morality, and some of them a noble altruism. For instance, the first is a prohibition of the slaughter of animals for food or sacrifice. The second is the provision for medical aid for men and animals, and for plantations and wells on the roadside. The third is a command ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... 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 enough to hew a way through! And those of us that might lead a decent life on this ill-arranged ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... others, and make all things yield to him, or similar selfish aims, he shall, before all, seriously reflect on how he may use it to do good. For I am absolutely persuaded from what I know, that he who makes Altruism and the happiness of others a familiar thought to be coupled with every effort (even as a lamb is always painted with, or appointed unto, St. John), will be the most likely to succeed. There is something in moral conviction ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable ideas of God. There's the Unknowable Creative Principle—one believes in That. And there's the Sum of altruism in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... had failed to 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 ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... why even the most uncompromising Individualist must recognise an element of altruism, call it whatever name you will, Collectivism, Socialism, Communism, or merely the vague and long-suffering term, Democracy. One cannot assume Individualism for oneself unless one assumes it for the many. That is a great truth which goes to the heart of the whole complex problem of eugenics ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... 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 relations, and makes more feasible ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... man more quickly and completely recalled from altruism to his own affairs. Aldous dropped his companion's arm, straightened himself with a thrill of the whole being, and saw Marcella some distance ahead of them in the Mellor drive, which they had just entered. She was stooping over something ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which menace her. Yet it appears inevitable that her approaching transformation must be coincident with a moral decline. Forced into the vast industrial competition of nation's whose civilisations were never based on altruism, she must eventually develop those qualities of which the comparative absence made all the wonderful charm of her life. The national character must continue to harden, as it has begun to harden already. But it should ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... on the minister, but the lawyer cut it short: "Well, then, I don't really see why the trades-unions are not as business-like as the syndicates in their dealings with all those outside of themselves. Within themselves they practise an altruism of the highest order, but it is a tribal altruism; it is like that which prompts a Sioux to share his last mouthful with a starving Sioux, and to take the scalp of a starving Apache. How is it with your trades-unions in Altruria?" ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... it and drew from it consequences of general philosophy. Thus, to Spencer, the evolutionist theory contains no immorality. On the contrary, the progressive transformation of the human species is an ascent towards morality; from egoism is born altruism because the species, seeking its best law and its best condition of happiness, perceives a greater happiness in altruism; seeking its best law and its best condition of happiness, perceives that a greater happiness lies in order, regular life, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... clapped; and then he tried hard to arouse their altruism—to get them to donate to the strike out of their union funds. However, his speech came limp and a little stale. The applause was good-natured but feeble. Joe sat down, sighing, and ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... position and is resolved when and if he leaves the Woolsack to resume practice as a Junior. It is further rumoured that some of our judges intend to follow his august example. The atmosphere of the Bench is not always exhilarating, and the salary is fixed. But a self-effacing altruism doubtless also ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... that sort of courage—the courage in the open, I may say—but he had also a European mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision, a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky face, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose thoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... I said; "but consider other cases. Why does a surgeon get out of bed on a winter's night to do an emergency operation at a hospital? He doesn't get paid for it. Do you think it is altruism?" ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... the power that makes the world go 'round. The old Greeks 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 heart is seldom joyful. Therefore it should ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... or very faintly, in altruism. He had to sweep away affected and therefore erroneous suppositions with regard to morality, and particularly with regard to social motives. He had come back to Paris, after his long and irksome exile, with a terrible clear-sightedness, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the Settlement worker, dull color flooding her sallow skin, "for a man to turn his back on greed and gain and devote his life to altruism——" ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... a great deal more than mere social observances; they stand as the outward expression of some of the deepest springs of conduct, and none of the modern magic of philanthropy— altruism, culture, the freedom and good-fellowship of democracy, replaces them, because, in their spirit, manners belong ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... to a substantial peak of popularity to which he has since clung, with little apparent loss, by the exercise of methods somewhat but not greatly less romantic than those which first lifted him above the flood. He came during a moment of national expansiveness. Patriotism and jingoism, altruism and imperialism, passion and sentimentalism shook the temper which had been slowly stiffening since the Civil War. Now, with a rush of unaccustomed emotions, the national imagination sought out its own past, luxuriating in it, not ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... 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 ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... "H's," and I didn't notice the name of "Henry" standing out in heavy-leaded capitals. It must be an inadvertence, of course. They must have said something about me, as, for instance: "Especially to be remarked is the noble altruism of Lieut. Henry, who on more than one march has been observed to take his pack, containing all his worldly goods, off his back and to hand it without ostentation to some lucky driver of a limber, saying, 'Take it, my lad; your need is greater than mine.'" Or again, referring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... 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 becomes more manifold ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... it. Sunstar determined to replace the watch in the stranger's pocket. He did his best, but he was far more practised in removing than in replacing. The stranger—a hulking, cowardly brute—caught my brother with his hand in his pocket, and failed to grasp the altruism of his motives, and that is why poor Sunnie walks ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... there dwell in man an equally 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 effort). ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... indirect expression as this mothering impulse of protection. Aroused by the cry of a child in distress, or by the thought of the weakness, or need, or ill-treatment of any defenseless creature, this mother-father impulse is at the root of altruism, gratitude, love, pity, benevolence, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the hope that in time institutions and relationships will be regulated on principles of altruism. It is not apparent indeed that such regulations would yield even the present allowance of happiness incident to our own immature method of capturing what wealth we can without relation to social factors. As unfortunate ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... our sympathetic and sentimental age, recklessly eulogistic of altruism, hurry into self-sacrifice. Altruism in itself is worthless. That an act is unselfish can never justify its performance. He who would be a great giver must first be a great person. Our men, and still more our women, need as urgently the gospel ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... just after she had been naively telling me of her efforts to poison his mind against Sylvia while pretending to admire her! But I made allowances for Claire at this moment—realizing that the situation had been one to overstrain any woman's altruism. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... 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
... than the sentiment which one of his favourite writers, Thomas a Kempis, addresses to God: Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te. All education and all moral discipline should have but one object, to make altruism (a word of his own coming) predominate over egoism. If by this were only meant that egoism is bound, and should be taught, always to give way to the well-understood interests of enlarged altruism, no one who acknowledges any morality at all would object to the proposition. But ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... 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 ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... 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
... instinctive and yet awkward. His life was full of arrested half gestures of assistance. And even this prodigy of a big man in green, leaping the wall like a bright green grasshopper, did not paralyze that small altruism of his habits in such a matter as a lost hat. He was stepping forward to recover the green gentleman's head-gear, when he was struck rigid with a roar ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the soul that is noble altruism must, without doubt, be always the centre of gravity; but the weak soul is apt to lose itself in others, whereas it is in others that the strong soul discovers itself. Here we have the essential distinction. There is a thing that ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... better! To enjoy myself may be mere selfishness, but to enjoy another's enjoyment is the purest satisfaction, good for body and soul. I am cultivating altruism.' ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... you not; you must take your chances amid my flying missiles. My forces go their eternal round without variableness or shadow of turning, and woe to you if you cross their courses. You may bring all your gods with you—gods of love, mercy, gentleness, altruism; but I know them not. Your prayers will fall upon ears of stone, your appealing gesture upon eyes of stone, your cries for mercy upon hearts of stone. I shall be neither your enemy nor your friend. I shall be utterly indifferent to you. My floods will drown you, my winds wreck you, my ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of the future;" and we shudder at the 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
... look upon as undiscoverable, were bandied about like the merest commonplaces of education. The absurdity of individuality and the subjectivity of the emotions were alike insisted on without notice of the paradox, which to me appeared extreme. The Associates were altruistic for the sake of altruism, not for the sake of its beneficiaries. They were not pantheists, for they saw neither universal good nor God, but rather evil in all things—themselves included. Their talk, however, was brilliant, and, with allowance ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... 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 ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... churches, a library, and athletic grounds were the main features, with sundry miscellaneous accessories. This project was heralded far and wide as a notable achievement, a conspicuous example of the growing altruism of business. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... had all the statements that I can absorb. What's behind 'em? That's what I want to know. Wait, I tell you! Don't insult my intelligence any more by telling me it's altruism, high-minded unselfishness in behalf of the people! I have heard others and myself talk that line of punk to a finish. Are you going to run for ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... 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, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... 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 ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... idea will be 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 ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... use your critical faculties and make selections of what is best—and you must encourage common sense and distrust altruism. Sanity is the ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... equipment for human existence. Huxley, if I remember rightly, asserted in his nonage that science would even afford us a newer and more enlightened morality. But I have never heard any scientist repeat that doctrine; I have never heard any scientist claim that the altruism of the Sermon on the Mount or of Buddha had been superseded by the dry light of scientific conclusions. Physical science and its inventions have not obviously advanced the delicacy of sentiments or of ethical ideas. Chaucer's notion of a "parfit gentil knight," and his ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... practical ability to devise corrective reforms that commanded the attention and won the approval of the foremost statesmen and moralists of his time. True, he also had a vision of Utopia, and his flights of imaginative altruism frequently elevated him so far above the realities of this world, that the incorrigible frailties of human nature seemed to vanish from his calculations, but when the rude awakening came, he neither forsook the fight nor failed to profit ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... mistake, please," said Ruth. "It is no sacrifice. There's no unselfishness about it, no fine altruism. I'm staying because I want to. I'm happier here. Can't any of you understand that?" she asked. There was a quality in her voice that made us all glance at her sharply. There was a look in her eyes which reminded me of her as she had appeared in the suffrage parade. This sister of mine had evidently ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... Evidently, with these men and with these women, the ordinary balance of motives which prompt people is reversed; in the inward balance of the scale it is no longer selfishness which prevails against altruism, but the love of others which prevails against selfishness.—Let us look at one of their institutions just at the moment of its formation and see how the preponderance passes over from the egoistic to the social instinct. The first thing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of Comte, consisting of two parts, of positive 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 Kant's works. ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... to us on this side of the Atlantic, there are no courses at Oxford in Housekeeping, or in Salesmanship, or in Advertising, or on Comparative Religion, or on the influence of the Press. There are no lectures whatever on Human Behaviour, on Altruism, on Egotism, or on the Play of Wild Animals. Apparently, the Oxford student does not learn these things. This cuts him off from a great deal of the larger culture of our side of the Atlantic. "What are you studying this year?" I once asked a fourth year ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... up against the strongest common instinct in the world. What do you expect? That the man in the street should be a Quixote? That his love of country should express itself in philosophic altruism? What on earth do you expect? Men are very simple creatures; and Mob is just conglomerate ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... academic ideals of an untried young woman like herself was an unthinkable thing. The power of illusion failed for the moment. Just what was it that she had hoped to accomplish with this fling at executive altruism? What was she doing with a French cook in white uniform, a competent staff of professional dishwashers and waitresses and kitchen helpers? How had it come about that she owned so many mounds and heaps and pyramids of silver and metal and linen? What was this Inn that she had ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... when he is generous he likes to feel generous, and to have other people sympathize with him. It's only human nature. A man can't be thinking about himself all the time; he gets that tired feeling that your scientific people in these days call altruism. It is an inability to concentrate his mind on his own concerns. In spite of himself his thoughts wander off to other people's affairs, and he has an impulse to do them good. Now in my day it was the easiest thing in the world to do good. The only thing necessary ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... got the chance of going. It'll keep her happy for days!" Jenny, trying with all her might to set the affair straight and satisfy everybody, was appealing to his vanity to salve his vanity. Alf saw himself recorded as a public benefactor. He perceived the true sublimity of altruism. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... choice, either to let the boys organize themselves on the outside, under self-directed and therefore incompetent leadership, or to organize the boys on the inside of the church, provide a definite place for this organization, and so permeate the gang instinct with the spirit of Christian altruism. Every church organization for boys, the organized Bible class, the church club, and other church forms of organization, are aiming to do just this thing. The law of the boy's life is to associate with his fellows and the expression ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... if indeed such he may be called, represents the antithesis of the common offender, whose evil acts are the outcome of his ferocious and egotistical impulses, whereas criminals from passion are urged to violate the law by a pure spirit of altruism. In fact, they stand in no relation whatsoever to ordinary delinquents, and it is only by a legislative compromise that they are classed together. They represent the ultra-violet ray of the criminal spectrum, of which the vulgar criminal represents ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... and my mother was English. I think I was born without that sense of responsibility to a traditional or conventional standard which is called Conscience, and that sense of obligation to consider others as important as myself, which, I believe, they call Altruism. I do not know whether the lack of these senses had been manifest in my mother's family, but I am sure it had been in my father's. For generations it had been a law unto itself; none of its members had known any duty but the fulfilment of his desires; and I believe even that kind of outward ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... 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 and selfishness! Qualities purely ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... 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 reserves for executing painful acts are ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... felt it a great merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been rewarded, and they were ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... honestly. You came, you landed on these shores with an inspired idea—something magnificent, something worthy. You have substituted for it the time-worn methods of all the reformers since the days of Adam, who have parted with their principles and dabbled in sentimental altruism. Piecemeal legislation—what can ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a lesson for many sorts of people to-day. What they call altruism is no discovery of Christianity, but its practice is. I freely admit that there is much honest and self-sacrificing beneficence and benevolence which are not connected, in the men who practice them, with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... sublimation of the idea familiar to the religious mind, but he gives it a new and larger interpretation; for, in place of the written Word, beyond the social and civic obligation, greater than the accepted moralities, superseding the ecclesiastical virtues, wider than the overworked altruism of Christianity, is the complete ideal of Man, from his roughest force to ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Eskiminzin, one of the most blood-thirsty and vindictive of all the old Apache leaders. The Government fed these Apaches well during the winter in return for pledges they made to keep the peace. This was due to the altruism of some mistaken gentlemen in the councils of authority in the East, who knew nothing of conditions in the Territory and who wrongly believed that the word of an Apache Indian would hold good. We, who knew the Indian, understood differently, but we ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... 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. Bear in mind that Ensal claims to seek the highest good ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... necessary 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 of his keeping this rule. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is a man very much like the rest of us, and being such a man he is first of all desirous of conforming to whatever standards are in way of acceptance by that part of society in which he moves. Obviously, these standards are made up of both selfishness and altruism, with selfishness tending all the time to become more enlightened ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... 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 ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... based upon an assumed economic altruism were much more numerous than those founded primarily upon religion but, as they were recruited almost wholly from Americans, they need engage our attention only briefly. There were two groups of economic communistic experiments, similar in their general characteristics but differing in their origin. ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... N. disinterestedness &c adj.; generosity; liberality, liberalism; altruism; benevolence &c 906; elevation, loftiness of purpose, exaltation, magnanimity; chivalry, chivalrous spirit; heroism, sublimity. self-denial, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, self-immolation, self-control &c (resolution) 604; stoicism, devotion, martyrdom, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Opinions of Mr. Queed; also concerning Henry G. Surface, his Life and Deeds; of Fifi, the Landlady's Daughter, and how she happened to look up Altruism in the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fell upon it with whoops of joy and published portraits 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 ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... of 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
... then in the case of the components of Hydra. Yet all the many-celled organisms that we are so accustomed to regard as individuals are really communities, demonstrating the existence and partial antithesis of the great laws of egoism and altruism, which are traceable even down to ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... that it was on just this scene that his father and mother 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 ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... which always acted on her moral sense like an opiate, lulling it to sleep and preventing it from rising up and becoming critical. If he had stolen a watch and chain, he would somehow have succeeded in convincing her that he had acted for the best under the dictates of a benevolent altruism. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... seemed to be overthrown. There were teachers of immorality abroad, who published the old Epicurean doctrine, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." This teaching was accompanied by a spirit of cold-blooded egotism which extinguished every spark of Confucian altruism. Even the pretended disciples of Confucius confused the precepts of the Master, and by stripping them of their narrow significance rendered them nugatory. It was at this point that Mang-tsze, "Mang the philosopher," ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... this truism as an unfailing formula and expect to enter the golden gate of eternal life because of obedience to the letter of the pass-word, he would fail. Altruism is; it is not mere recognition of ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad |
