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Altruistic   Listen
adjective
Altruistic  adj.  Regardful of others; beneficent; unselfish; opposed to egoistic or selfish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Altruistic" Quotes from Famous Books



... a mistake, however, to assume that Russia's motives had been entirely or even largely altruistic. The powers had expressed the fear that a greater Bulgaria would gradually become part of the Russian Empire. There can be no doubt that Russia thought so too. All her later actions point to that fact. The only mistake, and this was shared by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... do it; he couldn't! But she cried, with great wet tears streaming down the smooth planes of her face. Didn't he love her? Wasn't this one little favor worth doing for the sake of her happiness? No one would be hurt by it. The motives were altruistic, after all. ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar

... has been the fate of the Yugoslavs—Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Bulgars—to live for centuries beside each other and be kept always, by foreign masters, isolated from each other. At rare intervals, as we shall see in following their history, a person has arisen who has tried, with altruistic or with selfish motives, to make some sort of union of the Yugoslavs. And now we will go back to the time when Slavs first wandered ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... state of being self-centered, self-conceited, and unduly self-confident; selfish as opposed to altruistic. ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... his Generals to dine with him there on the 12th of September. I hear that a doctor went into the Prince of Wales' Hotel to-day, and saw stuck up in the hall the words: "Das Seegefecht in der Nordsee" (in which of course we were victorious). He tore it down and stamped on it. An altruistic German waiter thinking to please the English guests had put the first sheet of the "Frankfurter Zeitung" in a prominent position to console them for the many defeats we are supposed to have had. John ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... you. It is always interesting to see that flower bud twice from the same stalk. However, one naturally defers to a lady, especially when one is very much in her way. Place aux dames, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You must admit that his was an altruistic soul. Well, she has her freedom—if only to barter it for a new bondage. Shall we drink to the happy future ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... Ben. He wanted to be alone. Like all dominating people who don't get their own way in an altruistic issue, his feelings were deeply wounded. He took his hat from the disapproving Tomes, and went out to the sea to think. He supposed he was going to think about David's future and the terrible blow his paper ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller

... definite impressions. It would be absurd to say that I suffered, either mentally or physically. I was sunk in a sort of stupor of rage, and my bonds did not hurt me so long as I kept quiet. Curiously enough, my thoughts were somewhat altruistic. Instead of speculating as to my own fate I rather wondered what would be the outcome of the whole mysterious business. I could not bring myself to believe that, cleverly as the rogues had outwitted me, they would be able to similarly dupe a strong body of Metropolitan ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... like children. And Doris, with her head on a strong man's shoulder, and a rough coat scrubbing her cheek, suddenly bethought her of the line—"Journeys end in lovers' meeting—" and was smitten with a secret wonder as to how much of her impulse to come north had been due to an altruistic concern for the Dunstable affairs, and how much to a firm determination to recapture Arthur from his Gloriana. But that doubt she would never reveal. It would ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... present civilization is most uncivilized in many respects, will be admitted by all whose range of consciousness has touched in any degree, the infinite areas of wisdom expressed in altruistic action. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... ideal government of her dreams would follow—must follow, since among the people's elected representatives was a goodly number of unselfish, single-minded men of her father's class of life; men of breeding and education, impelled by a lofty altruistic patriotism; men who gradually came to form a party presently to be known ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... that civilization which has been made possible by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the altruistic sentiments. Development of these has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy; and sympathy could become dominant ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... unselfish motives as the origin of warfare. It is safe to say that 99 per cent of all the slaughter wrought by civilization under the cloak of a desire to better bad conditions really has been evil. It is impossible to conceive of general betterment through general slaughter. There have been few altruistic wars." ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... interest, he had allowed his interest to prevail over his quixotry. Self-sacrifice appealed so keenly to his imagination that the inability to exercise it gave him a sense of disillusion. He was like the philanthropist who with altruistic motives builds model dwellings for the poor and finds that he has made a lucrative investment. He cannot prevent the satisfaction he feels in the ten per cent which rewards the bread he had cast upon the waters, but he has an awkward feeling that it detracts somewhat from the savour of his virtue. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... accompaniment, and a voice was heard singing, as if to the singer's self, 'Il balen del suo sorris'. It is hard to tell how far such little incidents affected her in what she did that afternoon; but they had their influence. She said: "You are altruistic—or are you selfish, or both? . . . And should the woman —if it were a woman—yield, and spare the man, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... brought emancipation was not in itself a deliberately planned altruistic movement, but was precipitated upon the country, and waged primarily in the interest of the solidarity of ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... succeed. In the long run, that particular applicant for a clerkship or any other work who may be the more fitted is the one who gets it. While the severity of competition may be somewhat mitigated as the result of social organization, and while our altruistic charitable institutions enable many to prolong a more or less efficient existence, the struggle for existence cannot be entirely done away with. Heredity also is a real human process, and it follows the same course as in animals at large; as in the case of variation, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... led to the conclusion that that achievement was, in the first instance, of an altruistic character—it was no question of advantages, temporal or spiritual, which should accrue to the Quester himself, but rather of definite benefits to be won for others, the freeing of a ruler and his land from ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... call it, shellabi kabir. Extremely beautiful. Beautiful upon a mountain. El Kudz means The City, and in a certain sense it is that, to unnumbered millions of people. Ludicrous, uproarious, dignified, pious, sinful, naively confidential, secretive, altruistic, realistic. Hoary-ancient and ultra-modern. Very, very proud of its name Jerusalem, which means City of Peace. Full to the brim with the malice of certainly fifty religions, fifty races, and five hundred thousand curious political chicaneries disguised as plans to save our souls ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... on the contrary, the highest amount of pleasure is connected with this final act in the sexual process. The sexual impulse now enters into the service of the function of propagation; it becomes, so to say, altruistic. If this transformation is to succeed its process must be adjusted to the original dispositions and all ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... becomes firmly established: Yama becomes an ethical judge. In the Brahmanas, Manu, and the Mahabharata, we find a sort of heaven for the virtuous and a hell for the vicious. While the academic thought of Brahmanism and the altruistic systems of Jainism and Buddhism looked to the absorption of the departed into the All, the popular Hindu faith held fast to the scheme of happiness and wretchedness in the future.[172] As in Dante's Divina Commedia, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... benevolence Van Buren longed to protect Valentia and Romer, and to give Miss Walmer all she wanted; but most of all his idea was to save Harry from himself, so he always accepted with alacrity invitations to the Green Gate for altruistic reasons. Besides, his desire to see Daphne, although she was now becoming more and more remote to him, was still persistent, if ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... of only two companies that make top quality life extension vitamin supplement formulas. One is Prolongevity (Life Extension Foundation), the other, Vitamin Research Products. I prefer to support what I view as the altruistic motives behind Prolongevity and buy my products from them. Unfortunately, these vitamin compounders can not put every possibly beneficial substance in a single bottle of tablets. The main reason they do not is fear of the power-grabbing Food and ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... would be kinder to say a non-social feeling. Your home-loving person comes in the course of time to that state of mind where little else is of importance; the home becomes the only place where his sympathies and his altruistic purposes find any real outlet. The capitalist of the stage (and of real life too) is one so devoted to his home and family that he decorates one and the other with the trophies of other homes. There is none so devoted ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... Countess Loschek worked herself to quite as great a fury as if her motives had been purely altruistic, and not ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the commonest sources of mental and moral confusion is to mistake the egotistic shrinking from the sight of suffering with the altruistic shrinking from causing it ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... admission to the club-house of the exclusive Circle of Friends of Humanity; but Lanyard's knock secured him prompt and unquestioned right of way. The unfortunate fact is, he was a member in the best of standing; for this society of pseudo-altruistic aims was nothing more nor less than one of those several private gambling clubs of Paris which the French Government tolerates more or less openly, despite adequate restrictive legislation; and gambling was Lanyard's ruling passion—a legacy ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... He had taken lately so to labeling her small conventionalities. "Why accuse Mr. Farraday of altruistic insincerity? I think his description sounds delightful. Let's go tomorrow and ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... exemplary, conscientious, sterling, meritorious, saintly, guileless; humane, altruistic, philanthropic, benevolent, indulgent; desirable, excellent, expedient, commendable, beneficial, auspicious, propitious, favorable; clever, dexterous, competent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... he brought to the consideration of the subject, returned to him with a little more intense faith. The philosophical drift in the mores of our time is towards state regulation, militarism, imperialism, towards petting and flattering the poor and laboring classes, and in favor of whatever is altruistic and humanitarian. What man of us ever gets out of his adopted attitude, for or against these now ruling tendencies, so that he forms judgments, not by his ruling interest or conviction, but by the supposed impact of demographic data on an empty brain. We have ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... out of employment, is young, agile, a talker, a poser, sharp enough to be capable of anything in reason except honesty or altruistic considerations of any kind. The woman is a commonplace old bundle of poverty and hard-worn humanity. She looks sixty and probably is forty-five. If they were rich people, gloved and muffed and well wrapped up in furs and overcoats, ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... gospel which makes the welfare of the individual central does not grip the conscience and arouse the emotions as once it did. For the conception of human welfare as social rather than individual has become common; that "great fund of altruistic feeling," which, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd tells us, is the motive power of all our social reforms, is constantly stirring in human hearts; and although there are few whose lives are wholly ruled by this motive, there are fewer still who do ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... that I may be refreshed!" The amateurs who send their work for inspection cannot as a rule bear to face this fact. They constantly say that they wish to do good, or to communicate enjoyment and pleasure. To be honest, I do not much believe that the motive of the artist is altruistic. He writes for his own enjoyment, perhaps, but he publishes that his skill and power of presentment may be recognised and applauded. In FitzGerald's Letters there is a delightful story of a parrot who had one accomplishment—that ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... SOLUTION OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS... Why should we be altruistic? What is the exact meaning of selfishness and unselfishness? Are altruistic impulses always right? What mental and moral obstacles hinder altruistic action? How can ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... to the danger from below, from the unskilled whom the employer may break into their jobs in case of strikes. They therefore favor taking the unskilled into the organization. Their industrialism is consequently caused perhaps more by their own trade consideration than by an altruistic desire to uplift the unskilled, although they realize that the organization of the unskilled is required by the broader interests of the wage-earning class. However, their long experience in matters of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... owe my first clear apprehension of the gradual evolution of the preservative and altruistic elements in nature, arising from the struggle for existence, to a sermon of Dr. Abbott's called The Manifestation of the Son of God, now, I fear, out of print. Of course Darwin recognized these factors as ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... difference grew more marked at their subsequent sessions over it. There had been about the songs the glamour of discovery. One does not hasten to apply the assayer's acid to treasure trove. And, too, it was an altruistic impulse which had prompted her to take ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... I read, the old magic enfolds me, and I am seized with longing to turn myself into a society of collectors and to implore the altruistic dealer "kindly please" to send me, at a prodigious "abatement," "stamps and whole things ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... are curiously blended," remarks Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 139), "when, with one's own desire unsatisfied, one sees the satisfaction of another; and here we may see the altruistic stage beginning; this has two sides, the fear of causing desire in others, and the fear of causing disgust; in each case, personal isolation is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... revive in herself the old crusading flame—the hot unquestioning belief in Women's Rights and Women's Wrongs—the angry contempt for men as a race of coarse and hypocritical oppressors, which Gertrude had taught her. In vain. She sat there, with these altruistic loves and hates—premature, artificial things!—drooping away; conscious only, nakedly conscious, of the thirst for individual happiness, personal joy—ashamed of it too, in her bewildered youth!—not knowing that she ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... levels of government that look after the citizens' desires and wellbeing. It depends on laws to back it up, and on institutions and programs established by law. These are the only machinery by which it can be adequately stimulated, unless we assume that all waste producers are altruistic to a point of self-sacrifice, an assumption ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... like every other country, has witnessed during the last decades, it is not surprising to find a great many 'Modern' members of the Netherlands 'Hervormde Kerk' joining the Remonstrant fraternity, which affords absolute liberty as regards dogma and confession, and at the same time satisfies their altruistic inclinations. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... or not, we have in the person of John Gabriel Borkman a prominent example of the ninteenth century type of criminous speculator, in whom the vastness of view and the splendidly altruistic audacity present themselves as elements which render it exceedingly difficult to say how far the malefactor is morally responsible for his crime. He has imagined, and to a certain point has carried out, a monster metal "trust," for the success of which he lacks neither courage nor knowledge ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... health of that luckiest of young men, Lieutenant von Inster. "Old England forever!" he exclaimed, bowing over his glass to me, "The England that raises such fair flowers and allows Germany to pluck them. Long may she continue these altruistic activities. Long may the homes of Germany be decorated with England's ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... of these details of technique is the need of helping the student to clarify his thinking by engaging in some practical moral endeavor. The broadening and deepening of the altruistic interests is a familiar feature of adolescent life. The instructor in ethics, in the very interest of his own subject, is the one who should take the lead in encouraging these expressions, not only because of the general obligation of the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... from one small face to the other. He smiled grimly. They could see nothing but the humanness of a situation, the need existing. Going against all precedent meant nothing to them; they simply followed ridiculous altruistic impulses. Only in their minds was the knowledge that other people were suffering; and the immediate necessity ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... a good augury of better days, let us hope, when the intelligent, broad-minded women of Georgia, spurning the incendiary advice of that human firebrand who would lynch a thousand Negroes a month, are willing to join in this great altruistic movement of the age and endeavor to lift up the degraded and ignorant, rather than to exterminate them. Your proposition implies that they may be uplifted and further, imports a tacit confession that if you had done your duty to them at the close of ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... persons, and therefore more worthy of recognition, encouragement, and admiration. As the Child grows in years this sentiment is gradually and unconsciously modified, but it is never wholly eradicated. The inward emotion aroused in his heart by parental solicitude becomes partially altruistic and outward and is transmuted ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... to others or to the community. It is very often the same child that at one time glories in successful emulation under the encouragement of our approval, and that later fails to develop the germs of altruistic ideals because we fail to recognize, or at least to encourage, them. We cannot expect from the schools an early change of emphasis from the competitive type of ambition to the ideal of cooperation or service, although the ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... These altruistic reflections, however, have somewhat drifted us away from the matter under consideration, so that it becomes necessary to revert again to the main subject. Now, even at the risk of being regarded as wearisome, I propose to consider somewhat fully the different steps ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... length and purity of his pedigree, as in England; but in Hawaii he entered with full heart of sympathy into all of man's enterprises, and at his death bequeathed his body a sacrifice to men and gods. It was fitting that the Hawaiian poet should celebrate the dog and his altogether virtuous and altruistic services to mankind. The hula ilio may be considered as part of Hawaii's tribute to man's most faithful ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... Magin. "You administer them purely on altruistic principles, for their own good and that of the world at large—like the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... invariably sought to justify their moral and political theories upon a conception, if not a definition, of the nature of man. Aristotle, in his Politics and Hobbes in his Leviathan, to refer to two classics, offer widely divergent interpretations of human nature. Aristotle emphasized man's altruistic traits, Hobbes stressed his egoistic disposition. These opposite conceptions of human behavior are explicit and in each case presented with a display of evidence. Yet students soon realize that neither philosopher, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... mission builders are seen as philanthropists who selected human materials as gross as the mud from which they made the adobe brick, and from these built up a civilization that was more wonderful than all the mission-edifices which remain as monuments to their altruistic efforts. ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... the true basis of any given combination of their interests? Stirner says nothing about it, and he can say nothing definite since from the abstract heights on which he stands, one cannot see clearly economic reality, the mother and nurse of all the "Egos," egoistic or altruistic. Nor is it surprising that he is not able to explain clearly even this idea of the class struggle, of which he nevertheless had a happy inkling. The "poor" must combat the "rich." And after, when they have conquered these? Then every one of the former "poor," like every one of ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... explanation that occurred to her was that Steve had gone suddenly mad. He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said that he had taken away William Bannister, but ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... to acquire the habits which generally bring praise and blame; and ultimately these qualities become attractive for their own sake. The difficulty is to see where the line is crossed which divides truly moral or altruistic conduct from mere prudence. Admitting that association may impel us to conduct which involves self-sacrifice, we may still ask whether such conduct is reasonable. Association produces belief in error as well ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... many beds as possible were crowded into it, and the maximum number of men per bed were lodged. Either because their own rents were high or because they were unable to withstand the temptation of the sudden, and, for all they knew, temporary harvest, or perhaps because of the altruistic desire to assist their race fellows, a majority of the negroes in Pittsburgh converted their homes into ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... the weakest of us must come a sense of futility in those moments when we awaken from our sloth and hear the distant din of the battle. I thought of medicine, of all professions in itself the most altruistic, and then I found myself face to face with that distressing commonplace, the need of money, for though my father was accounted a rich man in the valley, his wealth was proportioned to the valley standards. A commercial life alone seemed left to me, and then I remembered ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... Basil Sequin swept up the broad steps at Thornwood, she congratulated herself upon a duty about to be accomplished. She had not foregone a bridge luncheon to make this tiresome trip to the country for purely altruistic reasons. She had come to prove to herself, and to her circle, the bond of friendship that existed between her and her distinguished cousin. Experience had taught her that an occasional reference to "my favorite ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... prudential maxims or rules which teach how to live rightly and to lift us above the tribulations and defeat of life. (4) Does the author think seeking pleasure is the real business of life? (5) Does he deny the value of altruistic service? (6) Does he believe in the future life and in ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... has long been the cry of sentimentalists that no living being should die in order that man might exist. Unfortunately for such theories, the stern and unbending edict of nature has negatived views of this kind ages before the altruistic philosopher came on the scene, and we are daily constrained to bow to this mandate of one of the primal laws of existence. However much we might desire it otherwise, it has been written that "only in death is there life;" nor may any ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... the Rancho Palomar," Miguel Farrel suggested, presently. "I dare say your purchase of this mortgage was not the mere outgrowth of an altruistic desire to relieve the First National Bank of El Toro of an annoyance and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... scale. This gives his productions a peculiar psychological value, though it cannot be denied also a morbid tinge that makes them often repellent. However, it is well to remember that nature is neither good nor bad, neither altruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the human psyche as well as through crystals and plants and animals with the ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... adduce, adhesive, adipose, adjudicate, adolescence, adulation, adulterate, advent, adventitious, aerial, affability, affidavit, affiliate, affinity, agglomerate, agglutinate, aggrandizement, agnostic, alignment, aliment, allegorical, alleviate, altercation, altruistic, amalgamate, amatory, ambiguity, ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of this mighty Twentieth Century altruistic movement is sure to be something in kind and in degree akin to Mr. White's 'A ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... now diluted form of it leaves me cold. Take for example the book that has occasioned this complaint, The Curious Friends (ALLEN AND UNWIN), an unconventional and perhaps just a little silly tale about a secret association of children and grownups, pledged to mutual help and a variety of altruistic aims—a scheme, with all its faults, at least human and understandable. But Miss C.J. DELAGREVE has chosen to complicate it by (apparently) a dash of the supernatural, in the person of a character ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... better. The word reform never passed the Russians' lips. It is the insistent cry of Japan. The welfare of the Korean people never showed its head above the Russian horizon, but it fills the whole vision of Japan; not from altruistic motives mainly but because the prosperity of Korea and that of Japan rise and fall with ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... matter of suicides, as in that of remorse, we were too "spectacular and altruistic"; that we lived in a rather unwholesome atmosphere of self-created and foolish ideas concerning honour and duty; that the Mektoub practice of the Arabs pointed to an underlying primitive sanity which we would do well to ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... any form, and in any degree, at any age prior to full maturity is a perversion of the primal instinct of race perpetuation. The practice has a more intimate and a more personal association with growing boys, however, than a merely altruistic reference. Any indulgence of this character at this time is physically and mentally injurious. No boy can hope ever to acquire the full measure of his possible development as an efficient working or thinking machine if he ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... one side of Eudoxia Pence—Eudoxia gorgeous, affluent, worldly. Never had she disclosed herself at a further remove from all that was earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic, altruistic. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... I went out among them consuming with fine altruistic zeal. A woman with a starving child in her arms begged of me in the plaza. Instantly my purse was out, and instantly I was mobbed by the howling, filthy crowd. My purse was almost torn out of my hand, my hat was knocked ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... a frightening picture," complained the skipper ironically. "First you say we have to fight him and his kind, and then you imply that he was highly altruistic. What is ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... kind of experiences to which I shall subject the lad, and in what order, or logical (and especially psychological) sequence. I begin, then, with aspects that are literal, objective, more or less cynical, and brutal, and philistine. A little at a time I introduce the subjective, the refined, the altruistic; and, by a to-and-fro increasingly intense rhythm of these two opposing themes, worked so to speak in counterpoint, I reach a preliminary climax: of brutality tempered by a longing for ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... thus to be interpreted, it seems to me. She says, 'The vices of the world's nobler half in this day are feminine.' We have to guard against 'half-conceptions of wisdom, hysterical goodness, an impatient charity'—against the elementary state of the altruistic virtues, distinguishable as the sickness and writhings of our egoism to cast its first slough. Idea is there. The funny part of it is our finding it in books of fiction composed for payment. Manifestly this lady ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the powers, for it gives four eyes, four hands and two minds with but one aim. And in this it does not simply multiply by two, but the blended powers are far more than two times one. It calls into activity all the gracious, artistic and altruistic powers of the soul. Surely these are gifts for which we may well forego some material comforts, may well work, ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... expressed in conversation and in his books, drew him into communication with a very large number of persons. It cannot be said, however, in this age marked by altruisms, that he was altruistic; on the contrary, he loved himself, and made himself his prime study—but as a member of the human race, he had his own purposes to fulfill, his own self-appointed tasks, and he preferred to take men only on ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... not merely of Owen and his followers, but those of all social reformers and visionaries—Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and others. By an easy transition, it soon came into general use as designating all altruistic visions, theories, and experiments, from the "Republic" of Plato ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... Americans the duty of self-culture, self-reliance, thrift, and the value of practical common sense. He was the first of our writers to show a balanced sense of humor and to use it as an agent in impressing truth on unwilling listeners. He is an equally great apostle of the practical and the altruistic, although he lacked the higher spirituality of the old Puritans and of the Quaker, John Woolman. This age is marked by a comparative decline in the influence of the clergy. Not a single clerical name appears on the list ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... shrewdest delegates in Paris, a man who allowed himself to be breathed upon freely by the old spirit of nationalism, but was capable withal of appreciating the passionate enthusiasm of others for a more altruistic dispensation, addressed me one evening as follows: "Say what you will, the Secret Council is a Council of Two, and the Covenant a charter conferred upon the English-speaking peoples for the government of the world. The design—if it ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... of the Jew, but with an errant philosophy which led him to believe first one thing and then another so long as neither interfered definitely with his business. He was an admirer of Henry George and of so altruistic a programme as that of Robert Owen, and, also, in his way, a social snob. And yet he had married Susetta Osborn, a Texas girl who was once his bookkeeper. Mrs. Platow was lithe, amiable, subtle, with an eye always to the main social chance—in other words, a climber. She ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... entitled to demand from Commerce that it should co-operate sincerely with the other elements in the State in pursuing the real objects of civilisation, inspired by an altruistic regard for the whole of which it is a part, that is by what is really "enlightened self-interest"; by what Plato has called Temperance[29] and Mr. H. G. Wells "a sense of the State."[30] We find instead that the trader has "day and night held on indignantly" in his disastrous hunt for markets, destroying ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... The egoism of these ideas is obvious. Wherein do the constructive factors lie? Simply in this: this expansiveness could easily be formulated directly. But he does not do so. His ideas include two objective and potentially altruistic interests his lodge and his race. He is interested in them; in fact one can probably say that it is just in so far as he is insane that the selfish determination for ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... knows you have far too much to do; but in this juncture I should count it worth your while to pay him some attention. I want him to get the President's ideas about Mexico, good and firm and hard. They are so far from altruistic in their politics here that it would be a good piece of work to get our ideas and aims into this man's head. His going gives you and the President and everybody a capital chance to help me ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... the altruistic scope of the unsigned agreement entered into by the three parties of the Triple Entente; and it only remained to get ready for the day when the matter could be brought to issue. The murder of the Archduke ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... open to us, one beginning at the bottom and one beginning at the top. The latter is the more orderly way, the former is being tried in Russia. If our reform should begin at the top it will require a social vision and an altruistic fervour of a sincerity and intensity which is ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... nor Abner Withers would spend one copper penny for any such altruistic reason as this man has given you, Whitley. Their motive is strictly selfish and personal. They are either afraid that I may go back to Glendale and try to expose them; or that I may take the shorter and surer way of balancing the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... object not only of their jealousy but also of the Pope's. A few months before the death of Henry VII., these four combined in the League of Cambrai, for the dismemberment of Venice. The allies, however, were not guided in their actions by any altruistic motives—any excessive regard for the interests of their associates. The French King, Lewis XII., by prompt and skilful action, made himself master of the north of Italy before the rest were ready to move. This was by no means ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... agnostic climate is a highly dubious proposition. We can only say that available experience seems to be against it. The Christian morality implies the Christian religion which has created it; as for the {180} high-minded, altruistic individual agnostic, he must simply be pronounced ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... briefs of lawyers, into the confidence of clergymen, into the papers and divorce courts, and that receive their final flaying or canonization on the stage and in novels of the time. Sitting at a distance, she had within recent years studied in a kind of altruistic absorption how the nation's press, the nation's science of medicine, the nation's science of law, the nation's practice of religion, and the nation's imaginative literature were all at work with the same national omen—the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... listening with devoted attention to each other's words; contacting, as it were, each other's inner nature, rather than obeying the merely animal urge of procreation. And above all, in the common aim of altruistic thoughtfulness for the little lives which their ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... possessions and power simply for himself. In the child this impulse is perfectly natural. In the normally developed individual, during the years of early adolescence (the years of 14 to 16) the social and altruistic impulses begin to develop and to take the place of those which are purely egoistic or selfish. When the fully developed man fails, as did Jacob, to leave behind childish things and retains the ambitions and impulses of the ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... act on the Board, Riviere had made an altruistic decision. But now the same problem confronted him again in a different guise. If he remained silent, the scheme would in all probability be floated in his name to a successful issue. If he remained silent, he would be betraying ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... sweating system," the unemployed, the pauper class, the natural products of the working of a system of competition where the competitors start from widely different lines of opportunity, can never be solved by the private play of enlightened self-interest, unless that enlightenment take a far more altruistic form than is consistent with the continuance of competitive industry. This is the fundamental paralogism of that school of reformers who find the cure of industrial maladies in the humanisation of the private ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... suggest that in the prospectus," said Gorman. "Our company, if we ever get it started, must be humanitarian, altruistic; I'm not sure that it ought not to be a little religious—mission of civilization. That's the ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... No doubt a fancied affinity with Tom Pinch through their common love of music made him like that most sentimental and improbable personage, whom he would have disowned and laughed to scorn if he had met him in life; but it was a purely altruistic sympathy that he felt with Little Nell and her grandfather. He was fond of reading the pathetic passages from both books, and I can still hear his rich, vibrant voice as it lingered in tremulous emotion on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "we'll leave Weston out. I'm not sure about what he believes in, and it's probable that, he doesn't know himself, except that it's everything as it used to be. His wife was High Church, with altruistic notions, and it's no secret that she made things rather uncomfortable for her husband; but when she took the lad in hand she succeeded perhaps too well. You see, he wanted to apply her principles; and altruism leads ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... the common good, so I regarded special knowledge and special culture as means for advancing the culture of all. It is said to be human nature when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that altruistic ideas should also be cultivated. We see that in China an aristocracy of letters—for it is through passing difficult examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are appointed—is no protection to the poor and ignorant from oppression ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... sure that a good half of his hearers began to think that, after all, there was "something in it." Visions of a carboniferous millennium, when there would be no more strikes and hardly any accidents, and altruistic colliers would hew their hardest to get cheap and abundant coal for the community, floated before the mind's eye as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various

... Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was perhaps Hellenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely perfection. And Zoroastrian ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... very much like the arrangement between Maecenas and Horace, or Voltaire and Frederick the Great. The patron is a man who patronizes—he wants something, and the particular thing that Dionysius wanted was to have Plato hold a colored light upon the performances of His Altruistic, Beneficent, Royal Jackanapes. But Plato was a simple, honest and direct man: he had caught the habit ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... epitomizing of the proletary's case; and he knew that his opinion was shared with complete unanimity by all who had known Griswold in Printing House Square. To a man they agreed in calling him Utopian, altruistic, visionary. What milder epithets should be applied to one who, with sufficient literary talent—not to say genius—to make himself a working name in the ordinary way, must needs run amuck among the theories and write a novel with a purpose? ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... contained any record of my own personal experiences. The satire was suggested by the work of an author whose sincerity I do not doubt, and for whose motives I have the highest respect, in order to point out what appears to me the defective morality, from an altruistic and practical point of view, of a system of which he is the principal exponent in this country, and which, under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, still seems to possess some fascination for a ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... imagination. Two of 'America's Leading Banjoists' charmed me next, for, after all, there is nothing like the banjo. If one does not one's self rejoice in its plunking, there are others who do, and that is enough for my altruistic spirit. Besides, it is America's leading instrument, and those who excel upon it appeal to the patriotism which is never really dormant in us. Its close association with color in our civilization seemed to render it the fitting prelude of the next act, which ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... Francisco to his father that evening. "But we mustn't underrate him as you said. The fellow has force. He knows the way to stir up human passion and he'll use his knowledge to the full. Also he knows equity and law. Some of his ideas are altruistic." ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... I have only half my faculties to appreciate the exquisite colors, and so a third influence has to come in—the meaning of the artist who painted them and perhaps put into them his soul. But that is altruistic—I could as well admire something of very bad art for the same reason. For me a picture should satisfy each of these points of view to be perfect and lift me into heights. That is why perhaps I shall prefer sculpture on the whole, when I shall ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... headquarters, and spreading a carpet or piece of cloth on the ground, proceeded to harangue the populace. Big words, marvellous tales, praise of their own distinguished ancestry, enumeration of the wonderful cures wrought by themselves, statements of their purely altruistic motives and benevolent designs, and of their contempt for filthy lucre, these were characteristic features of their discourses, which preceded the exhibition ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... subordinate self displayed in this letter was very characteristic of its author. He was by nature altruistic, and this propensity was intensified by his career at Dulwich and his experience of athletics, both influences tending to merge the individual in the whole and to subordinate self to the side. Death he had never feared, and he dreaded it less than ever after his experience of campaigning. His ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... Hankow. In this direction, however, his aptitudes were no more spontaneous than they were for the life of cultivated taste. Henry Guion's need struck him, therefore, as an opportunity. If he took other views of it besides, if it made to him an appeal totally different from the altruistic, he was able to conceal the fact—from himself, at any rate—in the depths of a soul where much that was vital to the man was always held in subliminal darkness. It disturbed him, then, to have Drusilla Fane rifle this sanctuary with irreverent persistency, dragging ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... debonair club man returned to Shirley's face, as he twitted back: "Purely an altruistic inquiry, Dick. I feared that you might be risking your own heart and the modicum of freedom which you still possess. But I'll wager a supper-party for four that I'll find out who she is, without either you or ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... altruistic ever to come in our lifetime; but, do you know, I am awfully optimistic about it. I really believe it will come so quickly, after it once gets a good start, that it will astound us. The proverbial snowball coming ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... primary one, because the initial functions which the old Adam exclusively represented remain imbedded in the new life, and are its physical basis. If the nutritive soul ceased to operate, the reproductive soul could never arise; to be altruistic we must first be, and spiritual interests can never abolish or cancel the material existence on which they are grafted. The consequence is that death, even when circumvented by reproduction and relieved by surviving impersonal interests, remains an essential evil. It may ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... heartrending performance continued until it was stopped by Wallace Banks, the altruistic and perspiring youth who had charge of the subscription-list for the party, and the consequent collection of assessments. This entitled Wallace to look haggard and to act as master of ceremonies. He ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... of hospitals, orphan asylums, institutions of learning and of art and many other altruistic enterprises depends largely upon the voluntary taxation, aggregating a great many millions annually, to which those men in America who have attained financial success have always willingly submitted themselves—more so, probably than ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn

... who, from a false altruistic standpoint, insist that the insane criminal requires no different treatment from that which the ordinary insane patient does. This is very true in the case of prisoners who develop mental disorders which have no relation to crime ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... higher birth. Animals know nothing of it; savages and the lower types of man ignore it. We ascribe a divine source to it when we pray God to have mercy on us; we do not ask Him to love us. All higher religions enjoin it. Mercy is love purified from self, or wholly altruistic. It is a man loving another not because of blood relationship, or because of expected benefits, or even because of benefits bestowed, but on the simple ground that he is his human brother, child of the same Divine Father. It is purer than the racial feeling, and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... were probably not moved by any altruistic sentiments in the matter, and their sole reason for action may have been to see that German subjects should not be excluded from Moroccan markets. It may also be that Germany was resolved that if there was to be a seizure of Morocco she should get her share of the territory ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... of all a charming romance, distinguished by a fine sentiment of loyalty to an ideal, by physical courage, indomitable resolution to carry to success an altruistic undertaking, a splendid woman's devotion, and by a vein of spontaneous, sparkling humor that offsets its more serious ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... veiled. It appears again in the utterly irrational conversion and purification of these characters, and we may further face it in the profound cynicism, all the more terrible because apparently unconscious, with which the author is content to dismiss Thenot, cured of his altruistic devotion by the shattering at one blow of all that he held most sacred ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... there is a delightful study of a lesson on "Rates" to young citizens with the altruistic text, "All for Each, Each for All." "Citizen Carrots," a tired newspaper boy up every morning at five, is revealed as responding with great enthusiasm to this interesting lesson which commences with a drawing on a blackboard of ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... properly not a childish trait at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with ideals of unselfishness. We must find much in the child to appeal to, even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning. "Help him because he helped you," or "Give her some ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... said she; "that I've never been much of a daughter to you. Well, neither have you been much of a father to me. Ever since I was born and my unknown mother—lucky soul!—died, you've been obsessed by an idea which, lofty and altruistic as you may have considered it, has rendered you self-centered, cold and inconsiderate of your own flesh and blood. Then there's that devilish temper of yours to contend with. I couldn't stand the life here. I wandered ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... be an altruistic festival. Then, if ever, we allow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts and good wishes. Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes a temporary fashion. And we find—do we not?—the indulgence of the feeling so remunerative that we wish there ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... fails to provide a high ideal for life, and to release man from sordid motives. It gives no place for love, for work for its own sake, for altruistic conduct, or for devotion to the high ideals of life. The aim of life is limited to this world—man has but to aim at the enjoyment and preservation of his own life. The mechanical explanation of life, too, does away with the possibility ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... a series of booklets, commencing with "The Greatest Thing in the World," intended to expound and commend the first principles of the Christian faith; his last work except one, published posthumously, entitled the "Ideal Life," was the "Ascent of Man," in which he posits an altruistic element in the process of evolution, and makes the goal of it a higher and higher ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... have supplanted. According to Geddes and Foster and others of their school, it is the species-subserving qualities that Nature selects; and these, in the higher grades of life, are equivalent to the altruistic, social, and ethical qualities. It is in virtue of the parental and maternal instincts of self-sacrifice, self-diffusion, self-forgetfulness in the interests of the offspring, that species are preserved and prevail. Selfish egoism leads eventually ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... of course, another side to all this: the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the lust for ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... while the babies themselves are on the average of better quality.[20] Thus the limitation of offspring, far from being an egoistic measure, as some have foolishly supposed, is imperatively demanded in the altruistic interests of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... the Newyorcon could be complete without a deep bow of appreciation to the altruistic trio of committeemen (including one comely woman) who all but destroyed themselves engineering the Convention: David A. Kyle, Ruth Landis ...
— Out of This World Convention • Forrest James Ackerman

... is to be found in a monarchy. "A Republic," says Schopenhauer, "is a land that is ruled by the many—that is to say, by the incompetent." But Schopenhauer, of course, knew nothing of the American primary, devised by altruistic Hibernians for the purpose ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... under no such altruistic delusions. She envied her cousin. She envied her money, her freedom, and her frank happiness. She had often pondered about the ways of Japanese husbands and wives; and the more she thought over the subject, the more she envied Asako her happy married life. She envied her with a woman's ...
— Kimono • John Paris



Words linked to "Altruistic" :   unselfish, altruist, selfless, egoistic



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