"Egoist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about her: I saw led up and presented among others the man who was to be, for a few months, her husband: and then, as the men bowed, pencilling on their programmes, over their shoulders I saw her eyes travel to an awkward young naval cadet (Do you remember Crossjay in Meredith's "The Egoist"? It was just such a boy) who sat abashed and glowering sulkily beside me on the far bench. Promptly with a laugh, she advanced, claimed him, and swept him off into ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... cut short. Esperance's clear voice broke in, "I do not wish to hear you speak in this manner of my father, godfather," she said coldly. "My father lives for my mother and me. He is good and generous. It is you who are the egoist, godfather!" ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... to assign an exaggerated importance to personal affairs develops egoism, the avowed enemy of poise. An egoist necessarily assumes that the rest of the world attributes to his acts the importance ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... "figulus'' gives evidence about another. Esprit de corps and jealousy pull the truth with frightful force, this way and that, and the picture becomes the more distorted because so-called esprit de corps is nothing more than generalized selfishness. Kant[1] is not saying enough when he says that the egoist is a person who always tries to push his own *I forward and to make it the chief object of his own and of everybody else's attention. For the person who merely seeks attention is only conceited; the egoist, however, seeks his own advantage ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... scarcely read and write; but in spite of his external clumsiness and coarseness, he was shrewd and cunning, and even, on occasion, capable of sharp practice, like many Little Russians. He was a fearful egoist, obstinate as an ox, and in general exceedingly impolite, especially with strangers; I even detected in him something like a contempt for the whole human race. He indulged himself in every caprice, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... that is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded and ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... he said, when at last the door was closed, "there's a great deal of sound common sense in what you say. I may be an egoist—I dare say I am. I've been through the proper training for it, and I've started life again on a pretty one-sided basis, perhaps. But—have ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I think of nothing but myself— I am a dreadful egoist. But what has made you turn so philosophical ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... you and always thought of myself as older than you. That's all nonsense.... You are not to blame for being older or for my being younger, or that I might be able to love some one else if I were free; but because you are a difficult person, an egoist, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... read. "Self-love is the Love of a man's own Self, and of everything else, for his own Sake": so begins his terrible analysis of human motives, and no man escapes from a perusal of it without recognition of himself, just as there is no escape from Meredith's Egoist. All of us move darkly in that awful abyss of Self, and as the fourth Maxim says, "When a Man hath travelled never so far, and discovered never so much in the world of Self-love, yet still the Terra Incognita will take up a considerable part ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... pain; and so by degrees schooled himself to hide his feelings, and learned to take sanctuary in his inmost self. Many superficial persons interpret this conduct by the short word "selfishness;" and, indeed, the resemblance between the egoist and the solitary human creature is strong enough to seem to justify the harsher verdict; and this is especially true in Paris, where nobody observes others closely, where all things pass swift as waves, and last as little as ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... was taken. Another turn of the page and Annie saw herself—an unkind vision, at her most set, hard of hair and jaw, with deep eye-sockets. She admired it for the black gown and the lace handkerchief she was holding; but she was interested in it, too, as the true egoist always is in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... through just that vein of conversation, half sentimentalising, half sensible, all profligate, which seldom fails to win the ear of a man both of imagination and of the world. "I will not; and, to vary the topic, I will turn egoist, and tell ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now our attention on the domestic life of the women. And first we must examine more carefully the exact conditions that we may suppose to have existed in these hostile groups. The father is the tyrant of the band—an egoist. Any protection he affords the family is in his own interests, he is chief much more than father. His sons he drives away as soon as they are old enough to give him any trouble; his daughters he adds to his harem. We may conceive that the domination of his sexual jealousy ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... that the author of "Celibates" is always expressing himself does not at all mean that he is recording merely his private sensations, emotions, and moods. Egoist as he is, George Moore could not write his autobiography. He tried to do this lately in "Ave," "Vale," and "Salve," and failed—failed captivatingly. He is always most himself when he is dealing with what is not himself—with skies and hills and ocean and gardens and men ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... of the girl he loves, and to go on loving her, even to the point of removing the obstacles to her marriage with another man, and so forth. Such is the hero of "Crime and Punishment"; such is Prince Myshkinh in "The Idiot," and so on; (2) The rapacious type, the type of the egoist, brimming over with passion, knowing no bounds to his desires, and restrained by no laws, either human or divine. Such are: Stavrogin in "Devils," Dmitry Karamazoff ("The Karamazoff Brothers"), and so forth. His women also can be divided into two similar, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... fail because they cannot see the world as the child sees it. The child of three is a frank egoist. He cares for no one but himself, and the world is his. Anger him and he would have you drawn and quartered if he had the power. His instincts prompt him to master his environment, and to begin with, when he is a few weeks old, his environment and his ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... was to start with the Cracow post for Vienna as early as this day week, but finally I have given up that idea—you will understand why. You may be quite sure that I am no egoist, but, as I love you, am also willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of others. For the sake of others, I say, but not for the sake of outward appearance. For public opinion, which is in high esteem among us, but which, you may be sure, does not influence ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of things, though he can also be powerful in tragedy; and his enthusiasms for the beauty of the world and for the romance of youthful love are delightful. He may perhaps best be approached through 'Evan Harrington' (1861) and 'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel' (1859). 'The Egoist' (1879) and 'Diana of the Crossways' (1885) are among his other strongest books. In his earlier years he wrote a considerable body of verse, which shows much the same qualities as his prose. Some of it is rugged ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... instincts—to choose the finest mate for her nest-building. She'll marry again, though the dear woman doesn't know it, and would be horrified at the thought. But she will, and it won't be either of us—we are too much her kind. It will be some other brilliant egoist who will thrill her, grind her heart, and give her wonderful children. She is an instrument. As I think I once heard poor Byrd say, she is not merely an expression of ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... on the solitary human soul. He understood simplicity: the charm of little happinesses, the sweetness of ordinary affections, the beauty of a country face. The paradox is strange; how was it that it should have been left to the morbid, tortured, half-crazy egoist of the Confessions to lead the way to such spiritual delicacies, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... work also is my only hope of reward. I am quite unable to deal with it on the piano to my own satisfaction. You must introduce it to me. For that reason I am thinking of delaying our meeting till I can go through THE WHOLE with you. Thus my highest need has made an egoist of me. The first two acts I hope to have finished and copied out at the end of October, the whole by Christmas. You said in your last letter it would suit you equally well to come either in November or at Christmas. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... tapped him with her fan. 'But do you know, my Prince, you are an egoist - your handy trysting-place is miles from me. You must give me ample time; I cannot, I think, possibly be there before two. But as the bell beats two, your helper shall arrive: welcome, I trust. Stay - do you bring any one?' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... funny his father was, and he had to show her. It wasn't decent of him. Barbara didn't approve of young Horace; yet she couldn't resist him; his eyes and mouth were full, like Ralph's, of such intelligent yet irresponsible joy. He wanted her to share it. He was an egoist like his father; but he had something of his mother's charm, ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... never enjoy as might a pagan, perhaps never as might a saint. But you will enjoy as a generous-blooded woman with a heart that only your friends—I should like to dare to say only one friend—know in its rare entirety. There is an egoist here, in the shadow of the mosques, who turns his face towards Mecca, and prays that you may never leave your ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a little it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature had, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... cannot take any other attitude; for are we not both human and therefore just alike?" It never occurred to Holmes that anybody could differ with him and still be normal; those who ventured to do so found the Doctor looking keenly at them to discover their symptoms. In an ordinary egoist or politician or theologian this would be insufferable; but strange to say it is one of the charms of Holmes, who is so witty and pleasant-spoken that we can enjoy his dogmatism without the bother of objecting to it. In one of his books he hints that talking to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... no more be a case of parthenogenesis than that of the physical woman—it had no room for the higher and subtler and more romantical idealizations of the owner of the kissed lips. You may put him down for an insensible young egoist. Put him down for what you will. His embrace ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to be inconclusive and, therefore, not truly moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist? ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... was a solemn egoist, and his picture represented, not Jane Holland, but Gisborne's limited idea of her. It was a sombre face, broadened and foreshortened by the heavy, leaning brows. A face with a straight-drawn mouth and eyes prophetic of tragedy, a face in which ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... blatant egoist, Lady Barbara," he said. "She loves singing about herself. And she lays it on pretty thick, too, doesn't she? Now, Sylvia, if you've finished—quite finished, I mean—do come and sit down and ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... funds lie unless compelled to move them. The small mortgagee, the petty miser, who has, perhaps, no investment to watch but one small loan, about which he is as anxious and as noisy as a hen with one chicken, he is the clamorous creditor, the harsh little egoist, who for fear of risking a crown piece would bring the Garden of Eden to the hammer. Now we are rid of that little wretch, Bonard, and have Perrin on our side; so there ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... productive is possible to him; all in him tends to absolute, pure production, and yet he has never yet concentrated his whole power of will on the production of a great work. Is he, with all his individuality, too little of an egoist? Is he too full of love, and does he resemble Jesus on the Cross, Who helps every ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... medium of 'Philosophical History' in these times, cannot even be not seen: it is misseen; affirmed to have existed,—and to have been a godless Impossibility. Your Norman Conquerors, true royal souls, crowned kings as such, were vulturous irrational tyrants: your Becket was a noisy egoist and hypocrite; getting his brains spilt on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral, to secure the main chance,—somewhat uncertain how! 'Policy, Fanaticism,' or say 'Enthusiasm,' even 'honest ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... have thought that I had earned some right to apply this obvious distinction to any foreign country, since I have consistently applied it to my own country. If the egoism is excusable, I am myself an Englishman (which some identify with an egoist) and I have done my best to praise and glorify a number of English things: English inns, English roads, English jokes and jokers; even to the point of praising the roads for being crooked or the humour for being Cockney; but I have invariably ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and publishers concerned have kindly given me permission to reprint some of the poems in this book which appeared originally in "Poetry" (Chicago), "The Egoist" (London), "The Little Review" (Chicago), "Greenwich Village" (New York), the first Imagist anthology (New York: A. and C. Boni. London: Poetry Bookshop), the second Imagist anthology ("Some Imagist Poets," London: Constable and Co. Boston: ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... he ended, 'is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great.... Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... thus stand apart from a man and say the true thing with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are some - and I doubt if there be any man who can return the compliment. The class of man represented by Vernon Whitford in THE EGOIST says, indeed, the true thing, but he says it stockishly. Vernon is a noble fellow, and makes, by the way, a noble and instructive contrast to Daniel Deronda; his conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but we agree with ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seek to dismiss me. There is in egoism, however, a depth to which all but myself are blind. I have found this depth in myself and out of it rises a definition which I must consider cautiously. There is but one egoist and that is He who, intolerant of all but Himself, sets out to destroy all but Himself. Egoism is the despairing effort of man to return to his original Godhood; to return to the undisputed and triumphant loneliness which was His when as a Creator He moulded the world to ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... be great, Reggie, just as to produce a perfect picture, or to compose a perfect symphony, is to be great. Francesco Cenci should have been worshipped instead of murdered. But the world can no more understand the beauty of sin, than it can understand the preface to 'The Egoist,' or the simplicity of 'Sordello.' Sin puzzles it; and all that puzzles the world frightens the world; for the world is a child, without a child's charm, or a child's innocent blue eyes. How exquisitely coloured these strawberries are, yet if Sargent ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... case with artists in Germany; Hugo Wolf is another example of it. Mahler's case is really rather curious. When one studies his works one feels convinced that he is one of those rare types in modern Germany—an egoist who feels with sincerity. Perhaps his emotions and his ideas do not succeed in expressing themselves in a really sincere and personal way; for they reach us through a cloud of reminiscences and an atmosphere of classicism. I cannot help thinking that Mahler's position as director ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... lights the dark shadow of her hair—hair black, abundant, and elaborately dressed in the fashion of that time. Passionate yet calculating, imperious yet susceptible of control, generous yet given to suspicion, an egoist yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm—she represented a type of feminine character ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... rebel leader of 1870. Cost us some considerable trouble, too. There's bound to be mischief where that hair-brained four-flusher gets a crowd to listen to him. For egoist though he is, he possesses a wonderful power over the half-breeds. He knows how to work. And somehow, too, they're suspicious of all Canadians, as they call the new settlers from the East, ready to believe anything they're told, and with ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... suffering of others, and tries to alleviate it, and in the combat with pain he insures his own happiness. A Catholic would say of St. Vincent de Paul or St. Charles Borromeo, 'He was a great saint.' I would say, 'He was a great egoist.' Let us render love to those who are swimming with us down the stream of life, and without pricking of conscience ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Tenorio to win the foolish heart of an Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another, with its savage eye—it is a profile—and big beaver head-covering, recalls Walt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." A giant egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as Spain ever begot, Goya is only hinted at in Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning: "Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues." Fleurs du Mal would ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... developed one. While the units of which it is composed have distinct and independent lives within certain limits, they are, outside of those limits, interdependent and inter-related. Man is governed by two great forces. On the one hand, he is essentially an egoist, ever striving to attain individual freedom; on the other hand, he is a social animal, ever seeking association and avoiding isolation. This duality expresses itself in the life of society. There is a struggle between its members motived ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... acts. By not going, he left himself free to strike out an independent policy for his own province, when that which had been forced upon Nova Scotia should, as he probably anticipated, have failed.' It is the apology of an egoist. Once again, at Confederation, we shall see him 'striking out an independent policy for his own province,' and with results ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... he did not consider himself an egoist, and upbraided and persecuted egoists and egoism more than anything else!—Of course! Egoism in other people interfered ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev |
