"Self-love" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Naples. And what is the use of being angry with the Italian point of view? As well be angry with the Mediterranean for being a tideless sea. But he glanced at the profile and remembered the words, and could not help wondering whether Miss Van Tuyn's cult for Lady Sellingworth had its foundations in self-love rather than in attraction to her whom Braybrooke had called "the most charming ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... moralist! First you convict me of vanity—now of self-love. Let me do as I please, Franziska. You, too, shall do as ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... themselves, or tried to shield themselves, in an armour of stoical indifference—of utter selfishness, being sure that at all events there was one friendship in the world which could neither change nor fade—Self-love. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... son of a farmer on the Forest, who called cousins with the young Carnegies. As the connection was wide, perhaps the vigorous dislike of more important persons than Bessie Fairfax is sufficiently accounted for. All the world is agreed that a slight wound to men's self-love rankles much longer than ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... not to converse in: keep up their ancient use; and whenever you see two or three gathered together, be you amongst them, and let them not hear the sound of their own voices till they have bought off the noise of yours. When self-love is thus satisfied, remember social virtue is the next duty, and tell your next friend where he may go and obtain the same relief, by the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... judgment once made known, Self-love and self-conceit's so strong, He'll rather let me die than own That his opinion ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... self-love in the hopes and fears of religion consists;—first,—in the previous necessity of a moral energy, in order so far to subjugate the sensual, which is indeed and properly the selfish, part of our nature, as to believe in a state after death, on the grounds of the Christian religion:—secondly,—in ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... knowledge of the human heart by which the Church of Rome has ever been distinguished, when, in his skilful narrative, he concealed the Roman Catholic save in the facts which he brought forward. It is well to enlist self-love on the side of truth. No conclusions are so readily embraced, as those which the reader flatters himself he himself has had a large share in drawing. Like the famous images which were withheld from the funeral of Junia, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... flatterer is not often detected, for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when self-love favours ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... eyes fixed on space, like a man who pursues through space the phantom of a vanished project, he said: "Yes, yes! I thought of it. That is why I persisted in taking that hovel, Saint-Jean-d'Acre. Here you only thought it obstinacy, a useless waste of men sacrificed to the self-love of a mediocre general who feared that he might be blamed for a defeat. What should I have cared for the raising of the siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, if Saint-Jean-d'Acre had not been the barrier in the way of the grandest project ever conceived. Cities! Why, good ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... you give me not the very words. And he gave his reasons, I perceive, with his wishes that you should accept them; which very few of the sorry fellows do, whose plea is generally but a compliment to our self-love—That we must love them, however presumptuous and unworthy, because ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... desire to remove the distemper of sin, similarly it is necessary to seek out the root of all sin. We can lay our finger on it at once; it is inordinate self-love. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... intercourse with the officers who occasionally came upon the lake to fish and hunt, had an effect in producing her present sentiments towards the young stranger. With them, while her vanity had been gratified, and her self-love strongly awakened, she had many causes deeply to regret the acquaintance—if not to mourn over it, in secret sorrow—for it was impossible for one of her quick intellect not to perceive how hollow ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and silent of late, and showed a growing tendency to dark hats. His refusal had been so unexpected that the blow, when it came, fell with all the more crushing force. His self-love and self-esteem had been wounded; but so had something else. Under the velvet corduroy waistcoat, which he wore in imitation of Ralph, he had a heart. Whether it was one of the very best of its kind or warranted to wear well is not for us to judge; but, at ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... constituents and their rulers; against their characters and their memories; against their justice, their honesty, their honor and their benevolence. Now let candor decide between those two classes of slaveholders, which is most entitled to credit; that which testifies in its own favor, just as self-love would dictate, or that which testifies against all selfish motives and in spite of them; and though it has nothing to gain, but every thing to lose by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... vanity, or writes a book from vanity, or seeks an office from vanity,—then, as certainly as the bite of an asp will poison the body, will the expected good be turned into a bitter disappointment. Self-love cannot be the basis of human action without alienation from God, without weariness, disgust, and ultimate sorrow. The soul can be fed only by divine certitudes; it can be enlarged only by walking according to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... though I have written "Napoleon III. in Italy." It is time to limit the significance of certain terms, or to enlarge the significance of certain things. Nationality is excellent in its place; and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest species of corruption reserved for the most noble organizations. ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... stood before it examining herself in an agony. And, indeed, there was a change. A touch of some withering blight seemed to have swept across the whole dainty face, and taken the dewy freshness from the eyes. There was fever in it—the fever of fret and mutiny and of a starved self-love. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... other's face flamed up, and she uttered a half-choked exclamation. "Oh," she cried—"you've fallen in love with playing the martyr; it's SELF-love! You SEE yourself in the role! No one on earth could make me believe you're in LOVE with this degraded imbecile—all that's left of the wreck of a vicious life! It isn't that! It's because you want to make a shining example of yourself; you want ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... would rehearse A labor'd work, and every dish a verse, He'd say, "Mend this and t'other line and this." If after trial it were still amiss, He'd bid you give it a new turn of face, Or set some dish more curious in its place. If you persist, he would not strive to move A passion so delightful as self-love. Cooks garnish out some tables, some they fill, Or in a prudent mixture show their skill. Clog not your constant meals; for dishes few Increase the appetite when choice and new. E'en they who will extravagance profess, Have still an inward hatred for excess. Meat forced too ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... magnificence, but one reads their history, and learns to love, of all their long succession, only one or two in their pride, learns to pity only one or two in their fall. They were patriotic, but the patriotism of despotic princes is self-love. They were liberal—in spending the revenues of the state for the glory of their family. They were brave, and led many nameless Mantuans to die in forgotten battles for alien quarrels which ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... also has, such as the love of committing adultery, of taking revenge, of defrauding, of stealing, of acting cruelly, indeed, in the worst men, of blaspheming the holy things of the church and of inveighing against God. The fountainhead of those enjoyments is the love of ruling from self-love. They come of lusts which obsess the interiors of the mind, from these flow into the body, and excite uncleannesses there which titillate the fibers. The physical pleasure springs from the pleasure which the mind ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. The same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure, when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... The retiring young man was not pleased when they got the better of him, you see! His vanity, don't you see? He wanted revenge. Then, those thick lips of his suggest passion. So there you have it: wounded self-love and passion. That is quite enough motive for a murder. We have two of them in our hands; but who is the third? Nicholas and Psyekoff held him, but who smothered him? Psyekoff is shy, timid, an all-round coward. ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... favor with his employer, and whenever he entered the house, which was but a few steps from the store, he was greeted by Mary Jessup with that peculiar welcome so charming between those who love each other, yet which to him was pleasing only because it gratified his animal nature and his self-love. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... brought against him. Pope was morbidly sensitive to slights, morbidly eager for praise, and extremely irritable. To a man of such temper, trifles light as air became significant of malice and hatred. Such trifles unhappily confirmed Pope's suspicions; his self-love was wounded, sensitiveness became animosity, and animosity became hate, which in the end inspired the most stinging bit ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... things understood, and it will easily be perceived how strictly I am reserved upon the ladies, and upon all gallantries, not intimately associated with what may be called important matters. I should be so here, more than in any other case, from self-love, if not from respect for the sex and dignity of the person. The considerable part I played in bringing about Madame la Duchesse de Berry's marriage, and the place that Madame de Saint-Simon, in spite of herself and of me, occupied in connection with her, would be for me reasons ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not so much in teaching men to regard themselves, as in leading them to forget, that their happiest affections, their candour, and their independence of mind, are in reality parts of themselves. And the adversaries of this supposed selfish philosophy, where it makes self-love the ruling passion with mankind, have had reason to find fault, not so much with its general representations of human nature, as with the obtrusion of a mere innovation in language ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Infinite, Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... caused me to feel humiliated for my sins, without crushing me, or driving me to despair; he showed me the futility of all human things, the sadness and emptiness of all pleasures arising from vanity and self-love.... Indeed, during a few moments, I thought seriously of consecrating my life entirely to God, and of becoming a gray nun in the convent under the Abbe ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... appears to me true, and capable of making sacrifices! but is not she also very different from all the others? How often have I not heard Sophie laugh at her for it—look down upon her!" And Otto's better feeling sought in vain for a shadow of self-love in Louise, a single selfish motive for her ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... miserable situation in which he was placed, and trust to his generosity to exonerate him from the false charge, which Mary, in her waywardness or madness, had fixed upon him. Judging his cousin's mind by his own, he felt that he was secure—that, however painful to Godfrey's self-love, he would never suffer him to bear the reproach of a crime ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... still apply this name to something, lies in the work of breeding genius . from such training everything is to be hoped. All consolation comes from art. Education is love for the offspring; an excess of love over and beyond our self-love. Religion is "love beyond ourselves." The work of art is the model of such a love beyond ourselves, and a perfect model ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... enlarges pleasures which would otherwise be contemptible. The most indifferent thing has its force and beauty when it is spoken by a kind father, and an insignificant trifle has its weight when offered by a dutiful child. I know not how to express it, but I think I may call it a transplanted self-love." ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... ideal of the expression of Christian love they do signally damage their cause, by saddening the serious and repelling the gay. Much less do we mean that perpetual smile of good-will which argues more of personal comfort and self-love than anything else. No; the loving look we speak of is as often grave as gay. Its character depends very much on the face through which it beams. And it cannot be counterfeited. Its ring defies imitation. Like the clouded sun of April, it can pierce through tears of sorrow; ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and for the instant his countenance evinced genuine emotion. His self-love was cruelly shocked by the evident loathing with which she shrunk away from the arm that, only a few days before, had brought the bright blood into her cheeks did she but rest her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... divert the thoughts of the mind and the efforts of the will from more important objects; dispositions very often dangerous for those who possess them, because it is easy to abuse them, and because they flatter and nourish self-love, or the other passions that flesh is heir to. You should imitate those intelligent gardeners who pay a daily visit to their garden, pruning knife in hand, and cut off branches that might exhaust or overcharge the tree—not sparing them for the beauty ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... one can be more satisfied than I am that Carlos, from causes honourable as well as causes dishonorable to it, is no speculation for the stage. Its very length were enough to banish it. Nor was it out of confidence or self-love that I forced the piece on such a trial; perhaps out of self-interest rather. If in the affair my vanity played any part, it was in this, that I thought the work had solid stuff in it sufficient to outweigh its ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... on, with this spectre before his eyes, stumbling at every step, without energy to confront these dangers, without the will or power to comprehend that to become King of Italy he must first of all forget that he was King of Piedmont. Despotic from rooted instinct, liberal from self-love, and from a presentiment of the future, he submitted alternately to the government of Jesuits, and to that of men of progress. A fatal disunion between thought and action, between the conception and the faculty of execution, showed itself in every act. Most ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... difference is not merely that we tolerate in a man of confessed superiority what would be intolerable in an equal. This is true; but there is a further distinction of moral quality in men's confessions. In Milton, as in Gibbon, the gratification of self-love, which attends all autobiography, is felt to be subordinated to a nobler intention. The lofty conception which Milton formed of his vocation as a poet, expands his soul and absorbs his personality. It is his office, and not himself, which he magnifies. The details ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... makes you any dubious proposition in words, you oblige him to commit it to writing. Not necessarily to be used against him afterwards, but for this reason—and I can almost quote my papa's phrase on the occasion—in the homage of his self-love, a man will rarely write himself such a knave as he will dare to own when he is talking, and in that act of weakness is the gain of the other party ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... interest; but this gave greater offence than the most ostentatious show of learning, for they concluded that I would not talk on such subjects, because I thought them incapable of understanding me. This was more wounding to their self-love than the most arrogant assumption on my part; and they regarded me with a jealous, envious stand-a-loofishness, that was so intolerable that I gave up all ideas of visiting them. I was so accustomed to hear the whispered remark, or to have it retailed ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... from an unsolved dualism, required a principle capable of reconciling the discrepancy between the conduct in accordance with the axiom of Benevolence and the conduct in accordance with the equally rational axiom of Self-love.[1] ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... may disagree with the reader. It is apt to harden the heart, wearying the attention, and mortifying the self-love. Such disturbances of the system interfere with the digestion of ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... is concerned it is well enough. But self-love is a cup without any bottom, and you might pour the Great Lakes all through it, and never fill it up. It breeds an appetite for more of the same kind. It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of egotism. It ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... them—and by the mother, whose flattery always seemed involuntary. The two women were so kind and friendly to him, he was so sure of pleasing them, they ruled him so delightfully by holding the thread of his self-love, that he soon passed all his ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... wish,—he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,—makes slaves of us all.—And Nature, who is kind to all her children, and never leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human failures without one little comfit of self-love at the bottom of his poor ragged pocket,—Nature suggested to him that he had turned his sentence well; and he fell into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always hovering dust outside the doors ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... that man to life—power, honors, wealth, all the magnificence that surrounded him—must have seemed to him to be already far away in an irrevocable past. It required courage of a very exceptional temper to resist such a blow without the slightest outburst of self-love. No one was present save the friend, the physician, the servant, three intimate acquaintances, who were familiar with all his secrets; the lights being turned low left the bed in shadow, and the dying man could have turned his face ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... over his life, for if there were any errors in his judgment— and he displayed as few as any man—we know of no blemishes in his virtue. He was the patriot without reproach; he loved his country well enough to hold success in serving it an ample recompense. Thus far, self-love and love of country coincided, but when his country needed sacrifices that no other man could, or perhaps would be willing to make, he did not even hesitate. This was virtue in its most exalted character. More than once he put his fame at hazard, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... between the virtuous is alone perfect. A settled habit, not a mere passion. Equality in friendship. Political friendships. Explanation of the family affections. Rule of reciprocity of services. Conflicting obligations. Cessation of friendships. Goodwill. Love felt by benefactors. Self-love. Does the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... he never refused a lease. Notwithstanding there ran through his whole demeanour and the habit of his mind, a vein of native simplicity that was full of charm, his manner was finished. He never offended any one's self-love. His good breeding, indeed, sprang from the only sure source of gentle manners, a kind heart. To have pained others would have pained himself. Perhaps, too, this noble sympathy may have been in some degree prompted by the ancient blood in his veins, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... himself to rally their foibles in his poems, he does so openly, and does it with such an implied sympathy and avowal of kindred weakness in himself, that offence was impossible. Above all, he possessed in perfection what Mr Disraeli happily calls "the rare gift of raillery, which flatters the self-love of those whom it seems not to spare." These characteristics are admirably indicated by Persius (I. 116) ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... in the chasm thus cut deep into our ambitions, into our self-love, the mighty Spirit in His tranquil fulness will spring up. And then, whether we know it or not, we Ministers of the Word shall assuredly be vehicles of spiritual power, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... proceeded with the building of a furnace on an anthill, where they are almost always placed, and they keep a look-out while working. We have the protection of an all-embracing Providence, and trust that He, whose care of His people "xceeds all that our utmost self-love can attain, will shield us and make ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... long without a rival the sceptre of the sciences and literature, it was grating to its members to relinquish it. They could ill bear to see set above it an establishment evidently intended to direct and guide it. Self-love offended seldom forgives, especially when it is animated by the esprit de corps. The University depreciated the new college, and endeavoured to fetter it in a thousand ways. At last, those dark intrigues being constantly smothered ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... first requisites, in order to be thus acceptable, is the neglect, the forgetfulness of self—a readiness to put self in the back-ground. Any obtrusion of self, any appearance of self-love, self-interest, self-conceit, or self-applause, tends to expose a man ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... of immortality, there is the THEOLOGICAL proof, founded on the attributes of God; and the MORAL proof, based on the conflict between conscience and self-love; and the ANALOGICAL proof, based on the law of progress in nature; and the COSMIC proof, founded on the relation of the soul to the universe; and the HISTORIC proof, resting on the universal belief in immortality; and lastly, the PSYCHOLOGIC proof, or the instinct of life in man, which ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... into the sea. For I ask of the men of knowledge of the world, whether they would not hold him for a blockhead, that should hope to prevail in an argument, whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask further, when such attempts have been made, whether they have not failed of success? The indignant heart repels the conviction that is believed to debase it.... Let me expostulate with gentlemen ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the self-love of M. Bonaparte to be seized by history, if perchance, and truly one would imagine so, he cherishes any illusion as to his value as a political miscreant, let him divest himself ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards that which soothes them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his own life; thus, self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to pain, become the essential and primary laws imposed on man by nature herself—the laws which the directing power, whatever it be, has established for his government—and which laws, like ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... those of his own household."(38) That is to say, the most potent evils which we suffer, the chiefest foes to our present and future welfare are from ourselves—our own waywardness, our tendencies to evil, our wilfulness, our self-love and self-seeking, our own sins. It is from these and like causes that we suffer most. Hard and trying it surely is to bear persecutions and contradictions from others; severe is the strain to nature when, in the face of our noblest efforts, proceeding from noblest motives, we meet with ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... is not sincere in the matter, and that he has himself become so far alienated from the scheme that we may sleep quietly upon it." And James appeared at that moment so vexed at the turn affairs were taking in France, so wounded in his self-love, and so bewildered by the ubiquitous nature of nets and pitfalls spreading over Europe by Spain, that he really seemed waking from his delusion. Even Caron was staggered? "In all his talk he appears so far estranged from the Spaniard," ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... should be established. That gentleman was at once very prudent, very harsh and austere, very tenacious in his resolutions, and wedded to his own notions—which is the occasion for the greatest errors in princes; for by not yielding, in matters that self-love adopts as certain, they allow themselves to be carried over any precipice. This passion was greatly predominant in that gentleman and was the cloud that obscured other talents, worthy of esteem, that adorned him. Immediately occasions of dispute arose between the two, not because Guerrero tried to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... particular interest, when we see persons of exalted rank or virtue sinking under great evils, the fear of the like misfortunes, with which we know that human life is on all sides invested, seizes upon us, and from a secret impulse of self-love we find ourselves sensibly affected with the distresses of others: besides which, the sharing a common nature(193) with the rest of our species, makes us sensible to whatever befalls them. Upon a close and attentive inquiry into those two passions, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... conciliatory step, and accordingly he went to see the barrister, intending to make honorable amends and so put an end to his sulkiness. Wishing, however, to give this advance an air which allowed an honest issue to his own self-love, he entered la Peyrade's room with an easy manner, and ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... accompanied by the idea of our own weakness, is called "humility;" the pleasure, which springs from the contemplation of ourselves, is called "self-love" or "self- complacency." And inasmuch as this feeling is renewed as often as a man contemplates his own virtues, or his own power of activity, it follows that everyone is fond of narrating his own exploits, and displaying ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs Most spend their mouths,[23] when what they seem to threaten Runs far before them. Good my sovereign, Take up the English short; and let them know Of what a monarchy you are the head: Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... sentiment, in fact, runs through them. They are so many different expressions, answering to so many different observations taken at different angles, of one and the same persisting estimate of human nature. 'Self-love is the mainspring and motive of every thing we do, or say, or feel, or think:' that is the total result of the "Maxims" ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... from self-love, though that has often a great hand in it. Men of fair minds, and not given up to the overweening of self-flattery, are frequently guilty of it; and in many cases one with amazement hears the arguings, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you will find nothing in them ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... irritated by the audacity of the enemies of the Republic, and he saw plainly that the majority of the councils had an evident ill-will towards him. The orators of the Club of Clichy missed no opportunity of wounding his self-love in speeches and pamphlets. They spared no insults, disparaged his success, and bitterly censured his conduct in Italy, particularly with respect to Venice. Thus his services were recompensed by hatred or ingratitude. About this time he received a pamphlet, which referred ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... pre-eminence, he could not give way without heart burning and humiliation; and to be supplanted thus by a rival son of earth seemed no less a shock to his superstitious notions about rank, than it was painful to his feelings of self-love ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... I, O my God! for a vain point of honor, and I had so little of true honor, which is not to displease you. I went so far in this, and my self-love was so great, that if I had failed in any rule of politeness, I could not sleep at night. Every one wished to contribute to my diversion, and the outside life was only too agreeable for me; but as to indoors, vexation had so depressed my husband that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... triumphed. In the faces of the weaker ones it showed offensively; the stronger hid it, but Evan was none the less conscious of it. His self-love suffered a ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... of Mr. Godwin's philosophy, in one word, was too much ambition—"by that sin fell the angels!" He conceived too nobly of his fellows (the most unpardonable crime against them, for there is nothing that annoys our self-love so much as being complimented on imaginary achievements, to which we are wholly unequal)—he raised the standard of morality above the reach of humanity, and by directing virtue to the most airy and romantic heights, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Soul and body become better balanced and nature no longer asks for more movement than is required for self-preservation. But the love of power does not die with the need that aroused it; power arouses and flatters self-love, and habit strengthens it; thus caprice follows upon need, and the first seeds of prejudice and ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... refinement was shattered; the very man came to light, coarse, violent, whipped into fury by his passions, of which injured self-love was not the least. Whether he believed his wife guilty or not he could not have said; enough that she had kept things secret from him, and that he could not overawe her. Whensoever he had shown anger in conversation ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... starting out on you from the wet canvas. The interest the painter takes in his task flatters you. And when the sittings are over, and you behold yourself hanging on your own wall, looking as it you could direct kingdoms or lead armies, you feel grateful to the artist. He ministers to your self-love, and you pay him his hire without wincing. Your heart warms towards him as it would towards a poet who addresses you in an ode of panegyric, the kindling terms of which—a little astonishing to your friends—you believe in your heart of hearts to be the simple ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the left foot on the fender to the right, and again tapped the arms of her chair with the tips of her delicately pointed fingers. "What a silly, sensitive little thing this self-love, this pride of ours, is! And it's Mary's hardiest sin. She wouldn't let the angels of heaven take her up to-day and put her down to-morrow, and while she laughs at much in life, there are certain things she doesn't smile at. A friend who fails in her eyes isn't even in ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... added a further question:—'Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your neighbour,—of the individual, or of the world?' This little addition has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is now supposed to include two principles as widely different as benevolence and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished between pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For the universal test of right actions (how I know them) may not always be the highest or best motive of ...
— Philebus • Plato
... are not very much obliged to me. Much good it was for me to talk to you about your nose! You would never have found out how extraordinary it was if it hadn't hindered you from doing what you wanted to. You see how self-love keeps us from knowing our own defects of mind and body. Our reason tries in vain to show them to us; we refuse to see them till we find ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... is the great source of public good, which, though operating unseen, never ceases one moment to act with unabating power, if it be not perverted by the futile regulations of some short-sighted politician." Again, Malthus, in his Essay on Population, in 1817, says: "By making the passion of self-love beyond comparison stronger than the passion of benevolence, the more ignorant are led to pursue the general happiness, an end which they would have totally failed to attain if the moving principle of their conduct had been benevolence. Benevolence, indeed, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... first was disappointed not to see Such mighty change as I had felt within Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked, 130 And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked One with the other even as spirits do, None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear, Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 135 'All hope abandon ye who enter here;' None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear Gazed on another's eye of cold command, Until the subject of a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... I to see that answer? And here you think it no dishonour to break your word or promise; by which I find your false notions of virtue and honour, with which you serve yourselves, when interest, design, or self-love makes you think it necessary.' 'Madam,' replied Octavio, 'you are pleased to pursue your anger, as if indeed I had disobeyed your command, or refused to shew you what you imagine I have from Philander:' 'Yes, I do,' replied she hastily; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... performers who are well acquainted with each other, are accustomed to play together, and know almost by heart the work they are executing. Even then, the inattention of a single player may occasion an accident. Why incur its possibility? I know that certain artists feel their self-love hurt when thus kept in leading-strings (like children, they say); but with a conductor who has no other view than the excellence of the ultimate result, this consideration can have no weight. Even in a quartet, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... barbarism, whose savage natives treated them with brutality and contempt. It would be hard to guess whence these unkindly feelings originated, but they felt that they had not deserved them, yet the consciousness of their own insignificance sadly militated against every idea of self-love or self-importance, and taught them a plain and useful moral lesson. Although they made the most charitable allowances for the Eboe people, they were, notwithstanding, obliged to consider them the most ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... heart of Senor Mier, but it seems to me that his words might be answered somewhat by those of Jeremias Bentham: [65] "How many praises are wasted on mercy! It has been repeated, time and time again, that that is the first virtue of a sovereign. Surely if crime consists only in an offense to one's self-love, if it is no more than a satire which is directed against him or his favorites, the moderation of the prince is meritorious. The pardon which he grants is a triumph obtained over himself! But when one treats of a crime against society, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity ...
— The Federalist Papers
... and truly, I want you to make a great hit, if only out of self-love, because we happen to be old cronies; and I have no doubt you will—I am sure you can. But you are, I'll be sworn, in a devil of a pucker; and I am not at your elbow, and Rogers is. I envy him; which is not fair, because he does not envy any body. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that, had she been aware that John Derringham's affections were really given elsewhere, nothing would have induced her to break off the engagement! Mr. Hanbury-Green was all very well, and was being a most exceptional lover, only this hateful humiliation and blow to her self-love mattered more ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... according to the exactness of the model; still granting him to have a perfect idea of that pattern by which he works, and that he keeps himself always constant to the discourse of his judgment, without admitting self-love, which is the false surveyor of his fancy, to intermeddle in it. These qualifications granted (being such as all sound poets are presupposed to have within them), I think all writers, of what kind soever, may infallibly judge of the frame and contexture ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... but loathe Things base or mean, I must confess I'd very freely take my oath, Self-love's ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... at these words, his eyes fixed themselves upon Corinne, who heard them with an emotion that was not inspired by self-love, but which was allied to the most amiable and delicate feelings. The Prince Castel-Forte was much affected for a moment, and then resumed his speech. He spoke of Corinne's talent for music, for painting, for declamation and for dancing: In all these talents, he said, she ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... which seemed to be inevitable occurrences in her life. Dreda forgot, and Susan reminded; Dreda procrastinated, and Susan hastened to the rescue; Dreda grew discouraged and Susan cheered; Dreda failed, and Susan succoured; yet with such diffidence were these services performed that self-love felt never a wound, and Dreda was left with the agreeable sense of having ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tent, should place a golden throne in the centre, on which should be laid a diadem, sceptre and royal apparel, and that there they should transact business as in the presence of the king. Antigenes and Teutamus willingly agreed to this proposal, which flattered their self-love by seeming to place them on an ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... of good, grace, and peace, [1] comes through affliction rightly understood, as sanctified by the purification it brings to the flesh,—to pride, self- ignorance, self-will, self-love, self-justification. Sweet, indeed, are these uses of His rod! Well is it that the [5] Shepherd of Israel passes all His flock under His rod into His fold; thereby numbering them, and giving them refuge at last from the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... adjective. Every man has some portion of self-love. So his next effort was a passionate denial that he was nice. When should he meet her? The postman brought him a letter which contained one word—Nimmer! He sent her four pages, a frank and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... dicta that anger and fear are aroused if the object of love is threatened, joy is aroused as it prospers, and sorrow if it is deeply injured or lost, self-love remarkably resembles other-love. The pride we take in our own achievements is unalloyed by jealousy, and there is always a trace of jealousy in the pride we take in the achievements of others, but there is no difference in the pride ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... teaching may be summarised as follows: Self-interest must be excluded from our love of God, for self-love is the root of all evil. This predominant desire for God's glory need not be always explicit—it need only become so on extraordinary occasions; but it must always be implicit. There are five kinds of love for God: (i.) purely servile—the love of God's gifts ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... visiting Sappho,[124] a fine lady, who writes verses, sings, dances and can say and do whatever she pleases, without the imputation of anything that can injure her character; for she is so well known to have no passion but self-love, or folly, but affectation; that now upon any occasion they only cry, "'Tis her way," and "That's so like her," without further reflection. As I came into the room, she cries, "O Mr. Bickerstaff, I am utterly ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... at least six times a-day during our visit at Washington, "How Congress compared with the British Parliament?" To which we used to reply, "That they did not compare at all," an answer which fully met the truth of the case, without in the least wounding the self-love of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Ghadames, planted far-away amidst the most appalling desolations of the Great Saharan Wilderness. This should teach us to lower our pretensions, and take a large discount from our merits in originating our various enterprises; but, alas! our over-weening self-love always manages to get the better of us. The brochure alluded to was a number of the Revue de L'Orient, published at Paris, containing a notice of Ghadames by M. Subtil, the notorious sulphur[6]-explorer ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... upon any historical facts, they are entirely lost to us; as all we learn from history concerning Narcissus, is the fact that he was a Thespian by birth. The Fable seems rather to be intended as a useful moral lesson, disclosing the fatal effects of self-love. His pursuit, too, of his own image, ever retiring from his embrace, strongly resembles the little reality that exists in many of those pleasures which ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... will find that only that man carries the cross who does wrong, and that the man who does right the cross turns to wings upon his shoulders that will bear him upwards forever. He will find that intelligent self-love embraces within its mighty arms all ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... your eminent works. It is a pleasure to watch the growing renown of those who are dear to us; and who should merit success more than you, whose elevation of character is proof against the temptations of literary self-love? I thank you for the little you have told me of your home life. It is not enough to be praised and recognized as a great and profound naturalist; to this one must add domestic happiness as ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... to see the judgments before which many a great mind has had to bend; and how often party spirit, either religious or political, moved by the basest passions—such as hatred, envy, rivalry, vengeance, fanaticism, intolerance, self-love—has been a pretext for disfiguring in the eyes of the public the greatest and noblest characters. It would then be seen how some censor (profiting by the breach which circumstances, or even a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... at the barrier of Paris. I experienced a sort of self-love in exhibiting to my son, by its most beautiful entrance, that capital, of which he could probably retain but a feeble recollection. I ordered the postillion to take us through the Boulevards to the Rue de la Paix, and to stop at the first hotel. Chance conducted ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... barbed arrow in my self-love, and a hard, resentful pain at my heart, on my mother's account. Fierce tears scalded the inside of my eyelids as I recalled her weeks of loving preparation for our school life, the thousand of stitches set by her dear hands, the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... for the sake of art; and it must be their splendid daring as much as their beauty which induces wealthy men, and even some of the nobility, to marry these women. Man loves courage and respects all who are brave enough to fight for their own. In a world where self-love (not selfishness) is highly esteemed, manhood, or the power of self-assertion, whether in man or woman, naturally becomes a fascinating virtue. No one likes to be colleague to a coward. The millionaires and others who have married actresses—and as actresses make plenty of money they are ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... by which men have been destroyed and saved, and lays them mockingly naked.... He shows the bare side of every virtue, the hidden heroism of every vice and crime. He summons before him all the injustices that have come to birth out of ignorance and self-love.... And in all this there is no judgment, only an implacable comprehension, as of one outside nature, to whom joy and sorrow, right and wrong, savagery and civilization, are ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... that the system of expediency, 'so far from being a derogation from the moral dignity of man, is the only method consistent with the conditions of his action.' He is neutral upon the question whether 'self-love is the immediate motive of all our actions,' and considers that question unmeaning, 'as not believing it possible that a man should be at once subject and object.' He writes an essay to show that there is no foundation 'for a philosophy of history in the analogy between ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... repulse further personal compliment. It entered his consciousness that she might become part of his political plan—might somehow abet his magnificent purposes. In the pause which succeeded his appeal to her self-love and ambition she once more scanned the mild, meditative countenance ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... her motions, that suggested the undulations of a spirit rather than joints and muscles, and made her soul and flesh one melody. As to her heavenly temper of goodness, there is but one voice from all who knew her. She accorded to the sufferings of self-love a pity and kindness seldom shown to them. She had the sweetest faculty for dressing the wounds of envy and jealousy, soothing the lacerations of rivalry and hate, assuaging the bitterness of neglected and revengeful souls. For all those moral pains, or griefs of imagination, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... by the latter, and to have been truly attached to David. But it is at least questionable whether Ziba was such a villain, and Mephibosheth such an injured innocent, as is supposed. This, at least, is plain, that Ziba demonstrated attachment to David at the time when self-love would have kept him silent. It took some courage to come with gifts to a discrowned king (2 Sam. xvi. 1-4); and his allegation about his master has at least this support, that the latter did not come with the rest of David's court to share his fortunes, and that the dream that he might fish to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... consideration in the colony, to which they were entitled neither by their rank nor their reputation. Nor was this reflection always without reason: in strange forgetfulness of the natural operation of self-love, the upper classes of New South Wales expected multitudes, often of greater wealth than themselves, to walk humbly in their presence. Such claims the emancipists met with defiance. The false morality of their journals will be largely ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... this dose, sweetened with the sugar of self-love, with intense satisfaction. And if we may personify that gentleman for the sake of illustration, what a fine sarcastic smile must dwell upon his countenance as he sees it swallowed and enjoyed, and knows ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... imagination; that its delights were more fervid but less appeasing; that it looked not so much into the future with hope and promise, as it filled the present with rapture; that its memories were neither so sad nor so vivid, and that it let in caprice, and vanity, and unreasonableness, and self-love, and the world's esteem, which are all as dust in the balance, or a feather in the whirlwind, to impetuous love. I was amazed to find myself a daily waiter upon beauty. Yet so it was. The vision of Gertrude was now gone from my path—the spectre had vanished ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... it may) insensibly become hard;—and, like some tender parts of his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by degrees that nice sense and perception with which God and nature endowed it:—Did this never happen;—or was it certain that self-love could never hang the least bias upon the judgment;—or that the little interests below could rise up and perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness:—Could no such thing as favour and affection enter this sacred Court—Did ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... and new triumphs are prepared over them. By comparing the imitation with the original, you see what you have done, and how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer than that of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of our self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you determine to paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to Nature. Every object becomes lustrous from the light thrown back upon it by the mirror of art: and by the aid of the pencil we may be said to touch and handle the objects of sight. The ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... much to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... of self-love and of this human "I" is to love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It can not prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries; man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy, and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... be blind, SELF-LOVE is certainly very short-sighted; and without the assistance of reason and reflection, is but a bad guide in the pursuit ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... of the French people, as well as of Italian skies, from English literature. The probability was that our earliest association with the Gallic race partook largely of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... etiquettes of England, but fits him the better for the class he has to address. His powers are uncommon and unfettered in their play; his aim is worthy. He is fulfilling and will fulfil an important task as an educator of the people, if all be not marred by a taint of self-love and arrogance now obvious in his discourse. This taint is not surprising in one so young, who has done so much, and in order to do it has been compelled to great self-confidence and light heed of the authority of other ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in his fishing costume, and saying very handsomely that were his dear sister ever in such danger of being insulted, he hoped some person as plucky as I would be on hand to defend her. This was applying cold cream to my smarting self-love. But it did not prevent me from observing the sly glances exchanged between the girls, nor prevent my hearing the little bursts of suppressed giggling which they pretended were caused by the funny motions of the hay-cutter in a neighboring ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... "It is self-love, my daughter; the worst enemy that can be to the true love of God and man. Real love is ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... is offered to them in the word, have been much puzzled, as if they were not believers at all: on the other hand, many secure and impenitent sinners, who have not yet believed the Lord's holiness, nor abhorrence of sin, nor their own ruined state and condition, do from self-love imagine, without any warrant of the word, that they are beloved of God, and that the foresaid description of faith agrees ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... that I was) giving no thought to the possibility of my so speedy dissolution, raged in my bonds, wasting myself in futile imprecations against this woman who (as it seemed to me in my blind and brutish anger) had but come to triumph over me in my abasement. Thus of my wounded self-love did I make me a whip of scorpions whereby I knew ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... apparently, the Young England of the day. He presents them as liberated from priest-craft, and ready for drinking the cup of a "Wizard old," attached to the suite of the goddess. This "Magus" extends to them the cup of self-love. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... chase, and to cause honour to fly away so much the faster, by how much it is more eagerly pursued. Finally, he is an importunate suitor, a corrupt client, a violent undertaker, a smooth factor, but untrusty, a restless master of his own, a bladder puffed up with the wind of hope and self-love. He is in the common body as a mole in the earth, ever unquietly casting; and, in one word, is nothing but a confused heap ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of this obligation, it is useless to ask what it is in our neighbour we are to love as ourselves, until we know what it is in ourselves we are to love. In what sense is a man to love himself? Because there is a radical difference between self-love as taught and practised in the world, and the love of self sanctioned and regulated by the Royal Law. Love of self is a right anxiety to secure the things we need in this world. It is based upon the principle ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... rent by the horns of the bull or torn by the claws of beasts. 20 His cruelty, his deformed imagination and deformed desires, found a kind of delight in such spectacles. And now the people wanted to rob him. Hence anger appeared on his bloated face. Self-love also would not let him yield to the wish of the multitude, and still he did not dare to oppose 25 it, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... of obtaining advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... decision had been made so entirely without effort on his part, that his breath was fairly taken away. But, beneath all his surprise and wounded pride was a feeling of relief scarce acknowledged to himself, though his first exclamation was one of distressed self-love, as he exclaimed angrily, "She has no feeling; she ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... dispense, as if they were a forgotten world. There was no one in her native city whom she seriously missed or to whom she was strongly drawn. That she, too, offered these people little, and was of small importance, self-love had never permitted her to realize, and therefore she felt an emotion of painful surprise when she perceived the deep gulf which separated her from her fellow-citizens of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... necessity. You mean self-love and self-interest. Man, be honest. Because this woman is an obstacle in your career, you would sacrifice her. It is boundless, pitiless selfishness. Suppose you abandon her, dare you think of her without shame! She loves you, she trusts you, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... fascinated, with an odd commingling of fear and hope and satisfied self-love. "Now I am unconnected with the affair. No one knows that I had any hand in it. Besides, no one knows me—that I—steal." Her tone fell lower. "The police have ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... hand on Mr. Pickwick's shoulder, 'your object is equally honourable, whatever the result is. Whether that species of benevolence which is so very cautious and long-sighted that it is seldom exercised at all, lest its owner should be imposed upon, and so wounded in his self-love, be real charity or a worldly counterfeit, I leave to wiser heads than mine to determine. But if those two fellows were to commit a burglary to-morrow, my opinion of this ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... adjusted in his soul, which was at unity with itself. But, at the fall, this beautiful order and peace was broken up; the same passions remained, but their use and action were changed; they rushed into extremes, sometimes excessive, sometimes the reverse. Indignation was corrupted into wrath, self-love became selfishness, self-respect became pride, and emulation envy and jealousy. They were at variance with each other; pride struggled with self-interest, fear with desire. Thus his soul became a chaos, and needed a new creation. Moreover, as I have said, his affections were set upon unsuitable ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Duchess by the deathbed of the Duke, her husband. Her attendance here is necessary, but it contributes little to the development of her character. We have learned to know her, and expect neither womanish tears nor signs of affection at a crisis which touches her heart less than her self-love. Webster, among his other excellent qualities, knew how to support character by reticence. Vittoria's silence in this act is significant; and when she retires exclaiming, 'O me! this place is hell!' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to himself, but not for that reason does he hate himself: thus a sick man hates his sickness for the very reason that he loves himself. Or we may say that avarice makes man hateful to others, but not to himself. In fact, it is caused by inordinate self-love, in respect of which, man desires temporal goods for himself more ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various passions—we can hate, love, approve, condemn, without offence to others, without ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of it is this: I cannot blame him for doing it. The jealousy of husbands is often nothing more than self-love. When they find they have been deceived, their vanity is offended; but their heart remains whole. But in this case it is very different. He not only loved his wife, he worshipped her. She was his happiness, life itself. When I took her from him, I robbed ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... lips trembled with indignation. "The Trescoes who were born and died in this house, belong here!" The tone of the words showed the stab to feeling and self-love. "It would be ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... illusions of life—lift, unflinching, the pall From the bier of the dead Past—that woman so fair, And so young, yet her own self-survivor; who there Traced her life's epitaph with a finger so cold! 'Twas a picture that pain'd his self-love to behold. He himself knew—none better—the things to be said Upon subjects like this. Yet he bow'd down his head: And as thus, with a trouble he could not command, He paused, crumpling the letters he held in his hand, "You know me enough," she continued, "or ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... as trees. You can't ever be sure they'll flourish in the new ground; but I want to do right. I've been reading some in Zeke's book, 'Science and Health,' and there was one sentence just got hold of me:[1] 'Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error—self-will, self-justification, and self-love!' Jewel's helped me to dissolve enough ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... arranged, and we start to-morrow. Mr. Pounce is in a condition of painful dignity. He seems afraid to move lest motion should thaw his official ice. Having found out that I am the "chaplain", he has refrained from familiarity. My self-love is wounded, but my patience relieved. Query: Would not the majority of mankind rather be bored by people in authority than not noticed by them? James North declines to answer for his part. I have made my farewells to my friends, and on looking back on the pleasant hours I ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the Archbishop himself. Then follows a remark which refers to Mozart's proneness to place undue reliance on promises, instead of using his own judgment. 'You have judgment,' says Leopold, 'but a trifle too much of conceit and self-love, and you are inclined to be over-confiding, and to open your heart to every one ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... so undisguised a censor but shock the prejudices of the moderate, and wound the sensibilities of the diffident; how but enrage the worshippers of new demi-gods in literature, art and fashion, whose pet shrines she demolished; how but cut to the quick, alike by silence or by speech, the self-love of the vain, whose claims she ignored? So gratuitous, indeed, appeared her hypercriticism, that I could not refrain from remonstrance, and to one of my ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli |
