"Self-love" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Women, their Condition and Influence in Society," says: "While Ninon de l'Enclos was fostering and patronizing genius, and giving it opportunities to expand, Madame de Sevigne was at the head of a cabal in opposition to genius, unless it was measured upon her own standard. In her self-love she wrought against Racine and sought to diminish the literary luster of Flechier. But with all her ability Madame de Sevigne possessed very little genius or tact, and her lack of discrimination is apparent in the fact that none of her proteges ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... was just contracting, a mortal sickness of the mind which should yet carry her towards death and despair. Had it been a doctor of psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of childish vanity, self-love IN EXCELSIS, and no more. It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing the inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used too strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a day of rolling mists; ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our emotional desires, and a primary element in that emotional faculty which is the will. So that to will is nothing more than to love what is good, and love is the willing or desiring what is good. If we desire good for ourselves we have what is called self-love; if we desire good for another we have the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... the anger of the governor, and his self-love wounded at the failure of his embassy, the secretary left the dungeon, and returned with all speed to the palace. The governor, on becoming acquainted with the determination of the youthful Jewess, raved with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... the proneness of his heart to comply with the men who have the power . . . Lord, he is unsound and double in his heart, politically crafty, selfish, not savouring nor discerning the things of God . . . Let not self-love, wit, craft, and timorousness corrupt his mind, but indue him with fortitude, patience, steadfastness, tenderness, mortification . . . Shall I expose myself and my family to danger at this time? A grain of sound faith would solve ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... by the Professor among women whose weakness he understood and could play upon. He would imagine that he had discovered the mystery of the sun, because he had observed a spot upon it, not understanding the nature of the very spot. Granted that a little salve to one's battered and scarified self-love was soft and grateful, what did that prove of the woman who welcomed it, beyond a human craving to keep the inner picture of herself as bright and fine as might be? The man who, out of contempt or irreverence, set a bait for the universal appetite proved ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... he said, whether gravely or in jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable impression it made might not be always pleasant to individual self-love. Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... who reads Machiavelli profitably, knows that human prudence consists in never threatening; in doing but not saying; in promoting the retreat of an enemy and never stepping, as the saying is, on the tail of the serpent; and in avoiding, as one would murder, the infliction of a blow to the self-love of any one lower than one's self. An injury done to a person's interest, no matter how great it may be at the time, is forgiven or explained in the long run; but self-love, vanity, never ceases to bleed from a wound given, and never ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... found Huntington in a bad way, due not so 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 somebody must ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... stubborn; and he will display the least folly who shall first yield. But if the adversaries become heated in the dispute, which always happens, when they suppose the matter important, or when they would defend the cause of their own self-love, from thence their passions sharpen, they grow angry, quarrels are provoked, they hate each other, and end by reciprocal injury. It is thus that for opinions, which no man can demonstrate, we see the Brachman despised; the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Musgrave's elegant emendation, which Hermann, unwilling to let well alone, has attempted to spoil. See, however, the Cambridge editor, who possesses taste and clear perception, unbiased by self-love. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... understood by Mademoiselle Natalie—who raised her head and smiled in response to 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 time at the ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... positions of the Princesses are assured. I should take more pleasure in shooting you, or running a sword through your body, than I took in the affair with your friend. His courage was truly admirable. I had nothing against him. But you have grievously wounded my self-love; we forgive all wrongs but that. I warn you that the affair will not be conducted after the French mode. You have perhaps a fortnight in which to improve your markmanship. The matter which shall carry us abroad will conclude within that time. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... with a consciousness which doubts and despises us—whether it be our own consciousness or a friend's. Our nature throws up earthworks against a contemptuous opinion. Just as a bodily wound is repaired by the wonderful normal processes of circulation and nutrition, so our self-love tends to repair the wounds of the soul. We feel that even if we are not perfect, we are as perfect as possible under the circumstances. If so-and-so and so-and-so had had to go through our sufferings or our temptations, he or she would have acted no better. And even in our wildest remorse ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... eagle, our youth is renewed—we feel strong as the horse in Homer—a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self—not self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world from selfishness—elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of which every glorious ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... men 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 ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... form of appeal. It would be higher to say, 'Do right because it is right; love Christ because Christ is lovely.' The purpose of such an appeal is to prepare us for the true gospel. But the appeal to a reasonable self-love, by warnings of the death which is the wages of sin, is perfectly legitimate. Dehortations from sin on the ground of its consequences is part of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 to dislike, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... the idea of a past or future object from which the cause for doubting has been removed. Despair is sorrow arising from a like cause. Confidence springs from hope, despair from fear. Pride is thinking too highly of ourselves from self-love. Despondency is thinking too ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... and to oppose people; but there was hidden somewhere in his heart a warm spot of affectionateness and desire for approval. When he had quarreled for a certain time, he turned square about on this instinct as on a pivot. The self-love that made him wish to rule ended in making him wish to please; he could not very well bear being disliked. The bully is always a coward, but there was a good sound spot of right-mindedness, after all, in John ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... replied: "I grieve to say that the Queen's orders are to the contrary; anger not the Queen by any bravado, else you will be placed in the irons, and if these fail we can have recourse to sharper means." To the excessive self-love, intemperance, conceitedness, and want of foresight which had characterized all his actions, the unhappy Albert had to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... stars in the limitless fields of space. As Katherine, earlier in the evening, had taken up the momentarily rejected burden of her motherhood, so Julius now, with a movement of supreme self-surrender, took up the momentarily rejected burden of the isolation of the religious life. Self-wounded by self-love, he had sought comfort in the creature rather than the creator. And the creature turned and rebuked him. It was just. Now Julius gave himself back, bowed himself again under the dominion of his fixed idea; and, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... "is now arrived when reflections of this sort cannot too seriously occupy me; the errors I have observed in others, I would fain avoid committing; yet such is the blindness of self-love, that perhaps, even at the moment I censure them, I am falling, without consciousness, into the same! nothing, however, shall through negligence be wrong; for where is the son who merits care and attention, if Mortimer from his parents ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... electoral sheep, left to their own instincts, can persuade themselves that they are voting from their own intelligence and their own lights, we may be certain to see them following that line eagerly and with a sentiment of self-love. Now to know a man's name, electorally speaking, is a good beginning toward a knowledge of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... not beauty so forget her birth That it should fruitless home return to earth! Love is the fruit of beauty, then love one! Not your sweet self, for such self-love is none. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... house. The children that he left behind him were these: Mr. Doubt, and he was his eldest son; the next to him was Legal-Life, Unbelief, Wrong-Thoughts-of-Christ, Clip-Promise, Carnal-Sense, Live-by-Feeling, Self-Love. All these he had by one wife, and her name was No-Hope; she was the kinswoman of old Incredulity, for he was her uncle; and when her father, old Dark, was dead, he took her and brought her up, and when she was marriageable, he gave her to ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... subjects. I confined my conversation to topics of common 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 to me by others, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... recommended Don Quixote to Blackmore, we are not allowed to doubt; but the relater is hindered by that self-love, which dazzles all mankind, from discovering that he might intend a satire very different from a general censure of all the ancient and modern writers on medicine, since he might, perhaps, mean, either seriously or in jest, to insinuate, that Blackmore was ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... and deep the foundations of a righteous character. If any moral proposition is self-evident, it is that such a code as this, which exalts God to the throne of the human soul and humbles man beneath his feet, is not the offspring of human self-love. If any one would know the difference between the Bible and a human code of morals, let him read Cicero's treatise on Duties, perhaps the best system of ethics which pure heathenism ever produced, but from which man's relation to deity ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... are the principles of modern infidels? Bolingbroke's morality is all embraced in self-love. Hobbes claims that the only basis of right and wrong is the civil law. Rousseau says all the morality of actions is in the judgement we ourselves form of them. Shaftsbury says, all the obligations to be virtuous arise from the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... night upon the bridge. "There is nothing," says Juvenal, "that a man will not believe in his own favour." Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers in the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... rather not selfishness, but self-love. Selfishness means not only a desire for our own happiness, but injustice towards others. It would have been wrong for me to have appealed to Dwight's selfishness, as that would have been encouraging a bad passion; but it was right for me to appeal to his self-love, ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... [of 'white lying'], to recommend evil that good may come? The test for us is, whether we could ever imagine Christ acting in this way, either for the sake of others, or—which would be quite as justifiable, since self-love is a moral ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... Culture and Intellectual Life, Distinguished. Human Life, a Problem. The Evil to be Managed. Self-Love Considered under a Three-fold Aspect. Three Agencies for meliorating the Human Condition. The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oft most in ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... out again, though with subdued power, Maskull's curiosity rose once more. "Your fellow countrymen, then, Spadevil, are sick with self-love?" ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... 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
... idealization of her beauties; and the most wretched condition of humanity struggling for existence contains elements of worth and future development inappreciable by the philanthropy that would elevate them by cultivating their self-love. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... secure her good. He gives, and asks nothing. Or, in the same way, the woman loves the man so that her whole thought is not what she can obtain from him, but what she can give him. True love desires only to give. Self-love strives only ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... do but loathe Things base or mean, I must confess I'd very freely take my oath, Self-love's a fault he ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... and exploring the celebrated Oasis of 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
... humble and self-denying in all things as we should be, is a subject for self-examination, not only on the part of our lay brethren, but as well on the part of us who are ministers of the Word. Self-love is self-worship. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve," is as true to-day as when it was hurled against the devil from the lips of Jesus Christ. Worship is love; and ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... on the head when he says that upon this principle "the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person;" certainly it should be clear that on this assumption, as there can be no return of affection from a God whose love is only self-love, so the effect of prayer can only be that which is produced upon the soul by its consciousness—supposed to be elevating—of being an infinitesimal fraction of an infinite totality. We say that this consciousness is supposed ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... farm, Monsieur de Serizy also intended to examine the work of restoration and the effect of the new furniture. He intended all this to be a surprise to his wife when he brought her to Presles, and with this idea in his mind, he had put some personal pride and self-love into the work. How came it therefore that the count, who intended in the evening to drive to Presles openly in his own carriage, should be starting early the next morning incognito ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the grave accusations 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 of satire ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... compromises, speculations and human arrangements, and desiring others to accommodate themselves to their humors and inclinations. I find myself unable to administer in the least degree to their self-love; and when I would be a little complaisant, a Master, more powerful than myself, restrains me. I cannot give such persons any other place in my heart, than God gives them. I cannot adapt myself to their superficial state, neither respond to ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... taken to be strictly impartial, it cannot be denied that, in publishing a work of this description at a time when the self-love of most men is mortified, and their resentment awakened, I run no small risk of displeasing all parties, because I attach myself to none, but find them all more or less deserving of censure. Without descending either to flattery or calumny, I speak both well and ill of the French, because ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... rest, no 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 sorry fortune on ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... to ask of Me? Give Me, if thou wilt, a list of all thy desires, all the wants of thy soul. Tell Me, simply, of all thy pride, sensuality, self-love, sloth; and ask for My help in thy ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... chained to beast, And groaned to free them. For their sakes, unfearing, He faced the ravening waves, and iron rocks, Hunger, and poniard's edge, and poisoned cup, And faced the face of kings, and faced the host Of demons raging for their realm o'erthrown. This was the Man of Love. Self-love cast out, The love made spiritual of a thousand hearts Met in his single heart, and kindled there A sun-like image of Love Divine. Within That Spirit-shadowed heart was Christ conceived Hourly through faith, hourly through Love was born; Sole secret this ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... 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 of his life and nurture ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... granted to the unfortunate prince a longer life, and a safe return to his kingdom, had Germany been at peace." But when a trait, which is nothing more than a proof of a yet lingering humanity, and which a mere regard to appearances and even self-love, would have extorted from the most insensible, and the absence of which could exist only in the most inhuman heart, has, by a Roman Catholic writer of modern times and acknowledged merit, been made the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... an allegory, of which he gives a most poetical interpretation. The Creation is mankind. The Garden of Eden is the mind of man, which he describes as originally filled with herbs and pleasant plants, "as love, joy, peace, humility, delight, and purity of life." The serpent he holds to be self-love, the forbidden fruit to be "selfishness," following the promptings of which "the whole garden becomes a stinking dunghill of weeds, and brings forth nothing but pride, envy, discontent, disobedience, and the whole actings of the spirit and power of darkness." And he argues ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... 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, they are only the more present to the mind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... thus betraying his master, the master, not to be behindhand with him, betrayed his servant. His self-love, and some remnant of respect to the Church, made him shudder at the idea of seeing a contemptible agent invested with the same hat which he himself wore as a crown, and seated as high as himself, except as to the precarious position of minister. Speaking, therefore, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... respect him much. And my present self I respect, without fondness. Is that metaphysics? Who knows? It is vanity in either case, and the vanity of self-respect is perhaps a more dangerous thing than the vanity of self-love, though you may call it pride if you like, or give it any other high-sounding title. But the heart of the vain man is lighter than the heart of the proud. Probably Nino has always had much self-respect, but I doubt if it has made him very happy—until lately. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... is some other person, of whose thoughts, actions, and sensations we are not conscious. This is sufficiently evident from experience. Our love and hatred are always directed to some sensible being external to us; and when we talk of self-love, it is not in a proper sense, nor has the sensation it produces any thing in common with that tender emotion which is excited by a friend or mistress. It is the same case with hatred. We may be mortified by our own faults and follies; but ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... ones have the heart to laugh at the shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering. These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are, in their eyes, harmless, and slight pricks which they themselves, by a coarseness of nature, or ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the bourgeoisie of Provins at her house in the Upper town. This intelligent young woman of twenty had not as yet made a single blunder or misstep on the slippery path she had taken. She gratified everybody's self-love, and petted their hobbies; serious with the serious, a girl with girls, instinctively a mother with mothers, gay with young wives and disposed to help them, gracious to all,—in short, a pearl, a treasure, ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... way to make him do so is to wound his self-love, and show yourself unjust and ungrateful to him; you will only force him to think the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... were sent to the Vatican on the morrow, but, in displaying them and returning publicly the Medici jewels, we had over-shot the mark, for the Pope's self-love was wounded by the exposition of the straits to which he must have been reduced, to have accounted for their having been even temporarily in Chigi's possession, and another banker received the patronage which our ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... glory and virtue and happiness of Yankee-doodle-doo have inspired the powers of the rotten Old World with the deepest jealousy and hatred, and that every crown in Europe pales before the lustre of that unparalleled confederacy. Nothing can be wider of the truth, pleasing as the illusion may be to the self-love of the most vainglorious people under the sun. The prestige which America and her institutions once undoubtedly enjoyed in many parts of Europe is rapidly fading away, as each successive post brings fresh evidence of her ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... likely to be justified, and that those who have hitherto so confidently opposed me, will soon be obliged to acknowledge their mistake, is of very small importance; nor is my self-love so predominant as to incline me to reckon the confirmation of my predictions, or the vindication of my sagacity among the benefits which we are now about to receive. We are now soon to be convinced that France ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... as the promptings of self-love, a violent temper, pride and ambition could without difficulty overcome. As he rose higher in the social scale the reflection that he had owed the impetus to others was a constant source of annoyance to him. Our house was now but rarely visited ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... fear of present good for the sake of future punishment; of remorse—that disavowal of past pleasure for fear of the sting in its tail; of ambition—that begrudging of all honorable results that are not effected by one's self; of these, and all similar politic and arbitrary masks of self-love and pusillanimity, these poor children know and suspect nothing. Yet their eyes are much keener than ours, for they see through the surface of nature and perceive its symbolism; they see the living reality, of which nature is the veil, and are continually at fault because this veil ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... with sufficient scrupulousness of care from error in this direction, and can be content, and even happy to give more affection than we receive—can make just comparison of circumstances, and be severely accurate in drawing inferences thence, and never let self-love blind our eyes—I think we may manage to get through life with consistency and constancy, unembittered by that misanthropy which springs from revulsions of feeling. All this sounds a little metaphysical, but it is good sense if you consider it. The moral of it is, that if we would build ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and risky 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 so I could face handing over the keys of this house ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... wise, leads me astray, Slow to discern the bad path I have trod: Hope fades, but still desire ascends that God May free me from self-love, my sure decay. Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth! Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way rise Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage. Teach me to hate the world so little worth, And, all the lovely things I clasp and prize, That endless life, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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 them (why ...
— Philebus • Plato
... therefore, and received from Seignelay a kindly welcome. The minister had not been much influenced by the letters of M. de la Barre; he was aware that men could not accomplish great achievements without wounding much self-love, nor without making numerous enemies. La Sale took the opportunity to explain to him his project of discovering the mouth of the Mississippi by sea, in order to open a way for French vessels, and to found ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... and the state legislatures could not properly confirm the acts of such a body, or take notice of them. Congress was the only source from which such proposals could properly emanate. These arguments were pleasing to the self-love of Congress, and it refused to sanction the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... former night which induced him to authorize Matilda's stay. The cloud was now dissipated which had obscured his judgment: He shuddered when He beheld his arguments blazoned in their proper colours, and found that He had been a slave to flattery, to avarice, and self-love. If in one hour's conversation Matilda had produced a change so remarkable in his sentiments, what had He not to dread from her remaining in the Abbey? Become sensible of his danger, awakened from his dream of confidence, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... being so talented, Zamore was not enrolled in Corvi's company? For I was even then sufficiently influential as a critic to manage this for him. Zamore, however, would not leave his master, and sacrificed his self-love to his affection, a proof of devotion which one would look for ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... carefully to retrace his steps, but as he did so he saw the figure of a man dimly lurching toward him out of the darkness of the wharf and the crossed yards of the ship. A gleam of hope came over him, for the emotion of the last few minutes had rudely displaced his pride and self-love. He would appeal to this stranger, whoever he was; there was more chance that in this rude locality he would be a belated sailor or some humbler wayfarer, and the darkness and solitude made him feel less ashamed. By the last flickering street lamp he could see that ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... him. This influence she had tried to make effectual in bringing about a reconciliation between him and her sister's husband; but, up to this time, her good offices were not successful. The old man's prejudices remained strong—he was not prepared to yield; and Markland's self-love having been deeply wounded by Mr. Howland, he was not disposed to make any advances toward healing the breach that existed. As for Mary, she cherished too deeply the remembrance of her father's unbending severity toward his children—in fact his iron hand had well ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... obstacles?-when did it not claim for itself the interests of federal power, and the nation's indulgence?-when did it not regard with coldest indifference the good or ill of all beyond its own limits? The slave world loves itself; but, though self-love may now and then give out a degree of virtue, slavery has none to lead those beyond its own atmosphere. To avoid, then, the terrors to which, even on the free soil of the north, a fugitive slave is constantly liable, as also that serpent-like ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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
... 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) in ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... First you convict me of vanity—now of self-love. Let me do as I please, Franziska. You, too, shall do as you ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... net, on 1500 pounds which my engagement brought me!), have ploughed my way through Belgium, with which I have every reason to be satisfied, and have sauntered about in Paris for six weeks. This latter, I don't hide it from you, has been a real satisfaction to my self-love. On arriving there I compared myself (pretty reasonably, it seems to me) to a man playing ecarte for the fifth point. Well, I have had king and vole,—seven points rather than five! [The "fifth" is the highest in this game, so Liszt ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... freely described what we saw, we wish it were in our power to lay down next, for the benefit of those who come after us, a satisfactory method of treating small-pox. The hospital returns are not of such an encouraging nature as to make our self-love predominate over observation and experience, and lead us to inferences which might seem to sanction the utility of this or that medicine, or curative plan. We had to deal, it is true, with the worst portion ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... long as you draw perfection in both sexes, you are certain to be read, because by so doing you flatter human nature and self-love, and transfer it to the individual who reads. Now a picture ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a narrow affection for the spot where a man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference, because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see not the array of force ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... prospects—the smiles of peace; it is the heart's Summer calendar, giving news of marriages and births for heirs and patrons; it is the Autumn of joy, giving accounts of plenty, and guarding the avaricious against the snares of self-love, and offering arguments in favour of humanity. It is more; a Newspaper is one of the most faithful lessons that can be represented to our reflections, for, while it is the interpreter 214of the general economy of nature, it is a most ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... think of other people. This changes the complexion of his spirits—generally wholesomely. The minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately wear out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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
... impossible than "Every Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to have absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... caused this storm. Le Brusquet, however, was not to be seen. He had stolen in, thrown his apple of discord, and stolen forth again like a ghost. None knew or understood better than he the wayward character of Vendome, and that never was the prince capable of acting with decision unless his self-love were hurt. So he had made his plan, and acted, and now stood in the shadow of a pillar in the courtyard waiting for the prince. He had not long to wait, for Vendome came storming out, almost on his heels, and called for his horse. There ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... 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 with her, she ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... opportunity, and human nature is such that Barbicane felt more keenly the opposition of that one man than he did the applause of all the others. He was well aware of the motive of this antipathy, the origin of this solitary enmity, the cause of its personality and old standing, and in what rivalry of self-love it had its rise. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... great deal of trouble not to be of the same opinion as our self-love, and not to be ready to believe in the good taste of those who believe in ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read; Self so self-loving were iniquity. 'T is thee, myself, that for myself I praise, Painting my age with ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... thus describes her pupil's character: "It is a curious compound of ease at learning, self-love, emulation, idleness, amiability, clear-mindedness, levity, haughtiness, and piety. There are a good many qualities to dispose of, and on this proper arrangement depends her happiness or unhappiness, and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 1830, Mr. Parke describes the custom of encoring performers as a prerogative that had been exercised by the public for more than a century; and says, with some justice, that it originated more from self-love in the audience than from gratitude to those who had afforded them pleasure. He considered, however, that encoring had done service upon the whole, by exciting emulation, and stimulating singers to extraordinary exertion; and that though, in many instances, it destroyed the illusion ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... 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 ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 generates a craving for high-seasoned personalities which is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which strain the bond to the breaking point. There is often a good deal of selfishness in the affection, which asks for absorption, and is jealous of other interests. Jealousy is usually the fruit, not of love, but of self-love. Life is bigger than any relationship, and covers more ground. The circles of life may intersect, and part of each be common to the other, but there will be an area on both sides exclusive to each; and ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... unceremonied, or call it unmannered, Americans the receiver of a letter probably knows no better than the sender how it should be addressed; but in the rarer case in which he does know, his self-respect or his self-love is wounded if it is misaddressed. It is something like having your name misspelled, though of course not so bad as that, quite; and every one would be glad to ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... knowledge kindles it into a flame. Thus we find there never have been slaves in any country, who have not seized the first favorable opportunity to revolt. These, our hewers of wood and drawers of water, possess the power of doing us mischief, and are prompted to it by motives which self-love dictates, which reason justifies. Our sole security, then, consists in their ignorance of this power, and their means of using it—a security which we have lately found is not to be relied on, and which, small as it is, every day diminishes. Every year ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... same time, hang not the weight of our wellbeing on our duties, but on Christ by faith. I am a reeling, unstable, staggering, unsettled, lukewarm creature. For Thy compassion's sake forgive and heal, warm, establish, enlighten, draw me and I will follow. I am full of self-love, darkness in my judgment, fear to confess Thee, or hazard myself, or my estate, or my peace. . . . We poor creatures are commanded by our affections and our passions; they are not at our command; but the Holy One doth exercise all His attributes ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... he would banish by shunning the society of all those who could call them forth. Their candid acknowledgment of having deserved his displeasure, and submission to his will, however, so soothed his self-love, his fondness for absolute power, that he permitted them to have vent with but little restraint. Agnes might have been the wife of a traitor, but he was out of Edward's way; the daughter of a traitress, but she was equally powerless; linked with treason, but too much crashed ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... "No, not I, little one. The guest's name is Humility." He waited a moment and then proceeded. "You are entertaining two guests now who are eating you out of house and home; devouring your substance literally. Their names are Vanity and Self-love. Vanity has a thin skin, is very easily injured. The other one whispers to you to hate your aunt and uncle, and to be jealous of Edna Derwent. They can't stay where Humility enters. Take her in. Listen to her. She will whisper to you that it isn't of so much ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... far as they have been confided to my care, have all succeeded; but, as I have stated (p. 79) in a printed report, a copy of which will be sent to you, they have neither flattered the vainglory of any particular nation, nor enlisted on their side the self-love of any influential class or powerful individual, and they have, in consequence, been attended with little eclat. They have, however, tended to secure to the Government the gratitude and affection of the people of India, and are measures of which that Government may ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... heart, and in solitary reflection pondered deeply if she in any way deserved them. She knew that the lesson of self-knowledge is never entirely learnt; and she knew too, that an enemy may say that in ill-will or malice which may have some foundation, though our friends, aided by self-love, may have hidden the truth from us. Deeply did this noble woman think on her plan of conduct; severely she scrutinized its every motive, and she was at peace. Before entering upon it she had implored the Divine blessing, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love—to the fact that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and, although these transactions of his have since been exposed, you will find that the ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by such expressions, that he knew how to flatter self-love, and animate zeal. I flew to Bale. Had it been necessary for me, in order to justify the expectations of Napoleon, to cross the Rhine under the mouths of the enemy's cannon, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... often catch ourselves neglecting it; and always, at the best, it takes a struggle to make it a reality in our conduct. Experience, however, impresses us more and more with a sense of its being absolutely essential to the ascertainment of truth in any disputable case. There is so much bias from self-love, so much recklessness about truth in general, and so much of even a sincere faithlessness of narration, that no partial account of anything is to be trusted. It is but a small concession to the cause of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... the sentiments which correspond to the fibers of propriety and self-love. However, a worthy representative of the hospitality which prevailed in early days, he feigned to be talking very earnestly with D'Artagnan, and incessantly repeated:—"Ah! monsieur, what a ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... D'Artagnan, "there lurks in everything the question of interest, the question of self-love. It is a very fine title, that of captain of the musketeers; but observe this: we have now the king's guards and the military household of the king. A captain of musketeers ought to command all that, and then he would absorb a hundred ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... make little distinction between right and wrong. O beauteous Bacchus, I will not rouse thee against thy will, nor will I hurry abroad thy [mysteries, which are] covered with various leaves. Cease your dire cymbals, together with your Phrygian horn, whose followers are blind Self-love and Arrogance, holding up too high her empty head, and the Faith communicative of secrets, and ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... feat like this. The pride of the province marry a fellow of his caste! The girl was angry and indignant. At first she considered it a joke; then she became annoyed, and finally she ridiculed the idea. At last she became used to Garnet's attentions, and it pleased her self-love to be a subject of adulation, which she unmercifully snubbed in return. But Santos was pertinacious in his courtship. With the persistence of a fly which dashes against glass, trying a hundred times to pass through the obstruction, neither repulses, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... themselves become the target for such things, it almost kills them, or at least they feel almost killed. What makes this great difference in their feelings? Why do they feel for themselves so much more than they do for others? Trace the feeling back to its origin, and you will find that their self-love is the thing that has been hurt. If they loved others as they love themselves, they would feel just as much hurt by that which was directed against the other as by that which was directed at themselves. It is self-love that makes people ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... pride and egoism; his ready tact, social charm, and power of psychological analysis, subtle sophistry and self-deception; his warmest affection, disguised self-love; his finest qualities perverted lead to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... it is a case of slow poisoning or of ordeal by red-hot irons, which though not fatal, undermines the whole character, and burns ineffaceable scars into the soul. And people take it in various ways—some fiercely, stung by a sense of wounded self-love; others haughtily: ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... fear there are many, some unconscious of the injury they do, and perhaps with just intentions, who feed this appetite for undue praise. Others, for mere popularity or the applause of the day, minister with adroitness the sweet though poisonous morsel for which our vanity and self-love are open-mouthed; which (to carry on the simile,) puffs us up with the comfortable notion that we are superior in every respect to all other nations, ancient or modern. It would be well to turn a deaf ear to this syren's song: let us learn if possible to know ourselves; ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various |
