"Self-seeking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or other, says Bishop Wilson, 'every man is conscious of an opposition in him between the flesh and the spirit.'" No one is more keenly conscious of this opposition than St. Paul himself. How is he to bring the evil and self-seeking tendencies of his composite nature into conformity with the law and will of God? "Mere commanding and forbidding is of no avail, and only irritates opposition in the desires it tries to control.... Neither the law ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... of bigot, self-seeking demagogue, and astute politician was fraught with grave menace to the peace of the state and the liberties of the people,—by which is meant the whole people, and not any one class, sought to be built up ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... as we possibly can a succeeding generation, which shall prepare still more capably for still better generations to follow. We are passing as a race out of a state of affairs when the unconscious building of the future was attained by individualistic self-seeking (altogether unenlightened or enlightened only by the indirect moralizing influence of the patriotic instinct and religion) into a clear consciousness of our co-operative share in that process. That ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... presence rather humbled and over-crowed. When the woman that a man loves laughs at his moral enthusiasms, it is like a black frost on the delicate tips of budding trees. It is up-hill work, as we all know, to battle with indolence and selfishness, and self-seeking and hard-hearted worldliness. Then the highest and holiest part of our nature has a bashfulness of its own. It is a heavenly stranger, and easily shamed. A nimble-tongued, skilful woman can so easily ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... subsistence would also widen and admit additional scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies touching the common ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Talents at work; and if the publick Spirit of Christian love and ingenuitie did possess those, that are possessed of publick places in the Colleges of the Universities. For if this Spirit did rule their Aims and Endevors, there would bee no self-seeking, no partialitie, no envie, nor anie cross actings for private ends, to the prejudice of the Publick; but the generous love of virtue and of profitable Learning, would swaie all their inclinations to a free conjunction; and make all their endeavors subordinate unto the publick good ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... could you impute to me such preposterous self-seeking? To solicit out of hand, for my private behoof, an hundred dollars from a perfect stranger? I am not ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... spirit could kindle in them. She saw what she had never beheld before indeed, but the meaning of which no woman ever yet mistook. It was her work—the assurance of her disgrace—the offspring of her self-seeking and unwomanly behavior; and yet, as she looked, the blood rose gradually to her pale cheeks, and stained them with a deeper and yet deeper spot of red; her glance caught a spark from his, and her fragile and drooping figure seemed to dilate and grow stately, as if inspired by some burst ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... sure, Sir Gilbert had his qualms of conscience, too, over having thus sent off Guy Waring, as he believed, to his grave in Cape Colony. He was not at heart a bad man, though he was pushing, and selfish, and self-seeking, and to a certain extent even—of late—unscrupulous. He had his bad half-hours every now and again with his own moral consciousness. But he had learnt to stifle his doubts and to keep down his terrors. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... two or three at her service: it was the most natural thing in the world for people to think as they did. Yet not a human being ever accused Hetty of flirting; her manner was always as open, friendly, and cordial as an honest boy's, and with no more trace of self-seeking or self-consciousness about it. She was as full of fun and mischief, too, as any boy could be. She had slid down hill with the wildest of them, till even her father ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... the wickedest offenses possible to commit against the Church is the stirring up of doctrinal discord and division, a thing the devil encourages to the utmost. This sin usually has its rise with certain haughty, conceited, self-seeking leaders who desire peculiar distinction for themselves and strive for personal honor and glory. They harmonize with none and would think themselves disgraced were they not honored as superior and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... have done this as readily for any Mr. Jones as for the Duke of Omnium; but were he to do it, it would be said of him that it had been done because the man was Duke of Omnium. There are positions exalted beyond the reach of benevolence, because benevolence would seem to be self-seeking. "Your father, if he were here," said he, "would know that I could ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... one time he was regarded by some of his opponents as a political fire-eater—a democratic despot who would have decapitated kings and queens without a tinge of remorse, and slain wicked Tories with the sword. He was, however, never the ungenial, self-seeking, aggressive person some of his foes may have fancied him. He was always an affable, pleasant, agreeable man, who could be civil and even polite to his adversaries, especially when political fighting was not going ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... necessity of change, to forestall revolution with healthy development,—and believes that there is no real antagonism between Old and New, but only a factitious one, the result of man's obstinacy or self-seeking. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and his energy and experience were guarantees of his competence, though, as a younger member of the great house of Thouars, he belonged by birth to the inner circle of the Poitevin nobility, whose treachery, levity, and self-seeking were proverbial. The powerful Viscounts of Thouars were constantly kept in check by their traditional enemies the Counts of La Marche, whose representative, Hugh of Lusignan, was by far the strongest of the local barons. His cousin, and sometime betrothed, Isabella, Countess of Angouleme, the widow ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Vice Presidency, and had frequently said to mutual friends that this was my desire. The contingency of Garfield's nomination I did not consider, for I supposed that as he was secure in the Senate for six years, he would not desire the presidential nomination, but as it has come to him without his self-seeking it is honorable and right and I have no cause of complaint. If I believed that he had used the position I gave him to supplant me, I would consider it dishonorable and would not support him; but, while such statements have been made to me, I feel bound to say that I have never ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... his insolent bearing. Obedient to the call of their chief, they assemble about him to determine on measures for the defence of the land, and to learn of the disposition of his dominions. The weak Brand is given his lawful share, which agrees well enough with Lady Helga's self-seeking plans of uniting all the land under her and Thorolf's rule. The more forceful Broddi is entitled to the other half; but when Kolbein, very conveniently for her, becomes delirious she substitutes Thorolf's name instead, shrewdly taking the precaution of compelling ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... bishops, experienced generals, magistrates learned in the law: he held it to be his duty and his interest to hear their advice. And they were not without influence: one or two were noted as able to restrain his self-seeking will. But the main affairs he kept in his own hands. All that he undertook he conducted with great foresight and as a rule he carried it through. Foreigners regarded him as cunning and deceitful; to his own people his successful ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... men whimperingly complain that there is no longer a career for genius? Tush! It is enthusiasm that is wanted. Give us that, and the career will follow. But the enthusiasm must be of the real sort—not self-asserting, self-conscious, self-seeking; but earnest, patient, resolute, and reticent: for science, too, needs heroism ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... name of their home in England. Love for the old country was still alive in Colonel Barrington, and it was only after grave deliberation that he had drawn the sword, convinced that he drew it for the right. Doubtless there were some in this great conflict who were self-seeking, but this was certainly not the case with Henry Barrington. He had much to lose, nothing personal to win which seemed to him of any consequence. Broadmead he loved. He had been born there. In due time he had brought home to it his beautiful young wife, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... this can and does progress, but mostly slowly, intermittently, with short violent paroxysms of excess and long sleepy reactions of defect, with one-sidedness, travesties, and—worst of all—with worldly indifference and self-seeking. The grace and aid of the Simultaneous Richness are here also always necessary; nor can these things ever really progress except through a deep religious sense—all mere scepticism and all levelling down are simply ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the nation or more anxious for its good. To a new political society, freshly exposed to the temptations of party struggles for power, no greater service can be rendered than a public life absolutely clear from any suspicion of self-seeking, governed uninterruptedly and long by public spirit, public ends, and a strong sense of duty. Such a service General Church has rendered to his adopted country. During his residence among them for nearly half a century they have become familiar, not in word, but in living reality, with some of the ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... were not of grief, but tears of yearning love, of sympathy, of solemn joy and gratitude to God for such a life in its rounded completeness, such an example and testimony, such fidelity to conscience, such recoil from all self-seeking, such unswerving devotion to duty, come what might of peril or loss, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... bestow upon the vast mass of your order the luminous intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of Nature'? Grant that you do so, and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you assume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself: what black ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with great ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great opportunity of making himself popular by stopping this Act against Conventicles; and how my Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if the Parliament continue, will undoubtedly fall, he having managed that place with so much self-seeking, and disorder, and pleasure, and some great men are designing to overthrow [him], as, among the rest, my Lord Orrery; and that this will try the King mightily, he being a firm friend to my Lord Lieutenant. So home; and to supper ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... clear of what the State must one day mean and what the work of the world must be, when once more the devil of self-seeking and greed flees to his own place, and each man knows that his life is his own only as he gives it to high service, and to loving thought for every weaker soul. The co-operative commonwealth must come; and ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully—I missed him even while his body was still lying in the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... a very long period. But as time went on negligence and self-seeking crept in. Those whose duty it was to superintend, threw more and more responsibility on their inferiors in office, and in time it became rare for the rulers to interfere or to interest themselves in any of the operations. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... class (hucksters and profiteers), a self-seeking, aggressive group of adventurers, promoters and organizers of bourgeois society to whom profit comes first. At one or another stage in the life cycle of every civilization aggressive bourgeois greed for wealth and power makes itself felt. Their role in western civilization ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... party assembles round the table, and these exiles on a foreign shore extend the warmest of welcomes to the stray bird of passage, who will soon leave behind only the shadowy "remembrance of a guest who tarrieth but a day." The idea so familiar to the self-seeking spirit, that "it is not worth while" to trouble about a passing acquaintance, finds no echo in this hospitable coterie. To the visitor, the bright hours of that afternoon, ten thousand miles away from England, remain as an evergreen memory of genuine human sympathy, the true "touch of Nature" linking ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... proof of his alliance with God. As Diderot has said, it is sometimes only necessary to be a little mad in order to prophesy and to enjoy poetic ecstasies; and in the case of Schlatter the flower of altruism which often blossoms in the hearts of such "madmen" was manifested in his complete lack of self-seeking and in his compassion for the poor and suffering which drew crowds around him. As to his miracles, we may—without attempting to explain them—state decisively that they do not differ from those accomplished by means of suggestion. The cases of blindness treated by Schlatter have a remarkable ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... was shot through with intrigue and corruption. The Marquis, with all the faults of his temperament, was an idealist, with a noble vision for his country. He saw that it had fallen into the hands of base, self-seeking men, and he grasped at every means that presented itself to overthrow the powers that seemed to him to be corrupting and enfeebling France. He became an enthusiastic follower of Boulanger; when Boulanger fell, he became a violent anti-Semite, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... likings must be curiously studied. He was dimly conscious of lacking the stage attributes of a lover. He could not pose as a mirror of all virtues, a fanatic for the True and the Good. Somehow or other he had acquired an air of self-seeking egotism, unscrupulousness, which he felt miserably must make him unlovely in certain eyes. Nor would the contest he was entering upon improve this fancied reputation of his. He would have to say hard, unfeeling things against what all the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... strain, Unto men these moonmen lend, And our shrinking sky extend. So is man's narrow path By strength and terror skirted; Also (from the song the wrath Of the Genii be averted! The Muse the truth uncolored speaking) The Daemons are self-seeking: Their fierce and limitary will Draws men to their likeness still. The erring painter made Love blind,— Highest Love who shines on all; Him, radiant, sharpest-sighted god, None can bewilder; Whose eyes pierce The universe, Path-finder, road-builder, Mediator, royal giver; ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is self-seeking, envy, calculation; with us the conviction that we are fighting for the holiest possessions of our people, ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... Dickens's sympathetic extravagances, it will seem hard and repellant. But men who, like Thackeray, have seen life and tasted its bitterness and felt its hollowness, know how to prize it. Thackeray does not merely expose the cant, the emptiness, the self-seeking, the false pretenses, flunkeyism, and snobbery—the "mean admiration of mean things"—in the great world of London society: his keen, unsparing vision detects the base alloy in the purest natures. There are no "heroes" in his books, no perfect ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to the fall of the light. It was a phrenetic indictment, but under the paltry rhetoric of the man there was genuine indignation and pain. There were revolting details of cruelty to the miserable, helpless, and defenceless; there were greed, and self-seeking, stripped naked; but more revolting to see without a mask was that falsehood which had been hiding under the words that for ages had spurred men to noble deeds, to self-sacrifice, to heroism. What was appalling was the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... large cities, every American community lies under a sacerdotal despotism whose devices are disingenuous and dishonourable, and whose power was magnificently displayed in the campaign for Prohibition—a despotism exercised by a body of ignorant, superstitious, self-seeking and thoroughly dishonest men. One may, without prejudice, reasonably defend the Catholic clergy. They are men who, at worst, pursue an intelligible ideal and dignify it with a real sacrifice. But in the presence of the Methodist clergy it is difficult to avoid giving way to the weakness of indignation. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... Layelah—"the heaven-born Atam-or. He shall be our teacher. The rich shall be esteemed, the poor shall be down-trodden; to rule over others shall be glorious, to serve shall be base; victory shall be an honor, defeat a shame; selfishness, self-seeking, luxury, and indulgence shall be virtues; poverty, want, and squalor shall be things of abhorrence ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... gentleman of our time, blest with every advantage that physical cultivation can bestow on him. Let this man be tried by a temptation which insidiously calls into action, in his own interests, the savage instincts latent in humanity—the instincts of self-seeking and cruelty which are at the bottom of all crime. Let this man be placed toward some other person, guiltless of injuring him, in a position which demands one of two sacrifices: the sacrifice of the other person, or the sacrifice of his own interests and his own desires. His neighbor's happiness, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... but we know that she can work. She has done the drudgery of this association for more than twenty years and I hope the woman who will be chosen in her place, whoever she may be, will be as consecrated and free from all self-seeking." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... unconscious selflessness which is the saint's gift. Those who ask nothing for themselves, whose whole strength is spent on affections that are their life, and on ideals at one with their affections, are not easily popular, like the self-seeking, parti-colored folk who make up the rest of us; who flatter, caress, and court, that we in our turn may be flattered and courted. Their gentleness masks the indomitable soul within; and so their fellows are often unaware of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... defection from the colonial clergy were numerically insignificant; but very far from insignificant was the fact that in Connecticut a sincere and spontaneous movement toward the Episcopal Church had arisen among men honored and beloved, whose ecclesiastical views were not tainted with self-seeking or servility or with an unpatriotic shame for their colonial home and sympathy with its political enemies. Elsewhere in New England, and largely in Connecticut also, the Episcopal Church in its beginnings was handicapped with a dead-weight of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... meretricious ornament, and an eagerness to convince and carry his hearers with him, which was singularly effective. His addresses were not only free from all ambition as to ornate or attractive language, but also as to original or characteristic thought. There was such an entire absence of all self-seeking about the man, and he so thoroughly identified himself with the people whose interests he pleaded, that, possessing a fair readiness of speech, and aptness for ad captandum argument, he could not fail to secure the favourable attention ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... emerges from the naive communal culture where the dominant note of life is the unanalysed and undifferentiated solidarity of the individual with the group with which his life is bound up. When he enters upon the predatory stage, where self-seeking in the narrower sense becomes the dominant note, this propensity goes with him still, as the pervasive trait that shapes his scheme of life. The propensity for achievement and the repugnance to futility remain the underlying economic motive. The propensity changes only in the form of its ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... was the governor of the province of New Jersey, came to the house at Christmas time. He was a silent, morose, dignified, self-seeking man, who astonished Jack with his rabid Toryism. He nettled the boy by treating the opinions of the latter with smiling toleration and by calling his own father—the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... generation, how quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church and Parliament ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... or cure!' he said, with that queer courage which never deserted him, even if it were based entirely upon self-seeking and self-interest. He threw his head back with the characteristic action with which he always swallowed his medicine, and went back ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... it had become known to Prince Kung and his friends that he had left the governing authority during the minority of his son, a child of less than six years of age, to a board of regency composed of eight of the least intelligent and most arrogant and self-seeking members of the imperial family, with Prince Tsai at their head. The emperor died on August 22. A few hours later the imperial decree notifying the last wishes of the ruler as to the mode of government was promulgated. The board of regency assumed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... near to Enoshima. Here at the monastery of Mampukuji is still kept the draft of the touching letter(120) which he sent to his brother, protesting his loyalty and denying the charges of ambition and self-seeking which had been made against him. But all this availed nothing. Yoshitsune returned to Kyoto and, in fear of bodily harm from the machinations of his brother, made his escape with his faithful servant Benkei,(121) into his old asylum with his friend Fujiwara Hidehira the governor ...
— Japan • David Murray
... receiveth the light of understanding from above. The spirit which is pure, sincere, and steadfast, is not distracted though it hath many works to do, because it doth all things to the honour of God, and striveth to be free from all thoughts of self-seeking. Who is so full of hindrance and annoyance to thee as thine own undisciplined heart? A man who is good and devout arrangeth beforehand within his own heart the works which he hath to do abroad; and so is not drawn away by the desires of his evil will, but subjecteth everything to the ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... Mill and Macaulay from the standpoint of an impartial umpire, with an expert's appreciation of their logical fencing and some humorous glances at the heated combatants. Mill was an austere Puritan, who would fell the Tory like an ox and would trample upon the cunning self-seeking Whig. The Edinburgh Reviewers were a set of brilliant young men who represented intellectual Liberalism; but 'they were men who meant to become judges, members of Parliament, or even bishops, and nothing in their social atmosphere had stimulated the deep resentment against social injustice ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... to make the war serve his ends, appeared everywhere. From the morrow of those first days of high exaltation the two currents ran side by side in Canada: the clear tide of valor and self-sacrifice, the muddy stream of cowardice and self-seeking. There was an influential element in the dominant party which was determined to exploit the war to the limit for political and personal interests. The war meant patronage; it must be placed where it would do the most party good. It meant an opportunity ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people: there it is said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":—they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... —innocent, and a child. I have washed my robes in the tears of repentance; I can come before the altar whither my guardian angel, my beloved Calyste, has led me. With what tender comfort I give you that name, which the step I now take sanctifies. I love you without self-seeking, as a mother loves her son, as the Church loves her children. I can pray for you and for yours without one thought or wish except for your happiness. Ah! if you only knew the sublime tranquillity in which I live, now that I have risen in thought above all petty earthly interests, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... man who habitually dwelt in the highest regions of thought during his whole life, absorbed in lofty contemplations, all from love of truth itself and to benefit the world, could not have had a mean or sordid soul. "As a man thinketh, so is he." We admit that he was a man of the world, politic, self-seeking, extravagant, careless about his debts and how he raised money to pay them; but we deny that he was a bad judge on the whole, or was unpatriotic, or immoral in his private life, or mean in his ordinary dealings, or more cruel and harsh in his judicial transactions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... exercising in nature's own way the activity bestowed upon women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues, provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner or later, the lives of all old maids. Birotteau, unhappily, had developed in Sophie Gamard the only sentiments which it was possible for that poor creature to feel,—those of hatred; a ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... tyrant to such as were below him. His affection for the Emperor, of which he made great display, was only for what it would bring to him; and his fidelity to his duties which was exemplary, grew out of no principle of integrity, but was merely a part of that self-seeking policy that was the rule of his life. His office put him in the way to amass riches, and for that reason there was not one perhaps of all the servants of the Emperor who performed with more exactness the affairs entrusted ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... by the crowd before the very eyes of the consul. In addition, the dread of the Sabine war spread, and when a levy was decreed, nobody gave in his name: Appius was enraged, and bitterly inveighed against the self-seeking conduct of his colleague, in that he, by the inactivity he displayed to win the favour of the people, was betraying the republic, and, besides not having enforced justice in the matter of debt, likewise neglected even to hold a levy, in obedience to the decree of the senate. Yet ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... strong passions of the first half of the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... fought the fight and kept the faith of a working man of letters. It is rendered to the most distinguished poet, of his country and generation, still remaining with us and still in full voice. It is rendered to the comrade—to the man who, with his modesty and fortitude and the absence of self-seeking—with the quips and quirks that cover his gravest moods, with his attachment for the city which has given him that which Lamb so loved, "the sweet security of streets"—it is rendered, I say, to the man who best preserves for us, in his living presence, the traditions ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... whom, if the Hesea's tale be true, I did once lay down my royal rank and dare the dangers of an unsailed sea; O thou whom in ages gone I would have sheltered with my frail body from the sorceries of this cold, self-seeking witch; O thou whom but a little while ago at my own life's risk I drew from death in ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... sufficient atonement. But he cared little, for his nature was not a courtier's, and even then the English Normans were colder and graver men than those of France, and more overbearing in arms, but less self-seeking, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross. For I feel it, I feel it—infinite love is suffering too—yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... cares, and rest in God. She said with Galahad, "If I lose myself, I save myself." Her enthusiasm for a pure ideal, joined to her eloquence, affected many minds. It provoked opposition in the Church and in the Court, which was for the most part gross and self-seeking. Madame Guyon was attacked, even imprisoned. Fenelon felt the charm of her spiritual aspiration, and, without accepting its form, was her defender. Bossuet attacked her views. Fenelon published "Maxims of the Saints on the Interior Life." Bossuet wrote on "The States of Prayer." These were the rival ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the grateful and deferential valet in The Rivals, "it hurts his conscience to be found out." There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He ghosted ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... He felt that he had received the pardon of Heaven for his sins, and could now depart bravely to work out his penance. Softened and exalted, he little realised that the penance was unnecessary and self-imposed, that the mood which now took on the heroic tone of self-sacrifice was still a mood of self-seeking, that his love for Lena was selfish now as it had always been, and utterly unworthy of the devotion he received. It was true that he loved her, but he loved himself and his ambitions and revenges more. Her forgiveness was but permission ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... how, in the face of many temptations, that attitude was maintained. The very message which he had to carry was full of temptations to a self-seeking man to assert himself. You remember the almost rough 'No!' with which, reiteratedly, he met the suggestions of the deputation from Jerusalem that sought to induce him to say that he was more than he knew himself to be, and how he stuck ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of home and education. She had belonged to a class. She had grown to womanhood in it. She had loved, and in loving had escaped the evil of her day, if not its taint. She had lived only for herself. Conscience had awakened—but, alas! too late. She had overthrown the sordid, self-seeking habit of life; she had awakened to real womanhood; she had fought the insidious spell of modernity and she had defeated it; she had learned the thrill of taking root in new soil, the pain and joy of labor, the bliss of solitude, the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... abhorrence of democracy, his admiration of strong character, his disposition to work from historical bases rather than from absolute principles, but representing them at once with a prudence of common sense and a prudence of self-seeking and timidity which are alike foreign to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I was much affected by what seemed to me the dramatically fitting outcome of my old kinswoman's Quixotism. I saw Cousin Tryphena picturesquely as the Happy Fool of old folk-lore, the character who, through his very lack of worldly wisdom, attains without effort all that self-seeking folks try for in vain. The happy ending of her adventure filled me with a cheerful wonder at the ways of Providence, which I tried to pass on to her in the exclamation, "Why, Cousin Tryphena, it's like a story-book? You're going to enjoy having those people. The woman is as ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... in Egypt with a picture of Antony fascinated by the Egyptian queen. The urgent needs of the divided Roman world call him away to Italy. Here, once free of Cleopatra's presence, he becomes his old self, a reveler, yet diplomatic and self-seeking. From motives of policy he marries Octavia, sister of Octavius Caesar, and for a brief space seems assured of a brilliant future. But the old spell draws him back. He returns to Cleopatra, and Octavius in revenge for Octavia's wrongs makes war upon him. Cleopatra proves still ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... as far as he dared the independence of the Slave States, and at the same time on the ruins of the Mexican Republic setting up a mock Empire. In similar spirit has he conspired against German Unity, whose just strength promised to be a wall against his unprincipled self-seeking. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... chiefly sustained by Cleveland and Vargrave, fell on public questions; and as one was opposed to the other, Vargrave's exposition of views and motives had in them so much of the self-seeking of the professional placeman, that they might well have offended any man tinged by the lofty mania of political Quixotism. It was with a strange mixture of feelings that Maltravers listened: at one moment he proudly congratulated himself on having quitted ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or Canning,—if we could forget his vanity, which after all is not so offensive as the intellectual pride of Burke and Pitt, and of sundry other great lights who might be mentioned, conscious of their gifts and attainments. There is something very different in the egotism of a silly and self-seeking aristocrat from that of a great benefactor who has something to be proud of, and with whose private experiences the greatest national deeds are connected. I speak of this fault because it has been handled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... spoke long and eloquently while all men listened, for he reminded them of mighty warriors of old who had not won such glorious fame, and warned them against pride and lack of generosity and self-seeking; and then, ending with thanks and fresh gifts to Beowulf, he bade the feast continue with increased jubilation. The tumultuous rejoicing lasted till darkness settled on the land, and when it ended all retired to rest free from ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... scandal scorched the Church with such a flaming vehemence that the heat kindled round the throne of the Chief Bishop himself, Father John escaped without so much as the smell of burning on his garments. None could lay self-seeking to his charge, nor even the smallest of the many vices which in every order raised their heads, rampant and unashamed. It was characteristic of Louis that he should attach to himself men of such unselfish humility and austere ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... not the grosser passions and forms of vice alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the truth. Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice—in a word, the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form—will effectually hinder the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of the truth; for they will incline him to seek a religion which flatters him and promises him impunity in sin, and will fatally prejudice him against ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... died in 1872.) The Fatality of Self-Seeking in Editors and Authors. (Printed with the "Miscellanies" in the "Recollections of a Busy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... there came over the Knight a sudden sense of compunction. He began for the first time to see the matter as it must appear to the Bishop and the nun. His own obstinate and determined self-seeking shamed him. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... too, I know that you are vain and self-seeking, and look forward contentedly to the time when your father will transfer his ownership of your physical attractions to that nobleman who offers the highest ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... outside the Porto a Faenza, which he had counseled Alessandro to construct for the intimidation of the Florentines.[1] The historians with the exception of Nerli agree in describing him as a pleasure-loving and self-seeking man, whose many changes of policy were due, not to conviction, but to the desire of gaining the utmost license of disorderly living. At the same time we cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental qualities, a princely bearing, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... who acts Free from self-seeking, humble, resolute, Steadfast, in good or evil hap the same, Content to do aright-he "truly" acts. There is th' "impassioned" doer. He that works From impulse, seeking profit, rude and bold To overcome, unchastened; slave by turns Of sorrow and of joy: of Rajas he! And there be evil doers; loose ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... shepherd of the folk. Scoffingly he asks Jan: 'Art thou a king?' Simple, yet endlessly deep the reply: 'Art thou a bishop?' Both alike false to their callings—as father of men and shepherd of souls. Yet the one cold, self-seeking sceptic, the other ignorant, passionate, fanatic idealist. 'Why hast thou destroyed the town and my folk?' 'Priest, I have not destroyed one little maid of thine. Thou hast again thy town, and I ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... mock-poetry about these creatures that suited that sort of thing; but for a man who wrote his letters from Brookes's, and whose dinner invitations included all that was great in town, to stoop to such an alliance was as bold a defiance as one could throw at a world of self-seeking and conventionality. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... enough, I could give up love itself for him. He hinted it, looking as from a distance at me in my attitude of protest and restraint. If I loved him enough, I could forego love itself for him. Somewhere there is a fault, it would seem, somewhere in my abandon is restraint, in my love, self-seeking. Remorse overcame me just as he was about to leave, and I schooled myself to think that there had been no affront, that it honours a woman to be wanted no matter for what end, that every use is a noble use, that we die the same, loved or used. If Herbert Wace wants a ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... could tell? Franklin had suggested this, half in jest, years before; Condorcet believed and asserted it now. Ignorance and misery, at all events, should come to an end. When kings and a wicked self-seeking aristocracy should be swept away, the divine sense of right, which God had implanted in the people, would rule; there could be no wars; armies and fleets would become useless; taxes would amount to nothing. All the nations would form ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... deal all along with human progress as something immediate in life, something to be immediately attacked by political parties and groups pointing primarily to that end. I now began to see that just as in my own being there was the rather shallow, rather vulgar, self-seeking careerist, who wore an admirable silk hat and bustled self-consciously through the lobby, and a much greater and indefinitely growing unpublished personality behind him—my hinterland, I have called it—so in human affairs generally the permanent ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... this world shall keep it unto life eternal." "If thy right eye offend thee, (or cause thee to offend,) pluck it out and cast it from thee." We must follow Christ. Here we are taught that, unless we put away all self-seeking, and willingly surrender the dearest objects of our affections on earth, yea, and our own lives also, if need be, we have no claim to the character of disciples of Christ. The glory of God and ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... empiricism. The capable business man who is said to understand the "world" and his fellow-men, has commonly no knowledge of human nature in the larger sense, but merely knows from observation how the average man of a certain limited class is likely to act within a narrow prescribed sphere of self-seeking. Town life, then, strongly favours the education of certain shallow forms of intelligence. In actual attainment the townsman is somewhat more advanced than the countryman. But the deterioration of physique which accompanies ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... praying and so working, keeping before him as his lode-star—"Our Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven;" and asking even for his daily bread for that purpose and no other, would find selfishness and self-seeking die out of him, and active benevolence grow up in him. He would find past sorrows and falls turned unexpectedly to practical use for his own and other's good; and discover to his delight, that his Father had been educating him, while he fancied he was educating himself; ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... were to concentrate their resources, to make a successful bid for victory. 60,000 men might march into Maryland and threaten Washington. But while he was anxious that these views should be laid before the President, he would earnestly disclaim the charge of self-seeking. He wished to follow, and not to lead. He was willing to follow anyone—Lee, or Ewell, or anyone who would fight." "Why do you not urge your views," asked Mr. Boteler, "on General Lee?" "I have done so," replied Jackson. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... self-seeking. They "feed themselves," but they "feed not the flock." They take up religion for what they can make out of it! It is a carnal ambition, not a holy service. It is used for getting, not for giving, for ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... who ever entered Canadian public life. From Ireland came Dr. William Warren Baldwin, whose son Robert, born in Canada, was less surpassingly able than the younger Bidwell but equally moderate and equally beyond suspicion of faction or self-seeking. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... our Blessed Father's, I am perfectly certain that, whatever they may at first sight seem to mean, they are assuredly the expression of thoughts, utterly unselfish, and totally devoid of the spirit of self-seeking. He had written just before: "Take good heed not to come to the feast of the Holy Cross, which is a million times fuller of exquisite pleasures than any wedding feast, without having on the white robe, spotless, and pure from all intentions ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... and some another. Some were for Harcourt, some for Morley, some for a leader in the House of Lords. Presently these disputations died down; what logicians call "the process of exhaustion" settled the question, and Campbell-Bannerman—the least self-seeking man in public life—found himself the accepted leader of the Liberal party. The leadership was an uncomfortable inheritance. There was a certain section of the Liberal party which was anxious that Lord Rosebery should return on his own terms. There were others who wished for ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... vision was conscious of itself as his guilt; he saw it rounded in a gray fog of life-chilling dismay. What was he but a troth-breaker, a liar—and that in strong fact, not in feeble tongue? "What am I," said Conscience, "but a cruel, self-seeking, loveless horror—a contemptible sneak, who, in dread of missing the praises of men, crept away unseen, and left the woman to bear alone our common sin?" What was he but a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... roguish attorney, who was deluding his clients into the carrying on of a long and costly lawsuit for the mere sake of putting money into his own pocket. He lampooned England's allies as well as England's great general; he described the Dutch, whom the Tory ministers had shamefully betrayed, as self-seeking and perfidious traitors, for whose protection we were sacrificing all, until we found out that they were secretly juggling with our enemies for our destruction. No stronger argument could be found to condemn the conduct of the Tory ministers than the mere fact that Swift and Arbuthnot ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... it. They just live and forget that beneath them lie their fathers' bones. They forget that in some few days—perhaps more, perhaps less—other unknown creatures will be standing above their forgotten bones, as blind, as self-seeking, as puffed up with the pride of the brief moment, and filled with the despair of their failure, the glory of their success, as ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... inimitable. The old gentlewomen, or caretakers, dry and twisted, brittle and sharp, repositories of emotion—vanities and malice and self-seeking—like echoes of the past, or fat and loquacious, with alcoholic sentimentality, are wonderfully ingratiating. They gather like shadows, ghosts, about the feet of the young, and provide Mr. Walpole with one of his main ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... of that day,—the Chancelier de l'Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine, and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office. This courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and self-seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to consult with the Connetable de Montmorency. No one ventured to draw him from the reverie in which he was plunged. Robertet, the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... duty. Their idea of the gospel is too confined to hearing sermons on Sunday. Their gospel does not touch the many interests of life. Their virtues are not concrete. Holiness, purity, love, truth, beauty, justice, goodness are metaphysical abstractions. Too much self-centred and self-seeking, they make little or no sacrifice for others. Many self-supporting churches do not shelter weaker ones and have no thought for the heathen. There are churches that are fortunate in having in their official ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... economy of a people are the workings of self-interest so apparent as in the determination of prices. When the price of a commodity is once fixed by the conflict of opposing interests,(601) the self-seeking of every individual dictates that he should thereby gain as much as possible of the goods of others, and lose as little as possible of his own. In this struggle, the victory is generally to the stronger, and the price is higher or lower, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... clothing of the being, in which Character ultimates itself. If the Character be simple and sincere, the Manners will be at one with it; will be the natural outbirth of its traits and peculiarities. If it be complex and self-seeking, the Manners will be artificial, affected, or insincere. Some persons make up, put on, take off, alter, or patch their Manners to suit times and seasons, with as much facility, and as little apparent consciousness ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... blissful ignorance of its contents." This seems almost impossible. But in explaining the groundlessness of Greeley's complaints, Weed wrote an editorial, the dignity and patriotism of which contrasted favourably with Greeley's self-seeking. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... certainly not had fair play; it had been represented as it was not; its character had been lied away! But now that the blinding influence of their chief subject was removed, he saw the verses themselves to be little worth. The soul of them was not the grand all-informing love, but his own private self-seeking little passion for a poor show of the lovable. No one could care for such verses, except indeed it were some dumb soul in love with a woman like, or imaginably like the woman of their thin worship! Not a few were pretty, he allowed, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald |
