"Selfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is very painful to you. As I said, it would make me die happier, but I don't want to be selfish about it. If I thought it would darken your life afterwards, or be a sad recollection to you, I would not ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and soon feels confident that she is able to make the patient well. She asks for rice and other food, and spirit made from fruit, which she eats and drinks to gratify the demon within her. She calls upon the people to see that the viands are good, but not from any selfish motive, for it is said that she is not aware that she is eating at all. The coloured rice, which has been prepared, is the spirit's share, and eggs are also given. The demon invoked to help calls out to the evil spirit in possession of the sick person, "You stay in this craft whilst I sit here." ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Wind were greedy and selfish. They enjoyed the great feast that had been prepared for them, without a thought of saving any of it to take home to their mother—but the gentle Moon did not forget her. Of every dainty dish that was brought round, she placed a small portion under ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... schemes for their dispersion were designed for anything except to benefit the plants themselves. The elegant foliage and beautiful flowers, the great diversity of attractive seeds and fruits, all point to plants as strictly selfish beings, if I may so use the term; and not to plants as works of charity, to be devoured by animals without any compensation. By fertilizing flowers, by distributing plants, and by other helpful acts, animals pay for at least a portion ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... solely upon favoring and gratifying himself. But while his nature was somewhat chilled by these things, he had the hottest of blood in his veins, he possessed a keen perception of the beautiful, and so he could desire with fury. His love could not be otherwise than selfish; but it was none the less capable of ruling ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... dropped like the gentle rain from heaven; and then came "Hints to Pilgrims." This I wanted to write about in the Yale Review, but the selfish editor, Mr. Cross, said that he preferred to ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... without a sign of the effort it cost her, frankly and openly, and said, "Sorry? Of course I am sorry. One does not have so many friends that one can spare them for long, even to have them grow famous. I think it is very selfish of you to go, for you are famous ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... is to endeavour to lead a better life, to regret the vileness of our present ways, to seek ill for none, to desire truth and purity and honesty, to despise this selfish civilisation and to comprehend what living might be. Understanding Socialism will not make people at once what men and women should be but it will fill them with hatred for the unfitting surroundings that damn us all and ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... rather different, A chap who is less confident, Yet full conceited—selfish, too, And steeped in ego, through and through. Though others oft "Myself" decry, He's very, very ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... crowded quarters close to Scarborough Square, with their poignant problems of sin and suffering, of scant beauty and weary joy, seemed a life apart and very far away. And the world of the Avenue, the world of handsome homes and deadening luxuries, of social exactions and selfish indulgence, of much waste and unused power, seemed also far away, and just Selwyn and I were together in a little world of ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... the less I trusted in him—I had almost said, the less I believed him. Ever since the tone of his voice had changed so suddenly, I liked him less than when he was honestly blurting out his coarse and selfish ambition. I do not think he was a hypocrite. I think he believed what he said, as strongly as he could believe anything. He proved afterwards that he did so, as far as man can judge man, by severe and diligent parish work: but ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Talking while Eating Beal, Nancy Throwing away Things Bildad, Master Selfish with Toys Bingg, Percy In the Way Birch, Betsy Talking in Church Boing, Levi Going Carelessly Call, Mary C. C. Crying Continually Coralie, Little Getting Feet Wet Crossett, Andrew Playing with Faucet Day, ...
— The Goop Directory • Gelett Burgess
... standing on the brink of the precipice over which he was destined to fall, heard warnings on all sides. D'Arthez had set him on the right road, had shown him the noble method of work, and aroused in him the spirit before which all obstacles disappear. Lousteau himself (partly from selfish motives) had tried to warn him away by describing Journalism and Literature in their practical aspects. Lucien had refused to believe that there could be so much hidden corruption; but now he had heard the journalists ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the press of Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country, I will be their best friend; but, if I find them personal, abusive, dealing in innuendoes and hints at a blind venture, and looking to their own selfish aggrandizement and fame, then they had better look out; for I regard such persons as greater enemies to their country and to mankind than the men who, from a mistaken sense of State pride, have taken up muskets, and fight us about as hard as we care about. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... bed spoke. "We have always worked together, we Colombos. When it is done for the whole there is no jealousy among the parts. I love Diego, and I think he did well, constraining his nature to it, here among the selfish, the dangerous and factious! And others know that he did well. I love him and praise him. But Bartholomew, thou art the man ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... that of the self-sacrifice of the rich for the sake of the poor. Disregarding all personal considerations, Clough printed a pamphlet entitled, "A Consideration of Objections against the Retrenchment Association," in which he met the careless or selfish arguments of those who set themselves against the efforts of the society. It was a characteristic performance. His heart was deeply stirred by the harsh contrast between the miseries of the Irish poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... pleasure she expected to derive from the interview for herself or should she share it with little brother? There was a certain risk in arousing brother. He was apt to awaken clamant, vociferous. Still, she resolved to try it. For one thing, it seemed so selfish to see Santa Claus alone, and for another the adventure would be a little ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... cousin to Nick, and nephew to that selfish gentleman, Mr. Temple, in whose affectionate care I had been left in Charlestown by my father. And my father? Who had he been? I remembered the speech that he had used and taught me, and how his neighbors had dubbed him "aristocrat." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... courts, they cleaned the chambers and polished the floors; they dug up the uncultivated soil, they covered the walks with gravel, extracted from a pit which they themselves had excavated. To prove that their ideas on the nature of marriage, and the emancipation of women, were pure from any selfish or sensual calculations, they imposed upon themselves the law of celibacy. Morning and evening they nourished their mind with the words of the father, or, in the lives of the Christian saints read aloud, they found example, encouragement, and precept. Hymns, the music ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... assurance, recklessness, soaring into the unknown—in a word, strong capacity for action. Whence arise, if we leave out the mixed forms, two principal types—the calculating, the venturesome. In the former the rational element is first. They are cautious, calculating, selfish exploiters, with no great moral or social preoccupations. In the latter, the active and emotional element predominates. They have a broader sweep. Of this sort were the merchant-sailors of Tyre, Carthage, and Greece; the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... flank, also much courted, was even more coy than Italy. Bulgaria, with her excellent army, was on the flank of Serbia and blocked the road to Turkey. Little Greece was another state watching the conflict with the selfish interest of a small spectator, trying to judge which side ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Capitalism, with its great material influence, but barren of any one single exalted idea or principle on the one hand, and Jingoism, sterile, empty, soulless, but with a rich stock-in-trade of bombastic ideas and principles, prompted by the most selfish aspirations, ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... person, nor, I am afraid, a very clever one in the way of getting on in the world; and the idea of breaking out for myself, even if that were all to be considered, is not a cheerful one. I am afraid all this sounds rather selfish to you, when, as I can see, you have deferred your plans for my sake, and after all else that you have ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... me. I long to spread wing and fly into the kind clean air of the country. I see nobody in the streets half so handsome as Mr. Reynolds {157} of our parish: all clever, composed, satirical, selfish, well dressed. Here we see what the World is. I am sure a great City is a deadly Plague: worse than the illness so called that came to ravage it. I tried to persuade Carlyle to leave his filthy Chelsea, but he says his wife likes London. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... "your poor father and I were great friends, and he was to me as a brother; your mother as a sister. He left me as it were the care and charge of you, and it seems to me that in my selfish studies I have neglected my trust; but, Heaven helping me, my boy, I will try and make up for the past. You shall so with me, my dear lad, and we will search till we find a place that shall restore you to ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... been a selfish, self-contained organism, but a living, throbbing influence that went out beyond the shadow of its gray walls, prodigal in giving to others the good things of the gospel that were fostered there. ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... she? I am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now, battered and selfish and too indolent to love her—say, as Gwyllem loved her. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... 10th April we passed the 89th parallel of latitude, and though sick to death, both in spirit and body, pressed still on. Like the lower animals, we were stricken now with dumbness, and hardly once in a week spoke a word one to the other, but in selfish brutishness on through a real hell of cold we moved. It is a cursed region—beyond doubt cursed—not meant to be penetrated by man: and rapid and awful was the degeneration of our souls. As for me, never could I have conceived that savagery so heinous could brood in a human bosom as now ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... felt the same interest in Aldercliffe that I used to. When she was alive that was my hobby. I shall simply be putting out the money in a different direction, that is all. Perhaps it will be a less selfish direction, too." ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end: the fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our shores could again be contemplated. It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him: the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, and public monuments, and posthumous rewards, were ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... useless; deny God, and conscience is powerless. And the vices which, if not subdued, were yet curbed and restrained by the overawing sense of an unseen omnipresent Power, will burst forth with devastating fury, snapping asunder the feebler fetters of human law, and overleaping the barriers of selfish prudence itself; vanity and pride, ambition and covetousness, sensual indulgence and ferocious cruelty, will rise into the ascendancy, and establish their dark throne on ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... omnipresence of countless legions of evil spirits, able and anxious to perpetrate the mischiefs that it has been the object of these pages in some part to describe, would regard those who, for their own selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered their hopes of eternal happiness in exchange for an alliance with the devils, which would render these ten times more capable than before of working their wicked wills. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... became insensible, indifferent and debased by stupid and selfish ideals from beyond the Vosges; till at last Germany became, literally, a land without a people, a people without ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... looked upon it as a secure possession. Had I looked upon my title as secure, I should have prized it so much, that I should scarcely have mounted it for fear of injuring the animal; but now, caring not a straw for it, I rode it most unmercifully, and soon became a capital rider. This was very selfish in me, and I tell the fact with shame. I was punished, however, as I deserved; the pony had a spirit of its own, and, moreover, it had belonged to gypsies; once, as I was riding it furiously over the lawn, applying both whip and spur, it suddenly lifted up ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of stocks are men of great honour and probity, who are candid and open in all their transactions, and incapable of mean and selfish purposes; and it is to be lamented, that a market of such importance, as the present state of this nation has made theirs, should be brought into any discredit by the intrusion of bad men, who, instead of serving their country, and procuring an honest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... just kept, from starving by the incessant charitable effort of their countrymen. Never had the attitude of the suffering working classes shown such genuine nobility; they understood that the calamity which lay heavy on them was not brought about by the careless and selfish tyranny of their worldly superiors, but came in the order of God's providence; and their conduct at this crisis proved that an immense advance had been made in kindliness between class and class, and in true intelligence and appreciation of the difficulties proper ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... The selfish appetites never exhibit themselves in a more unmasked and more disgusting manner than in the use they excite a man to make of his knife and fork in carving for himself, especially when not ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... adventure and that contempt of peril. But of what stamp must have been that soul which could find consolation in all this? And, as often happens, the man to whom she thus devoted herself was not wholly worthy of her. He had infinite spirit; but he was coldly calculating, profoundly selfish, meanly ambitious. He measured others by himself. He was naturally as subtle in evil, as she was disposed spontaneously to virtue. Full of finesse in his self-love and in the pursuit of his own interest, he was, in reality, the least chivalrous of his sex, although ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... people actually thought it possible, "This is not our quarrel. You must decide between Russia and Germany as best you can. We refuse to fight Russia's battles; though we would fight yours if you were wantonly attacked." But that was as foolish as it was selfish. France and Russia were bound to support each other against the foe they found so potent and so menacing;—a foe willing, nay, eager, to support that "negation of God erected into a system" ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... months at the station, the Colonel's palanquins and bearers made their appearance, and Elvira Wilkins went away weeping as a widow should. Why did she abuse Newcome ever after at Calcutta, Bath, Cheltenham, and wherever she went, calling him selfish, pompous, Quixotic, and a Bahawder? I could mention half a dozen other names of ladies of most respectable families connected with Leadenhall Street, who, according to Colonel Newcome's chum—that wicked Mr. Binnie—had all conspired more ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an intense longing to speak to the girl. He had forborne for her sake before, but to-night he was in one of those frames of mind in which a man is selfish, and is apt to let his course be regulated by his impulse. Why should he not speak, after all? If there was danger for him there was danger for her, and it was absurd that he should not show her that he was not afraid. Why should she interpose her single ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suppose that he was moved out of his usual indifference, that some long-dormant spring of nobility was quickened to a renewed life, that a girl's truth and purity, refining his selfish passion, had bitten deep into the man's callous worldliness. For long he sat in a sombre silence with his head leaning on his hand, his keen mind busy with the problem—so I shall always believe—as to how he might even yet save me from ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... this craving is unsatisfied that we cower so fondly over our open hearths. Our fires are makeshifts for sunshine. Autumn after autumn, 'we see the swallows gathering in the sky, and in the osier-isle we hear their noise,' and our hearts sink. Happy, selfish little birds, gathering so lightly to fly whither we cannot follow you, will you not, this once, forgo the lands of your desire? 'Shall not the grief of the old time follow?' Do winter with us, this once! We will strew all England, every ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... higher consideration until they had fed and pleased one another. The worst of it is that this dangerous preposterousness in marriage, instead of improving as the general conduct of married couples improves, becomes much worse. The selfish man to whom his wife is nothing but a slave, the selfish woman to whom her husband is nothing but a scapegoat and a breadwinner, are not held back from spiritual or any other adventures by fear of their effect on the welfare of their mates. Their wives do not make recreants and cowards of them: their ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... soldiers who have achieved mightier victories in the field, and made conquests more nearly corresponding to the boundlessness of selfish ambition; statesmen who have been connected with more startling upheavals of society: but it is the greatness of Washington that in public trusts he used power solely for the public good; that he was the life and moderator and stay of the most momentous revolution in human affairs; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... times better. I declare, I always think, when we pray for 'all who are destitute and oppressed,' it means the old maids. I'm sure the 'fatherless children and widows' are thought of, and why not the poor, forlorn, unmarried women? Indeed, I think Archibald is almost selfish to keep you at home as he does. My girls would never have been settled if I had let them stay in Ashurst. I've a great mind to tell your father he isn't doing his duty. You ought to have ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... progress in the Christian life or accomplish anything for God, we must have strong aspirations. These are as a spur to our energies. Aspiration is the cure for being "at ease in Zion." Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we aspire to be leaders, as so many religious people do, only that they may have authority ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... not refer to his mourning by even a syllable, speaking of myself again and again, and using him as father-confessor. He is an awkward comforter who does not himself feel pain sympathetically, or not vividly enough. My first grief was the passionate, selfish one at the loss I had sustained; for Marie,[11] so far as she is concerned, I do not feel it, because I know that she is well provided for, but that my sympathy with the suffering of my warmest friend, to whom I owe eternal thanks, is not strong enough to produce a word of comfort, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... men. It is the eye of talent, or impressibility. The large, open, transparent eye, of whatever color, is indicative of elegance, of taste, of refinement, of wit, of intelligence. Weakly marked eyebrows indicate a feeble constitution and a tendency to melancholia, Deep sunken eyes are selfish, while eyes in which the whole iris shows indicate erraticism, if not lunacy. Round eyes are indicative of innocence; strongly protuberant eyes of weakness of both mind and body. Eyes small and close together typify cunning, while those far apart and open indicate frankness. The normal distance between ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... tenderly sensitive to every form of suffering, who yet feel only for the sufferer, not with him, and who would regard and treat him coldly or harshly, if he were not a sufferer. In such cases, pity would seem to be a selfish feeling; and there can be no doubt that some men relieve distress and poverty, as they would remove weeds from a flower-bed, because they are offensive to ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... many respects independent of the central government both as regards taxation and administration. In a word, the monarchy had to share its dominion with the nobility; and the Danish nobility in the 16th century was one of the most exclusive and selfish aristocracies in Europe, and already far advanced in decadence. Hermetically sealing itself from any intrusion from below, it deteriorated by close and constant intermarriage; and it was already, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... not," replied Mrs. Bernard; "on the contrary, I hope, to Edward it will prove a real good; and I am sure you are none of you so selfish as to wish to deprive him of any advantage, merely for the sake of your ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... assist the illustration of an English Dictionary of Buddhism; perhaps to inspire some future laureate with a metaphor startling as Tennyson's figure of the "oiled and curled Assyrian bull." Assuredly they would not be preserved in vain. The thinkers of a less conventional and selfish era would teach new reverence for them. Each eidolon shaped by human faith remains the shell of a truth eternally divine, and even the shell itself may hold a ghostly power. The soft serenity, the passionless tenderness, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... convince me that Margaret was not a creature of my imagination. But the little tawdry decoration, and the faint aroma of her individual fragrance which still clung to it, was all that was left of her and my selfish dreams. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... resources, for the protection of our forests and of the wild life of the woods, the mountains and the coasts, is essentially a democratic movement. Democracy, in its essence, means that a few people shall not be allowed for their own selfish gratification, to destroy what ought to belong to the people as a whole. The men who destroy our forests for their own immediate pecuniary benefit, the men who make a lifeless desert of what were ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... in the college and in the business world, they are beginning to learn that they have a common interest. They know now that they form a class. The anti-suffragist is the isolated woman, she is the belated product of the 18th century. She is not intentionally, viciously selfish, she has merely not developed into 20th century fellowship. She is unrelated to our democratic society of today.... How shallow, in the face of that idea of duty in fulfilling our obligations of citizenship, sound the words of Governor Hughes that "when ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... our acquaintance, who is neither a friend to thieves nor poachers, has at this moment in his household a favourite cat, whose honesty, he is sorry to say, there is but too much reason to call in question. The animal, however, is far from being selfish in her principles; for her acceptable gleanings she regularly shares among the children of the family in which her lot is cast. It is the habit of grimalkin to leave the kitchen or parlour, as often as hunger and an opportunity may occur, and wend her way to a certain ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... to mean constant respect for certain social conventions, and the permanent repression of selfish impulses, it is quite evident that crowds are too impulsive and too mobile to be moral. If, however, we include in the term morality the transitory display of certain qualities such as abnegation, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotion, and the need of equity, ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... scornful answers. Susie always chose the most unsuitable moments for displays of temper, and Mrs. Beauchamp sighed as she looked at the firm little mouth and eager blue eyes. She felt so very, very sorry to be leaving Dick the elder in London—so intolerably selfish. Her voice was full of ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... whom everybody is anxious to be well—for who would fall out with its genial glow? one who submits with a graceful resignation to the caprices of every casual elbow—and who has never poked a fire to death? one whose good offices have endeared him alike to the selfish and to the cultivated,—at once a host, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... had never known one man or one woman from the subtler, surer divination of the heart. His intellect had made servants and lures of his emotions and his heart, for even his every case in court had been won by easy and selfish command of all those feelings in mankind ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ever—the personal craving, the selfish need, that must be filled at any cost. In the silence of the descending night Catherine quietly, with tears, carried out that sentence, and slew her young new-born joy at the feet of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... It is bad to boast, but I will make this boast. I am so little selfish, that I desire above all that you should do that which may make you most happy and contented. I will be quite frank with you. I love you well enough to wait these four years with the hope of becoming your wife when they are over. ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... of weird stories sprang from the burial and the woman's selfish conjuration. I was dissatisfied with what I heard, harped upon questions, and struck at last this vein of metal. It is from sundown to about four in the morning that the kinsfolk camp upon the grave; and these are the hours of the spirits' wanderings. At any time of the night—it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them," she said softly, "but I've liked looking at them. Aunt Millicent gave them to me, and maybe I'd like to wear them sometime, but," she continued, "I'll not be selfish and keep them for some time. I'll give them to Lina, in place of those ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... "I see now that I have been inexcusably selfish with Droozle. I've kept him cooped up here, not wanting to bother with him while I was out on my painting trips. True, he was busy writing. But most of his knowledge of Earth has come from books; he can't write classics about living things ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... her future not wrecked, but blessed doubly? for her conduct has made Walter almost worship her. I am happy to think I have brought her good, rather than ill; but—selfish being that I am—I am not contented. I have a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... of the fireside, or the bloom and ornament of life, Woman has always power enough, if she choose to exert it, and is usually disposed to do so, in proportion to her ignorance and childish vanity. Unacquainted with the importance of life and its purposes, trained to a selfish coquetry and love of petty power, she does not look beyond the pleasure of making herself felt at the moment, and governments are shaken and commerce broken up to gratify the pique of a female favorite. The English shopkeeper's wife does not vote, but it is for her interest ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... family. Unselfishness begins in small circles. The starving man must be allowed a smaller range of unselfishness than the man who has enough. It is not uncomplimentary or unworthy in human nature to admit that this is so—to demand that the human being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish. If he is not bright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous to society. We ought to insist upon his being selfish, and help him in it. Virtue is ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... thereabouts, whose acquaintance we shall make presently, and who was doing all that a good heart and sound head prompted in nursing an old hypochondriac, and filling his place in the parish. But though the old man was weak and selfish, he was kind in his way, and ready to give freely or do anything that his daughter suggested for the good of his people, provided the trouble were taken off his shoulders. In the year before our tale opens, he had allowed some thirty acres of his glebe to be parcelled ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and so young a head as that? Yes, and it spoke very well for Dab's heart, as well as his brains, that plan number two was not a selfish one. The substance of it came out in the first five minutes of the talk he had with Ford and Frank, on the other ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... the astounded Auberon. "Will wonders never cease? Have the two greatest marvels been achieved? Have you turned altruistic, and has Wayne turned selfish? Are you the ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome woman, but plainly a heartless one—selfish, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... by survey, as to leave little doubt that some European navigator must at one time or other have examined it, though his labours have been buried, as the labours of many thousands have been before and since his time, in the mouldy archives of a jealous and selfish government." ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... hastily adopt a measure, nor hastily abandon it. The plan struck out by him for the preservation of Europe was the result of prophetic wisdom and profound policy. But though defeated in many respects by the selfish ambition and short-sighted imbecility of foreign powers, whose rulers were too venal or too weak to follow the flight of that mind which would have taught them to outwing the storm, the policy involved in it was still a secret operation on the conduct of surrounding states. His plans ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... something like rapture; and that oft-repeated declaration that he had never done anything like it before—a declaration I have heard too many times to now altogether accept. The voice was splendid, the diction very fine, the argument close and well knit, the matter carefully prepared without any selfish adherence to the letter of a manuscript—a fidelity which always spoils anything like spontaneity of oratory. And the Old Man was in splendid physical condition and in the brightest of spirits. Indeed, I was never more struck with the extraordinary physical perfection which Mr. Gladstone's ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... earth;—that would be his mission. And then, how sweet to teach them the value, the inestimable value, of the political privilege lately accorded to them,—or, as Ontario would put it, lately wrested on their behalf from the hands of an aristocracy which was more timid even than it was selfish;—how sweet to explain this, and then to instruct them, afterwards, that it was their duty now, having got this great boon for themselves, to see at once that it should be extended to those below them. "Let the first work of ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... the child demands that housing shall include land for pets, for vegetables and flowers; not merely to increase beauty and selfish pleasure, but for the ethical value of contact with things dependent on care and forethought. The thoughtful sociologist recognizes as one of the greatest needs for the children of to-day a closer companionship ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... kings to govern wrong" which became the doctrine of prelates and courtiers in the age of the Stuarts. He shows in his "Richard the Second" the doom that waits on a lawless despotism, as he denounces in his "Richard the Third" the selfish and merciless ambition that severs a ruler from his people. But the dread of misrule was a dim and distant one. Shakspere had grown up under the reign of Elizabeth; he had known no ruler save one who had cast a spell over the hearts of ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... see her girls happily married and taken care of. At first it had seemed as if existence without him was impossible, yet the regular routine of life must go on. Besides it was not fair to the girls. Her own life was irretrievably wrecked, but theirs had barely begun. It would be selfish to allow her grief to cast a permanent shadow over their young lives. They loved their father very dearly; his death had been a great shock to them. But they were young. They had a thousand outside interests to distract their attention. And youth, with its gaze ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... brought out that he stepped back from the glaring revelation. He believed that in his peculiar position Eva gave him the affection that a daughter might give a father, and he was determined that this charming relationship should not be undone by the appearance, on his part, of a selfish love; and in his resolve he was strong, but in cold dread he looked forward to the time when she should come with a new light in her eyes and ask him to release her. Suddenly a noise came from below, the tramping ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... fingers as he sat staring with dull perplexity at Neckart. There was a certain nobility in the carriage of the powerful figure and black shaggy head, an occasional fire in the deep-set eyes, a humor in the fine smile, which argued a different order of man from this scheming, selfish politician. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... king. You know kings never have to work like other people to get enough to eat; everybody brings them a little of their best, and so kings have the best in the land without the trouble of working for it. It was just this way with old King Bear. That was before he grew so fat and lazy and selfish that Old Mother Nature declared that he should ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... steadfast folk, who worship God at home, Of wise words, learnt beside their mother's knee; Of innocent faces, upturned once again In awe and joy to listen to the tale Of God made man, and in a manger laid: May soften, purify, and raise the soul From selfish cares, and growing lust of gain And phantoms of this dream, which some call life, Toward eternal facts; for here or there Summer or ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the sultry atmosphere. Not so with the storm which has been brooding in the hearts of a handful of ambitious men, and which has burst forth at last, its bolts directed by no wise or merciful power, and by the hands of selfish and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... I were in other ways what the man of your choice should be, would this truth have any weight with you? I do not know and I dare not ask. Reason does tell me how selfish it would be to ask you to hold in your heart a memory and not a man. That is for me to do—to have a memory, and not you. But my memory never can ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... accumulation by day, and of ostentatious expenditure by night. I have often heard, that their general voice, had it been raised, would have been hostile to the policy that has prevailed. But it was not raised; and now, when too late, and these mercenary and selfish beings are driven to some action by the loss of their accustomed gains, a large and violent party is forming among them, who loudly condemn the conduct of the Queen and her ministers, and advocate immediate submission to whatever terms Aurelian may impose. This party however, powerful ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... been suffering Johnny in silence; yet, at the first little drop of water, from above, Johnny's father must break out into violent abuse of me. A fine reward! Well, Johnny's future could look after itself now; anyhow, he was doomed with a selfish father like that. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... tell you; I was coming to that. Mrs. Christopherson has relatives well off—a fat and selfish lot, as far as I can make out—never lifted a finger to help her until now. One of them's a Mrs. Keeting, the widow of some City porpoise, I'm told. Well, this woman has a home down in Norfolk. She never lives there, but a son of hers goes there to fish and shoot now and then. Well, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... France. But you yourself do not forget it. Only the queen can propose such a prize as you have set, and only the queen can ask so insignificant a boon on the other side. You have made it impossible for me to win, for you know well that I am not selfish." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... to stone. The whole thing became perfectly clear to her on the instant. It had not been just a carelessly selfish proposal—that bargain he had made with Ann—but a deliberately thought-out scheme. Slowly she replaced the useless notes in the little silken bag which had ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... part, Who readily can lie with art: The man's proficient in his trade; His power is strong, his fortune's made. 30 By that the interest of the throne Is made subservient to his own: By that have kings of old, deluded, All their own friends for his excluded. By that, his selfish schemes pursuing, He thrives upon the public ruin. Antiochus,[8] with hardy pace, Provoked the dangers of the chase; And, lost from all his menial train, Traversed the wood and pathless plain. 40 A cottage ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Of trumpets. From the first moment that the outside world makes its claim felt there is no happiness for the man who, like Lycius, is living a life of selfish pleasure. ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... dove may be clad in a plainer attire, But she is not selfish and cold; And her love and affection more pleasure impart Than all your fine ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... radically selfish. She forgot the old ideas of noble-heartedness and self-denial, and her temper had become weak and childish. She did not meet her puzzle face to face, but she ran away from it with her hands over her ears. Miss Crofutt stared at her, and therefore ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... improves a man to get married," said Halleck, with a long, stifled sigh. "It's improved the most selfish hound ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... profoundly touched at parting from her in such a way. I embraced her neck and kissed her on the forehead. As I tore myself away from her I believe I was within an ace of shedding tears. Yet, not a thought of compunction on your account penetrated my selfish soul. I picked my way through the swamp to the fourth concession, and then struck out across unfrequented fields for Harborough station, eight ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... from selfish impulses by transposition does not resolve ethics into egoism, as Helvetius would have us believe. It is "a caricature of the true state of things to speak of self-interest, when we have in mind magnanimity and beneficence, and to maintain that beneficence is nothing but disguised ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... a horror beyond description. The Convention of the Boston Eight Hour League, in 1872, did not overstate when it declared of the factory system that "it employs tens of thousands of women and children eleven and twelve hours a day; owns or controls in its own selfish interest the pulpit and the press; prevents the operative classes from making themselves felt in behalf of less hours, through remorseless exercise of the power of discharge; and is rearing a population of children ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... that such sparks glowed within me at intervals, and at such intervals only did I feel enthusiasm in the cause. But it was no consideration of this kind that hindered me from deserting my banner. Far otherwise: I was influenced by a motive purely selfish—pride. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the wife to give up remunerative work is a factor that operates in certain cases; this may be due to the position of the wife as the support of an invalid husband and family, but in other cases the reason is obviously selfish. ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... or shorter according to the type of life which preceded it; the more there was of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, the longer will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was of activity directed to selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be the ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... Nussey which has been quoted as if to bear out this suggestion: 'I returned to Brussels after aunt's death,' she writes, 'against my conscience, prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... elected. I was proposed by Holland, and seconded by Harcourt, and accepted office with no light heart: there will be much trouble and thought needed to work it satisfactorily, but it will take me out of myself a little, and so may be a real good—my life was tending to become too much that of a selfish recluse. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... When Mrs. Carlyle's Correspondence came to be published it was seen that there were two sides to the question, and that, if he had leisure to think of what he was doing, Carlyle could be the most considerate of husbands. Irritable and selfish he might be. Deliberately cruel he never was. Froude, with his accustomed frankness, told Carlyle at once what he thought. Mrs. Carlyle's letters should be published, not alone, but with the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Dr. H——, from year to year, manifested his sense of obligation, by remitting to the widow such sums of money as he could afford. This was a reciprocity of kind offices, equally honorable to the benefactors and to them who received the benefit: an instance, alas, too rarely met with in a selfish world. ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... seated itself in a wicker chair and berated the idea that mortal man ever could be generous,—act without selfish motives. With the greatest reverence in his tone, sitting there in his whimsical costume of bright red silk, at high noon,—an immaculate French butler waiting at the door to announce lunch, Mark Twain concluded an analysis of modern religion with "—why the God I believe in is too busy spinning ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... part of my story," said Mrs. Gray, sighing. "They were anything but happy. They both had too much of the artistic temperament to live peaceably. Besides, Guido Savelli was thoroughly selfish at heart. Next to himself, his music was the only thing in the world that he really cared for. When they had been married for about a year and a half he played before the king, and soon became the man of the hour. He neglected his beautiful young wife, who, in spite of their frequent ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... forlorn old critter he is! And this Mrs. Richie is lonely too—a widow, with no children, poor woman! I must call next week. Goliath wouldn't like to turn round now and climb the hill again. Danny, I fear Goliath is very selfish." ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... be no dispute, I am sure, as to the value of some of the results he achieved in that other path. He did indeed create anew for us the type of good-citizenship, well-nigh effaced in a sordid and selfish time, and of an honest politician and a pure-minded journalist. He never really forsook literature, and the world of actual interests and experiences afforded him outlooks and perspectives, without which aesthetic endeavor is self-limited and purblind. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... am growing too old not to feel the value to a woman—a necessity to her in this country—of security in her present and future position. Another can give me that. And although you may call this a selfish view of our relations, I believe that you will soon—if you do not, even as you read this now—feel the justice of it, and thank me ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... pictures as hanging over an innocent and plain people. An argument for the restoration of the classical system of education which should run off into eulogies of the good old times might easily become an argumentum ad populum; an argument in favor of a new park which should dwell on selfish advantages which might be gained by the abutters without regard to larger municipal policy would probably be ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... children loved her so, And called her blessed, all shall know: She never had a selfish thought, Nor valued ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... retirement, but never with any very serious intention. In the Court was his element, and there were his hopes. Often there seems little to distinguish him from the ordinary place-hunters, obsequious and selfish, of every age; little to distinguish him from the servile and insincere flatterers, of whom he himself complains, who crowded the antechambers of the great Queen, content to submit with smiling face and thankful ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... producing any other effect than spasmodic whitewashing and the ineffectual turning on of the hose. Nothing short of boiling water would have cleansed those dens. Nothing else came of it, because stronger even than the selfish motive that exploits public office for private gain is the deadly inertia in civic life which simply means that we are all as lazy as things will let us be. The older I get, the more patience I ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... excuse themselves by saying as the rum-sellers once did, "If I don't sell it, others will," This plea did not justify the rum-seller, neither will it, the dealer in tobacco. Others will say, "I must sell it, or I shall offend my patrons and lose their custom." But this is not valid even as a selfish argument. A large and increasing portion of the community would be glad to patronize traders who sell only the useful and necessary articles of life. Let respectable traders cease to sell the article, and respectable customers would ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... suppose that, though Cheops had not the welfare of his own people in his thoughts, his purpose was nevertheless not selfish, but intended in some way to promote the welfare of the human race? I say his purpose, because, whoever originated the scheme, Cheops carried it out; it was by means of his wealth and through his power that the pyramid was built. This is the view adopted by Professor Piazzi Smyth and others, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... her hands, and in a certain droop of eyelids veiling eyes which met the gaze frankly as a rule, he read this evening sure proofs of the constancy of her heart. This fresh knowledge affected him in two ways. On the one hand it gave breath to the selfish passion which now dominated his ideas. At the same time, however it assured him that when he asked his question: "Why did you not send for me?" an unassailable answer would be forthcoming; and, moreover, by convincing him of this, it destroyed the sole excuse he had pleaded to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason |
