"Self-interest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain Winstanley, pacing up and down his study, distraught with the pangs of wounded self-interest; "I have been taking care of her money, when I ought to have taken care of her. It is her life that all hangs upon: and I have let that slip through my fingers while I have planned and contrived to save ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... deny charity; it is mysticism. In vain do you talk to me of fraternity and love: I remain convinced that you love me but little, and I feel very sure that I do not love you. Your friendship is but a feint, and, if you love me, it is from self-interest. I ask all that my products cost me, and only what they cost me: why do you ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... is the same reason, namely, the public interest in good government. We hold it to be a self-evident principle that every one who exercises the suffrage should not only be educated, but should have a stake in the country, in order that self-interest may be identified with public interest. As the power exercised by every citizen through the suffrage is the same, the economic stake should be the same, and so you see we come to the reason why the public safety requires that you should loyally accept your equal ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... that. Making a desperate mental search for the best way to serve her hard self-interest, he thought, she was impervious ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... Well! I had all the credit of the offer, without any of the trouble and expence of putting it into execution. I have detailed these facts as another proof of my enthusiasm. I never acted from any cold calculating notions of self-interest. If I thought it right to perform an act of public or private duty, having once made up my mind, I never suffered any selfish considerations to interpose to prevent my ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... was alone. "A still stranger business for a genuine scholar. Is he really poor? Does he do this work to afford him ease and time for his studies? Or, better still, does he hide a great and singular patriotism under butterfly wings? Patriotism? More and more it becomes self-interest. It is only when a foreign mob starts to tear down your house, that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... have any reason to think that he may make himself disagreeable to you when he knows of your engagement to me, out of disappointed ambition, conceit, or self-interest (for of course YOU never encouraged him), I should advise you to go on a visit to some friends for a few days, till his irritation shall have somewhat passed. What say ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... finally manage to digest it. But they can't digest it and stay what they are; you've got to be democratic, to some extent, to understand the idea. What keeps us obeying laws we ourselves make? What keeps us obeying laws that make things inconvenient for us? Sheer self-interest, of course—but try to make a Tr'en ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... law and untrue to their office. They fear that any disturbance will bring Rome's heavy hand down on them, and lead to the loss of what national life they still possess. But even that fear is not patriotism nor religion. It is pure self-interest. 'They will take away our place'—the Temple, probably—'and our nation.' The holy things were, in their eyes, their special property. And so, at this supreme moment, big with the fate of themselves and of their nation, their whole anxiety is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... social equality.[228] He now prepared to federalize Switzerland on a moderately democratic basis; for a policy of balance, he himself being at the middle of the see-saw, was obviously required by good sense as well as by self-interest. Witness his words to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... a good world — nobody can say that it is, save those who wilfully blind themselves to facts. How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star? The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that there should be any good left ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... if so homely a term may be pardoned, as a plain matter of business. There is nothing low or unworthy in this, as some lately have pretended, for all nature shows us that there is nothing more acceptable to God than an enlightened view of our own self-interest; never let anyone delude you here; it is a simple question of fact; did certain things happen or did they not? If they did happen, is it reasonable to suppose that you will make yourselves and others more happy by one course of ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... she had never ceased to love. These mysterious visits soon became no longer a secret to any one; and then Conde and his sister could convince themselves how different are the sentiments which love inspires and those which self-interest and vanity simulate. The great Conde, by his intelligence and bearing, had all the means of pleasing women; but obtained small success notwithstanding. Mademoiselle Vigean excepted, he appears to have been incapable ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... secret hostility with Sidney Kirkwood, there mingled before long a strain of feeling which was natural and pure; he became a little jealous of his father and of Sidney on other grounds than those of self-interest. Intolerable as his home was, no wonder that he found it a pleasant relief to spend an evening in Hanover Street; he never came away without railing at himself for his imbecility in having married Clem. For the present he had to plot with ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... acting adversely to some one of whom he at once makes an enemy; for an attorney's weapons must necessarily be pointed almost invariably at our pockets! He is necessarily, also, called into action in cases when all the worst passions of our nature—our hatred and revenge, and our self-interest—are set in motion. Consider the mischief which might be constantly done on a grand scale in society, if the vast majority of attorneys and solicitors were not honorable, and able men! Conceive them, for a moment, disposed everywhere to stir up litigation, by availing themselves of their perfect ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... expenses; but, while he exhibited the rarest magnanimity, he did not expect it from others, and urged Congress to provide for the future pay of the officers, when the war should close. He looked upon human nature as it was, not as he wished it to be, and recognized the principles of self-interest as well as those of patriotism. It was his firm conviction that a long and lasting war could not, even in those times, be sustained by the principle of patriotism alone, but required, in addition, the prospect of interest, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... been a man of many employments, and of many religions. He was never troubled with scruples of conscience, but guided his conduct wholly by enlightened self-interest. He was a Broad Churchman, very broad. As tutor in various families, he had instructed his pupils in the tenets of the Church of England, of the Catholics, of the Presbyterians, and of the Baptists. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... until the seventeenth century little but a tale of destruction is to be recorded; for this period witnessed the dissolution of the monasteries, the beginning of a wholesale system of spoliation urged by self-interest and hypocrisy, and the establishment of "Reformation" methods of procedure in Church and State. By each of these both the fabric and the diocese suffered, even though by some they gained. But especially did vandalism help to destroy, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... his heart and the door of heaven is closed against him. A kingdom, O bull among men, has its root in righteousness. That minister, or king's son, who acts unrighteously, occupying the seat of justice, and those officers who having accepted the charge of affairs, act unjustly, moved by self-interest, all sink in hell along with the king himself. Those helpless men who are oppressed by the powerful and who indulge on that account in piteous and copious lamentations, have their protector in the king. In cases of dispute between two parties the decision should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... have any taint of the blood which you discover inclines you toward guile, insincerity, and untruthfulness fortify yourself by the reflection that insincerity is a losing game. Put it on the low ground of self-interest, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... these States. One would say, that, if there had formerly been such pleasant relations between them, there ought now to be mutual sympathy and forbearance, instead of mutual distrust and antagonism. One would say, too, that self-interest, the common interest of capital and labor, ought to keep them in harmony; while the fact is, that this very interest appears to put them in an attitude of partial defiance toward each other. I believe the most charitable traveller must come to the conclusion, that the professed love of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... difficult to prevent this than to execute the game-laws. For such an order of affairs the decision of the French Academy was largely responsible, for if men only find a shadow of right on the side of self-interest, they are likely enough to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... accomplices to disastrous rout and caused them to lose millions. He continued his operations with increasing violence and increasing profits up to the fourth anniversary of the tragedy. On the intervening anniversary I had been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with greater difficulty ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... King of Sweden master of his country; besides that, by such a step, he must at once break with the Emperor, and expose his States to his future vengeance. The Elector's struggle with himself was long and violent, but pusillanimity and self-interest for awhile prevailed. Unmoved by the fate of Magdeburg, cold in the cause of religion and the liberties of Germany, he saw nothing but his own danger; and this anxiety was greatly stimulated by his minister Von Schwartzenburgh, who was secretly in the pay of ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... reaching his audience Fielding adopted, he tells us, a second method. He argues that no acquisitions of guilt can compensate a man for the loss of inward peace, for the attendant horror, anxiety, and danger, to which he subjects himself; thus endeavouring to enlist man's self-interest no less than his admiration, on the side of virtue. Again, he explains yet another method by which he essays to foil the progress of evil, viz. to show that virtue and innocence are chiefly betrayed "into the snares that deceit and villainy spread for them" by indiscretion; ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... love, that bound us to our Creator and to one another, are sundered; as a race, severed from the governing Centre of all, each has chosen a centre for himself, and is moving on in darkness and ruin; selfishness the rule, self-interest the end. ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... imitating Odry in "Les Funambules," "is high comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian language has but two tones,—Self-interest, Vanity." ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... striking example of the impotence of philosophical and religious sentiments in a conflict with the energetic activity of self-interest. ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... to see why this should be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by his will; it is determined ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... light of truth dispels the clouds of superstition, as by a new revelation. The Pope and his monks are found to bear, very often, but faint resemblance to Jesus and his apostles. Moreover, the instinct of self-interest sharpens the eye of the public. Many greedy priests, of lower rank, had turned shop-keepers in the Netherlands, and were growing rich by selling their wares, exempt from taxation, at a lower rate than lay hucksters could afford. The benefit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a certain point are virtues. Beyond that point they become vices. Certainly we should think well of ourselves, and then act so that this good opinion is merited. Self-interest and selfishness are the main-springs of progress. Most of us need some inducement to do good work. It is well that it is so. The ones who deserve the great rewards generally get them, whether they are mental ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... any government, unless we were to exclude particular descriptions of men, such as the holders of the funds, from all office. I told him, there was great difference between the little accidental schemes of self-interest, which would take place in every body of men, and influence their votes, and a regular system for forming a corps of interested persons, who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury. He touched on the merits of the funding system, observed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... note of 'the third time.' Thrice was the choice offered to them, and thrice did they put away the possibility of averting their doom. But Pilate's persistency had a weak place, for he was afraid of his subjects, and, while willing to save Jesus, was not willing to imperil himself in doing it. Self-interest takes the strength out of resolution to do right, like a crumbling stone in a sea wall, which lets in the wave that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... rental at from L50 to L150 per annum, that the evils of careless building and want of sanitary precautions become most apparent. Until recently sanitary science was but little studied, and many things were done a few years since which even the self-interest of a speculative builder would not do nowadays, nor would be permitted to do by the local sanitary authority. Yet houses built in those times are still inhabited, and in many cases sickness and even death are the result. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... sublime conceptions, upon my erudition; and expressed by some truly elegant epithets; but your ideas, like your conscience, are of the fashionable, elastic kind;—self-interest ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... Fling a man headlong into one social melting pot after another, and convictions and forms and moral systems become so many meaningless words to him. The one thing that always remains, the one sure instinct that nature has implanted in us, is the instinct of self-interest. If you had lived as long as I have, you would know that there is but one concrete reality invariable enough to be worth caring about, and that is—GOLD. Gold represents every form of human power. I have traveled. I found out that ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... they never hesitate to say so, and they have a painfully downright way of giving reasons for their behaviour, which is apt to jar on a temperament so sensitive that its owner always and only treads the path of high principle when self-interest points him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... The question, therefore, concerning the wickedness or goodness of human nature, enters not in the least into that other question concerning the origin of society; nor is there any thing to be considered but the degrees of men's sagacity or folly. For whether the passion of self-interest be esteemed vicious or virtuous, it is all a case; since itself alone restrains it: So that if it be virtuous, men become social by their virtue; if vicious, their vice ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Worcester has made so much progress that at the three largest and best hotels, which make up nearly one hundred beds each, no intoxicating liquor of any kind is sold. A people thus willing to carry out their convictions, to the sacrifice of prejudice, appetite, and apparent self-interest, cannot long remain a nation of slave-holders. In common with the rest of New England, this town is remarkable for the number, size, and beauty of its places of worship. I calculated, with the aid of a well-informed ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... another private talk with the lad. This time he addressed himself solely to 'Arry's self-interest, explained to him the opportunities he would lose if he neglected to make himself a practical man. What if there was money waiting for him? The use of money was to breed money, and nowadays no man was ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... street in Athens, and this bellicose sentiment was reciprocated alike by the Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian army. The secular mutual enmities and animosities of the Greeks and Bulgarians, which self-interest had suppressed long enough to enable the Balkan Allies to make European Turkey their own, burst forth with redoubled violence under the stimulus of the imperious demand which the occasion now made upon them all for an equitable distribution of the conquered ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... should be lodged. I wrote him back word, I did not care for doing it, lest it should hurt my father's health. He wrote me word, that it was quite innocent, and could not hurt him; and how could I think that he would send any thing to hurt a father of mine? and that self-interest would be reason enough lor him to take care ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... the biographers of the Jack Shepherds and Nancy Sykeses say what they please to the contrary. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" The criminal is the most solitary creature upon earth; he has no ties—for the ties of guilt are nothing; they snap at the lightest breath of self-interest. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... public servant, to assume, is that he will draw the line on conduct, discriminating against neither corporation nor union as such, nor in favor of either as such, but endeavoring to make the decent member of the union and the upright capitalists alike feel that they are bound, not only by self-interest, but by every consideration of principle and duty to stand together on the matters of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... cannot be so; it shall not be so! In seeking the Marquess I was unquestionably impelled by a mere feeling of self-interest; but I have advised him to no course of action in which his welfare is not equally consulted with my own. Indeed, if not principle, interest would make me act faithfully towards him, for my fortunes are bound up ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires—the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is for ever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... boundary treaty was less than a year old when this petition was presented. It was characteristic of Mormon duplicity to find their representatives in Great Britain appealing to Queen Victoria on the ground of self-interest, while their chiefs in the United States were pointing to the organization of the Battalion as a proof of their fidelity to the home government. Practically no notice was taken of this petition. Vancouver Island, was, however, held out to the converts ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... not include the Chinese, is one composed of a large number of nationalities which have very little in common, and amongst whom a good deal of rivalry prevails. It may have been that when the question of revising the treaties was being keenly agitated, self-interest, or what was deemed to be self-interest, occasioned a sort of fictitious unity among foreigners, but at the present time, so far as my observation has gone, there is very little real unity among the foreigners in Japan. The English, of course, predominate ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... blindly blundering, as through baffling mist, Is a professional philanthropist, Rosy-gilled, genial, hearty. A mouthing Friend of Man. He dreams he's deep In jungles of self-interest, where creep Sleuth-hounds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... rebuked by parliament for "their greedy and covetous minds," "as more regarding their own singular lucre and profit than the commonweal of the Realm;"[8] and although in an altered world, neither industry nor enterprise will thrive except under the stimulus of self-interest, we may admire the confidence which in another age expected every man to prefer the advantage of the community to his own. All land was held upon a strictly military principle. It was the representative of authority, and the holder or the owner took rank in the army of the State according ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... attempt to deceive anybody, except for a legitimate purpose, as in military strategy; and, above all, he was incapable of deceiving himself. He possessed that rarest of all human faculties, the power of a perfectly accurate estimate of himself, uninfluenced by pride, ambition, flattery, or self-interest. Grant was very far from being a modest man, as the word modest is generally understood. His just self-esteem was as far above modesty as it was above flattery. The highest encomiums were accepted for ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... hand of gain, of what Jouffroy calls self-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain and will of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform. An illustration of this statement, and a practical recognition of the physiological method ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'Catch several hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society—the more whole coats, so to say—the firmer are its foundations and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to Helvetius that the propositions that the first motive is always self-interest, and that we should always consult our own interest first, are fallacious. It is a strange thing that so virtuous a man would not admit the existence of virtue. It is an amusing suggestion that he only published his book out of modesty, but that would have contradicted his own system. But if it were ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in individual conduct and its meaning in the belief that this life is but a preparation for a future life: whereas National life is a thing of this world and therefore the law of its being must be self-development and self-interest. The Prussians interpret this crudely as mere self-assertion and the will to power. The Christianising of international relations will be brought about by insisting on the contrary interpretation—that our highest self-development and interest is to be attained ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... other's fidelity. The report of the immediate arrival of Philip had also considerable effect over the less resolute or more selfish; and the confederation was dissolving rapidly under the operations of intrigue, self-interest, and fear. Even the Count of Egmont was not proof against the subtle seductions of the wily monarch, whose severe yet flattering letters half frightened and half soothed him into a relapse of royalism. But with the Prince of Orange Philip had no chance of success. It is unquestionable ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... they who had warm fortunes were always sure of getting good husbands: "But heaven help," continued she, "the girls that have none! What signifies beauty, Mr. Thornhill? or what signifies all the virtue, and all the qualifications in the world, in this age of self-interest? It is not, What is she? but, What has she? ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... course of the year; you can understand, if I pay them a paltry farthing short, every man of them, it mounts up to thousands, and a capital thing too for me!" Think of that, sir! And the way they treat one another too, sir! They injure each other's trade all they can, and that not so much from self-interest, as from envy. They are always at feud with one another. They entertain in their grand mansions drunken attorneys' clerks, wretched creatures, sir, that hardly look like human beings. And they, for a small tip, will cover sheets of stamped ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short: and the sleep which is in the grave, is long! Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. This pure creature—pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious—never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... vestry again met, and the report was read; but the meeting exclaimed against so extensive a proposal, imputing mere motives of self-interest to the surveyor. "Popular clamour," says Telford, "overcame my report. 'These fractures,' exclaimed the vestrymen, 'have been there from time immemorial;' and there were some otherwise sensible persons, who remarked that ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... and its inherent kindness. No; human nature is a sort of fetish which is credited with a great many amiable qualities it never possesses, and though there are exceptions to the general rule, Balzac's aphorism on mankind that 'Nature works by self-interest,' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... inferior officers, and even among the men, all those who have displayed, either at reviews or in battles, capacity, activity, or valour, are all members of his Legion of Honour; and are bound to him by the double tie of gratitude and self-interest. They look to him alone for future advancements, and for the preservation of the distinction they have obtained from him. His emissaries artfully disseminate that a Bourbon would inevitably overthrow ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... explained, an excellent basis for banking. Their absorption for that purpose would create not only a market for that class of securities but inevitably cause them to appreciate in value. The government would thus be largely benefitted, and its cause would be strengthened by the silent influence of self-interest which would certainly be developed by the general distribution of its bonds as the basis of a national currency. It was also urged that the existing banks could with great facility and without sacrifice re-organize under the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... forces between races which promise the highest development for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may suppose, that differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that either benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore an assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... people, some drawn by curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest—house owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants—streamed into Moscow as blood flows to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... interests of others without injuring itself. Should capital demand more than its due, by that demand it limits its opportunities, and, correspondingly, the laborer who demands more than his due thereby takes away from himself the opportunity to labor. No one can escape this law of co-operation. Self-interest demands that we must observe its just limitations. We must be ready to do our part and accord to all others the fair opportunity of doing their part. We must co-operate with and help our colaborer. We should approach the solution of each question which may arise with ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... form, less perfect at beginning, spending more time dependent on its mother, receives from her more power. First from her body's shelter, the full, long upbuilding; safety while she is safe; the circling guard of wise, mature, strong life, of conscious care, besides the unconscious bulwark of self-interest. Contrast this with the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... enthusiasts—like those two I have just been drawing out—for their tools; we don't let them make tools of us. Osmond, you know, is jackal to an asylum in London; Dr. Wycherley, I have heard, keeps two or three such establishments by himself or his agents: blinded by self-interest and that of their clique—what an egotistical world it is, to be sure!—they would confine a melancholy youth in a gloomy house, among afflicted persons, and give him nothing to do but brood; and so turn the scale against his reason. But I have my ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... commit, uncheck'd by shame, What in a beast so much you blame? 70 What is a law, if those who make it Become the forwardest to break it? The case is plain: you would reserve All to yourselves, while others starve. Such laws from base self-interest spring, Not from the reason of the thing—" He was proceeding, when a swain Burst out,—"And dares a wolf arraign His betters, and condemn their measures, And contradict their wills and pleasures? 80 We have establish'd laws, 'tis true, But laws are made for such as you. Know, sirrah, in its ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The next evening I discovered ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... rival, Apelles. Shakespeare, not to be outdone in any loyalty, sets forth the same fantastical devotion in the sonnets and plays. He does this, partly because the spirit of the time infected him, partly out of sincere admiration for Herbert, but oftener, I imagine, out of self-interest. It is pose, flunkeyism and the hope of benefits to come and not passion that inspired ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... North, on the other hand, were not all wise or disinterested in their way of attacking slavery. As always happens, self-interest and moral purpose mingled on both sides; but, as a whole, it may be said that they wished to get rid of slavery because they felt it to be wrong, and totally out of place in a country devoted to freedom and ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... Sally's eyes. The disease of love-sickness has its common symptoms, the whole world knows them; the hungry self-interest that wears itself out into a hypochondriacal morbidity; the perverted power of vision, the hopeless want of philosophy; not to mention the hundred ailments of the body that beset every single one who ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... not a short cut to the millennium, it is no way of changing human nature, and in the new type of assembly, as in the old, spite, vanity, indolence, self-interest, and downright dishonesty will play their part. But to object to a reform on that account is not a particularly effective objection. These things will play their part, but it will be a much smaller part in the new than ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... will enable us to utilize to the utmost the free gifts of a gracious God; to the proper distribution of wealth; to the emancipation of labor, not by the law of blind force, but enlightened self-interest—not by riotous revolution, but peaceful evolution. I want to see every American Citizen in very truth a Sovereign, to whom life is a joy instead of a curse. I want to see every rag transformed into a royal robe, every ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in modern times, both among Catholics and Protestants. As to its results, we must bear in mind that, while there is no need to attribute the mass of stories regarding miraculous cures to conscious fraud, there was without doubt, at a later period, no small admixture of belief biased by self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of facts. Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. Every cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish church claimed ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... experience once,"—he could not help alleging this case, in which he had long triumphed,— "and I have always felt that I did right in advising against a romantic notion of self-sacrifice in such matters. You may commit a greater wrong in that than in an act of apparent self-interest. You have not put the case fully before me, and it isn't necessary that you should, but if you contemplate any rash sacrifice, I ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... in the region under dispute, but he replied that he must wait for orders from the Governor in Quebec. One object of Washington's mission was to win over, if possible, the Indians, whose friendship for either the French or the English depended wholly on self-interest. He seems to have been most successful in securing the friendship of Thanacarishon, the great Seneca Chief, known as the Half-King. This native left it as his ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... particular kinds of it are more open and avowed in some ages than in others; and, I suppose, it may be spoken of as very much the distinction of the present to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to self-interest, than appears to have been done formerly. Upon this account it seems worth while to inquire whether private interest is likely to be promoted in proportion to the degree in which self-love engrosses us, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... fiercest desire to live and to will—the money centre of the earth? Was not the whole structure of Society at last thoroughly materialistic? Was not religion merely a tradition, honour and virtue merely the themes of song and story? Had not self and self-interest at last become the sole force behind all great deeds? It looked that way. Then why should any man be a sentimental fool? Why ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... I have to some of the witty Sparks and Poets of the Town, has put me on a Vindication of this Comedy from those Censures that Malice, and ill Nature have thrown upon it, tho in vain: The Poets I heartily excuse, since there is a sort of Self-Interest in their Malice, which I shou'd rather call a witty Way they have in this Age, of Railing at every thing they find with pain successful, and never to shew good Nature and speak well of any thing; but when they are sure 'tis damn'd, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... classes, recognize the necessity of the passive obedience of the masses of the State, like that of soldiers during a war; you want the unity of power, and you desire that it shall never be brought into question. What England has obtained by the development of her pride and self-interest (a part of her creed) cannot be obtained in France but through sentiments due to Catholicism, and none of you are Catholics! Here am I, a priest, obliged to leave my own ground and argue with arguers. How can you expect the masses to ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... the human soul, to efface the effigy of Deity in the soul, and to dissolve this energy, this noble enthusiasm, in the cold, killing breath of a pusillanimous indifference. Under the slavish influence of their own unworthiness they have entered into terms with self-interest, the dangerous foe of benevolence; they have done this to explain a phenomenon which was too godlike for their narrow hearts. They have spun their comfortless doctrine out of a miserable egotism, and they have made their own limits the measure of the Creator; degenerate slaves ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to elicit definite affidavits as to graft and irregularity. Evidence of bribery was more difficult to obtain. Plant's easy-going ways had made him friends, and his facile suspension of gracing regulations—for a consideration—appealed strongly to self-interest. However, as always in such cases, enough had at some time felt themselves discriminated against to entertain resentment. Thorne took advantage of this both to get evidence, and to secure information that enabled him to frighten evidence ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Financial Development. There is another international force which expresses itself in the same sense. The voice of abstract justice raised against war is fortified by the voice of concrete self-interest. The interests of the propertied classes, and therefore of the masses dependent upon them, are to-day so widely distributed throughout the world that whenever any country is plunged into a disastrous war there arises in every other country, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... nations in the East, including China, superior to them in manners, in education, and in government; possessed of a literature equal to any, and of arts and sciences totally unknown in the West. Self-preservation and self-interest make all men restless, and so Eastern peoples gradually moved to the West taking their knowledge with them; Western people who came into close contact with them learned their civilization. This fusion of East and West was the ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... he is famous is called Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth (1651). It is partly political, partly a philosophical book, combining two central ideas which challenge and startle the attention, namely, that self-interest is the only guiding power of humanity, and that blind submission to rulers is the only true basis of government.[179] In a word, Hobbes reduced human nature to its purely animal aspects, and then asserted confidently that there was nothing more to study. Certainly, therefore, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... just like to run on with my own impressions from them first. It seems that, since Madame Danterre's death, there has been a good deal of wild talk against her in Florence, which was kept down by self-interest as long as she was living and an excellent paying-machine. You will see, when you read the gossip, that very little is to the point. But, on the other hand, Pietrino has valuable information from one of the nurses. She is a young woman who is disappointed, as she has had ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... will 'profit,' and to act accordingly. The commercial view of life, if rightly taken, with regard to all a man's nature through all the duration of it, will coincide accurately with the most exalted. It 'pays' to follow Christ. Christian morality has not the hypersensitive fear of appealing to self-interest which superfine moralists profess nowadays. And the question in verse 25 admits of only one answer, for what good is the whole world to a dead man? If our accounts are rightly kept, a world gained shows poorly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... said of Isaac Brock that he never allowed a thought of self-preservation or self-interest to affect for one instant his conception of duty. He was blind at this moment to all personal considerations. He made no effort to shelter himself behind any plausible excuse that would have been gratefully seized by the timid or ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... of their government, or so that they might not write ill of it. I am convinced that they will always write ill of me, because I am ever striving to regulate the service of God and that of your Majesty. As that is a labor in which both services may be free from self-interest and worldly ends, I shall not resent that they write to your Majesty whatever they like; for, since you are so just and so Catholic a sovereign, I cannot believe or expect that you will condemn me without a hearing. Therefore ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... soon as I receive the answers. I wish you would also send me your lectures, and likewise Sebastian Bach's five-part Mass, when I will at once remit you the money for both. Pray, do not imagine that I am at all guided by self-interest; I am free from all petty vanity; in godlike Art alone dwells the impulse which gives me strength to sacrifice the best part of my life to the celestial Muse. From childhood my greatest pleasure and felicity consisted in working for others; you may therefore ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... with the marked deck? Bismarck's life abounds with episodes showing this astonishing readiness. In love, in laughter and in intrigue, it was ever the same. Bismarck's use of human nature, constructively, at the precise psychological moment, redounding to his self-interest, is supreme. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... friendship the standard of His own great action, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This high-water mark has often been reached. Men have given themselves to each other, with nothing to gain, with no self-interest to serve, and with no keeping back part of the price. It is false to history to base life on selfishness, to leave out of the list of human motives the highest of all. The miracle of friendship has been too often enacted on this dull earth of ours, to suffer us to doubt either ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... dallied with Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the possession of an extensive franchise, and upon enlightened self-interest to guarantee their proper use of it. Macaulay rejoined, in the Edinburgh Review, that the masses might possibly conclude that they would get more pleasure than pain out of universal spoliation; and that if his opponent's ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... self-interest to the wind and was at her daughter's side like a whirlwind. The fact that the two were of one blood was never so strongly evident. Red spots glowed in the elder woman's cheeks and her ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... submitting to him, so much is he my life. I believe God blindfold, without questioning or reasoning. God is; this is sufficient. How immense is the freedom of the soul in him! O may you not doubt, that when all of self is taken away from the creature, there remains only God. O God, can I have any self-interest, or appropriate aught as mine? In what can I take it? How strange the thought! how far removed from the possession of God! ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... steadily—"Nothing but the law of Nature working in response to the law of God, which is Love! The child was healed of his infirmity by the power of unselfish prayer. Are we not told 'Ask and ye shall receive'? But the asking must be pure! The prayer must be untainted by self-interest! God does not answer prayer that is paid for in this world's coin! No miracle was ever wrought for a fee! Only when perfect love and perfect faith exist between the creature and the Creator, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... as well as from many whom he generously supported, filling every heart capable of appreciating goodness and greatness with the deepest sorrow, affected me also in the most profound and painful degree. The stern duty of self-interest compels me to lay before your Highness a humble petition, the reasonable purport of which may, I hope, plead my excuse for intruding on your Highness at a time when so many affairs of importance claim your attention. Permit me to state the ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... favourable reception, by pointing out the almost necessarily direct pecuniary benefit ultimately derivable from his unpalatable tax; and the instant that he has disclosed his proposal, in the same breath carries our attention to a similar topic—an assurance calculated to arouse the self-interest and excite the approbation first of the commercial classes, and then of all classes, by the means this tax will give the Minister of proposing "great commercial reforms," and "reducing the cost of living." No power of description we possess can adequately set before the reader the effect produced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... financing, are placed in certain jeopardy by such a labor policy, and this risk is not continued, generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deep below the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest and un-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance in the language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economic reason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it did not pay, and ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... short duration. It soon appeared, that those who had declaimed the loudest for the liberties of their country, had been actuated solely by the most sordid and even the most ridiculous motives of self-interest. Jealousy and mutual distrust ensued between them and their former confederates. The nation complained, that, instead of a total change of men and measures, they saw the old ministry strengthened by this coalition; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... wilful blindness of self-interest; but the utterances of the press and the legislative debates of the period are similar in tone. In relation to another railroad, the "Boston Transcript" of Sept. 1, 1830, remarks: "It is not astonishing that so much ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... sentiments—self-destroying; but I always maintain that sentiment is stronger than fact, and even than self-interest. I see clearly how foolish these feelings are, and how they operate to the disadvantage of those whom they influence. Yet I confess that were I in the same position I should be just as foolish. If ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... I hope, that there is not a man amongst us who has not in his heart wished to go to the front, and to do what he could. The thought may have been only transitory, and may soon have been blotted out by self-interest; and there is many a strong man who has thrust it from him because he knew that his duty lay at home. But to everyone the wish must have come, though only to a few can come the opportunity. We all want to do our share, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... persons of influence and different chambers of commerce are earnestly in favor of the proposed change in their coinage. The change is so slight with them that an enlightened self-interest will soon induce them to make it, especially if we make the greater change in our coinage. We have some difficulty in adjusting existing contracts with the new dollar; but as contracts are now based upon the fluctuating value of paper money, even the reduced dollar in coin will be of more purchasable ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... anything compromising would not have occurred to him, but her marvellous beauty presenting itself in the same scale with her necessity, blinded him to prudence and every other consideration but passion. It was a contest between the cunning of a luscious beauty striving for a secret end and the self-interest of a mercenary man. The victory was hers, though scarcely by the means ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... exigencies in the matter of commercial treaties, undoing much of the work of protection upon which Colbert sought to nourish the yet feeble growth of French sea power. These sops, however, only stayed for a moment the passions which were driving England; it was not self-interest, but stronger motives, which impelled her to a ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... of self-interest, it requires great skill to bestride the capricious mare called Opportunity, and make her lead to the end in view. Every winner must possess a strong will and a dexterous hand. But Louis did not devote much ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... houses in county Cork sufficient to hold them," said Father Bernard. And so the debate went on, not altogether without some sparks of wisdom, with many sparks also of eager benevolence, and some few passing clouds of fuliginous self-interest. And then lists were produced, with the names on them of all who were supposed to be in want—which were about to become, before long, lists of the whole population of the country. And at last it was decided among them, that in their ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray Which after thy night introduces the day; How concealed, how persuasive, self-interest's breath, Though it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death! I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all, 35 Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall, And duty forbids, though I languish to die, When departure might heave Virtue's breast with a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was with them at home and they were talking about the Mallingers. Apropos; I am getting so important that I have rival invitations. Gascoigne wants me to go down with him to his father's rectory in August and see the country round there. But I think self-interest well understood will take me to Topping Abbey, for Sir Hugo has invited me, and proposes—God bless him for his rashness! —that I should make a picture of his three daughters sitting on a bank—as ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... down that unhappy impediment of speech. Certainly, during this visit, Morley's scruples relaxed; but when he returned home they came back with greater force than ever,—with greater force, because he felt that now not only a spiritual ambition, but a human love was a casuist in favour of self-interest. He had returned on a visit to Humberston Rectory about a week previous to the date of this chapter; the niece was not there. Sternly he had forced himself to examine a little more closely into the condition of the flock which (if he accepted ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if women as a class are now unfitted for politics it is because they have not that pressure of personal interest and responsibility by which men are unconsciously trained. Give this, and self-interest will do the rest, aided by that power of conscience and affection which is certainly not less in them than in men, even if we claim no more. A young lady of my acquaintance opposed woman suffrage in conversation on ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... for self, at the time being, or in the long run—in this world or the next. Why do this, that, or the other? because you will gain most by it, in the end. At bottom, the motive is taken for granted, whether openly admitted or more or less thinly disguised—self, self-interest, selfishness. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... as the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider your Maxims as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which you are fondest of taking your exercise: but the same ridge hath also a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions to self-interest. Now, a sentiment of interest must be preceded by calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in the country feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the country; because ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... ambition of the Papacy. For while the Popes, through the loss of a great part of their authority and prestige, had become less formidable antagonists, their financial extortions had waxed so intolerable as to suggest the strongest arguments appealing to the self-interest of kings. Hence the frequency with which the demand for "a reformation in the head and the members" resounded from all parts of the Western Church. And hence, too, those memorable councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which, coming in rapid succession at ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... impeachment of Eginhard's sincerity, or of his honour under all ordinary circumstances, that when piety, self-interest, the glory of the Church in general, and that of the church at Seligenstadt in particular, all pulled one way, even the workaday principles of morality were disregarded; and, a fortiori, anything ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... personal blame whatsoever (my business being not with this or that man, but with a system and its principles); this man, by a step well-meant but injudicious, and liable to a very obvious misinterpretation, as though taken in a view of self-interest, had entangled himself in a quarrel. That quarrel would have been settled amicably, or, if not amicably, at least without bloodshed, had it not been for an unlucky accident combined with a very unwise advice. One morning, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the army Bonaparte inaugurated a new era in the wars of the Republic. Previously the leading motives had been pure patriotism and love of liberty; Bonaparte for the first time, in his proclamation on taking command, invoked the spirit of self-interest and plunder, which was to dominate the whole policy of France for the next twenty years. Evil as were the passions which he aroused, Napoleon's great military genius flashed forth in its full brilliancy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... of self-interest and self-defence is, no doubt, their motive, may it not arise from the helplessness of their state in such rigorous seasons; as men crowd together, when under great calamities, they know not why? Perhaps approximation may dispel some degree of cold; and a crowd may make each individual appear safer ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... surprise. Since we gave up at the Reformation the superstitious practice of praying to the saints, saints' days have sunk—and indeed sunk too much—into neglect. For most men's religion has a touch of self-interest in it; and therefore when people discovered that they could get nothing out of St Peter or St John by praying to them, they began to forget the very memory, many of them, of St Peter, St John, and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was, when I thought the whole thing out, that the man Black could be showing me this marked consideration only for some motive of self-interest. It was evident that he had been aware of my intention to follow him from the moment when Roderick purchased our new steam-yacht. He had put one of his own men craftily upon the ship to watch us, and had made a bold attempt to deal with us in mid-Atlantic. ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Whitney, "the young man would also have the motive of self-interest to keep him from making ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... is a regrettable fact that many people use the name of Theosophy and of our Organization for self-interest, as also that of H.P. Blavatsky, the Foundress, to attract attention to themselves and to gain public support. This they do in private and public speech and in publications, also by lecturing throughout the country. Without being in any ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... After these, and guarded on either side by detached parties of troops, the captives, of barbaric and Grecian origin mostly, but here and there interspersed with men of other races—Jews, Syrians, and Huns—who, through contiguity of place or love of arms or self-interest, or a kindred hatred of the Roman rule, had been drawn into the battle—and who, having bravely stood their ground, striving for success, and with hearts well prepared for the consequences of failure, had been overtaken by the usual defeat, and dragged into utter and hopeless ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... This is the surest way to fetch him; he never fails to swell out his chest when he hears that buncombe. In point of fact, of course, he is no more an altruist than any other healthy mammal. His ideals, one and all, are grounded upon self-interest, or upon the fear that is at the bottom of it; his benevolence always has a string tied to it; he could no more formulate a course of action to his certain disadvantage than an Englishman could, or a Frenchman, or an Italian, or a German. But to say that ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... fighting for the right. The deaf shouters for justice. The excellent intentioned men and women labouring for reforms that could only be hoped for when greed and prejudice had yielded place to reason, and who sought to bring about their ends by appeals to passion and self-interest. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... him,—not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of the ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... pay twice or thrice the sum. They love her, and she loves them, and makes herself very useful to them. Benevolence sets out on her journey with a good heart, and puts a good face on it, but is apt to limp and grow feeble, unless she calls in the aid of self-interest by way of crutch. In Mary's case, as far as respects those she is with, 'tis well that these principles are so likely to co-operate. I am rather at a loss sometimes for books for her,—our reading is somewhat confined, and we have nearly exhausted our London library. She has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... kindly voice, and his own self-interest becoming prominent once more, old Dougal told his tale—not an uncommon one —of sheep lost on the hill-side, and one misfortune following another, until a large family, children and orphan grandchildren, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... with Gregory was revolting. It suggested dark thoughts which he tried to put from him in horror, for he was far from being a hardened villain. He was only a man who had gradually formed the habit of acting from expedience and self-interest, instead of principle. Such a rule of life often places us where expedience and self-interest require deeds ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe |
