"Self-aggrandizement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would bear no contradiction and no opposition. The absorbing sentiment of his soul seems to have been that France belonged to him, that it had been given to him as an inheritance, to manage as he pleased for his private gratification. "Self-aggrandizement," he wrote, "is the noblest occupation of kings." Most writers affirm that personal aggrandizement became the law of his life, and that he now began to lose sight of the higher interests and happiness of his people, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... more void of offence against man and God. If Robin lived by plunder, so did the king; the one took toll from a few travellers, the other from a kingdom; the one dealt hard blows in self-defence, the other killed thousands in war for self-aggrandizement; the one was a patriot, the other an invader. Verily Robin was far the honester man of the two, and most worthy ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... eventually become of great service to the descendants of those who lived at the time. There were some whom he wished could have been there, but Providence had ordained the contrary, and therefore he stood before them to say that it was for no purpose of self-aggrandizement, but for the purpose of good to the nation, that the early expeditions were promoted and conducted (cheers) and that the object of James Chambers, Finke, Stuart, and himself was to span this colony for the purpose of allowing a telegraph line to be laid. (Cheers.) When we read of the many times ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... that the heart of the German people is in the war, and that that heart is governed by two motives—the motive of self-defense against Russia and the motive of overbearing self-aggrandizement. I do not base my opinion on phenomena which I have observed. Beyond an automobile journey through Schleswig-Holstein, which was formidably tedious, and a yacht journey through the Kiel Canal and Kiel Bay, which was somewhat impressive, I have never traveled in Germany at all. I base my opinion ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... offer no advantages, but, on the contrary, the most certain disadvantages; and the aberration of self-love into acts of injustice will be suppressed by self-love itself. According to infallible regulations, in such a State, all taking advantage of and oppressing others, every act of self-aggrandizement at another's expense is not only sure to be in vain—labor lost—but it reacts upon the author, and he himself inevitably incurs the evil which he would inflict upon others. Within his own State and outside of it, on the whole face of the earth, he finds ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... time receded from these historic epochs, engrossed more and more in national development, mercantile aspirations, internal improvements, rivalry of parties, self-aggrandizement—in short, all the agencies and factors inseparable from human nature that influence on material lines, have effaced much of the general solicitude that formerly existed. This decadence of purpose is not unnatural; a wardship is a duty, and should ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs |
