"Self-interested" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to preserve his copyright, to revise and correct his speeches and addresses, so as to make them at least in details so far differ from the reported form. This thing ought Lord Rosebery to have done, on ethical and literary grounds, not to speak of legal and self-interested grounds; and I, for one, who from the first held exactly the view the House of Lords has affirmed, do confess that I have no sympathy for Lord Rosebery, since he had before him the suggestion and the materials for as substantial alterations and additions from my own hands, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... to business," said I. "You must be aware that we English are generally considered a self-interested people." ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... replied but to Mr. Hume and Dr. Milles—to the first, because he had a name; to the second, because he had a mind to have one:—and yet I was in the wrong, for it was the only way he could attain one. In truth, it is being too self-interested, to expose only one's private antagonists, when one lets worse men pass unmolested. Does a booby hurt me by an attack on me, more than by any other foolish thing he does? Does not he tease me more by any ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... verified. I suppose that we did not call upon less than five hundred freeholders; in fact, we procured nearly that number of signatures, and to me this was a most interesting and entertaining expedition. I had no self-interested object in view; I was, or at least I believed I was, performing an important public duty, and my only aim was to procure a county meeting—and for what, it will be asked? My answer is, for the sole purpose of inducing my brother freeholders ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... reputation of being invincible, which hitherto they had both maintained. So that the alliance which they had contracted by Pompey's marriage to Julia, was from the first only an artful expedient; and her charms were to form a self-interested compact, instead of being the pledge of a ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... speak of. I was far too careless in the year 1840 to bother my head about the conundrums set by our office-seekers, "place-hunters" as the Americans call them. While they were amusing themselves with the fancies, envious, irreligious, unhealthy, and above all self-interested, which they posed as deducing from the principles of 1789, a far more terrible revolution than the French one—for it was to strike the poor as well as the rich—was shortly to burst upon us; the revolution brought about by the use of steam and electricity ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Valancourt'—said her aunt. 'O, madam!' interrupted Emily, anticipating what she would have said, 'do not let me glance on that subject: do not let my mind be stained with a wish so shockingly self-interested.' She immediately changed the topic, and continued with Madame Montoni, till she withdrew to her apartment ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... collected in haste (and which consisted merely of his retainers in the single shire of Warwick), the march of Edward cut him off from the counties in which his name was held most dear, in which his trumpet could raise up hosts. He was disappointed in the aid he had expected from his powerful but self-interested brother-in-law, Lord Stanley. Revenge had become more dear to him than life: life must not be hazarded, lest revenge be lost. On still marched the king; and the day that his troops entered Exeter, Warwick, the females of his family, with Clarence, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lord-provost and citizens of Edinburgh should suffer in the terms of the present bill, they would suffer by a cruel, unjust, and fantastical proceeding; a proceeding of which the worst use might be made, if ever the nation should have the misfortune to fall under a partial self-interested administration. He told them he sat in the parliament of Scotland when that part of the treaty of Union relating to the privileges of the royal burghs, was settled on the same footing as religion; that is, they were made unalterable by any subsequent parliament of Great Britain. Notwithstanding ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... across the seas were enlarging the boundaries of the external world, and her science was studying it. Mixed as the motives of the discoverers must have been, like those of the crusaders before them, and probably, for the most part, self-interested, it is easy to imagine the surprise they must have felt at seeing ignorant people, who, to quote ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of intuition, the famous journalist realised quite well the immense work that might have been done by England through Rhodes had the latter consented to sweep away those men around him who were self-interested. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... king invited Isaac to settle in his domains, and he assigned fields and vineyards to him for cultivation, the best the land afforded.[59] But Isaac was not self-interested. The tithe of all he possessed he gave to the poor of Gerar. Thus he was the first to introduce the law of tithing for the poor, as his father Abraham had been the first to separate the priests' portion from his fortune.[60] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... writing I have been doing all these years. But if that were so, I should have had respect in my young days when I deserved it, not now when I no longer deserve it so well. No one—no one in the world— can be expected to write after fifty nearly so well as before, and only the fools or the self-interested pretend to ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... have been conquered by the English, who have taught them the use of fire arms, and civilized them, in a degree, so as to form them into regiments of soldiers, and this imperfect idea of the half savage Sawney will not soon be corrected; and we must say that the general conduct of this harsh and self-interested race towards our prisoners, will not expedite the period of correct ideas relative to the comparative condition of the Scotch and English. The Americans have imbibed no prejudice against the Irish, having found them a brave, generous, jovial set of fellows, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... documentary narrative of what must hereafter form the basis of their national annals. I do not for a moment contemplate that men of enlightened views such as now direct the affairs of both countries have either part or sympathy with self-interested adventurers who in popular revolutions too often rise to the surface, and for a time make confusion worse confounded; till replaced—as a matter of course, no less than by necessity—by men of greater grasp of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... multiplied. Here was the solution of the problem—protection; and the most permanent and effective protection could be procured by getting the government to preserve it as a National Park. But, just as nearsighted and self-interested individuals opposed and tried to thwart the building of the first transcontinental railroad, so there were persons who could see no reason for setting aside this region as a National Park, men who had for years cut government timber without restriction, or who had grazed livestock ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the tremendous dose of flattery administered by Mary would have been so plainly self-interested as to alarm the dullest perception, but Henry's vanity was so dense, and his appetite for flattery so great, that he accepted it all without suspicion, and it made him quite ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major |
