"Selfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under any conditions, was ready for once to leave the rules to another. I felt no curiosity, knew no determination to discover the conditions of her life that I might bend them to my own purposes. I was quite passive, untroubled, and of a marvellous, almost selfish happiness. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... necessity to wander. That is to say, his chances of redemption depend upon constancy of some unknown young lady. All the Dutchman has to do is to find her, make himself agreeable, and trust to luck. A more childish notion never occurred to an intellectual man, nor a more selfish one. The lady might have done nothing wrong; she was to be punished for loving not wisely but too well; and there is nothing in the old legend or in the Wagner-Heine form of it to show the Dutchman to have been a deserving person. Yet, on the other hand, Wagner, with still vivid memories of the ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... not heard anything for three or four days about the poor woman at No. 10," she said; "I meant to have gone to see her to-day, but somehow one gets so selfish when—when one's mind is full of affairs of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to abuses, for selfish purposes, in contracts and salaries, was opened on the 15th of March, by Sir James Erskine, who endeavoured to show that Hastings had made both corrupt and improvident bargains for providing bullocks, elephants, &c.; that he had grossly favoured individuals that were devoted to his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... misanthropy, incivism; egotism &c (selfishness) 943; moroseness &c 901.1; cynicism. misanthrope, misanthropist, egotist, cynic, man hater, Timon, Diogenes. woman hater, misogynist. Adj. misanthropic, antisocial, unpatriotic; egotistical &c (selfish) 943; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... by men who, in good faith, have not the least idea that they are making themselves disagreeable. There is no malicious intention. It is a matter of pure obtuseness, stupidity, selfishness, and vulgarity. But an obtuse, stupid, selfish, and vulgar person is disagreeable. And your right course will be to carefully avoid all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the foundation of their orders in Italy, and who had been full at first of passionate zeal for the spiritual and physical welfare of the poor, had now departed widely from their early character and become selfish, luxurious, ignorant, and unprincipled. Much the same was true of the 'secular' clergy (those not members of monastic orders, corresponding to the entire clergy of Protestant churches). Then there were such unworthy ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time. Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for'ard or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a messmate. If choice there ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... must be rich, and come from Ohio or New York, to gratify an expensive taste like this. Other men, on both political flanks, did the same thing, and did it well, less for selfish objects than for the amusement of the game; but Hay alone lived in Washington and in the centre of the Ohio influences that ruled the Republican Party during thirty years. On the whole, these influences were respectable, and although Adams could ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... me than any cottage," she said, recovering herself with a little gasp. "I had hoped perhaps he would have come and lived here, and let me take care of him, after all his years of hard work. But it was a selfish idea. He has told me that he cannot leave his work or his uncle, who has been so kind to him, and who is very infirm now—partially paralysed, and needing the greatest care. I ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... case, his mother was the only one who had to exercise self-denial. But he never thought of that. He prided himself on being a very generous fellow, and so he was by nature, but not so much so as he took credit for, and he was growing more selfish than otherwise; which was a pity. He went up to London, and was measured for his dress clothes, and got his boots and gaiters, and then sought out and found the gun-shop, mentioned in the Field, and instead of pretending to be knowing about firearms, wisely told the shopman why he came ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... other people, my dear. Not just your own selfish feelings.... You ought to write and tell ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... that cleanliness and plain living are almost a part of religion. And we Christians agree with you, Moro, in all these grand ideas; for I think that, with all the sorrow now in the world, some of us have been too selfish, too luxurious, as though we thought we would live forever, and had no duty ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... families, with all their domestic affections and domestic snobbery, and have to confess that the snobbery is stronger than the affection. As we desire to love Amelia Sedley, we wish that the people around her were less vulgar or less selfish,—especially we wish it in regard to that handsome young fellow, George Osborne, whom she loves with her whole heart. But with Jos Sedley we are inclined to be content, though he be fat, purse-proud, awkward, a drunkard, and a coward, because we do not want anything better for Becky. Becky ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... constitutes the science of life. Here congregate men of every conceivable calling and character, all meeting on the equal and easy terms of a reputable pursuit, and all more or less under the influence of the natural and perfectly selfish ambition of money making. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... that is a charge I'll not allow—that I am so little of a man as to let my courting be done for me. No, no, it was my love compelling you that made you speak the words you did—the love of a selfish man who should have thought only of shielding you from the hardships of such a wandering, homeless life ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... will hold the share you have. As you didn't know any of the regular London representatives of the New York papers, you couldn't trust them not to tell on you, and so you came to me. Now that I see a good substantial selfish motive for your action, I am ready ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... well be doubted if the advantages to be gained by their counsel in such a position are not outweighed by the evil of exposing it to criticism as dictated by selfish considerations. A member of the New York convention thus alluded upon the floor to the measures supported by the Chief Justice ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... impending dangers of a minority, required the support of a mature and experienced guardian; of an associate raised above the envy of his equals, and invested with the name and prerogatives of royalty. For the interest of the prince and people, without any selfish views for himself or his family, the great duke consented to guard and instruct the son of Theodore; but he sighed for the happy moment when he might restore to his firmer hands the administration of his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and skilled artisans, who lived in the cities and who, ambitious and discontented, did much to stimulate the increasing unrest and demand for reform which in time pervaded the whole nation. A king, constantly in need of increasing sums of money; an idle, selfish, corrupt, and discredited nobility and upper clergy, incapable of aiding the king, many of whom, too, had been influenced by the new philosophic and scientific thinking and were willing to help destroy their own orders; an aggressive, discontented, and patriotic ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... stopped, in her way to school. When she saw the cage hanging amid the vines, and heard the clear, sweet notes of the linnet, her heart was stirred with envy. She was a very selfish little girl, or it would have pleased her to see Fanny so happy with her bird; but she looked very cross and ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... do, Diana," answered Iris. "But I will tell you more about it in the arbor. Come, Apollo; mother would not like us to stay in the house just because she has gone away to the angels. Mother never was the least little bit selfish. Come into ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... hard upon a woman, Stephen, to turn her out, helpless, on a cold and selfish world," answered Jack, simply, much too honest to affect reserve she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... going about making people believe we're cranks and agitators who are hurting business for our own selfish ends." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... look at it from a selfish point of view," said Susanna. "Think of poor Sampaolo—under the old regime, an Island of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... withdraws its solemn light from the vain and presumptuous intellect, doting ever over its own fancied superiority. Inspiration, that holy light only vouchsafed to the loving soul, speaks to man in the silence of the subjective intellect. If the heart is tossed by a thousand passing and selfish passions, how can its solemn but simple and tender voice be heard? Suffering such inflated spirits to plume themselves upon the transitory admiration they are always sure of obtaining, it allows them to take the evil for the good; the grotesque for the beautiful; the meteors of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... both," said the youth, draining his cup with a sigh of satisfaction. "Some time before I had bought up the mortgage on the farm without saying a word to father or mother. I was selfish, I guess, but I wanted the pleasure of their surprise." His eyes sparkled moistly. "My! it was great. It was worth every cent, although it took nearly every dollar of my little pile. You had ought to have been up there to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... at my ghost," exclaimed Bonaparte, laughing. "Look at this selfish woman, she does not wish me a hero's death, lest I should appear to her here in the ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... palms, what blooms, what gorgeous affluence of color and of growth, equalled the wood on the lake-shores, with its stately hemlocks, its joyous birches, its pale-blue, shadow-blanched violets? Nor was this regret, that had at last become a part of the man's identity, entirely a selfish one. He had no authority whatever for his belief, yet believe he did, that, firmly and tenderly as he loved, he was loved, and of the two fates his was not the harder. But a man, a man, too, in the stir of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... things in common, and so on. I replied that matters would never arrive at the state described unless this planet were visited by another deluge, and neither Noah nor any other animal endowed with the present human attributes saved to continue this selfish species. I declared that nothing short of a new planet, Utopia, and a newly created, selected, and combined race of Utopian angels, would ever get as far as the personages in that book, not to speak of remaining in equilibrium on that dizzy point when it should ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... to exhibit anything like a spirit of egotism, and I assure you that I write with a gratified feeling that is a very wide remove from that selfish sentiment, when I tell you that I have received from very many parents, in different parts of the country, letters containing their "warm and grateful thanks" for the endeavor which I made, in a recent number of your magazine, to create more confidence in childhood ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... they sparred and quarrelled still. He was a man of high and rather stern ideals, which had perhaps been intensified—made a little grimmer and fiercer than before—by the strain of the war; and the selfish frivolity of certain persons and classes in face of the national ordeal was not the least atoned for in his eyes by the heroism of others. The endless dress advertisements in the daily papers affected him as they might have affected ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said Mrs. Cromarty, at last. "We have enjoyed having Patty here more than I can tell you. But we must not be selfish. I know her parents have been writing for her to go to them, and it is wrong for us to ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... the moonlight weeps, To quiet its weary breast; Cruelly cold the mad wave leaps, With the moonshine on its crest; Or with scowl, or growl, to the shore it creeps, And sinks to its selfish rest. ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... convictions of a people. But this sentiment, when it has once taken root, is one of the most powerful of those by which human conduct is affected. It is a sentiment of the highest order, lifting men out of narrow and selfish individualism into a region where they behold their duties as members one of another, as partakers of the general life of humanity—the inheritors of the past, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... impertinence," answered Mr. Beach, but with a careful avoidance of the direct issue. "What! You, who have nothing in the world except a name which you father has—well—tarnished—to use your own word, you ask me for my dear daughter's hand? You are so selfish that you wish not only to ruin her chances in life, but also to drag her into the depths of your poverty. Leonard, I should never have thought it ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... benefit of society, inasmuch as it is likely to decrease the number of those who transgress its laws—that it will prove a greater security to our persons and property than laws or prisons afford. But there are other motives which, if these selfish ones were wholly wanting, might be sufficient to advocate, in every humane heart, the same course of conduct. If the duty of promoting honesty amongst the labouring classes did not exist, that of increasing happiness and piety amongst them would ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... spirit into its body with the force of a catapult, to remain and to suffer for sometime longer. Investigators of conditions beyond have heard many complaints of such treatment. When it is seen that death must inevitably ensue, let not selfish desire to keep a departing spirit a little longer prompt us to inflict such tortures upon it. The death chamber should be a place of the utmost quiet, a place of peace and of prayer, for at that time, and ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... she had been hearing that Bobbie Wetherill's life was not all that it should be and Wainwright had tacitly accepted the possibility of the same weakness in himself. These were boys with whom she had been brought up. Selfish and conceited she had often thought them on occasion, but it had not occurred to her that there might be anything worse. She pressed her hands to her eyes and tried to force a calm steadiness into her soul. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... and there has been no curling, and the book club is all amiss. Lilias insists upon the card, because the parties are by no means always merry affairs, and she says that otherwise we would slip them off on each other, and pick and choose, and be guilty of a great many selfish, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... I, "No doubt Miss Rensworth and her friends were more amusing than your poor sick Mammy. I suppose it was selfish of me to want to have you all to myself. If you would like to go back to your Aunt Rennie again, dear child." I added, "you ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... this exile, was now simply a remembrance, no longer a man. Light hearts are thus constituted; while they themselves continue untouched, they roughly break off with every one who may possibly interfere with their little calculations of selfish comfort. Madame had received Buckingham's smiles and attentions and sighs while he was present; but what was the good of sighing, smiling and kneeling at a distance? Can one tell in what direction the winds in the Channel, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dream Of the time that prophets have long foretold, Of an age surpassing the age of gold, Which the eyes of the selfish can never behold, When truth and love ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... well enough what old Rehu was. A touchy, selfish man all but a hundred years old, who would have seen them all die rather than deprive himself of a pinch of snuff or a single one of the pins that were always stuck on the lapels of his coat. Ah, poor child! He must be hard up indeed before he ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... he was misusing his time and wasting his opportunities, but that he had refrained from saying so because he had trusted him; that his one prayer for his children was that they might not turn out useless, dilettante, or frivolous, selfish men. "I had hoped that whatever they engaged in my sons would say, 'If this is worth doing, it is worth doing well.' I did not want them to say, 'I mean to work in order to be first in this or that, to beat other people, to court success'—I do ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... still inspired. They would not listen to his arguments. They would not be cool enough to treat the issue as one of international morality or of the right governance of Europe. The cry would simply be that, for various sinister and selfish reasons, the President wished "to let the Hun off." The almost unanimous voice of the French and British Press could be anticipated. Thus, if he threw down the gage publicly he might be defeated. And if he were defeated, would not the final Peace be far worse than if he were to retain his prestige ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... visit of some days or weeks from home, and then we knew how valuable she was. It would be hard to say whether my mother were relieved or disappointed when Emily refused James Eastwood, in spite of many persuasions, not only from himself, but his family. I believe mamma thought it selfish to be glad, and that it was a failure in duty not to have performed that weighty matter of marrying her daughter; feeling in some way inferior to ladies who had disposed of a whole flock under five and twenty, whereas she had not been able ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all these utterances, and the fact was indeed strange, bearing in mind Mrs. Hood's outburst of loving grief when her husband was brought home, and the devotedness she had shown throughout Emily's illness. Were the selfish habits of years too strong for those better instincts which had never found indulgence till stirred by the supreme shock? Thinking over the problem in infinite sadness, this was the interpretation with which Emily had to satisfy herself, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... appropriate and welcome. In his great heart, there was room enough for those who had been excluded from the sympathy of little souls. In its spirit and design, the gospel overlooked none—least of all, the outcasts of a selfish world. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... boasting with revulsion. Although he had the ability to work for the ultimate good of mankind, this creature intended, instead, to use his newly found power for selfish aggrandizement. ...
— Rex Ex Machina • Frederic Max
... as a boy, Samuel," said Mrs. Hignett, "lamentably lacking in consideration for others and concentrated only on your selfish pleasures. You seem to have ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... till you have seen them. Besides if they had been angels I did not want them just now. But how selfish I am! Come and have some tea. And you can stop longer, that is if you live through the Atterby- Smiths who are worse than both the Kendah tribes put together. Indeed I wish old Harut were coming instead. I should like to see Harut again, wouldn't you?" and suddenly the mystical look I knew so ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... smile, when every one else, he frown. You think she is the angel, yes, oui? But she come to Ba'teese different. She talk to you sof' and she try to turn you against your frien'. Yes. Oui? Ne c'est pas? Ba'teese see her with the selfish mouth. Peuff! He see her when she look to heem out from the corner of her eye—so. Ba'teese know. Ba'teese come back quick, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... he said kindly, 'this is a most mortifying and trying predicament that I am in; and you must pardon me if I seem selfish. I do not know how I am to bear several months of this unnatural life you propose; and in thinking of myself I forget you. Yet your case, as you see it, is harder than mine; and I ought to pity and comfort you. If my darling would only ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... she assured him, "but when I find myself compelled to accept your money to pay for the ordinary necessaries of living, I feel myself being put in an intolerable position. I suppose you won't understand that. I imagine you think of me as a selfish little beast who has no scruples about anything. But I'm not quite like that. It galls me to have Jim borrow from you. He may intend to pay it back. But he won't; it will somehow never be quite convenient. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on the coal-scuttle, making a fresh discovery about himself. He had known before that he had a selfish disposition, though he had never thought about it particularly; but he hadn't known that it was in him to grudge Denis anything—Denis, who was consciously more to him than anyone else in the world. Lucy was different; she was ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... came back from sea, I heard of her marriage. Well, why shouldn't she marry whom she liked? Title and money—who could carry them better than she? She was born for all that is beautiful and dainty. I didn't grieve over her marriage. I was not such a selfish hound as that. I just rejoiced that good luck had come her way, and that she had not thrown herself away on a penniless sailor. That's ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... will be sure to be a failure in respect to teaching the boy to act on right principles in the management of money, and training him to habits of exactness and faithfulness in the fulfillment of his obligations. But in making him a thoughtless, wasteful, teasing, and selfish boy while he remains a boy, and fixing him, when he comes to manhood, in the class of those who are utterly untrustworthy, faithless in the performance of their promises, and wholly unscrupulous in respect to the means by which they obtain money, it may very probably ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... in the monogamic family that the highest type of altruistic affection can be cultivated. It is difficult to understand, for example, how anything like unselfish affection between husband and wife can exist under polygyny. Under monogamy, husband and wife are called upon to sacrifice selfish desires in the mutual care of children. Monogamy is, therefore, fitted as a form of the family to foster altruism in the highest degree, and, as we have seen, the higher the type of altruism produced by the family life, the higher the type of the social life generally, other things being equal. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... contact with public men high and low was not so uniformly gratifying. I enjoyed, indeed, the privilege of meeting statesmen of high purpose, of well-stored minds, of unselfish patriotism, and of the courage of their convictions. But disgustingly large was, on the other hand, the number of small, selfish politicians I ran against—men who seemed to know no higher end than the advantage of their party, which involved their own; who were always nervously sniffing for the popular breeze; whose most demonstrative ebullitions of virtue consisted in the most ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... risen and grown.... Nor was even public morality altogether of its pristine tone. The prospect of material prosperity had introduced a degree of luxury; and luxury had brought ambition and mean longings. Venality had become possible; and clever and venal men had a motive for enlisting the selfish and the stupid, and decrying the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... to save the Greeks from the plague, allowed the maiden to depart, warning Agamemnon, however, that he would no longer fight for a chief who could be so selfish and unjust. As soon as the girl had gone, therefore, he laid aside his fine armor; and although he heard the call for battle, and the din of fighting, he staid quietly ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... father's house, or seen with his eyes when he began to open them. The society there was probably composed of his uncle's friends; soldiers and statesmen who had no sympathy with mobs, but detested the selfish and dangerous system on which the Senate had carried on the government, and dreaded its consequences. Above the tumults of the factions in the Capitol a cry rising into shrillness began to be heard from Italy. Caius Gracchus had wished to extend the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and ears a span wide at this offer, gave consent in his heart to scourge himself with a good will. "Ay, sir, now you say well," quoth he to his master. "I am willing to dispose of myself to do you a pleasure in what may consist with my advantage, for my love for my children and wife makes me seem selfish. Tell me how much you will give me for each lash I give myself?"—"Were your payment, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "to be answerable to the greatness and quality of this cure, the wealth of Venice and the mines of Potosi would be small payment for thee. But see what ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise: Their aid they yield to all: they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone: Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects, what they ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... for any further words, Jimmie darted out of the door and then his steps were heard on the staircase. Fremont had never in all his life had a key turned on him before. He threw himself into a chair, then, realizing how selfish he was, he hastened to the north room and again bent ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... was content to live in absolute solitude with her. She was much of the same mind, dear girl, but God had touched her heart, and in her sweet talk—without intending it, or dreaming of it—she showed me how selfish I was in thinking only of our own happiness, and caring nothing for the woes or the joys of ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... explanation is satisfactory, let any one ask himself what kind of physiognomy he may expect in those who have all their life long, except on the rarest occasions, harbored nothing but petty, base and miserable thoughts, and vulgar, selfish, envious, wicked and malicious desires. Every one of these thoughts and desires has set its mark upon the face during the time it lasted, and by constant repetition, all these marks have in course of time become furrows ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... once. What had we to fear? Personal violence was out of the question. He would never bring his own life into jeopardy by attempting ours. She believed he was quite capable of the most dastardly and treacherous crime; but she thought he was too cunning, cautious, and selfish, to contemplate a mode of revenge which could not be accomplished without risk to himself. In any case, however, she was clearly convinced that the best plan was to go boldly upon him at once. It was like taking ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... for his own selfish ends, wished to keep Clifford and his purse nearer Cliffe Towers, incited my father to oppose the scheme. This was easy. Lord Heathercliffe did not believe in the dignity of labor, and the two voted this new departure ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... before passing on to her own. As hostess to her young relative whose income would not have permitted her to visit this most fashionable of winter cities uninvited, it behooved her to see that the guest lacked no comfort. She was a selfish old woman, but she rarely forgot ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... I said, "that there is such a treasure, though I myself have never seen it. But I know this, that if it still lie in the place where it was set, it is because so heavy a curse will rest upon him who shall lay hands on it wickedly and for selfish ends, that none of those Pharaohs to whom it has been shown have dared to touch ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... action if I add a purely selfish reason for it," Coombe went on. "I will give you one. I do not wish to be the last Marquis ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wife and the woman-servant, Riddet, were. I have been turning the other business over in my mind," she continued, speaking with increasing emotion and rapidity; "and oh, believe me, Mr. Waters, if you can, that it is not solely a selfish motive which induces me to aid in saving Mary Rogers from destruction. I ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... exclusiveness. Exclusiveness is deadly to originality. The exclusive woman is seldom of service to the race, and she is not always a congenial or an agreeable person. She may live so much to herself that she is uninteresting as well as selfish. She touches nothing vital excepting books and has nothing else ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... little dwarf was selfish. He carried his mug in his pocket. "I am going to keep this mug to drink from myself. It belongs to me. If others need a mug to drink from, let them look out for themselves," ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... intense the Gracchi tried to relieve it by inducing the richer classes to allot some share in the public lands to the common people. The old and famous aristocracy of birth and rank had made a stubborn resistance, but it knew the art of yielding. The later and more selfish aristocracy was unable to learn it. The character of the people was changed by the sterner motives of dispute. The fight for political power had been carried on with the moderation which is so honourable a quality of party contests in England. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... mind tells me that dulness, and a mediocre order of ability, and poverty, are not in themselves admirable things. Yet in my heart I always feel that the sales-women in shops and the working girls in factories are more meritorious than I. Many of them, with my opportunities, would be more selfish than I am. Some of them, with their own opportunities, are more selfish. Yet I make this sentimental genuflection before the nun and the charwoman. Tell me, haven't you any weakness? Isn't there any foolish natural thing that unbends you ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... of haste, of farewell; it was enough to 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
... in which things link together. Setting forth on a purely selfish financial enterprise, behold Mademoiselle Chocardelle suddenly brought to the point of wielding an immense electoral influence! And observe also that her influence is of a nature to compensate for all the witty pin-pricks of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... and if this is not granted impartially the doctrine of protection proclaimed by the founders of our government, supported for more than a hundred years of wonderful progress, will be sacrificed by the hungry greed of selfish corporations, who ask protection for great establishments and refuse to grant it to the miner, the laborer ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... a tinge from their deep and politic genius, and their wisdom seems wholly concentrated in their personal interests. I think every tenth proverb, in an Italian collection, is some cynical or some selfish maxim: a book of the world for worldlings! The Venetian proverb, Pria Veneziana, poi Christiane: "First Venetian, and then Christian!" condenses the whole spirit of their ancient Republic into the smallest space possible. Their political proverbs no doubt arose from the extraordinary ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... until this very night have I felt the power of it. Now, however, my soul is full of it, and it shall wax into a poem. This is why I sought you, dear friends, to-night; for I am too gloriously happy to be selfish, and I want you to share my happiness with me. Yes, Mac, it has come at last, the warm Promethean fire, and at last I can proclaim, 'Anch' io ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... any form, but a social one, the point to be decided is whether the social feelings connected with an act and the sense of social duty in performing it, can be expected to be as powerful when the act is done in secret, and he can neither be admired for disinterested, nor blamed for mean and selfish conduct. But this question is answered as soon as stated. When in every other act of a man's life which concerns his duty to others, publicity and criticism ordinarily improve his conduct, it cannot be that voting for a member of parliament ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... Rob Dow spent in misery, but so little were his fears selfish that he scarcely gave a thought to his conduct at the manse. For an hour he sat at his loom with his arms folded. Then he slouched out of the house, cursing little Micah, so that a neighbour cried "You drunken scoundrel!" after him. "He may be a wee drunk," ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the letter and looked up with a strained expression. "I never thought I'd want to leave Ashness and I feel a selfish brute! All the same it would ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... as Prigio bowed before the throne, "you are restored to your position, because I cannot break my promise. But your base and malevolent nature is even more conspicuously manifest in your selfish success than in your previous dastardly contempt of duty. Why, confound you!" cried the king, dropping the high style in which he had been speaking, and becoming the father, not the monarch,—"why, if you could kill the Firedrake, did you let your ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... Canada." There were some who had exerted themselves to defame and injure the President, with a view to their own private interests. He particularly alluded to that contemptible animal, Chief Justice Alcock; to his worthy friend and coadjutor, of whose treacherous, plausible, and selfish character, he had never entertained a doubt; and to that smoothfaced swindler, whom the Lieutenant-Governor had taken so affectionately by the hand, as the man, who, of all others, came nearest in point of knowledge, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... juste-milieu; the more determined, uniting with the workers, would only form a new Gironde, and succumb in the course of the mighty development. The prejudices of a whole class cannot be laid aside like an old coat: least of all, those of the stable, narrow, selfish English bourgeoisie. These are all inferences which may be drawn with the greatest certainty: conclusions, the premises for which are undeniable facts, partly of historical development, partly facts inherent in human nature. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... of the people who had surrounded me the preceding day, I was awakened by the noise of somebody lighting my fire. I thought it was Ellinor; and the idea of the disinterested affection of this poor woman came full into my mind, contrasted in the strongest manner with the recollection of the selfish encroaching people by whom, of late, I ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... burdened, or even virtually prohibited. It is best, while the country is still young and while the tendency to dangerous monopolies of this kind is still feeble, to use the power of Congress so as to prevent any selfish impediment to the free circulation of men and merchandise. A tax on travel and merchandise in their transit constitutes one of the worst forms of monopoly, and the evil is increased if coupled with a denial of the choice of route. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... the house with the whitefolks till I was 19. They lak to kept me in there too long. That's why I'm selfish as I am. Within three weeks after I was out of the house, I married William Douglass. Whitefolks now don't want you to tech 'em, and I slept with white chillun till I was 19. You kin cook for 'em and put your hands in they vittles ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... the whole sympathy of a child for their creed and their church. To be individualistic, to be a patriot and a believer are the quite natural gifts of a healthy person. But maternal love exaggerates very often the individualism of a child and makes it egotistic and selfish; exclusively cultivated patriotism degenerates into chauvinism; and exclusive church education makes a bigot. These three kinds of people (alas! the majority), egotists, chauvinists and bigots, will be against an international scheme of education. But you must say to the sensible mothers: ...
— The New Ideal In Education • Nicholai Velimirovic
... will; and who, when a United States Senator, had displayed no ability as a legislator. His election was notoriously the work of Martin Van Buren, inspired by Aaron Burr, and with his inauguration was initiated a sordidly selfish political system entirely at variance with the broad views of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... him, unyielding to his tread, recalled the apathy with which his fellow-countrymen had listened to his cries. Had he been fired solely by a love of Sweden, he would very likely long ere this have renounced his hopeless task. But a selfish purpose kept him in the path. He was a pariah, hunted down by his enemies, and driven through sheer necessity to play the patriot. It was liberty or death. And so he pushed on, resolved to mingle among the hardy mountaineers of Dalarne, and ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... just as they were on the point of departure, Meg paused. "You must enjoy having her all to yourself for a little while," she said in honeyed, sympathetic tones such as Hugo, certainly, had never heard from her before. "I fear we've been rather selfish about it, but for the future we must not forget that you have the first right to her.... Did you kiss your dear ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Cleomenes. For they, being desirous also to raise the people, and to restore the noble and just form of government, now long fallen into disuse, incurred the hatred of the rich and powerful, who could not endure to be deprived of the selfish enjoyments to which they were accustomed. These were not indeed brothers by nature, as the two Romans, but they had a kind of brotherly resemblance in their actions and designs, which took a rise from such beginnings and occasions as I ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... "but one must always think of one's self—at least, I am afraid I must. Not that I mean to be selfish," she added, seeing a look of consternation spread over Miss Symes's face. "The fact is this, St. Cecilia, I have had the most horrible fright. Those ghastly little creatures the twins—the Vivian twins—brought a most enormous spider into your room, hid it in the center of my bed, ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... died of consumption when Pinkey was eleven, and two years later her father had married his housekeeper. She proved to be a shiftless slattern, never dressed, never tidy, and selfish to the core under the cloak of a good-natured smile. She was always resting from the fatigue of imaginary labours, and her house was a pigsty. Nothing was in its place, and nothing could be found when it was wanted. This, she always explained ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... herself: "Dear me, how selfish it makes one to be unhappy! Here I am, letting it fall on this dear, innocent darling. I ought to be ashamed." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... cut it down with the giant scissors. They were so rusty from long idleness that he could scarcely move them. He tried to think of some rhyme with which to command them; but it had been so long since he had done any thinking, except for his own selfish pleasure, that his brain ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... everything in its simple literal sense. And it is easy to discover whether children in such play, in the activity of free joyousness, incline to the side of mischief by their showing a desire of satisfying their selfish interest. Then they must be checked, for in that case the cheerfulness of harmless joking gives way ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... at law. I'm going to make it go, by George, or I'll know the reason why. I'll make my way in this town and my pile. There's money to be made here and I might just as well make it as the next man. Every man for himself, that's what I say; that's the way to get along. It may be selfish, but you've got to do it. By God! it's human nature. Isn't that right, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... liked, delicious food, especially cooked ... all (quoth the Surveillant with the itching palm of a Grand Central Porter awaiting his tip) for a mere trifle or so, which if I liked I could pay him on the spot—whereat I scornfully smiled, being inhibited by a somewhat selfish regard for my own welfare from kicking him through the window. To The Barber's credit be it said: he never once solicited my trade, although the Surveillant's "Soi-meme" (oneself) lectures (as B. and I referred to them) were the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... recovered $13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him say, every time, "What have you done, my dear, with the twenty-five cents I gave you yesterday?" Isn't such a position, I ask you, humiliating enough to be called "servitude?" That husband, ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... discovered at possessing things I could call my own, and the frequent repetition of the words, My own, my own, gave my mamma some uneasiness. She justly feared that the cold treatment I had experienced at my uncle's had made me selfish, and therefore she invited a little girl to spend a few days with me, to see, as she has since told me, if I should not be liable to fall into the same error from which I had suffered so much ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... were united by the common bond of a common secret which very closely concerned one of them. Things were not as they had formerly been. Mrs. Goddard no longer felt that she had anything to hide; the squire knew that he no longer had anything to hope. If he had been a selfish man, if she had been a less sensible woman, their friendship might have ended then and there. But Mr. Juxon was not selfish, and Mary Goddard did not lack good sense. Having ascertained that in the ordinary course of events there was no possibility ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... you're being sympathetic. You are just foolish and stupid and selfish. You see me getting a smasher right in the face that kills a whole part of my life: the best part that can never come again; and you think you can help me over it by a little coaxing and kissing. When I want all the strength I can get to lean on: ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the former rejoined, endeavouring to disguise his evident contentment, in his customary selfish, but shrewd expression, "I am an old dreamer, and often have I thought myself swimming in the sea when I have been safe moored on dry land! I believe there must soon be a reckoning with the devil, in order that each may take his share of my poor carcass, and I be left ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... nation will ever again be called upon for a like sacrifice. But this wonderful example will not be lost, even though there be no longer any occasion to imitate it. At a time when the universal conscience seemed about to bend under the weight of long prosperity and selfish materialism, suddenly it raised by several degrees what we may term the political morality of the world and lifted it all at once to a height which it had not yet reached and from which it will never again be able to descend, for there are actions so glorious, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... I did not at all understand. Teresa tells me that you had no Bible, and you see I didn't know that. And she said that after you had read it, you would of course be giving it back to me. I am so sorry that I appeared so selfish. Please, pardon me, won't ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... 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 ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... will not do. I want it now. I fear," she whispered, blushing—"I fear, before I married, I was very thoughtless and selfish. I would like to cure myself, and spend my money usefully, as Anne Valery does. Charity is ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... smart hunting set in England. A gay young lord wins in love against his selfish and cowardly brother and ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to go rather farther than I would care to venture, my friend; or you, either, if you should stop to think about it. Your proposition is utterly a selfish one. You must know that. You have thought only of yourself and the mess you are in. You do not consider me at all. You would cheerfully use me as a means of venting your spite—or shall I call it, temper?—against Patricia. For the moment, you are intensely angry at her. Not only that, you feel that ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... naturally, to put them to a good moral use; and at some sacrifice, in certain places, of dramatic effect (though I trust with no sacrifice of truth to Nature), I have shown the conduct of the vile, as always, in a greater or less degree, associated with something that is selfish, contemptible, or cruel in motive. Whether any of my better characters may succeed in endearing themselves to the reader, I know not: but this I do certainly know:—that I shall in no instance cheat him out of his sympathies in ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... you've always been kind to me; so it's plainly my duty to do you a good turn when I can. Next, I liked what I saw of Miss King. I'm convinced that she's in earnest about her art, and is really working at it simply for art's sake and not from any selfish motives. Therefore, as an educated man, it's my duty to help her if I can, without outraging my own conscience or acting in any way unsuitable for a clergyman. Assuming Simpkins to be the kind of man you describe, it is a public ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... duties of sacrificial action of a Vedic worshipper in the life of a new type of Yogin (evidently from yujir yoge) on the other, who should combine in himself the best parts of the two paths, devote himself to his duties, and yet abstract himself from all selfish motives associated ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... he said. "She will have all that she can wish; she will succeed; she will be wealthy. She is a selfish little jade, and a woman who is selfish can get anything she likes. But for people with hearts there's nothing left but to hang a stone round one's neck and throw oneself into the river. But, I too, I shall go far. I, too, shall climb high. I, too, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... convert a home into an inferno. Jealousy is sure to kill love in time. The jealous individual often excuses himself on the ground that he loves. That is not true. There is more fear than love at the base of jealousy. Jealous people are selfish and too indolent mentally to give ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... to do such a thing? Men who are thinking about themselves are not generally either so quick-witted, or so inclined to throw away a good cloak, when by much scraping and saving they have got one. I never met a cunning, selfish, ambitious man who would have done such a thing. The reader may; but even if he has, we must ask him, for Queen Elizabeth's sake, to consider that this young Quixote is the close relation of three of the finest public men then living, Champernoun, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. "Bibbs," she said. "I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be glad you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come because you were happy." She did not speak again for a little while; then she said: "Bibbs—dear—could you tell me about it? Do ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... and tears. In his own selfish way he had adored his wife, and her last words could not easily be put aside. As the months passed by, he was the more inclined to follow her wishes, as the few thousands which fell to him at her death enabled him to pay off his more pressing debts ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and you left her, when you went away, a certain souvenir which she communicated to a friend of hers, who, in perfect good faith, made a present of it to his wife. This lady did not wish, I suppose, to be selfish, and she gave the souvenir to a libertine who, in his turn, was so generous with it that, in less than a month, I had about fifty clients. The following months were not less fruitful, and I gave the benefit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed circle about which all her desires revolved. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... murky cloud hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to accept his return? That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish, blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman! Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back! And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... prosecuting those fisheries was to colonize the country, and conduct them on the spot, whereby he would have established a resident population, who would have combined fishing with the cultivation of the soil. It was a departure from this policy, and a determination, at the behest of selfish monopolists, to make the island a mere fishing-station, that postponed for many weary years the prosperity of the colony, blighting the national enterprise, and paralyzing the energies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... us will ever mention the matter to a soul, it will do no harm. I wish you had not had to hear it, however, as I hate for my Molly to realize that such women as Mrs. Huntington exist, so cold and selfish and worldly. I am glad poor Elise is to be allowed to stay in Paris all winter and work. Perhaps we can make up to her ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... bought back from the Government by their proper owners, was one (whose Order, for selfish reasons, I prefer not to specify), situated in the maze of narrow streets between the Piazza Navona and the Piazza Colonna; this, however, may be said of the Order, that it is one which, although little known in Italy, had several houses in England ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... repairing in progress, or the house in the hands of the decorators. Indeed, so many unforeseen accidents may occur to make her visit an unpleasant memory, both to herself and her hostess, that only the most selfish and inconsiderate of women will so violate the social conventions ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... fury, trying a fall with the insolent, gigantic Bothwell at the 'Change-house, and vanquishing him at the noble battle of Loudon-hill; there is Bothwell himself, drawn to the life, proud, cruel, selfish, profligate, but with the love-letters of the gentle Alice (written thirty years before), and his verses to her memory found in his pocket after his death: in the same volume of Old Mortality is that lone figure, like a figure in Scripture, of the woman sitting on the stone at the turning ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... over-indulge those who are left. At first Mr. Low did not observe how far these plans of indulgence were being carried; indeed, he did not open his eyes fully to the mischief till Bernard was become one of the most troublesome, selfish boys in the whole valley. At five years old he was the torment of the whole house, though even then he was cunning enough to hide some of his worst tempers from his father. He had found out that when he pretended to be ill, mother, nurse, and sister were all frightened out of their senses, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... her—yet——" she said very quietly. "At the same time I don't care to doubt the genuineness of her affection for me. I would rather think that she turned coward at the notion of suffering punishment, and let me endure it in her place through a selfish terror which forbade her to own up and take ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... 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
... have his wife slighted; nor in more important things would he endure to see a lame outcome when he might set things in better shape. He encouraged schools and worthy charities by giving them his hearty countenance. No arm was more potent than his in saving the country, nor was his patriotism selfish. He saved his country because he believed it was for the good ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... feelings no longer. Throwing himself down on his face, he began to sob as only a strong man can when he is at last moved to tears, not by any selfish grief, but by the very burden of his ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... the conservation of our natural 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 once coasts teeming ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... thing I were resolved on—I'd make a fresh start—I'd forget as I'd ever had a home—I'd change my name, and be my own mayster. It were not right—I see it now—I were misguided— it were not right to my poor Betty, my loving sister—it were selfish to leave her to bear all the trouble by herself, and it were not right by you, fayther, nor by poor dear mother. I should have borne my trials with patience, and the Lord would have made a road through 'em; but I've prayed to be forgiven, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson |
