"Selfishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be grasped, too mysterious to be understood; therefore he faced life doubtfully, with a mixture of timidity and respect, as in Henry Esmond. His philosophy was that every person is at heart an egoist, is selfish in spite of himself; therefore is every man or woman unhappy, because selfishness is the eternal enemy of happiness. This is the lesson written large in Pendennis. He lived in the small world of his own class, while the great world of Dickens—the world of the common people, with their sympathy, their eternal hopefulness, their enjoyment ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... indicated by her costume and by the work that she did. The father's eyes did not care to recognize a daughter in that servant's garb and in her performance of menial occupations. She was no longer a person with his blood in her veins or who had the honor to belong to him: she was a servant; and his selfishness confirmed him so fully in that idea and in his harsh treatment of her, he found that filial, affectionate, respectful service,—which cost nothing at all, by the way,—so convenient, that it cost him a bitter pang to give it up later, when a little more money mended the family fortunes: battles ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... so, while every stone of the pile of Oldenhurst and every tree in its leafy park might have been eloquent with the story of vanity, selfishness, and unequal justice, it had been left to the infinite mercy of Nature to seal their lips with a spell of beauty that left mankind equally dumb; earth, air, and moisture had entered into a gentle conspiracy to soften, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Selfishness.—When parents spoil their children, it is less to please them than to please themselves. It is the egotism ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... itself were many citizens in high position who were at variance with the government, quite prepared to declare for Antony or Pompey if either should appear a match for the young heir of Caesar. Clearly the great epic of Rome could not have matured in that atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, and selfishness. The convulsions of the dying republic, beheld day by day near at hand, could only have inspired a disgust sufficient to poison a poet's sensitive hope. It was indeed fortunate that Vergil could escape all this, that he could retain through the period of ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... don't know," she answered. "I am afraid that my kindness is only another form of selfishness. I am rather a lonely person, you know. Lord Redford is beckoning to you. I am going to break ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his colleagues sought to check the practice of forestalling. But, as usually happens in a struggle with human selfishness, success was doubtful. More fruitful was the expedient of attracting foreign corn by granting large bounties on imports. As if this were not enough, British warships sometimes compelled neutral corn-vessels, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "Well-beloved;" but by the middle of the century they so detested him that he dared not pass through Paris, lest the mob should execrate him. He had not the vigor of the true tyrant; but his langour, his hatred of all effort, his profound selfishness, his listless disregard of public duty, and his effeminate libertinism, mixed with superstitious devotion, made him no less a national curse. Louis XIII. was equally unfit to govern; but he gave the reins to the Great Cardinal. Louis XV. abandoned them to a frivolous mistress, content ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... that we owe the ideal of human brotherhood, but to evolution. It is because altruism is better than selfishness that it has survived. It is because love is stronger and sweeter than greed that its influence has deepened and spread. From the love of the animal for its mate, from the love of parents for their young, sprang the ties of kindred and the loyalty of friendship; ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... to correct this fatal tendency, or to encourage it from a notion that it weans men from political passions and thus wards off revolutions, they might eventually produce the evil they seek to avoid, and a time might come when the inordinate passions of a few men, aided by the unintelligent selfishness or the pusillanimity of the greater number, would ultimately compel society to pass through strange vicissitudes. In democratic communities revolutions are seldom desired except by a minority; but a minority may sometimes effect them. I do not assert that democratic nations are secure from ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... shall reap our reward. Let this be a consolation to us in all our troubles and disappointments when we have been strenuously endeavouring to do some important good, and find all our plans and projects defeated by the selfishness, the ignorance, the obstinacy of others, perhaps of the persons we would benefit, till at last we are inclined to exclaim: "What is the use of attempting to do good in this world? Do all I can, I cannot succeed." We do succeed—we can succeed; often, very ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... faith in the better things that shall be, its trust in God, its generous self-abandonment to men, passes like a breath of inspiration, bringing shame at once and strength with it. Before such an one, not only does selfishness hold its peace, and cynicism forget to be sarcastic, but a new vigour steals into the irresolute will, a fresh power of self-sacrifice takes possession of the heart. The kingdom of God no longer seems a dimly glorious dream, far off in a new strange world, but an ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... you never think. You never think of anything but your own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think to pity us and save us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forced to confess that he had found this father of his vastly different from the man he had been led to expect. He had looked to find a debauched old rake, a vile creature steeped in vice and wickedness. Instead, he found a weak, easy-natured, commonplace fellow, whose worst sin seemed to be the selfishness that is usually inseparable from those other characteristics. If Ostermore was not a man of the type that inspires strong affection, neither was he of the type that provokes strong dislike. His colorless nature left ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... plainly preponderant. And, even then, there is a wide margin between the acts which we praise for their heroism, or generosity, or self-denial, and those which we condemn for their baseness, or meanness, or selfishness. It must never be forgotten, in the treatment of questions of morality, that there is a large number of acts which we neither praise nor blame, and this is emphatically the case where the competition is between a man's own interests and those of his neighbours. We applaud ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... to complete the round of homely happiness in our little rural centres; how is it that we do not properly encourage the things which, albeit childlike, are essential, which sweetly recreate? It is not merely the selfishness of those who are well placed and prefer to live for themselves, or who have light but care not to shed it on those who are not of their class. Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in men of all races. It is not selfishness, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... temporarily. Brotherhood is unquestionably an instinct of the soul, an inheritance from that sunrise era when mutual interdependence was as imperative as it was automatic. The complexities of civilization have overlaid it, and almost but not wholly replaced it by national and individual selfishness. But the world as yet is only about one-third civilized. Centuries hence a unified civilization may complete the circle, but human nature and progress must act and react a thousand times before the earthly millenium; and it cannot be ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... you drive selfishness and coldness to that extent," said Madame, "that you would let this unhappy young man continue to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... or madman had locked the door, and so fastened him to the sinking ship, at a time when, in the bustle, the alarm, the selfishness, all would be apt to forget him and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... pleasant fibs, the latter generally having the best of it. The contest finally settled down into the Victorian compromise, which was tacitly accepted by even the best of the imaginative writers of the period. The understanding was that brutality, lust and selfishness were to be represented as being qualities only of "bad" people, plainly labelled as such. Under this compromise some magnificent works were produced. But inasmuch as the compromise involved a suppression of a great and all-important fact about the human soul, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... lust and natural affection may seem to render it unavoidable; yet there are other particulars in our natural temper, and in our outward circumstances, which are very incommodious, and are even contrary to the requisite conjunction. Among the former, we may justly esteem our selfishness to be the most considerable. I am sensible, that generally speaking, the representations of this quality have been carried much too far; and that the descriptions, which certain philosophers delight so much to form of mankind ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... will, before he is forced to—such a person simply schemes to betray us. There are gentlemen in plenty who would be glad to stop your mouth by kissing you! If you become dangerous some day to their selfishness, to their vested interests, to their immorality—as I pray heaven every day, my dear friend, that you may!—it will be a grand thing for one of them if he can persuade you that he loves you. Then ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... that you must go away—for awhile. It's only selfishness that has blinded me to that all along. I'm killing all the best in ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... remember. But I lied. I was punishing myself because I had been selfish about you. But I didn't believe what I was saying—not deep in my heart. I wanted you to say you wouldn't go—but I didn't want you to look back ever and blame me for my selfishness. You see now how wicked and wrong and weak I am. I didn't want the world to take you away from—from us up here: from the woods and the plain folks. You'll hate me now. But I have to be truthful with ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and who will not give his vile carcass burial, for fear of pollution. Is our prejudice against persons of color more rational or more just? The plain fact is, our prejudice has the same foundation as that of the Mahometan—both are grounded in pride and selfishness. A law has lately passed in Turkey, imposing a fine upon whoever shall call a Christian a dog. Let us try to keep pace with the Turks in candor and benevolence.—[Massachusetts ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... arisen within him, in what way we need not now inquire, that higher powers exist who can, if they will, defend and prosper him, in this way he has religion, he keeps up intercourse with higher powers. And thus religion is not necessarily, even in its most primitive form, a manifestation of mere selfishness. Though gifts are offered which are expected to please the higher beings, and though benefits are asked of which the worshipper is urgently in need, such transactions are not necessarily sordid any more than similar applications between human beings, between two ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... sit among the lazy saints, Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset, Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness? Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!) The world of pain were better, if therein One's heart might still be human, and desires Of natural pity drop upon its fires Some cooling tears." Thereat the pale monk crossed His brow, and muttering, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... a heavy task for one so young, particularly in Priscilla's case, for, besides a father, mother, brother, and sister, in whom she could not but discern many and serious failings, she possessed an aunt who was addicted to insincerity, two female cousins whose selfishness and unamiability were painful to witness, and a male cousin who talked slang and was so worldly that he habitually went about in yellow boots! Nevertheless Priscilla did not flinch, although, for some reason, her earnest and unremitting efforts had hitherto failed ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... me, whom they claimed to respect as kinsman redeemer and whose decisions would seal their fate for good or ill, that there were other survivors from the Great Wars. I was also shocked by their selfishness, for while they fought pettily amongst themselves over how they would change their lands for the better, a seemingly important question about past and future, they completely ignored the sufferings of other humanoids, to whom their way of living no doubt ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... to the world, probably saw the selfishness of Pope's friendship; and, resolving that he should have the consequences of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis, by Steele, that he was sorry for the insult; and that, whenever he should think fit to answer his remarks, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... perilous time, and his agony of mind was terrible, for just then it seemed to him that he had, to gratify his own selfishness, brought the son of his old friend—a lad weak and wasted from a long illness—into a peril which might have been avoided. There they were, perfectly unconscious of danger in this direction; and as soon as the party had finished their whispered consultation he felt ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... self-sacrifice, mutual help, lofty thoughts, love, un-selfishness, joy in the success of others, humanity, justness, are the elements which slay those already enumerated as the sun slays the microbes, and restore ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... she said breathlessly. "There is a nobler happiness than one secured at the expense of selfishness and ingratitude. I tell you, as long as I live, I will not have them know or suffer because of my disgraceful escapade with you! You probably meant well; I must have been crazy, I think. But we've got to endure the consequences. If there's unhappiness and pain to be borne, we've got ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... repeated these words, because he approved of them. The poison of selfishness began anew to work within him; and the words of Verkhoffsky, which he looked on as treacherous, poured like oil on flame. "Hypocrite!" said he to himself; "your hour is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... very sorry for his sister, and at first bad feelings rose in his heart; but he had learned how to conquer them; so he talked to her, and told her how much happier they were than Mary Day, and how disagreeable she made herself, with her selfishness and her vanity; and then he told her that he had read in a book somewhere, that it was better to live in a mud hovel, with a kind heart, and a cheerful temper like hers, than to live in a ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... is the Son of God come to do the works of his Father. Where, then, is the healing of the Father? All the world over, in every man's life and knowledge, almost in every man's personal experience, although it may be unrecognized as such. For just as in certain moods of selfishness our hearts are insensible to the tenderest love of our surrounding families, so the degrading spirit of the commonplace enables us to live in the midst of ministrations, so far from knowing them as such, that it is hard for us to believe that ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... nobler than law or custom: they felt convictions which, but for such intercourse, could not have been afforded, that, as in the practice of their pastor, there was no guile, so in his faith there was nothing hollow; and we are warranted in believing, that upon these occasions, selfishness, obstinacy, and discord would often give way before the breathings of his good-will, and saintly integrity. It may be presumed also—while his humble congregation were listening to the moral precepts ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... bright than Marann Fluker. Simeon had not cordially indorsed the movement into town, though, of course, knowing it was none of his business, he had never so much as hinted opposition. I would not be surprised, also, if he reflected that there might be some selfishness in his hostility, or at least that it was heightened by apprehensions personal ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... not answer. The mountain girl's words had revealed to him the selfishness of his own consideration of his problem so clearly that he was stunned. Why had he not, in his thinking, remembered the dear old gentlewoman who had saved him ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... buckle under to the social conditions of England in those days, and who were consequently not exactly pestered with offers of employment. And a man who could see the difference between doffing his ragged cap to a dissolute squire or parson, and saluting his better on parade, could also see the selfishness of leaving an honest girl to languish for him. Brown could not get a living in England. So he told his girl to get a better man, swung his canvas bag across ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... as the past unhappiness, was quite as much her fault as his, and the act of separation more so—he having been the passive and consenting party, did not consider it specially incumbent on him to make things easy for his wife. In his irritation and disgust at her heartless selfishness, he half determined to make them very much the reverse. He was not surprised at his wife's communication; he knew perfectly well that she would seek a divorce sooner or later, as the liberality of the world in such matters ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... was the moral law of the Church, establishing its great fundamental principles but leaving details to the working out of life itself. Behind the sin of Abelard lay his intolerable spiritual pride, his selfishness and his egotism, qualities that society at large did not recognize because of their devotion to his engaging personality and their admiration for his dazzling intellectual gifts. Their idol had sinned, he had been savagely punished, he had repented; that ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... and it was not till a month after his removal to Metaxata that intelligence from these gentlemen reached him. The picture they gave of the state of the country was, in most respects, confirmatory of what has already been described as his own view of it;—incapacity and selfishness at the head of affairs, disorganisation throughout the whole body politic, but still, with all this, the heart of the nation sound, and bent on resistance. Nor could he have failed to be struck with the close ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... outward danger an inward ferment was in ceaseless activity; and the effect of the situation on the character of the ruler was generally of the most sinister kind. Absolute power, with its temptations to luxury and unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was exposed from enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably into a tyrant in the worst sense of the word. Well for him if he could trust his nearest relations! But where all was illegitimate, there could be no regular ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... intellectual life. Either one of these diagonally opposed interpretations of the time is too extreme. The truth is in neither view. As a matter of fact, behind the seething mass of human forms was the age-old motive of human selfishness; and while here and there some lofty soul may have glimpsed in his fervid imagination a United Germany, based on a "German national faith," in which the rights of each citizen should be no more or no less than the rights of all others, with each man working for all men and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... pointed to a large white gull, skimming the main at some distance. Disgusted with her selfishness, I vouchsafed her no farther notice at the time, and her crooning went on during the whole period of the bitter death-struggle of that poor sufferer, whose name I never knew, but whose little, deformed waif, the orphan of the raft, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... be sheer, downright selfishness for you to die. It will be your one unworthy act. You have no disease: you have only to comply with the conditions of life ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... endeavour to do good to others, rather than evil, and that therefore I look to my departure from this world with awe indeed, but still with satisfaction. But I cannot look with satisfaction to a condition of life in which, from my own imbecility, I must necessarily retrograde into selfishness. It may be that He who judges of us with a wisdom which I cannot approach, shall take all this into account, and that He shall so mould my future being as to fit it to the best at which I had arrived in this world; still I cannot but fear that a taint of that ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. It deserves the indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. And the spirit which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,—the spirit which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust, intemperance and covetousness,—this animating spirit of evil which works against the Divine will and mars the peace and order of the universe is the great Adversary against whom we must fight for our ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... the irreparable blow dealt to the Jacobite cause by the stupid selfishness which impelled Charles Edward's younger brother to become a Romish priest and a cardinal, appears to have definitively decided the extraordinary change in the character of the Young Pretender. During the many years of skulking, often completely lost to the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... angel of all men, no longer came each day to teach Charles patience and amiability, and he fell into the ways of short temper and selfishness. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the butchery told by the student. As a German, and not generally known to be a Protestant, he managed to escape the fate of his Huguenot friends, but he witnessed, and was forced to appear to applaud, the most revolting exhibitions both of cruelty and of selfishness. His favorite professor, the venerable Francois Taillebois, after having been twice plundered by bands of marauders, was treacherously conducted by the second band to the Loire, despatched with the dagger, and thrown into the river. "The last lecture, which he gave on Monday at ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Anglo-Saxon man, developed under purely American conditions, maturing slowly, keeping close to facts, dying, like the old English saint, while he was "still learning," had none of the typical hardness and selfishness of the Anglo-Saxon. A brooder and idealist, he was one of those "prophetic souls of the wide world dreaming on things to come," with sympathies and imagination that reached out beyond the immediate urgencies of his race and nation to comprehend ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... day more amiable; she is now in the full tyranny of her charms, at the age when the mind is improved, and the person in its perfection. I every day see in her more indifference to her lover, a circumstance which gives me a pleasure which perhaps it ought not: there is a selfishness in it, for which I am afraid I ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... before leaving finally for America, than in quite an honest and enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail the sad fate of such poor wretches as have to forsake their native land, and to accuse the aristocracy of the country of every act of selfishness, and to charge the government with a shameful indifference. But Sheila brought him up suddenly. In the gentlest fashion she told him what she knew of these poor people, and how emigration affected them, and so forth, until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... tent, but till the stars waned he had been awake, and in the white light of the moon he had seen the beginning of the path. Men were said to be selfish. People, especially women, often talked as if selfishness were bred in the very fiber of men, as if it were ineradicable, and must be accepted by women. He meant to prove to one woman that even a man could be unselfish, moved by something greater than himself. Up there on Drouva he had definitely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Meekness, Self-denial, Heavenly mindedness, Zeal for GOD, and Charity towards Men: But as there is even untill now, a great contempt of the Gospel, a great Barrenness under it; So a deep Security under our sin and Danger, a great want of Piety toward God, and Love towards Men, with a woful Selfishness, every one seeking their own things, few the things of Christ, or the publick Good, or one anothers welfare: And finally, the most part more ready to Censure the sins of others, than to Repent ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... the initiative ability of a designer, but she could appreciate the crashing music of gorgeous colours met together on the right notes. Love of colour was in her Jewish blood, and she was a shrewd business woman also, animated with too vital a selfishness to let any opportunity of advancement go. She seized the new girl's idea at a glance, realized its value and its possible meaning ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... aside the accidents of birth and fortune, immeasurably my superior. In that thought—I mean the thought that the man she selects deserves her more than I do, and that in his happiness she will blend her own—I shall find comfort, so soon as I can fairly reason down the first all-engrossing selfishness that follows the sense of unexpected and irremediable loss. Meanwhile you will think it not unnatural that I resort to such aids for change of heart as are afforded by change of scene. I start for the Continent to-night, and shall not rest till I reach Venice, which I have not yet ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinction he ever met who never reminded him, by word or manner, of his color; he was as just and generous to the rich and well-born as to the poor and humble—a thing rare among politicians. He was tolerant even of evil: tho no man can ever have lived with a loftier scorn of meanness and selfishness, he yet recognized their existence and counted with them. He said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of a La Rochefoucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meanness for the public good. He never asked ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... have gone alike, the wheat of honest endeavour and hardship well borne, and the tares of class hatred and selfishness. Had ever reaper nobler task in front of him than the burning of those tares and the gathering of that wheat into the nation's ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... help him in the matter of sensual and heart-steeling self-indulgence. And the surreptitious fame thus acquired, instead of working in him for good, merely serves to procure him larger means and larger license for pampering his gross animal selfishness. His thoughts dwell not at all on the Prince's act of magnanimity, which would shame his egotism and soften his heart, but only on his own ingenuity and success in the stratagem that led to that act. So that the effect is just to puff ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Symonds Dodd to do anything toward squaring a wrong he had committed except when he gave Kate Kilgour a fine position in his office. And there are those who say that he was only showing more of his selfishness when he hired her; he wanted the prettiest girl in the city ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... I ask, my girl. But if I did not believe it was germinating in your heart, and that it would come pouring over me in a torrent some glad day, I doubt if I could allow you to go, Ruth! I am like any other man in selfishness and in ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right and the left and sees old soldiers - men of twelve years' service, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... in the dust of gross selfishness which clings more or less to all of us, we bow worshipping before the gods, into which we elevate the meanest qualities of our own nature, apotheosizing sinful lusts of hate and vengeance; and while we vow reckless tribute and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... wondered most at their selfishness and their generosity. They had so much of both! And I believe that as men they lose none of ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... short, like the hens, these cats held up a mirror to human nature. They showed what men and women would be, if they were—cats; which they would be, if a few modifying qualities were left out. They exhibit selfishness and greed in their pure forms, and we see and ought to shun the unlovely shapes. Evil propensities may be hidden by a silver veil, but they are none the less evil and bring forth evil fruit. Let cats ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... think me—and I am, I am, and I can't tell him I don't really mean to be," and then her tears burst forth, and she cried, and cried until all the bitterness and selfishness were washed from her heart, and ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... than to the body, and though it has its seat in the heart and in the emotions, it has to do principally with the will. 'Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then when lust has conceived it bringeth forth sin.'[6] The essence of sin is selfishness. It is the deliberate choice of self in preference to God—personal and wilful rebellion against the known law of righteousness and truth. There are, of course, degrees of wrongdoing and undoubtedly extenuating ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... just the point in which I see him likest the common run of men, while in his home relations he was worse. It is my conviction that such an act of open disgrace as he had been guilty of, may be the outcome of evil more easy to cast off than that indicated by home-habits embodying a selfishness regarded embodied in families, and which perhaps are as a mere matter of course. There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... infuriated them, but it served to pique. He wasn't actually as unconcerned as he appeared, but he had early learned that effort in their direction was unnecessary. Nick had little imagination; a gorgeous selfishness; a tolerantly contemptuous liking for the sex. Naturally, however, his attitude toward them had been somewhat embittered by being obliged to watch their method of driving a car in and out of the Ideal Garage doorway. His own manipulation ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... tones in which the phrase was uttered grated on Raphael's ears; it fell on them like an indiscreet remark let slip by some man in whose friendship we would fain believe, a word which reveals unsuspected depths of selfishness and destroys some pleasing sentimental illusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the cool inscrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called a servant, and, when ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Wundt, as follows. First of all, he had, on the previous day, met the funeral procession of an acquaintance. Again, he had read of cholera breaking out in a certain town. Once more, he had talked about the particular lady with this friend, who had narrated facts which clearly proved her selfishness. The hastening to flee from the infected neighbourhood and to overtake the procession was prompted by the sensation of heart-beating. Finally, the crowd of red bier-followers, and the profusion of nosegays, owed their origin to subjective visual sensations, the "light-chaos" which often ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... side to all this: the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the lust for power ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... have harbored the thought you attribute to us, Thorwald. After all you have told us of your freedom from trouble, of the dethronement of selfishness and the reign of love, of your great achievements in every art, and of your ideal life in general, we shall always look upon you as a perfect race. How is it possible to rise to a higher plain? Can you express in terms suited to our comprehension ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish with her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered, her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings of Eileen's heart. She was not capable of understanding ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... it was unavoidable for one of so generous and self- sacrificing a nature. I may add, that my aunt Lily is much touched, and thoroughly approves, and my uncle Jasper says imprudence is better than selfishness." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly less adoring Claire—the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving herself "airs"—are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of delicatesse. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig; selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain that his way as a transgressor ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... official as love-making or wine-bibbing seem to a strait-laced parson. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should never avert by his words any ill-will naturally caused by his acts; that he should never soothe disappointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He was an adept in alienation, a novice in conciliation. His magnetism was negative. He made few friends; and had no interested following whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his behalf; no band worked for him ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... a heathen, and had suffered much for the faith, and with that I was satisfied. Indeed you do not seem very ready to speak of those long past days. Our neighbor should be as dear to us as our self, and who is nearer to me than you? Aye, self and selfishness! There are many gulfs ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... found, were considered as the theme of a priest, and my desire to detach her from such empty pursuits as the selfishness of a lover. She was even offended at my freedom, and warmly affirmed that no one had a right to arraign her conduct. I mentioned Major Sanford, who was then in town, and who (though she went to places of public resort with Mr. and Mrs. Sumner) always met and gallanted her home. She rallied me ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... with them the better, and hence a large grant was acknowledged in the treaty of peace. The acts of England toward the United States after acknowledging their independence indicate that the fixing of the western boundary on the Mississippi had as much selfishness as liberality, if indeed it was ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... a feather in the public scale. It is better for me to mind my own affairs, and leave these higher attempts to more competent hands.' This is the language, not of reason and modesty, but of sloth, of selfishness, and of pride. The amount of it is, 'I cannot do every thing, therefore I will do nothing,' But you can do much. Act well your part according to your faculties, your station, and your means. The result will be honorable to yourself, delightful ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... for the Southland. A few months later, supposing him to be possessed of a faith in the country, he returns with a wife to share with him in that faith, and incidentally in his hardships. This but serves to show the innate selfishness of man. It also brings us to the trouble of 'Scruff' Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before the country was stampeded and staked by a tidal-wave of the che-cha-quas, and when the Klondike's only claim to notice was ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... She had grown, as she often told herself, to be a hard, cautious, selfish, successful woman, without any interference or assistance from such pleasure. Might there not be yet time left for her to try it without selfishness,—with an absolute devotion of self,—if only she could find the right companion? There was one who might be such a companion, but the Duke of Omnium certainly could not be ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... to the lowly cottage which he had occupied to the time of which we write. He became a settled misanthropist, whose only aim in life seemed to be the acquirement of wealth, and whose once genial and generous nature had now become warped into the selfishness and avarice ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... centuries—the damning crime to which all men have been subjected. I leave it to metaphysicians to determine the precise moment when wisdom and experience leap into existence, when, for the first time, the mind distinguishes truth from error, selfishness from patriotism, and passion from reason. It is sufficient for me that I am understood." This was Garrison's first experience with "gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston. It was not his last, as ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and public renunciation of the royalist principles of Charles de Buonaparte. It contains also the last profession of morality which a youth is not ashamed to make before the cynicism of his own life becomes too evident for the castigation of selfishness and insincerity in others. Its substance is a just reproach to a selfish trimmer; the froth and scum are characteristic rather of the time and the circumstances than of the personality behind them. There is no further ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... her did not occur to him. Mr. M'Vie held the non-contagion theory, and helpless selfishness excluded all thoughts of keeping his daughter at a distance. He clung to her as he used to do in former days, before Camilla had taken possession of him, and could not bear to have her out of reach. In the sick-room she was of disappointingly little use. The nurse was ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that does away with impatience; 'and is kind,' that makes us neighborly; 'love envieth not,' that saves from covetousness; 'vaunteth not itself,' that does away with self-conceit; 'seeketh not its own,' that kills selfishness; 'is not provoked,' that shows we are forgiving; 'rejoiceth not in unrighteousness,' makes us love only what is pure; 'covereth [Footnote: Marginal rendering.] all things,' that leaves no room for scandal; 'believeth ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... current through the world, sacred as his oath—more binding than his bond; fair, manly dealing is at an end; and he who would mount the ladder of fortune, must be prepared to soil his hands if he hope to reach the top. Legitimate trading is no longer profitable. Selfishness is arrayed against selfishness—cunning against cunning—lying against lying—deception against deception. The great rogue prospers—the honest man starves with his innate sense of honour and integrity. Is it possible to enter cheerfully ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... all her servants; and she knew that, while his enemies were exclusively attached to their own interests, Cecil was attached also to the interests of his prince, his country, and his religion; that while others,—with that far-sighted selfishness which involves men in so many intrigues, usually rendered fruitless or needless by the after-course of events,—were bent on securing to themselves the good graces of her successor, he was content to depend on her alone; that while others were the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... improvement is often absent when it is most needed. A vast multitude of inferior people are perfectly content with themselves in a selfish life, wholly absorbed in providing for their own wants, or, if possessed of wealth, using it only in selfishness and ostentation,—content in believing themselves as good as their neighbors, doing nothing to benefit society, unless under the coercion of public opinion, leading such lives that the world is certainly no better, and perhaps a little worse, for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... have lost the 'inherited wisdom' since the Reform Bill; they maintain a coarse and violent selfishness and the ignorance ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... of a German invasion has haunted far too exclusively the imagination of the English people, and has diverted their attention from another danger far more real and far more immediate. With characteristic naivete and insular selfishness, some jingoes imagine that if only the naval armaments of Germany could be stopped, all danger to England would be averted. But surely the greatest danger to England is not the invasion of England: it is the invasion ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... latter's intention to visit her father's family. Mrs. Feldt, however, whose attitude toward Linda had been negatively polite, now displayed an animosity carefully hidden from her husband but evident to the two girls. The elder never neglected an opportunity to emphasize Linda's selfishness or make her personality seem ridiculous. But this Linda ignored from her wide sense of the inconsequence of ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... providing gratification for its unlawful desires at the expense of the higher part of a man, indulging the animal propensities which in their excess are sinful. "Sowing to the flesh" is scattering the seeds of selfishness, which always must ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... before him as his lode-star—"Our Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven;" and asking even for his daily bread for that purpose and no other, would find selfishness and self-seeking die out of him, and active benevolence grow up in him. He would find past sorrows and falls turned unexpectedly to practical use for his own and other's good; and discover to his delight, that his Father had been educating him, while he fancied he was educating ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... some show of right he could blame his ministers and advisers for his own mistakes and misdeeds. He was so selfish that he would make concessions here and there rather than "embark again upon his travels." In fact, pure selfishness was the basis of his policy in domestic and foreign affairs, but it was always a selfishness veiled in wit, good humor, and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the life and comfort of them all.... The place is looking beautiful, and your mother's garden was never so lovely. It is pleasant in all these sorrows and trials to see a family so united in affection, and so totally without feelings or objects that partake of selfishness or ill-will. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Hospital. The dozen beds of the men's ward were full, and he had been placed in the private ward. He lay now on the narrow bed, sleeping heavily, the white, bright light of the spring morning showing mercilessly the havoc selfishness and reckless self-indulgence had wrought upon a once sufficiently handsome face. The emaciation of his long form was plainly seen through the single scarlet blanket ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... of the association. This singular society is purely French, a creature of French virtues, and possibly of French defects. It cannot be imitated by the English. The roughness, the impatience, the more obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent friendships of the Anglo-Saxon, speedily dismember such a commonwealth. But this random gathering of young French painters, with neither apparatus nor parade of government, yet kept the life of the place upon a certain footing, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a fine, serious, though uncultivated nature. A genuine lover of the wilderness, he had reached that time of life when love is cleansed of its devastating selfishness, and his feeling for the lonely woman of the Shellfish held ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... who was twelve years the Chevalier's senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person, deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his knowledge about the prince, did ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... road, he thought, must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... Castle" is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... fringe of that frantic, swaying, cursing crowd, and cynically watched its proceedings. The scene upon which he gazed was precisely what he had expected from the moment when those three ill-omened lights had burst through the fog and told him that the Golden Fleece was a doomed ship. Here was selfishness supremely triumphant, beating down and eradicating in a moment every nobler instinct of humanity. It was "Every man for himself" with a vengeance; women and children were struck out of men's way with horrid curses and savage, murderous blows; men were fighting ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... subsidiary reasons. For, first, there is, in our drunken land, a certain privilege extended to drunkenness. In Scotland, in particular, it is almost respectable, above all when compared with any "irregularity between the sexes." The selfishness of the one, so much more gross in essence, is so much less immediately conspicuous in its results, that our demiurgeous Mrs. Grundy smiles apologetically on its victims. It is often said—I have heard it with these ears—that drunkenness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a weazened little man, all out of drawing, in a black velvet doublet, satin breeches and silk stockings. At his side is a rudimentary sword. The man's face is sallow, and shrewdness and selfishness are shown in every line. He looks like a baby suddenly grown old. The two friends in the pit have seen this man before, but they have never met him face to face, because they do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... judged them at first sight. She had resolved that they were just selfish, inconsiderate, characterless people. On reflection, she determined that they were not. And even if they had been, why should Peg have been their accuser? And after all, is there not an element of selfishness in every nature? Was Peg herself ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... exclaim when they read such things about the Chinese. Yes, it is selfishness; but life in China is not like ours—a struggle for luxuries—but a struggle, not for bread and rice as many suppose, but for cornmeal and cabbage, or something else not more palatable. This is the life to which most Chinese children ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... reproachful to myself, because I have retained my love for thee a secret from her. A secret from Nisida! Oh! I have been cruel, unjust, not to have confided in my sister long ago! And yet," he added more slowly, "she might reproach me for my selfishness in bestowing a thought on marriage soon, so very soon, after a funeral! Flora, dearest maiden, circumstances demand that the avowal which accident and opportunity have led me this day to make, should ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Lord, whom the God of all the world has made Lord and Christ; and so if you are meek and gentle, when something wrong tempts you to be passionate and proud, if you are kind and helpful to others, when selfishness tempts you to please yourself, you are acknowledging this blessed Master as yours. Is not this a happy thought, my Arthur? and do you not like to give pleasure to the One who loves you so, and who did for you what ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... to this disregard of vital details, there was a tinge of selfishness in everything which Rhodes undertook and which gave a personal aspect to matters which ought to have been looked upon purely from the objective. The acquisition of Rhodesia, for instance, was considered by him as having been accomplished for the aggrandisement ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... remarkable people the Jews are! We find them all over the world (barring Scotland) successful in almost everything they undertake, a prolific race, and good citizens, yet carrying with them in very many cases the characteristics of selfishness, greed and ostentation. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... impels; and all would smile or stare, could they know the aching and measureless wishes, the sad apprehensiveness, which make me pause and strain my almost hopeless gaze to the distance. What wonder if my present conduct should be mottled by selfishness and incertitude? Perhaps you, who can make your views certain, cannot comprehend me; though you showed me last night a penetration which did not flow from sympathy. But this I may say—though the glad ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Then all selfishness passed away in turn, and the word enemy dropped out of his being as the true English boy shone out of his eyes in compassion for a lad who had evidently passed through some ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... lofty nature. He had given the arbitrament of war a trial, and had realised that in that way he could make no head against us. He might, indeed, have continued the futile struggle, but he was the sort of man to recognise the selfishness of that persistency which would involve ruin and death to the devoted people who would not desert his cause while he claimed to have a cause. When historians write of Afghan treachery and guile, it seems to have escaped their perception that Afghan treachery was but a phase of ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... virtue, from a parent's lips, with a few excellent books, to lift the noble kindlings of the soul, the flame could not ascend to what was heavenly and just; but with inverted point, struck downward to selfishness and vice. Men of this character, though enlisted in the war of liberty, were not her soldiers, felt not her enthusiasm, nor her consolations. They did not walk the camp, glorying in themselves, as men called to the honor ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... acknowledge it, follow Mr. Gryce and the trembling, swaying figure of Eleanore Leavenworth down-stairs. Not that I felt the least relenting in my soul towards guilt. Crime had never looked so black; revenge, selfishness, hatred, cupidity, never seemed more loathsome; and yet—but why enter into the consideration of my feelings at that time. They cannot be of interest; besides, who can fathom the depths of his own soul, or untangle for others the secret cords of revulsion ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... humanity—he, of all men, most helped forward the terrible change in the soldiers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,[15] helped to change loyalty into license, protection into plunder, truth into treachery, chivalry into selfishness; and, since his time, the purest impulses and the noblest purposes have perhaps been oftener stayed by the devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other base name ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... stiff beard which was allowed to grow beneath the angle of his massive jaw, the rest of his face being clean shaven. The eyes were deep-sunk and of a clear, cold blue. His mouth broad, with firm, solid lips. Dogged resolution, unconquerable will, cold-blooded selfishness, and a keen hog-cunning showed in his face, while his short, stout form—massive but not fleshy—betrayed a capacity to endure fatigue which few ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... will bring shame and misery on all the rest. The world is full of troubles; but I do not think that we often find, even among those of our own nature, men, women, boys, and girls, not related to us, a person with so little selfishness as to be always sorry and sad when we are so, and because we are so. When we meet with any one so kind-hearted, we love that person, and would do a great deal to serve or ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the child that this was too good to be true. The country, in her imagination, was the source and foundation of all real happiness. There was nothing in cities,—nothing but dust and crowds, and human selfishness and universal hardness of heart, and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... to her hips—gracefully posed there, as became an actress—Belle regarded him fixedly. "My Gawd!" she whispered, owning defeat before that invulnerable selfishness of Duke's. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... questions, such as the protective tariff and the need of raising it, the sad decline of the morality of the working man, the spread of syndicalism and the lack of Christianity in the labour class, and the awful growth of selfishness among the mass ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... is in general commensurate with selfishness of feeling: men old and hackneyed in the ways of the world ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to grow continually better. All the doctrines are practical, and are used as motives to purity, love and beneficence. All the promises are given to support and cheer people in the faithful discharge of their duty. All the warnings are to keep men from idleness, selfishness and sin. The Church and all its ministries; the Scriptures and all their revelations; Providence and all its dispensations; nature and all her operations, are all presented as means and motives to a life of holy love and usefulness. The Bible has ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... She was not a bad-hearted girl in reality, but she had been spoiled by those who should have known better; and although every now and then, at moments such as this, her better nature would assert itself, it was gradually becoming choked and crushed by selfishness, conceit, and carelessness. Marjory had been inclined to envy the baker's daughter her privileges, but in reality Mary Ann was to be pitied rather than envied, for she had no one to guide and help her. Her parents' chief care was that she should be better dressed and better ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... way with books of travel. The chateaus and castles, with all their atmosphere of story and romance which she had always longed to visit, interested him not a jot. In his opinion they were, one and all, bloody monuments of greed and selfishness; the sooner they were razed to the ground and forgotten, the ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... hard sinners could often be brought to a good life more surely, and be enabled more certainly to persevere, by forcibly emphasizing the Incarnation and its benefits than by any other method. Their blindness and selfishness hinder hard sinners from easily appreciating our Lord's sufferings as borne on their account. Father Hecker regretted that the idea of redemption was so often presented in a way to give the impression that atonement ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... expand, may thus not only be permitted but encouraged to contract, and the exercise of that studious ingenuity, which perhaps leads the world to admire the achievements of learning, thus deceive us into a state of existence little better than cold selfishness itself. Sir Isaac Newton, who soared so high and travelled so far on the wing of abstract thought, gathering light from the stars that he might convey it in intelligible shape to the world, seems to have thought, high as the employment was, that it was not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... me,' I observed, roused by what I took to be his selfishness, 'it always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life, when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity—two of the best qualities that Heaven gives them—and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... He was a young man of eighteen, and he had not yet become familiar with the grossness and selfishness of this calculating world. He was rather offended at the patronage which the Senator had proposed to bestow upon him, and he even regretted that he had so readily given ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... views on these subjects. He was therefore sent to the Hague. Heinsius was at that time suffering from indisposition, which was indeed a trifle when compared with the maladies under which William was sinking. But in the nature of William there was none of that selfishness which is the too common vice of invalids. On the twentieth of February he sent to Heinsius a letter in which he did not even allude to his own sufferings and infirmities. "I am," he said, "infinitely concerned to learn that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out of the window towards the garden, and the dry ground, and all the trees and garden vegetables seemed to be drinking in the rain with delight. That made him think of the vast amount of good the rain was doing, and he saw his own selfishness in a striking point of view. In a word Rollo was now beginning to be really penitent. The tears came into his eyes; but they were tears of real sorrow for sin, not ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... selfishness of the bank officials, he induced his mother to withdraw the money—shrunk to eight thousand dollars—from the bank, and allow him to take it to Boston, where, in a larger and safer bank, it would draw interest, and on which she could write checks ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... had gone, whispering to Mr. Rupert that he would come back later. He went out on tiptoe, as from the presence of an angel. His selfishness had dropped away from him. The evening wore on, and in the little back room ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this hypocrisy, this intrigue, this selfishness and dissimulation, there was something more pure and good. It was love, pure and simple, binding the thoughts and hearts of Mattie Chapman and young Tite. That love which forgets everything else in its truth and purity, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton, and others of the Royalist exiles, there were particulars of selfishness in it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in her determination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, and nowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, with Charles; and since July the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson |
