"Altruistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a little more intense faith. The philosophical drift in the mores of our time is towards state regulation, militarism, imperialism, towards petting and flattering the poor and laboring classes, and in favor of whatever is altruistic and humanitarian. What man of us ever gets out of his adopted attitude, for or against these now ruling tendencies, so that he forms judgments, not by his ruling interest or conviction, but by the supposed impact of demographic data on an empty brain. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... which has arisen from the broader development of his sympathies. The savage may be defined as a man who cares only for his family and his tribe; the civilized man as one whose kindly interest extends to mankind and beyond to all sentient beings. In the development of this altruistic motive the care of the dependent species has evidently been most effective. We note that the peoples who have attained the first upward step in the association with domesticated animals are in their quality, ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... manifestly the man who, making himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder for all others engaged in it, and excludes from it many who might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic motive, there are two altruistic motives which should deter from ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... earnings, which are diverted, through the channels provided by the opium dens, the gambling houses and the pawn shops, into a stream which eventually empties into the company's coffers. For, mark you, the chartered company did not go to North Borneo from any altruistic motives. It is animated by no desire to ameliorate the condition of the natives or to increase the well-being and happiness of its imported laborers. It is there with one object in view, and one alone—to pay dividends to its stockholders. As the chairman of the company ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... to those who, from a false altruistic standpoint, insist that the insane criminal requires no different treatment from that which the ordinary insane patient does. This is very true in the case of prisoners who develop mental disorders which have no relation to crime or imprisonment. These do not require special ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... nature deeper and richer than that of her brothers. She is to-day foremost in the great social, philanthropic, humanitarian, and ethical reforms, in which selfishness has no place. In her widening influence, growing liberty, and freedom, I see impearled a prophecy of an altruistic era—a civilization triumphant—rising against ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... people in mass were, under various necessary cloaks, controlled by the leaders in the political and business worlds. He wrote me a very strong letter of protest against my attitude, expressed in dignified, friendly, and temperate language, but using one word in a curious way. This was the word "altruistic." He stated in his letter that he had not objected to my being independent in politics, because he had been sure that I had the good of the party at heart, and meant to act fairly and honorably; but that he had been warned, before I became a candidate, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... can operate. The world, we might say, is still infantile or immature. The world is still unmoral. We cannot say that nationalism as the principle of the conduct of nations is a wholly selfish principle as contrasted with a moral or altruistic motive, since such an analogy with individual morality fails to take into account the complex nature of nationalism, and overlooks ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... beautiful. Beautiful upon a mountain. El Kudz means The City, and in a certain sense it is that, to unnumbered millions of people. Ludicrous, uproarious, dignified, pious, sinful, naively confidential, secretive, altruistic, realistic. Hoary-ancient and ultra-modern. Very, very proud of its name Jerusalem, which means City of Peace. Full to the brim with the malice of certainly fifty religions, fifty races, and five hundred thousand curious political chicaneries disguised as plans to save our souls ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Dunborough, Lord Almeric, and two other gentlemen; one of these, an elderly man, who wore black and hair-powder, and carried a gold-topped cane, had a smug and well-pleased expression, that indicated his stake in the meeting to be purely altruistic. The two ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... selfish interest. I have made sacrifices, because I hoped to reap a rich reward. And now, I am well punished; I deserve all this, I certainly do. I have done nothing for others. I have not been altruistic." ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... other students might be accepted as apprentices by the great Masters, even as she herself had been accepted, and that the only way to gain such acceptance was to show oneself worthy of it by earnest and altruistic work. She told me that to reach that goal a man must be absolutely one-pointed in his determination; that no one who tried to serve both God and Mammon could ever hope to succeed. One of these Masters Himself had said: "In order to succeed, a pupil must leave his ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... small face to the other. He smiled grimly. They could see nothing but the humanness of a situation, the need existing. Going against all precedent meant nothing to them; they simply followed ridiculous altruistic impulses. Only in their minds was the knowledge that other people were suffering; and the ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... tendency of his nature changes. Instead of being assertive and rather insentient, he becomes wavering and sensitive. He begins to have as many feelings—nay, more than a woman. His heroism is all in altruistic endurance. He worships pity and tenderness and weakness, even in himself. In short, he takes on very largely the original role of woman. Woman meanwhile becomes the fearless, inwardly relentless, determined positive party. She grips the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... how altruistic you may be about it, you get man to the point that he doesn't depend on atmospheric oxygen here, and domes, pressurized houses and groundcars, oxygen equipment—a great many things are going to be unnecessary. But there'll still be a lot of other things we'll have to ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... had fought a good fight. For there is a good fight, and to the weakest of us must come a sense of futility in those moments when we awaken from our sloth and hear the distant din of the battle. I thought of medicine, of all professions in itself the most altruistic, and then I found myself face to face with that distressing commonplace, the need of money, for though my father was accounted a rich man in the valley, his wealth was proportioned to the valley standards. A commercial life alone seemed left to me, and then I remembered the million kegs of nails, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... tied hand and foot, I find it difficult to recall any definite impressions. It would be absurd to say that I suffered, either mentally or physically. I was sunk in a sort of stupor of rage, and my bonds did not hurt me so long as I kept quiet. Curiously enough, my thoughts were somewhat altruistic. Instead of speculating as to my own fate I rather wondered what would be the outcome of the whole mysterious business. I could not bring myself to believe that, cleverly as the rogues had outwitted me, they would be able to similarly dupe a strong ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... awakening. Soon this would pass, and the sane, ideal government of her dreams would follow—must follow, since among the people's elected representatives was a goodly number of unselfish, single-minded men of her father's class of life; men of breeding and education, impelled by a lofty altruistic patriotism; men who gradually came to form a party presently to be known as ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Lord knows you have far too much to do; but in this juncture I should count it worth your while to pay him some attention. I want him to get the President's ideas about Mexico, good and firm and hard. They are so far from altruistic in their politics here that it would be a good piece of work to get our ideas and aims into this man's head. His going gives you and the President and everybody a capital chance to help me keep our good ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... civilization is most uncivilized in many respects, will be admitted by all whose range of consciousness has touched in any degree, the infinite areas of wisdom expressed in altruistic action. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... in history;—our emotions re stirred by the memories of great captains, statesmen, discoverers, reformers,—but only because the magnitude of that which they accomplished appeals to our own ambitions, desires, egotisms, and not at all to our altruistic sentiments in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. The nameless dead to whom we owe most we do not trouble ourselves about,—we feel no gratitude, no love to them. We even find it difficult to persuade ourselves that the love of ancestors can possibly be a real, powerful, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... crowded into it, and the maximum number of men per bed were lodged. Either because their own rents were high or because they were unable to withstand the temptation of the sudden, and, for all they knew, temporary harvest, or perhaps because of the altruistic desire to assist their race fellows, a majority of the negroes in Pittsburgh converted their homes into ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... energy in ferreting out other people's business, dear cousin. If you 're always so—so altruistic, let us say—I wonder how you have time to devote to ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... she perceives the movements of the child and her thoughts are turned to it instinctively. About this time many of the discomforts of pregnancy disappear and there ensues a period of unusually good health. Perhaps it would be going too far to give this more wholesome altruistic mental attitude the entire credit for the relatively better health of the second half of pregnancy, but without doubt it is a most ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... rested upon the glowing face of the great clock in the tower, his smile, altruistic as it was, became slightly tinged with contempt. Big thoughts were the Prince's; and it was always with a shake of his head that he considered the subjugation of the world to the arbitrary measures of Time. The comings and goings of people in hurry ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... I have ever encountered from a reviewer was the laconic and cynical remark (commenting upon my rather altruistic belief in the duty of giving one's best thought to the conversational circle), that "Nowadays, people don't talk: if they have any good ideas, they save them and write them out and sell them." The ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... seen as philanthropists who selected human materials as gross as the mud from which they made the adobe brick, and from these built up a civilization that was more wonderful than all the mission-edifices which remain as monuments to their altruistic efforts. ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... staring eyes. Her presence had been so inexpressibly sweet and helpful he could not bear to let her go. And yet he understood her feeling. Slowly through years of thought he had grown, till now he was level with her altruistic conception of life. When he spoke again it was ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... freedom is to be found in a monarchy. "A Republic," says Schopenhauer, "is a land that is ruled by the many—that is to say, by the incompetent." But Schopenhauer, of course, knew nothing of the American primary, devised by altruistic Hibernians for the purpose of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the distinction between the progressive and the conservative? On the other hand, the revolutionist has no alternative but to hold that law and justice are not the same, and so he is obliged to subscribe to the benevolent character of all crimes which are altruistic and social in their purposes, whether they are reactionary or anarchistic ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... on one side of Eudoxia Pence—Eudoxia gorgeous, affluent, worldly. Never had she disclosed herself at a further remove from all that was earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic, altruistic. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... intellectual and spiritual man, will for the first time in history, have the necessary conditions in which to expand, blossom and bear fruit. Under such circumstances, life in the country will be both altruistic and idealistic. By comparison, life in cities will become a hardship which few will care to choose. The few, it may be taken for granted, will be so bound to the wheels of Mammon that they cannot ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... children brought up on that! And the toy-makers are not even content with this grand personage, four feet high, who says "Papa! Mamma!" She is passee already; they have begun to improve on her! An electrician described to me the other day a superb new altruistic doll, fitted to the needs of the present decade. You are to press a judiciously located button and ask her the test question, which is, if she will have some candy; whereupon with an angelic detached-movement-smile (located in the left cheek), she is to answer, "Give ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... friends laughed at him for deliberately choosing to leap into the political mire, he told them that the governing class ought to govern, and that not they themselves but the bosses and "heelers" were the real governors of New York City. Not the altruistic desire to reform, but the perfectly practical resolve to enjoy the political rights to which he had a claim was his leading motive. It is important to understand this because it will explain much of his action as a statesman. Roosevelt is the greatest ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... occurred to her was that Steve had gone suddenly mad. He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said that he had taken away William Bannister, but that ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... details of English land management—ignorance guaranteed by the learned habits of a lifetime—on his complete lack of popular sympathy, and on the contempt felt by the disciple of Bismarck and Mommsen for all forms of altruistic sentiment. The squire despised priests. He hated philanthropic cants. Above all things he respected his own leisure, and was abnormally, irritably sensitive as to any possible inroads ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with assumed confidence into the bedroom. And simultaneously, to intensify his unease, the notion that profiteering was profiteering, whether in war or in peace, and the notion that F.F. was a man of lofty altruistic ideals, surged ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... grain, over prairie flowers, over umbrageous trees and all things borne upon the bosom of Mother Earth, checking the succulence of precocious overgrowths, hardening fibre, turning plant energy away from selfish exuberance in mere stalk building into the altruistic sacrament of ripening fruit and hardening grain. A wise old alchemist is Mother Earth, working in time but ever ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... brought emancipation was not in itself a deliberately planned altruistic movement, but was precipitated upon the country, and waged primarily in the interest of the solidarity of the white ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... articles on the trend of modern literature, he published "The Reprobate," a bold dithyrambic on ancient Greek philosophy. The poetry that followed was clearly Epicurean and in complete contradiction to the altruistic tendencies of the neo-Christian period, which found an arch enemy in Nietzsche, whose philosophy evidently influenced Merezhkovsky. However, this evolution did not have a very favorable effect on his poetry; it bordered on an art the clarity of which approached dryness, while at ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... willowy while others acknowledged Junoesque forms. But all of them, of either sex, high or short, thin or stout, appeared to think only of bestowing undying love and affection for the pure glory of giving, for the highest of altruistic motives. Other and more trivial things were spoken of, as a rule, in a second short paragraph which, to the initiated, would have seemed rather more important than the longer announcements. At any rate, that which they asked ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... act on the Board, Riviere had made an altruistic decision. But now the same problem confronted him again in a different guise. If he remained silent, the scheme would in all probability be floated in his name to a successful issue. If he remained silent, he would be betraying ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... took hold of Bertha's imagination—not because she cared to see Chicago adorned, but because he was so singularly altruistic in his concernments. That a man should live to make the world more beautiful was a wondrous discovery for her. He was not specially troubled about the physical welfare or the morals of the average citizen, but the city's ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Generals to dine with him there on the 12th of September. I hear that a doctor went into the Prince of Wales' Hotel to-day, and saw stuck up in the hall the words: "Das Seegefecht in der Nordsee" (in which of course we were victorious). He tore it down and stamped on it. An altruistic German waiter thinking to please the English guests had put the first sheet of the "Frankfurter Zeitung" in a prominent position to console them for the many defeats we are supposed to have had. John ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... These altruistic reflections, however, have somewhat drifted us away from the matter under consideration, so that it becomes necessary to revert again to the main subject. Now, even at the risk of being regarded as wearisome, I propose to consider somewhat fully the different steps ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... seems that two other office-boys in the building had worked upon his feelings by tales of injustice and oppression till they had wrought his compassion to the pitch of that frenzy. But his father's friend, of course, dismissed him summarily as likely to ruin his business. After that altruistic exploit Stevie was put to help wash the dishes in the basement kitchen, and to black the boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian mansion. There was obviously no future in such work. The gentlemen tipped him ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... echoing patriotism—for want of a better gathering place. It is like an incident during an earthquake, when men who have abandoned a cleft fortress will shelter in a drinking bothy. But the very upheavals that have shattered the old fastnesses of altruistic men, will be found presently to be taking the shape of a new gathering place—and of this the New Republic presents an early guess and anticipation. I do not see how men, save in the most unexpected emergency, can be content ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... I owe my first clear apprehension of the gradual evolution of the preservative and altruistic elements in nature, arising from the struggle for existence, to a sermon of Dr. Abbott's called The Manifestation of the Son of God, now, I fear, out of print. Of course Darwin recognized these factors as a necessary ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... subordinate self displayed in this letter was very characteristic of its author. He was by nature altruistic, and this propensity was intensified by his career at Dulwich and his experience of athletics, both influences tending to merge the individual in the whole and to subordinate self to the side. Death he had never feared, and he dreaded it less than ever after ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... like picturesque grace. Any dull dog that owns a pen and a banking-account can write out cheques for charitable institutions. But to accomplish anything personal, imaginative, adventurous, anything with a touch of distinction, is a less easy matter. You wake up in the morning with the altruistic yearnings of a St. Francois de Sales, and yet somehow you go to bed in the evening with the craving unsatisfied. You have really had so few opportunities; and when an occasion does arise it is hedged around with such difficulties ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... although I do not want to do this. But you know publishers. They say that if there are menus for those who do not have the desire to compute them, the usefulness of the book will be increased. Publishers are so altruistic. ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... shakes his habit; tomorrow the alcalde will on some pretext deny you what today he has granted; no mother will allow her son to attend the school, and then all your labors will produce a counter-effect—they will dishearten those who afterwards may wish to attempt altruistic undertakings." ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... excite admiration and gain the confidence of the natives. If the British Government, in acquiring the desert island, had for its purpose the instruction of the natives in a modern system of government, she is to be sincerely congratulated, but it is feared that her motives were less altruistic. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... on a strong man's shoulder, and a rough coat scrubbing her cheek, suddenly bethought her of the line—"Journeys end in lovers' meeting—" and was smitten with a secret wonder as to how much of her impulse to come north had been due to an altruistic concern for the Dunstable affairs, and how much to a firm determination to recapture Arthur from his Gloriana. But that doubt she would never reveal. It would ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... refreshed!" The amateurs who send their work for inspection cannot as a rule bear to face this fact. They constantly say that they wish to do good, or to communicate enjoyment and pleasure. To be honest, I do not much believe that the motive of the artist is altruistic. He writes for his own enjoyment, perhaps, but he publishes that his skill and power of presentment may be recognised and applauded. In FitzGerald's Letters there is a delightful story of a parrot who had one accomplishment—that of ruffling up his feathers and rolling his eyes ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... frightening picture," complained the skipper ironically. "First you say we have to fight him and his kind, and then you imply that he was highly altruistic. What is the fact?" ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... reading public of Continental Europe. By him it was used to designate the teachings not merely of Owen and his followers, but those of all social reformers and visionaries—Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and others. By an easy transition, it soon came into general use as designating all altruistic visions, theories, and experiments, from the "Republic" of ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... usual sound commercial instincts of the Jew, but with an errant philosophy which led him to believe first one thing and then another so long as neither interfered definitely with his business. He was an admirer of Henry George and of so altruistic a programme as that of Robert Owen, and, also, in his way, a social snob. And yet he had married Susetta Osborn, a Texas girl who was once his bookkeeper. Mrs. Platow was lithe, amiable, subtle, with an eye always to the main social chance—in other words, a climber. She was ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... destroy and to construct. They had to sweep away the past, and from the resultant chaos to construct a new order. Alike in destruction and construction, they committed errors; they fell far below their high ideals. The altruistic enthusiasts of the National Assembly gave place to the practical politicians of the Convention, the diplomatists of the Directory, the generals of the Consulate. The Empire was far from realising that bright vision of a regenerate nation which had dazzled the eyes of Frenchmen in the first hours ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... long sigh. "Dear me, you ought to have been an evangelist. I can't understand why you suddenly become punctilious and altruistic. For years you never did anything but try to make money and wonder if I would marry you—you never cared who was dead or what happened as ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... the State is entitled to demand from Commerce that it should co-operate sincerely with the other elements in the State in pursuing the real objects of civilisation, inspired by an altruistic regard for the whole of which it is a part, that is by what is really "enlightened self-interest"; by what Plato has called Temperance[29] and Mr. H. G. Wells "a sense of the State."[30] We find instead that the trader has "day and night held on indignantly" in his disastrous hunt ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... ebullient sense of eloquence, of extravagant oratory, I longed for a sympathetic ear. An altruistic emotion pervaded me. Who would suspect, thought I, as I walked a little too circumspectly amid the throng, that my heart was aglow, that I was tensing my muscles in the pride of their fitness, that my brain was a bewildering kaleidoscope of thoughts ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... out of employment, is young, agile, a talker, a poser, sharp enough to be capable of anything in reason except honesty or altruistic considerations of any kind. The woman is a commonplace old bundle of poverty and hard-worn humanity. She looks sixty and probably is forty-five. If they were rich people, gloved and muffed and well wrapped up ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... than Lombroso to speak on the present punitive methods of society as a direct cause of terrorism. "Punishment," he says, "far from being a palliative to the fanaticism and the nervous diseases of others, exalts them, on the contrary, by exciting their altruistic aberration and their thirst for martyrdom. In order to heal these anarchist wounds there is, according to some statesmen, nothing but hanging on the gallows and prison. For my part, I consider it just indeed to take energetic measures against the anarchists. However, it is not necessary ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... The state of being self-centered, self-conceited, and unduly self-confident; selfish as opposed to altruistic. ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... highest ideals are to become realities. Even those who have been so earth-bound and selfish as to be lifeless, cold, and dead to the knowledge of God and love to the neighbor are commencing to arise in answer to the spirit of the approaching altruistic age. Accompanying this present resurrection, the veil is being rent that for so long has intervened between this life and the next. And although no outward cloud is sundered for a personal Messiah to descend to rule as temporal ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... poet Lucretius in an oft-quoted passage describes the satisfaction that naturally fills the mind when from some safe vantage-ground one looks forth on travellers tossed about on the stormy deep. We may perhaps use the poet's not very altruistic words as symbolising many of the feelings with which, at the dawn of the twentieth century, we look back over the stormy waters of the century that has passed away. Some congratulation on this score is justifiable, especially ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was the object not only of their jealousy but also of the Pope's. A few months before the death of Henry VII., these four combined in the League of Cambrai, for the dismemberment of Venice. The allies, however, were not guided in their actions by any altruistic motives—any excessive regard for the interests of their associates. The French King, Lewis XII., by prompt and skilful action, made himself master of the north of Italy before the rest were ready to move. This was by no means to the taste ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... providence. (3) Make a list of prudential maxims or rules which teach how to live rightly and to lift us above the tribulations and defeat of life. (4) Does the author think seeking pleasure is the real business of life? (5) Does he deny the value of altruistic service? (6) Does he believe in the future life and ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... Basil Sequin swept up the broad steps at Thornwood, she congratulated herself upon a duty about to be accomplished. She had not foregone a bridge luncheon to make this tiresome trip to the country for purely altruistic reasons. She had come to prove to herself, and to her circle, the bond of friendship that existed between her and her distinguished cousin. Experience had taught her that an occasional reference to "my favorite cousin, John Jay Queerington, the author, you know," had its influence. "His is the ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... vicar and resolved to trust him. "Let me explain," he said. "You and I agree in thinking that Miss Wynton is an uncommonly nice girl. I am not on her visiting list at present, so my judgment is altruistic. Suppose she was your daughter or niece, would you care to see her left to that ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... character being carefully veiled. It appears again in the utterly irrational conversion and purification of these characters, and we may further face it in the profound cynicism, all the more terrible because apparently unconscious, with which the author is content to dismiss Thenot, cured of his altruistic devotion by the shattering at one blow of all that he ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... a matter which so nearly touched his own interest, he had allowed his interest to prevail over his quixotry. Self-sacrifice appealed so keenly to his imagination that the inability to exercise it gave him a sense of disillusion. He was like the philanthropist who with altruistic motives builds model dwellings for the poor and finds that he has made a lucrative investment. He cannot prevent the satisfaction he feels in the ten per cent which rewards the bread he had cast upon the waters, but he has an awkward feeling that it detracts somewhat from the ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... successive and terrible shocks of experience. The enormous world had not missed him; and his place therein was not void—society had simply forgotten him. So long as he had moved among them, all he knew for friends had performed their petty altruistic roles,—had discharged their small human obligations,—had kept turned toward him the least selfish side of their natures,—had made with him a tolerably equitable exchange of ideas and of favors; and after his disappearance from their midst, they had duly mourned ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... it. The share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was perhaps Hellenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active charity and dissatisfied with the ideals ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... through a glass darkly. But, dear, I may come to see it through your eyes and in the light of this altruistic dog fancier. I'm such a soft one that it's a wonder I'm ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... of hospitals, orphan asylums, institutions of learning and of art and many other altruistic enterprises depends largely upon the voluntary taxation, aggregating a great many millions annually, to which those men in America who have attained financial success have always willingly submitted themselves—more so, probably than ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... over, that the age of impersonality had arrived for her. She was delighted at having escaped from herself and at being free from egoism. From henceforth she could give herself up to the sentiments which, in pedantic and barbarous jargon, are called altruistic sentiments. By this we mean motherly and grandmotherly affection, devotion to her family, and enthusiasm for all that is beautiful and noble. She was delighted when she was told of a generous deed, and charmed by a book in which she discovered talent. It seemed to her as though she were in some way ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... smile of the debonair club man returned to Shirley's face, as he twitted back: "Purely an altruistic inquiry, Dick. I feared that you might be risking your own heart and the modicum of freedom which you still possess. But I'll wager a supper-party for four that I'll find out who she is, without either you ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Love, mark you. It is always interesting to see that flower bud twice from the same stalk. However, one naturally defers to a lady, especially when one is very much in her way. Place aux dames, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You must admit that his was an altruistic soul. Well, she has her freedom—if only to barter it for a new bondage. Shall we drink to the happy future ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... "we'll leave Weston out. I'm not sure about what he believes in, and it's probable that, he doesn't know himself, except that it's everything as it used to be. His wife was High Church, with altruistic notions, and it's no secret that she made things rather uncomfortable for her husband; but when she took the lad in hand she succeeded perhaps too well. You see, he wanted to apply her principles; and altruism ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... continued until it was stopped by Wallace Banks, the altruistic and perspiring youth who had charge of the subscription-list for the party, and the consequent collection of assessments. This entitled Wallace to look haggard and to act as master of ceremonies. He mounted ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... kind; she had always been a binder of wounds, a dispenser of punctual sunlight; she was one of the world's powerfully benignant great ladies; committees clustered round her; her words of assured wisdom sustained and guided ecclesiastical and political organisations; one must be benignant, in an altruistic modern world, if one wanted to rule. It was not a cynical nun who gazed; Lady Elliston was kind and Lady Elliston loved power; simply, without a sense of blame, ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was thoughtful a moment, and then he answered: "No, I should not say it was. From what we know historically of those conditions in our country, it appears that the great mass of women were not directly affected by them. They constituted an altruistic dominion of the egoistic empire, and, except as they were tainted by social or worldly ambitions, it was possible for every woman to be a lady, even in competitive conditions. Her instincts were unselfish, and her first thoughts ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... essays and letters (many published for the first time) belonging to the last fifteen years of Tolstoy's career, the period in which he has devoted himself exclusively to humanitarian labors. Therefore each has a definite altruistic purpose. In the letters in particular we have, in the words of the translator, "Tolstoy's opinions in application to certain definite conditions. They thus help to bridge the gulf ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... explain within the brief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately after death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the man who deliberately lays down (not merely risks) his life from altruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of him who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in the hope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature or Providence, Fate, or ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... matter of suicides, as in that of remorse, we were too "spectacular and altruistic"; that we lived in a rather unwholesome atmosphere of self-created and foolish ideas concerning honour and duty; that the Mektoub practice of the Arabs pointed to an underlying primitive sanity which we would do well to foster ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... and the law of duty seem to me all one. I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... had bought the horses in Wyoming. Maunders sold the herd himself, and the news that came from the south that the herd had been stolen made no perceptible ruffle. The ranchmen had enough difficulty preserving their own property and were not making any altruistic efforts to protect the horses of ranchmen two hundred miles away. Maunders continued to flourish. From Deadwood came rumors that Joe Morrill, the deputy marshal, was carrying on a business not dissimilar to that which was making Maunders ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... to Comte the only practical method of social regeneration is gradually to inculcate the true social feeling which subordinates itself to the welfare of others. The application to sociological problems of the physical theory of organic evolution further developed the altruistic theory. According to Herbert Spencer, the life of the individual in the perfect society is identical with that of the state: in other words, the first object of him who would live well must be to take his part in promoting the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... couldn't! But she cried, with great wet tears streaming down the smooth planes of her face. Didn't he love her? Wasn't this one little favor worth doing for the sake of her happiness? No one would be hurt by it. The motives were altruistic, after all. ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar
... no," said Ben. He wanted to be alone. Like all dominating people who don't get their own way in an altruistic issue, his feelings were deeply wounded. He took his hat from the disapproving Tomes, and went out to the sea to think. He supposed he was going to think about David's future and the terrible blow his paper had ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... Massachusetts to be so little Yankee (in the best sense still) that she could bear all this without murmur or objection—is it to be imagined that she can lift other States in this generation to her altruistic level? How would Kansas, for example, enjoy being balanced in the Senate, and nearly balanced in the House, on questions relating to the irrigation of her arid plains, or the protection of her beet-root industry, ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... mere will to receive. It is unlikely that the red-haired man would have refused a slice of eagle if it had been offered to him where he stood. And it is still more unlikely that his friend would have handed it to him. Such is not the way of hosts. The hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... to lay his own on his heart in a burlesque of it. At the door he remembered something, and turned. He stood looking back precisely where Laura Filbert had stood, but the sun was gone. "You might tell me more about your friend of the altruistic ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... You have discovered the Ghetto—you and the impertinent newspaper men. And like the reporters you come down to use us for 'copy.' You live here in comfort among us and then go away, write a book about our wretchedness and pose as altruistic heroes in your own silly set. How I loathe that word—altruism! As if the sacrifice of your personality does not always lead to self-deception, to hypocrisy! It is an excuse for the busybody-rich to advertise their charities. If they were as many armed as Briareus or the octopus, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... city is not greater than the prosperity of the largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of the council hall. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... has long been the cry of sentimentalists that no living being should die in order that man might exist. Unfortunately for such theories, the stern and unbending edict of nature has negatived views of this kind ages before the altruistic philosopher came on the scene, and we are daily constrained to bow to this mandate of one of the primal laws of existence. However much we might desire it otherwise, it has been written that "only in death is there life;" nor may any animal ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... that system only. Advocates who are not prepared to say that every bargain shall be controlled by beneficence, and who distinctly admire the chief results of competition, cannot logically demand that labor, alone of all salable commodities, shall be bought and sold on altruistic principles. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... that I find the popular idea, whatever it may happen to be, irritating; I like to annoy the people who hold it by pointing out their foolishness, which is partly why I'm now farming in western Canada. George, of course, is more altruistic; though I don't think he ever analyzes his feelings. As soon as he sees anybody in trouble and getting beaten, he begins to strip. I've a suspicion that ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... grew more marked at their subsequent sessions over it. There had been about the songs the glamour of discovery. One does not hasten to apply the assayer's acid to treasure trove. And, too, it was an altruistic impulse which had prompted her to take ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and it has been not less necessary for the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against enemies. From the association necessary for reproduction has sprung family life and all the altruistic institutions of human society, while from the association for providing food supply have sprung society's industrial institutions. Neither society nor industry, therefore, has had a premeditated, reflective origin, but both have sprung up spontaneously ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... doubt, then surely his noble ambition has been satisfied: for through them he has, indeed, influenced the thought of his country, the thought of the whole world, which owes more than we even yet realise to their pure and altruistic teachings. However, leaving this most interesting question to be decided by our readers, each for himself, we shall now place the chief contents of these writings before them, using as far as possible ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... diabolically ingenious wording—a secret message to his own spies in Washington. Commands for them to obey. A dozen of his spies were in the Earth government's most trusted, highest service—and some of them were there in Washington, close around Georg and Maida as they made their altruistic plan. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... he said. "It is just that. She's right in theory every time; and if people were all as straight and altruistic and high-principled as she is, there'd really be no more bother about morals in the world. Native good sense would decide. Even as it is, the native good sense of mankind is deciding certain questions and will presently ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Curtis's sense of dread and horror was merely altruistic, the natural welling forth of the springs of human sentiment. If the man now lying stark and lifeless in that dreary official bureau had in truth been hurrying on his way to a marriage feast, then, indeed, tragedy had assumed its grimmest aspect that night in New ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... descriptions of love cannot be denied. The subject, however, is too many-sided for me to attempt to describe it here. Suffice it to say that the men of the coming religion will be distinguished by an intelligent and yet intense altruistic affection—the new-born love. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... thought typical of more than a small part of the country's population, yet they show how far-reaching the influence of the church may be on sexual selection. Quite apart from altruistic motives, the churches might well encourage social affairs where the young people could meet, because to do so is one of the surest way ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with ideals of unselfishness. We must find much in the child to appeal to, even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning. "Help him because he helped you," or "Give her some because she always gives you part of hers," ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... entirely altruistic. Her going had already taught him one thing. "We are so used to each other," the piteous little letter had said. Yes, they were used to each other; so used that they would never again be able to ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... currents and movements is necessary to understand that the Revolution was brought about by the dissatisfied trading class as the only means of securing absolute freedom of trade. Notwithstanding the view often presented that it was an altruistic movement for the freedom of man, it was essentially an economic struggle fathered by the trading class and by a part of the landed interests. Admixed was a sincere aim to establish free political conditions. This, however, was not an aim for the benefit of all classes, but merely one for ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... prominent feature of highly organized industry. In building a hut to shelter his family, a savage puts into his work conscience and affection as well as muscular effort; and when the mother of the family does this work, the altruistic element in it is still more conspicuous. As society becomes highly organized the importance of the moral element in all labor increases till the further progress, or even the existence, of the social order may be said to depend on it. In the world of business there is now distrust and turmoil, ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... down I am sure that a good half of his hearers began to think that, after all, there was "something in it." Visions of a carboniferous millennium, when there would be no more strikes and hardly any accidents, and altruistic colliers would hew their hardest to get cheap and abundant coal for the community, floated before the mind's eye as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... sympathetic. In his benevolence Van Buren longed to protect Valentia and Romer, and to give Miss Walmer all she wanted; but most of all his idea was to save Harry from himself, so he always accepted with alacrity invitations to the Green Gate for altruistic reasons. Besides, his desire to see Daphne, although she was now becoming more and more remote to him, was still persistent, if a little ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... in the Memoirs of his Minister, Czartoryski.[714] They illustrate the mingling of sentimentality and statecraft, of viewiness and ambition, which accounts for the strange oscillations of Muscovite policy between altruistic philosophy and brutal self-seeking. At present the Russian Janus turned his modern face westwards. Alexander insisted on the need of tearing from France the mask of liberty which she had so long and so profitably worn. Against the naturalism of Rousseau, which supplied Napoleon ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the Rancho Palomar," Miguel Farrel suggested, presently. "I dare say your purchase of this mortgage was not the mere outgrowth of an altruistic desire to relieve the First National Bank of El Toro of an annoyance and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... which the self interest of the skilled workers demand their amalgamation with the unskilled are still rare, however. If common laborers are admitted in the near future to unions of other workers in the same industry, they will be admitted not from self interest, but from more altruistic motives, from a growing spirit of class consciousness attended, perhaps, by a correspondingly growing realization of class responsibility"—"Amalgamation of Related Trades in Unions." American Economic Review, ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... reality. Even with Lucy's chest and Harry's lessons and the cost of food, she had always felt a soothing conviction that by thinking hard enough about them she could make them every one come out right in the morning. As a normal human being in a world which was not planned on altruistic principles, it was out of the question that she should entirely escape an occasional hour of despondency; but with the narrow outlook of women who lead intense personal lives, it would have been impossible for her to see anything really wrong in the universe ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... a small relation, being chiefly of the character of the pains being absent. As a social animal man is only imperfectly adapted to the state, there going on a constant warfare between his egoistic and altruistic impulses. In fact, it would certainly be an arguable proposition, if we allow intention in nature, to say that man was intended to remain at the animal level, and that, having so far defeated nature's intention, he is dogged by a disappointed creator, and made to pay the fullest ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... the most fitting product of a not perfect environment; good-sorts; normal, but not too normal; distinctly themselves, but not distinguished. They support civilisation. You can trust them in anything, if your demand be for nothing extremely intelligent or absurdly altruistic. One of these could be exhibited in any gallery in the universe, 'Perfect Specimen; Upper Middle Classes; Twentieth Century'—and we should not be ashamed. They are not vexed by impossible dreams, nor outrageously materialistic, nor perplexed by overmuch prosperity, nor spoilt by reverse. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the commonest sources of mental and moral confusion is to mistake the egotistic shrinking from the sight of suffering with the altruistic shrinking from causing it and desire ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... contemporaries,—obedience, union, and protection,—as well as the three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the past, the present, and the future. In accordance with my theory of the brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic instincts,—veneration, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... against the traction trust for transfers refused. All were contingency cases, with the chances of success exceedingly remote. And Montague noticed that the people had come to him as a last resort, having apparently heard of him as a man of altruistic temper. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... from the brute has, when deliberately adopted, driven reverence from the heart and made young Christians agnostics and sometimes atheists—depriving them of the joy, and society of the service, that come from altruistic effort ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... of preying upon one another and seeking to put one another down, after the fashion of this world, should live together as brothers, seeking one another's elevation and spiritual growth." It was essentially socialistic in its conception and execution and, although professedly altruistic in its nature, was in reality a visionary scheme which reflected but little credit upon the judgment of either its originators or its patrons. Its company was composed of "members" and "scholars," to whom may be added a celebrated list of those who sojourned at the Farm for brief periods ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... however, to assume that Russia's motives had been entirely or even largely altruistic. The powers had expressed the fear that a greater Bulgaria would gradually become part of the Russian Empire. There can be no doubt that Russia thought so too. All her later actions point to that fact. The only mistake, and this was shared by all who participated ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... things that we have not. It has been observed, by all acute students of the novel, that the egotistic variety will not bear heavy crops of fruit by itself; and that it is incapable, or capable with very great difficulty, of letting the observed and so far altruistic kind grow from the same stool. Of what is sometimes called the dramatic faculty (though, in fact, it is only one side of that),—the faculty which in different guise and with different means the general novelist must also possess,—Rousseau had nothing. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... these details of technique is the need of helping the student to clarify his thinking by engaging in some practical moral endeavor. The broadening and deepening of the altruistic interests is a familiar feature of adolescent life. The instructor in ethics, in the very interest of his own subject, is the one who should take the lead in encouraging these expressions, not only because of the general obligation of the college ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... that we are a nation of dupes and the advertisements carried in some of the papers would indicate the truth of this statement. No manufacturer is going to advertise anything that does not sell well and bring a considerable profit. Men are not so altruistic as to be in business just for the good of humanity. The majority are in business for the money to be obtained from it. Somehow, women are very susceptible to the arts of these greedy manufacturers. A company commences to make a patent medicine and then, in order to derive ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... used him well.[28] Undoubtedly he was right so far as this, that gratitude answering to a spirit of exaction in a benefactor is no merit; a service done in expectation of gratitude is from that fact stripped of the quality which makes gratitude due, and is a mere piece of egoism in altruistic disguise. Kindness in its genuine forms is a testimony of good feeling, and conventional speech is perhaps a little too hard, as well as too shallow and unreal, in calling the recipient evil names because he is unable to respond to the good feeling. Rousseau ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... instincts of self-interest and to the illegal appropriation of other people's property. It revels in the lust of boasting, so deeply ingrained in human nature. In a word, it is a policy which is in direct opposition to the true spirit of religion, to the altruistic ideals of humanity, and to that sentiment of humility and moderation which is the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... a new idea—the ecclesiastical and altruistic life as distinct from the intellectual and emulative life. A man could preach and do good to his fellow-creatures without taking double-firsts in the schools of Christminster, or having anything but ordinary knowledge. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... feeling, or perhaps it would be kinder to say a non-social feeling. Your home-loving person comes in the course of time to that state of mind where little else is of importance; the home becomes the only place where his sympathies and his altruistic purposes find any real outlet. The capitalist of the stage (and of real life too) is one so devoted to his home and family that he decorates one and the other with the trophies of other homes. There is none so devoted to his home as the peasant, and there is no one ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... justice and liberty. Thus do men love their neighbors as themselves, and move forward to fraternity and equality in kingdoms and commonwealths. The special province of moral reformers, like Garrison and the Abolitionists, seems to be to set these egoistic and altruistic elements of human society at war, the one against the other, thereby compelling its members and classes, willy nilly, to choose between the belligerents. Some will enlist on one side, some on the other, but in the furnace heat of the passions which ensues, an ancient evil, or ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... soil and flourish in an agnostic climate is a highly dubious proposition. We can only say that available experience seems to be against it. The Christian morality implies the Christian religion which has created it; as for the {180} high-minded, altruistic individual agnostic, he must simply be ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the progress of mankind in self-control and virtue. Human character itself will change with the amendment of human institutions. Passion can be dominated by reflection, and by the deliberate encouragement of gentle and altruistic sentiments. The business of politics is to destroy the opposition between self-interest and altruism, and to make a world in which when a man seeks his own good, he need no longer infringe the good of others. A great share ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... again," said Mr. Charteris. "And my wife—oh, it would upset Anne, quite frightfully! It is our altruistic, nay, our bounden duty to save them ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... favorite book with him, and so was the 'Old Curiosity Shop.' No doubt a fancied affinity with Tom Pinch through their common love of music made him like that most sentimental and improbable personage, whom he would have disowned and laughed to scorn if he had met him in life; but it was a purely altruistic sympathy that he felt with Little Nell and her grandfather. He was fond of reading the pathetic passages from both books, and I can still hear his rich, vibrant voice as it lingered in tremulous emotion on the periods he loved. He would catch the volume up anywhere, any time, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... little I know of the President's plan I am sure that it is impracticable. There is in it too much altruistic cooperation. No account is taken of national selfishness and the mutual suspicions which control international relations. It may be noble thinking, but it ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... she wondered if he was not really distinguished and aristocratic-looking. He was really neither, but was well-built and well-dressed, and had good grayish-brown eyes, about the colour of his grayish-brown hair. Among these amiably worldly people, who were not in the least moved by an altruistic prompting, Emily's greatest capital consisted in the fact that she did not expect to be taken the least notice of. She was not aware that it was her capital, because the fact was so wholly a part of the simple contentedness of her nature that she ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm simply bursting with it. I challenge you, sir, to show me where there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man. Mother love doesn't count—mother and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Charles the Second and the rights of the flesh, which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselves in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume led the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed that it was only an object of the five senses; or of six, if we add that of "hunger." The divine element was explained away, and the proper study of mankind was, not ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... land of prophecy that its path to future glory be stained with the blood of its aborigines. Incongruous as it is, the two nephews, with their white associates, were glad of a condition so profitable to them. Their solicitation for Blue-Star Woman was not at all altruistic. They thrived in their grafting business. They and their occupation were the by-product of an unwieldly ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... egotistical but, curiously enough, altruistic, since mankind, even when bayoneting their fellow-creatures, want to persuade themselves and others that this is done merely for the benefit of their adversary. In accordance with this idea, in the opinion of all parties, the war will be brought to an end with ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... multitude of half formed ideas, perhaps but just conceived, perhaps taking tentative form, which he was eager to work out and put to practical test. For the most part they seemed to her to be an unusual combination of business shrewdness, just feeling, and altruistic intent. Apparently his aim in them was to attain the end of social betterment by means of the co-operative and mutually profitable effort ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... to be equally devoid of the more caressing gifts. They may be filled with altruistic passion, but they certainly have bad complexions, and not many of them know how to dress their hair. Nine-tenths of them advocate reforms aimed at the alleged lubricity of the male-the single standard, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... however, one thing for a government to declare its altruistic intentions, but often quite another to carry ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... is possible—that Mr. Constant had supplied her with the L25 to leave the country. He was like a brother to her, perhaps even acted imprudently in calling upon her, though neither dreamed of evil. It is possible that he may have encouraged her in her abnegation and in her altruistic aspirations, perhaps even without knowing their exact drift, for does he not speak in his very last letter of the fine female characters he was meeting, and the influence for good he had over individual human ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... the whole, the last word remained with Halidon, and Ambrose's personal chariness seemed a trifling foible compared to his altruistic breadth of intention, yet neither of us could help observing, as time went on, that the habit of thrift was beginning to impede the execution of his schemes of art-philanthropy. The three travelling scholarships had been founded in the first blaze of his ardour, and before ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... ago. That is the most the success of the Amusement Enterprise can mean to me—to afford some day the legitimate as a plaything. It costs money to educate the public to better things. It's been profitable playing down to its taste—some day it is going to enable me to afford to be sufficiently altruistic to foot the bills for serving up the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst |
