"Egotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... merely an outward and visible sign, and with the Princess Zara, although her beauty was striking, it was the least of her attractions. I had thought that I was born and had lived, devoid of that form of self consciousness which is called diffidence, although it is only an expression of egotism; but for the first time in my life I found myself ill at ease, and wondering if I was appearing to advantage. I was conscious of myself; and what was stranger still I realized that this trained society beauty, the undoubted heroine of unnumbered ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... another crime. They think to dispose of thee, as if thou wert worthless merchandise, to their own advantage. But thou wilt defeat their design. I read the generous resolution in thine eye, Violetta; thou wilt manifest a will superior to their arts and egotism." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... make no profession of being ultra-Christian," he went on, "but I know the letter of the Bible quite as well as most Teachers of Christianity, and without intending any egotism I am sure I dare to say that I know it infinitely better than the average Christian. And if I was a teacher or preacher of the Christian faith I would raise my voice most vehemently against the wilful, sinful ignorance of the Bible on the part of the professed Christians. Members ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... public seven days in the week. And yet you probably all make one mistake about me: you take me for the alumni of some university. Not so. I'm a self-made man. I made myself; and considering that I'm the first man I ever made, I think—pardon the seeming egotism—I think I've done well. A few years ago there dwelt in humble obscurity among the granite hills of New England, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow upon his father's farm, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown. But one day ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... dwell on the imperfections in that immortal strain of sympathy and consolation, that enchanted book of consecrated regrets. It is an easier if not more grateful task to note a certain peevish egotism of tone in the heroes of "Locksley Hall," of "Maud," of "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." "You can't think how poor a figure you make when you tell that story, sir," said Dr. Johnson to some unlucky gentleman whose "figure" ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... proposed to spend the most of his time alone in wandering amid old scenes and brooding over the past. The morbid mind is ever full of unnatural contradictions, and he found a melancholy pleasure in shutting his eyes to the future and recalling the time when he had been happy and hopeful. In his egotism he found more that interested him in his past and vanished self than in the surrounding world. Evil and ill-health had so enfeebled his body, narrowed his mind, and blurred the future, that his best solace seemed a vain and sentimental recalling of ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... tragedy, happier still, to die upon the stage, supremely pitied and honestly mourned for at least a minute? And then, from first to last, applause loud and long—not postponed, not even delayed, but following immediately after. For a piece of diseased egotism—that is, for a man—what a lot ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... her wonderful eyes, he realized in some measure the strength of her determination, felt the utter impotence of anything which he could say to her. He forgot for the moment his own self-pity, the egotism of his own passionate love. He took her hands firmly in his and raised them ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... minimum acuteness, false constructiveness, untrained capacity for inference; in the same way, again, the most cruel hardness depends on properties which, taken in themselves, are good: determination, energy, purposeful action, clear conception of one's fellows, healthy egotism, etc. Every man is the result of his nature and nurture, i. e. of countless individual conditions, and every one of his expressions, again, is the result of all of these conditions. If, therefore, he is to be judged, he must be judged in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to look more kindly on Mr. Hanks and to realize the wisdom of his advice that I lock away my letters. I recalled the varied receptions they had met, and when I started on my second round they were hidden in my trunk. Repeated rebuffs had a salutary effect. My egotism was reduced to a vanishing-point, my pride was quickened, and with my pride my determination to accomplish my purpose. Even had I lacked pride, I must have been nerved to my dogged persistence by the memory of Gladys Todd with Doctor Todd and the three Miss Minnicks speeding me to ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... her to know I know it," he thought, "and I will wait till she knows me better." Instead he began telling her about himself and his own early life, his home, his loss of parents, his struggle to earn a living, and how much success he had so far met. It may be considered egotism, but it was the wisest thing he could have done, for it awakened her interest in him far more than he realized. When his recital and cigar were both at an end and it was time to go in, he said: "I may not have another chance to ask you, Miss ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... had walked with him down to the strand, and had left him when the conference began. Henry was not easily thrown from his equanimity nor wont to exhibit passion on any occasion, least of all in his discussions with the ambassadors of England, but the cool and insolent egotism of this communication was too ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... singular suggestiveness and vigour, illustrated by examples which are always apt and luminous, permeated by the spirit of temperate and tolerant desire for human improvement and happiness, and almost unique in its entire freedom at once from doctrinairism, visionary enthusiasm, egotism, and an undue spirit of system. The genius of the author for generalization is so great, his instinct in political science so sure, that even the falsity of his premises frequently fails to vitiate his conclusions." (Saintsbury, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... she said, with a note of suppressed passion in her how tone. "It is just the accursed egotism of your sex. What right have you to make us suffer so—to ask me to marry you—and sit by my side and wonder whether you care for another woman? Can't you see how humiliating it all is? It is an insult to ask a woman to marry you to cure your loneliness, to make ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... softly lit up by the light of her clear blue eyes, wore, at certain moments of weariness or ill-humor, an expression of almost savage brutality, in which a physiologist would perhaps have recognized the indication of profound egotism or great insensibility. But hers was usually a charming head, with a fresh and youthful smile and glances either tender or full of imperious coquetry. The blood of youth flowed warm and rapid in her veins, and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... labours, it would be a ridiculous piece of silliness in you to allow yourself to be controlled by Aramis, whose cunning you know—a cunning which, we may say between ourselves, is not always without egotism; or by Athos, a noble and disinterested man, but blase, who, desiring nothing further for himself, doesn't sympathize with the desires of others. What should you say if either of these two friends proposed to you ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he lost himself in this passion of egotism and defiance he hardly knew. He was roused from it by the servant bringing a lamp; and as she set it down, the light fell upon a memorandum scrawled on the edge of a sketch which was lying on the ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on commonplace subjects; also all egotism and anecdotes of personal adventure and exploit, unless they should be called out by persons you ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... lastly, the creed of the philosophers of sages varied according to the character and knowledge of each; their relative acquaintance with the secrets of natural science, their intellectual and sectarian egotism, and their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is a classic as well as a mediaeval monasticism. They end in losing the life of Greece in play upon words; but we owe to their early thought some of the soundest ethics, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sick man ejaculate: "Well thank God, Pickwick will be out in ten days, anyway!" No young author ever sprang into more sudden and brilliant fame than "Boz," and none could have remained more thoroughly unspoiled, or so devoid of egotism under success. His own opinion of his fame, and his estimate of its value, may be quoted here: "To be numbered amongst the household gods of one's distant countrymen, and associated with their homes and quiet pleasures; to be told that in each nook and corner of the world's ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... course it is all chance, but a curious chance. I don't wonder that people are often superstitious; and yet a moment's reasoning proves the absurdity of this sort of thing. Nothing truly strange often happens, and only our egotism invests events of personal interest with a trace of the marvellous. My business man neglected to advise me of my improved finances as soon as he might have done. My aunt receives me, not as I expected, but as one would naturally hope to ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... charming and vivid picture of a man whose egotism never marred his natural kindness, and whose vanity ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... outside all consideration: herein lies the root of all the evil that befalls the family through degenerate love. What is commonly, but improperly, called love is either pagan fondness or simon-pure egotism and self-love. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... counted it an impudent fiction that playfulness is inconsistent with greatness. Many men and women have died of Dignity, but the disease which sent them to the tomb was not contracted from Charles Dickens. Not long ago, I met in the street a bleak old character, full of dogmatism, egotism, and rheumatism, who complained that Dickens had "too much exuberant sociality" in his books for him, and he wondered how any one could get through Pickwick. My solemn friend evidently preferred the dropping-down-deadness of manner, which he had been accustomed to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... all, was gone; politicians had already thrown off the mask in Poland; the lust of aggrandizement had prevailed . . . . The indissoluble bond connecting morals and politics being broken, the result was to make egotism the prevailing principle of public as well as ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... have suggested that, as the reader likes to know something about the author, a short account of his origin and early life would lend additional interest to this book. Such is my excuse for the following egotism; and, if an apology be necessary for giving a genealogy, I find it in the fact that it is not very long, and contains only one incident of which I have reason ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... for your family—try to look as well as you can yourself. When you used to go courting, how elegantly you looked! Ah, your eye was bright, your step was light, and you looked like a prince. Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in you to suppose a woman is going to love you always looking as slovenly as you can! Think of it! Any good woman on earth will be true to you forever when ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... continued Parmalee, with the egotism of a lover. "Beautiful name, don't you think? We've been engaged for more than a year, but I didn't want to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... of the thoughts, fancies, opinions, and varying moods of Lamartine, as awakened by the objects which met his eye. These objects, which a great poet would consider of the first importance, are with the Frenchman only secondary to the exhibition of himself. If this mingled egotism and vanity were affected, it would disgust the reader, but as it is the natural action of the author's mind, and is accompanied with much eloquence and beauty of composition, it is more likely to fascinate than to offend. At the present moment, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... difficulty that, with a nature so full of impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret Cooper—particularly in the company of an adroit man like Stevens, whose purpose was to encourage her in that language and feeling of egotism which, while it was the most grateful exercise to herself, was that which most effectually served to blind her to his designs—her action was always animated, expressively adapting itself, not only to the words she uttered, but, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... of disease. If he lives to be cured of his vice his selfishness disappears, and he is another man; but so long as he is mastered by the craving, all things on earth are blotted out for him saving his own miserable personality. So far does the disease of egotism go, that it is impossible to find a drunkard who can so much as listen to another person; he is inexorably impelled to utter forth his views with ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... of his time. His mental equipment nearly approached genius. He was industrious to a degree. His oratorical gifts were of the highest order, and he was a debater of rare power and resources. But his intolerable egotism deprived him of vision necessary for supreme leadership. With all his oratorical power and his talent in debate, he made little impression upon the country and none upon posterity. His position in the Senate was a masterful one, and on the platform most attractive, but none of ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... what real inducement was there for him to abandon his native land? A literary reputation? Was he to run after a little celebrity, a little glory, without ever reaching the real goal of his ambition? What influence could he exercise in favour of his unhappy brothers in a country where egotism monopolised the high places? What was the mass of foreigners doing which had been thrown into Paris by choice or misfortune? Who among them was useful to his fellow-men? The political troubles which desolated Italy had obliged her noblest sons ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... won for him his unique place, that he was always too much interested in estimating the man to whom he was talking, to consider even what the other might think of him. It was at once a form of egoism, and the total negation of egotism. It made him the least self-conscious of human beings. And old Horace Vanney, pompous, vain, the most self-conscious of his genus, felt, though he could not ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... just it! The watchword of our age is self! We are all for ourselves; the twentieth century is to be a glorification of selfishness, the Era of Egotism! Forget yourself, and what would you do? The dignified thing. You would live quietly beside your husband if not with him. And your son would be worthy ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Bating the egotism unavoidable in a work of the sort, the style of Mr. Milburn's book is agreeable, and the anecdotes of various kinds with which it abounds render it very amusing. It is of particular interest as showing how much a blind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more,—let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... awkward, had steady eyes, and an almost invariable neatness and dignity in her clothes. She seemed just as stiff and shy as a girl ought to be, Lady Palsworthy thought, neither garrulous nor unready, and free from nearly all the heavy aggressiveness, the overgrown, overblown quality, the egotism and want of consideration of the typical modern girl. But then Lady Palsworthy had never seen Ann Veronica running like the wind at hockey. She had never seen her sitting on tables nor heard her discussing theology, and had failed ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the piano and singing for him in his home, and she sang only when he was there. There was something about his steady, even gait, his stocky body and handsome head, which attracted her. In spite of her vanity and egotism, she felt a little overawed before him at times—keyed up. She seemed to grow gayer and more brilliant ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... prevented his singular behavior from doing irreparable injury to the colonial cause. The English newspapers tauntingly ridiculed his insignificance and incapacity; de Vergennes could not endure him, and scarcely treated him with civility. But his intense egotism prevented him from gathering wisdom from such harsh instruction, which only added gall to his native bitterness. He wreaked his revenge upon his colleagues, and towards Franklin he cherished an envious hatred which developed into a monomania. Perhaps Franklin was correct in charitably saying ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... invariably that after the rare occasions when the pitiful curtain of his egotism had been blown aside by some chance breeze of destiny, and Francis Madigan had stood for a moment face to face with himself and his shirked responsibilities, he made the spasmodic effort to fulfil his paternal obligations, which the Madigans had learned to call ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... man, tall, broad and deep chested, with prominent eyes wide apart and a large mouth. There was a singleness of attitude in him, as in all persons reared to a purpose. It was that certain self-centeredness which is not egotism, yet a subconsciousness of self in all acts. He was the finished product of a specific, life-long training, and the confidence in his atmosphere was the confidence of one aware of his skill and ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... sitting where they had sat together only a few minutes ago, he looked down at the curving lights. The old dreams surged up into his brain. The treasure ship had come indeed, the treasure ship for Ruth. Almost immediately the egotism of the man rebuked itself. If, indeed, she were passing into a new and happier life, should he not first, of every one, be thankful?—first of every one because within that hour he had learned the secret toward which he had ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she had never had much admiration from the other sex. This she did not attribute so much to anything as to her own superiority; it really wanted a great deal of courage for an average mortal to propose to her. Her unconscious egotism had something rather grand in it; it was rarely obtrusive, but it was always there. Her mind was naturally a vigorous one, but it had moved in a narrow channel, and whatever was out of her own groove, she ignored. She appreciated whatever Jane Melville knew that she was herself acquainted ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... him back, but she had wanted to make them; and she knew he would not have noticed it if she had done the boldest sort of things to encourage him, to let him know that she liked him; he was so simple, in his straightforward egotism, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... until it was far into the night, and he had gone through every line of them. They were as bright as sunshine, as free as air, easy, playful, forcible, full of picture, but, above all, egotistical, proud with the pride of intellectuality, and vain with the certainty of success. It was this egotism that fascinated Philip. He sniffed it up as a colt sniffs the sharp wind. There was no need to make allowances for it. The castles which his father had been building in the air were only as hovels ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Egotism here becomes rather unavoidable. At Dumbarton Grange the library in which I wrote for some twelve years was lighted by three windows set side by side and opening outward. It was in the instant of unclosing one of these windows, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... year (1755) General Edward Braddock came over with two regiments of British soldiers, and after augmenting his force with Colonial troops and a few Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock's testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial soldiers, and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness, alienated the respect and confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... borrowed this money, which in Sir Bale's eyes seemed the greatest miracle in the matter, from those thriving shepherd mountaineers, the old Trebecks, who, he believed, were attached to him? Feltram had, he thought, borrowed it as if for himself; and having, as Sir Bale in his egotism supposed, "a sneaking regard" for him, had meant the loan for his patron, and conceived the idea of his using his revelations for the purpose of making his fortune. So, seeing no risk, and the temptation being strong, Sir ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... it is not until we have learnt the folly of our aims that we may forget them, that we may pity the sufferings of others, that we may rejoice in the triumphs of our friends. To the superficial therefore, John Norton will appear but the incarnation of egotism and priggishness, but those who see deeper will have recognised that he is one who has suffered bitterly, as bitterly as the outcast who lies dead in his rags beneath the light of the policeman's lantern. Mental ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... characters among the men of the book, Wentworth and Lord Lossiemouth, are not, like Mr. Rochester, strong men disfigured by violent faults, but essentially worthless persons, one the slave of an oldmaidish egotism and the other of a frank animalism. The result in both cases is an experimentum in corpore vili. The authoress, instead of presiding over her creations like a little Deity, is a strong partisan; and the purpose seems to be to bring out more ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... difficult to discover some of the causes to which this great man has owed a celebrity, which I cannot but think disproportioned to his real claims on the admiration of mankind. In the first place, he is an egotist. Egotism in conversation is universally abhorred. Lovers, and, I believe, lovers alone, pardon it in each other. No services, no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude, admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all the tragedy is explained. I have left myself no space in which to do justice to some admirable characterization. Keeling's wife is worthy of a place in the author's long gallery of woolly-witted matrons; while in Silverdale he has given a study of clerical futility and egotism almost savage in its detestability, a portrait at which one laughs and shudders together. Of course the book will have, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... to let him see it without being rude; but the blindness of egotism and vast self-appreciation was upon him and he thought her only charmingly coy; probably with the intent to thus ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... now frankly told my motives for concealment, so far as I am conscious of having any, and the public will forgive the egotism of the detail, as what is necessarily connected with it. The author, so long and loudly called for, has appeared on the stage, and made his obeisance to the audience. Thus far his conduct is a mark of respect. To linger in their presence would ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... have no terrors for me, prepared as I am to confront you with some of the best and the bravest in all France. Deny this if you can, you who seek to undermine the throne, and to sacrifice the nation to your own ambitious egotism, and I will confound you with the names of Guise, Montmorency, Brissac, Sully, Bassompierre, Lesdiguieres, Marillac, and Ornano; these, and many more of the great captains of the age, will peal out my war-cry, and rally round the threatened throne ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... think it my peculiar happiness to be as it were enlarged, expanded, made another man, by the acquisition of my son; and he thinks in the same manner concerning my union with him." This is as curious as it is uncommon; however the cynic may call it egotism! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... accustomed to terrible sensations, that only some unimaginable and well-neigh impossible woe could produce any lasting impression there. Now and again there are tragedies so awful and so grand by reason of the complication of virtues and vices that bring them about, that egotism and selfishness are forced to pause and are moved to pity; but the impression that they receive is like a luscious fruit, soon consumed. Civilization, like the car of Juggernaut, is scarcely stayed perceptibly in its progress by a heart less easy to break than the others ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... thoughts for some time before he attempted to move. The past, save and except the dim memory of his having been in some trouble in a mist and losing his way, had no existence for him, and the young man lay there in a state of the most intense egotism, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Henceforth he would pick up silver and gold by the shovelful; he would have a share in abundance of festivals—the joy of doing nothing—the pleasure of commanding—all the sweetness and all the calm satisfaction of delightful egotism—reposing in a bed of eider-down—fed upon delicate birds—owning two or three houses, a carriage, horses, and a box at the opera. What a future! At intervals Samuel Brohl passed his tongue over his lips; they were parched ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... twenty when, according to some, every girl is a "possible murderess." So they wisely marry her and get rid of what is called the "lump of grief," the "domestic calamity"—a daughter. Amongst them we never hear of the abominable egotism and cruelty of the English mother, who disappoints her daughter's womanly cravings in order to keep her at home for her own comfort; and an "old maid" in the house, especially a stout, plump old ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... mind continually and bade herself remember the days of her gay bridal, or else those two lonely graves far beyond the western sea; and then, ere she was aware, her memories of the past had become speculations about the future. And she was abashed by this arid, incurable egotism in the most secret place of her soul. She felt it making itself known continually in her hard determination to make the best of things; she knew that it was this feeling which was determined to close the death chamber, to deny all torturing memories; which ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... what matter, provided the sentiment that gives birth to this weakness is the strongest and purest of all? What matter if a limpid stream springs up between two paving stones? Are we to be blamed for being generous out of egotism, and for devoting ourselves to others ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... personal narrative that could possibly interest the most indulgent public is told now; if the few words I have left to say should bore you—O patient reader!—they will at least be free of egotism. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... 'I feel the egotism of my language, but I have none, sir, in my heart, for I feel beyond all encouragement from myself, and I hope for ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... in all great calamities of great masses: increasing misery also increases egotism and heroism. Miserable drivers of wagons to whom the wounded had been entrusted took advantage of the night and threw the helpless wounded on the road where the rearguard found them dead or dying. The guilty drivers, when discovered, were punished; but it was ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... Gregory's own judgment on the reasons for his failure. Rather the blame is to be laid upon his lack of statesmanship. His egotism and his fanaticism worked together to make him believe that the supremacy of the spiritual power which he aimed at might be attained by very secular devices. In action he showed himself a pure opportunist, approving ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... by old persons and even by pretty women, had become in Mademoiselle Gamard's soul as ardent a longing as that of Birotteau for Chapeloud's apartment; and it was strengthened by all those feelings of pride, egotism, envy, and vanity which pre-exist in the breasts of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... and, in the light of her recent reply to Rollin, asked again, if she had any very great purpose in life herself. What would Jesus do? There was a fortune in her voice. She knew it, not necessarily as a matter of personal pride or professional egotism, but simply as a fact. And she was obliged to acknowledge that until two weeks ago she had purposed to use her voice to make money and win admiration and applause. Was that a much higher purpose, after all, than Rollin ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... by the movement; but if TIMOTHY knows himself, he longs for the day when the seizer may come. Although TODD—who is the writer of this epistle—says it, who perhaps shouldn't, lest the shaft of egotism be hurled mercilessly at him, he does unhesitatingly say that to aid this movement he would make the greatest of sacrifices. He is willing to sacrifice his wife and other female relations upon the sacred altar of the movement, and contribute liberally to the expense thereof. He ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... chamber. The second death corresponds to the perfection of the grand mastery. It signifies the complete sacrifice of his personality, the renunciation of every personal desire. It is the effacement of that radical egotism that caused the fall of Adam, in that he dragged down spirituality into corporeality. The narrow pusillanimous ego melts into nothing before the high impersonal self, symbolized by Hiram. The mythical sins of the eternal universal human Adam are thus expatiated. The architect of the temple ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... out into the garden; and in surrendering herself to the superbly unconscious egotism of childhood, found passing respite from the torment of her own thoughts. But it was some time before Mrs Conolly returned ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to feed the bonfire of love. An old man may love like a fool, but the boy loves like a hero. The old man who believes that he is loved by a girl is a reveler in the debauchery of his own vanity. With an egotism unknown to youth, he believes. The "sweet thing" tells him with an air of wisdom that she could not love youth, that it is but an animated folly, and he believes her. But the boy is uncertain and doubts himself. His love, instead of inspiring confidence within ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... believed of what she said it is impossible to say, but her lack of self-control and her immense egotism were such that together they made a formidable force ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... confession of cynical egotism, the man had greatness in him, and those who knew his works readily recognised his power. The impression he had made on Innocent's guileless and romantic nature was beyond analysis,—she did not try to understand it herself. His name and the connection he had with the old French ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... worked up in my life, and did not sleep many hours under the hospitable roof...It would be quite impossible to give by way of report any idea of these talks before and at and after dinner, at breakfast, and at leave- taking; and yet I dislike the egotism of 'testifying' like other religious enthusiasts, without any verification, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... pre-eminently distinguishes the man of Truth from the man of self, and that is humility. To be not only free from vanity, stubbornness and egotism, but to regard one's own opinions as of no value, this indeed ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... times, and putting them under her pillow at night, just like a child! And she wrote to him regularly once a month—pretty, playful, loving letters. But there was in them one peculiarity—they were utterly free from that delicious maternal egotism which chronicles all the little incidents of babyhood. She said, in answer to her husband's questions, that "Olive was well;" "Olive could just walk;" "Olive had learned to say 'Papa and Elspie.'" ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... is golden weather without, dear friend, and within is order and system. But what good? I am stagnating, perishing. I can see no release—cannot even imagine in what form I would like it to come. In your great happiness remember my sorrow. And with your wonderful sweetness forgive my bitter egotism. But ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... picturesque sentence, Dr. Dibdin gives a life-like portrait of Erskine, whose personal vanity was only equalled by the egotism which often gave piquancy to his orations, and never lessened their effect:—"Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes and silk stockings, at this time constituted the usual evening dress. Erskine, though a good deal shorter than his brethren, somehow ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... magnificent egotism passed unnoticed. Curiously enough, the truth of it was so apparent ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not linger long, making some excuse to go forward, but Estada remained for some time, endeavoring to entertain. She laughed at his efforts and appeared interested in encouraging him, so that he kept his spirit of good humor even amid these difficulties. His egotism made a fool of the man, yet even he finally became discouraged of making her comprehend his meaning, and lapsed into a silence which gave her an excuse to retire. This was accomplished so graciously as to leave no sting, the fellow actually ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Marie's had already indicated, as we have seen, his social disappointment. But I found him more bitter even than I had expected; cut off even from the anarchists, nourishing almost insanely his individuality, full of Nietzsche's philosophy of egotism, rejecting everything passionately, turning from his friends, turning from himself. Old society had long been dead for him and now he had no hope for ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... boyhood. We heard all the interesting particulars of his panoramic picture of the Storming of Seringapatam, which, the first of its class, was known half over the world. We must not, however, be misunderstood—there was neither personal nor family egotism in the Porters; they invariably spoke of each other with the tenderest affection—but unless the conversation was forced by their friends—they never mentioned their own, or each other's works, while they were most ready ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... never be assailed with impunity. Personal interest is the prime mover of public opinion and feeling; and however degrading the truth may appear, it is not to be disputed. After a great national catastrophe this baleful egotism is particularly evident. Dignified passions become extinct for want of fuel; and the human mind, destitute of external occupation, works inward upon itself, and begets selfishness, the true pestilence of the soul. When this disease affects a nation, the government ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... thousand men in such a manner creates an egotism which is very likely to be lasting. I had not accomplished very much in my studies. I was nothing in particular among my religious brethren. My general reputation up to this moment in the ship was that of a simple-minded Irish lad, who was a religious fanatic, a sort of sky ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the first time I had myself sported the envied 'wife-catchers' at the pattron of Moycullen. I was then as wild a blade as any in Connaught, and the 'tops' were in the prime of their beauty. In fact, I am not guilty of flattery or egotism in saying, that the girl who could then turn up her nose at the boots, or their master, must have been devilish hard to please. But though the hey-day of our youth had passed, I consoled myself with the reflection that with the help of the saints, and a pair of new soles, we might yet hold out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... our remarks on this subject, we should remember with gentleness the order of society from which our nurses are drawn; and that those who make their duty a study, and are termed professional nurses, have much to endure from the caprice and egotism of their employers; while others are driven to the occupation from the laudable motive of feeding their own children, and who, in fulfilling that object, are too often both selfish and sensual, performing, without further interest than is consistent with their own advantage, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... its special aim the portrayal and exposure of masculine egotism. This was a favorite subject with Meredith and it recurs frequently in his novels. The plot of The Egoist is slight. The interest is centered on the awakening of Clara Middleton and Laetitia Dale to the superlative selfishness of Sir ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... seductive women ever created, in the person of the Princess Ziska, and that he, Gervase, meant to possess that loveliest of women, whatever happened in the near or distant future. Of her, and of the influence of his passion on her personally, he did not stop to think, except with the curiously blind egotism which is the heritage of most men, and which led him to judge that her happiness would in some way or other be enhanced by his brief and fickle love. For, as a rule, men do not understand love. They understand desire, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... has been to grow an organism so conscious that it can turn round and look at her with intelligent eyes. She has done so at last, but the consciousness is so high as to be self-conscious, and man cannot for egotism look at his mother after all. Borrow was a great exception. Thoreau’s self-consciousness showed itself in presence of Nature, Borrow’s in presence of man. The very basis of Borrow’s nature was reverence. His unswerving belief in the beneficence of God was most beautiful, most touching. In his ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... between her and the Divine 'defecate' constantly, in Coleridge's curious phrase, 'to a clear transparency.' Things seen were an open window into the Infinite; but with us, heaven knows, that window is so thick filthy with selfhood, so cobwebbed and begrimed with passion and egotism and individualism and all the smoke and soot of the brain-mind, that given an artist with a natural tendency to see through, he has to waste half his life first in cleaning it with picks and mattocks and charges of dynamite. So it becomes almost inevitable that when ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... competent to study these facts?" asked Brierly, hotly. "The egotism of you professional physicists is a kind of insanity. The moment a man like Richet or Lombroso admits a knowledge of one of these occult facts, you who have no experience in the same phenomena jump on him like so many wolves. Such bigotry ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... those bright racy essays at which modern dulness delights to sneer, Hazlitt discussed the question whether the desire of posthumous fame is a legitimate aspiration; and the conclusion at which he arrived was that there is "something of egotism and even of pedantry in this sentiment." It is a true saying in literature as in morality that "he that seeketh his life shall lose it." The world cares most for those who have cared least for the world's applause. A nameless minstrel of the North Country ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... without the slightest element of egotism, I should be ashamed of my efforts were I to present as my handiwork nothing better than the level and plane ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... woman, which is like quicksilver, to reckon with. I spoke bravely about her forgetting, but I have doubts. Sometimes I wonder if it be possible for a person with a fine and generous nature to become a really great artist. Perhaps it is necessary to have great egotism and selfishness for the arts' development. I wonder," he said, aloud; repeating, after a minute's silence, ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... a moment. "I had never realized the sublimity of your egotism," she said. "It would never occur to you to judge anyone else by ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... in New York life that reduces all men to a common level, that touches everybody with its potent magic and brings to the surface the deeply underlying nobody. The effect for some temperaments, for consciousness, for egotism, is admirable; for curiosity, for hero worship, it is rather baffling. It is the spirit of the street transferred to the drawing-room; indiscriminating, levelling, but doubtless finally wholesome, and witnessing the immensity ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there was something irresistibly appealing in the "sweetly domestic" woman, something suggestive of that oldest occupation of woman—the business of ministering to man's physical and temperamental needs, the duty of making his body and his egotism comfortable. He watched her ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... Gracchus' speeches that remain (unhappily very few) we should gather that in asserting himself he was without a rival. The mixture of simplicity and art removes him at once from Cato's bald literalism and Cicero's egotism. It was, however, in impassioned attack that Gracchus rose to his highest tones. The terms Gracchi impetum, [29] tumultuator Gracchus, [30] among the Latin critics, and similar ones from Plutarch and Dio among the Greeks, attest the main character of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... for me to know what others have believed and now believe. Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and good of the past would be childish egotism. But it is always needful that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to seek it. Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege, and in doing this it has greatly weakened the ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings at bottom to egotism. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... than nature had given them capacity for; and accordingly they have been the means of bringing about not a little harm both in art and literature. From their false principles in the fine arts—principles which, however much trumpeted and gospeled about, were in fact egotism united with weakness—our German artists have not yet recovered, and are filling the exhibitions, as we see, with pictures which nobody will buy. Frederick, the younger of these Dioscouri, choked himself at last with the eternal chewing of moral ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... you buy it dear, and it will not keep. Does not the egotism of the great take the form of glory, just as for nobodies it is their ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... amused by this prologue, which seemed to spring partly from the egotism of a self-made man, partly from an instinctive unwillingness to embark upon the confession to which he was committed. However, he was far from being bored. "I'm about thirty myself," he remarked, "and I'm worth about thirty ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... were not the most honourable to myself, for their source was egotism, had withheld me from visiting him since my return; but these were now subdued, by others that were more imperious. I was not satisfied with requiring his approbation of my plan of vengeance; my choleric vanity challenged him to the lists, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... rejected his suit, should he take her life on the spot, that she might never be another's,—that neither man nor woman should ever triumph over him,—the proud, ambitious man, defeated, humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which only the most vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her lover? It was not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd complications, if anybody was foolish enough to try it. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... deceived neither himself nor the girl. She knew quite as well as he where his heart was. It was a kiss of gratitude and of good-will, and was received as such without affectation. In his masculine egotism, however, he quite overlooked any possible good or ill to her in the matter,—his consideration began and ended in the gratification of her conduct towards him. And he would have been cold indeed not to feel the friendly glow which answers so eloquently ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... that nothing could be more disagreeable to the king than this public reception, but his heart was overflowing with hope and happiness, and he felt the necessity of shouting his vivats in the sunny air. In the egotism of his love, he forgot to respect the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... write again. Writing," he generalised, and possibly not without some reason, "when it is n't the sordidest of trades, is a mere fatuous assertion of one's egotism. Breaking stones in the street were a nobler occupation; weaving ropes of sand were better sport. The only things that are worth writing are inexpressible, and can't be written. The only things that can be written are obvious and worthless—the very crackling of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... than his body. It used to be very agile, if light, but it was not agile now. It worked slowly toward the topics which we found with difficulty, in our necessity of avoiding the only topics of real interest between us, and I could perceive that his original egotism, intensified by the long years in which he had only himself for company, now stood in the way of his entering into the matters brought forward, though he tried to do so. They were mostly in the form of reminiscences of this person and that whom we had known ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... was apparent in Pausanias. Glory had made him arrogant, and sudden luxury ostentatious. He had graven on the golden tripod, dedicated by the confederates to the Delphic god, an inscription, claiming exclusively to himself, as the general of the Grecian army, the conquest of the barbarians—an egotism no less at variance with the sober pride of Sparta, than it was offensive to the just vanity of the allies. The inscription was afterward erased by the Spartan government, and another, citing only the names of the confederate cities, and silent ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... combative by nature and never happier than when fighting the Devil in his own corner, as he expressed it. Furthermore, he was haughty, stubborn and egotistical, and these traits of character I inherited from him. But while I honestly inherited combativeness, stubbornness and egotism from my father, these characteristics became very objectionable to him when displayed by myself. So from my earliest childhood days there was a continual tug of war between us to see who would be ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... it," answered Will, with some egotism, "Nay, fear not, our third trial is yet to come. I did but stay you to speak of your cousin—" He paused, ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine—he confounds my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at once reply—another indication of his overwhelming egotism. She repeated her questions; habit reasserted itself, and he spoke without thinking the words which were in ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... reminiscences of the Republic and the Laws are continually recurring in them; they are too like him and also too unlike him, to be genuine (see especially Karsten, Commentio Critica de Platonis quae feruntur Epistolis). They are full of egotism, self-assertion, affectation, faults which of all writers Plato was most careful to avoid, and into which he was least likely to fall. They abound in obscurities, irrelevancies, solecisms, pleonasms, inconsistencies, ...
— Charmides • Plato
... could not forget that look. I continued to see those pinched features and burning eyes all the way home where I went to get my grip-sack, and I saw them all the way to the station, though my thoughts were with her sister and the joys I had planned for myself. Man's egotism, Dr. Perry. I neither knew Adelaide nor did I know the girl whose love I had so over-estimated. She failed me, Dr. Perry. I was met at the station not by herself, but by a letter—a few hurried lines given me by an unknown man—in which she stated that I had asked too much of her, that ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... I hate egotism, I think my friend was right. Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean-spirited fellow, with no more ambition than to know the contents of a few musty books, I think the man had some good in him; especially in the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the prophetic imagination usually vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He had in him all the lift toward greatness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's fanaticism or egotism, without any of the visionary's narrow jealousy of the practical man and inability to strive in practical fashion for the realization of an ideal. He had the practical man's hard common sense and willingness to adapt means to ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... constantly launched into anecdote; because at the present day anecdotes are the vehicle of all moral teaching, and the anti-narcotic of every work of literature. In literature, analysis and investigation prevail, and the wearying of the reader increases in proportion with the egotism of the writer. This is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a book, and the present author has been quite aware of it. He has therefore so arranged the topics of this long essay as to afford resting places for the reader. This method has been successfully adopted ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... could tell his or her own story with perfect truth; still less could tell it so to the hearer the most passionately loved, and whose love seems to hang in the balance. It would be apt to be a piece of special pleading, for or against, as egotism or conscience happened to be strongest. Best, then, not to try to reproduce the words spoken that night—spoken in the tuneless, level voice, which, in its dull monotony, is a truer indication of pain than any other; but to repeat only the substance of all that ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the hopefulness of youth, the serene happiness of useful and contented men and women;—some shadowed by recent sorrow, where perhaps patriots, as in the olden time, learn to endure for the sake of a beloved country;—or others, perchance, where worldliness, discord, and egotism have severed hearts that should be united. God grant the number of the latter may be few! Happy should we be, could we know that our arrival would bring one more smile to the lips of the gay, a single ray of support or consolation to the souls of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... to commend. "Grass," said the writer, making the title of the book his text, "grass is the gift of God for the healthy sustenance of his creatures, and its name ought not to be desecrated by being so improperly bestowed upon these foul and rank leaves of the poison-plants of egotism, irreverance, and of lust, run rampant and holding high revel in ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... You are inclined to be pleased with his work, on account of the strong prepossession you entertain for his subject. To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation. It is an admirable excuse for egotism. You would not discourse on the falcon-like curve which distinguishes your nose, or the sweet serenity of your reposing lips, or the mildness of the eye that spreads a light over your countenance, in the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... elusive is the figure of his first wife, Margaret Tittle, with whom, to judge from the character of her eldest son, literary and artistic sensibility first mingled in the hard practical Browning stock. In this second Robert Browning, indeed, the somewhat brutal and grasping egotism of the father gave place to a cultured humanity of almost feminine tenderness and charm. All his life long he was passionately devoted to literature, to art, to children. He collected rare books and prints with avidity, but was no less generous in ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... to clash with his predilections. How would he behave in a tight place? He was a fashionable young man with the tastes of his class, and she thought she had detected in him once or twice a touch of that complacent egotism which is liable to make fish of one foible and flesh of another, as the saying is, to suit convention. In short, were ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... by the books we read, by all the talk about us that once we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then afterwards we discovered that other was also an egotism, a thing of ideas and impulses, that failed to ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... for old age. All made use, on placards, of the cautious expression "Apartments"; while some flung all reserve to the winds and said also they were "To let" outright. The least satisfactory one of the lot was almost invisible owing to its egotism, but distinguishable from afar because the cross-board on a standard that had been placed in the garden-front had fallen forward over the palings like Punch's gallows. It didn't much matter, because ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... account for many acts towards Shiel which were set down to personal jealousy. Dr. Michelsen is very unjust to O'Connell in the following critique upon his character:—"His greatest fault was no doubt his egotism; he could not endure a rival at his side, and would not have hesitated to annihilate any one who did not follow him with implicit obedience." O'Connell would have hailed with delight any accession of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... childhood this man was taught the honored traditions of his people, and, thus trained in pride of ancestry, grew up to believe that the supreme things of life are what his kind call education, refinement, and culture. In his shallow egotism, he came to measure all life by the ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... without meaning, and vanish again without result. And in various ways,—he now began to think,— he must certainly have grown inordinately, outrageously selfish!— his irritation at the prospective return of Miss Vancourt proved it. He determined to brace himself together and put the lurking devil of egotism down. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... all the power that we have mastered," boasted Garboreggg with supreme egotism. "It connects with the individual controls ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... the incident at Gallup, did not scorn Wampus so openly as before; but he still reserved a suspicion that the fellow was at heart a coward and a blusterer. The chauffeur's sole demerit in the eyes of the others was his tremendous egotism. The proud remark: "I am Wampus!" was constantly on his lips and he had wonderful tales to tell to all who would listen of his past experiences, in every one of which he unblushingly figured as the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... and Cecil had seen where lay the weakness of his position; they had evaded, cajoled, finally had defied and triumphed over him. When he sank to the grave, the lordship of the sea had passed, the lordship of the Netherlands was passing, the lordship of the New World was tottering. His overweening egotism had sucked the life-blood of Spain. The Power which forty years before had threatened to dominate the world was no better than a decrepit giant; the form still loomed gigantic, but the substance was gripped with the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... perfectly competent for a Gascon whose gasconading was understood to be without any motive beyond that of vanity and egotism, and without any incidence to effects, to say, in the way of mere foolery, many things which an English statesman could not then so well endorse. And in case his personality were called in question, there was the mountain to retreat to, and the saint of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... places) of capitals, small capitals, and italics. And I cannot think that any irreverence could be charged against an editor who had the courage to put a moist pen through those expressions of egotism and naive self-satisfaction and vanity which do occasionally ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... and ended in God; the branch to the left was Ignorance and ended in the Soul. Thus the Soul contemplates Illusion under the form of her gods. Up the line of the trunk came next the Energy of Nature; then Pride; then Egotism and Individuality; whence branched to one side Mind, to the other the senses and the passions. Then followed the elements, fire, air, water, and earth; then the vegetable creation; then corn; and then, at the summit of the tree, the primitive ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... discourses concerning himself individually. Had this been done in any other way than the consummately simple, delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has adopted, the whole would have been insufferable egotism, disgusting coxcombry, or oppressive dulness. Whereas, this personal identity is the charm, the strength, the soul of the book; he lives, he breathes, he moves through it; his pulse beats or stands still, his eye kindles or fades, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... which had ruled his life for many years, seemed suddenly conquered by this upheaval of a stormy past. Under the influence of the serene night, the starlit sky, and the force of these old memories, he seemed to realize more than he had ever done before the littleness of his life, its colorless egotism, the barrenness of its routine. Like a flash it stood glaringly out before him. Stripped of all its intellectual furbishing, the chill selfishness of the creed he had adopted struck home to his heart. A finite life, with a finite goal—annihilation! Had it really ever satisfied him? Could it satisfy ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eyes tenderness and courage. The lower part of the face, on the other hand, suggests a good deal of animalism: the finely cut nostrils show egotism—another word for selfishness; the nose itself, vanity; the lips, sensuousness and love of luxury. I wonder what sort of woman she really is." He laid the photograph back ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... surgeon. To a singular power of self-investigation and an acute observation of the actions of men, he added great affluence of thought and excursiveness of fancy, which render him, in spite of his egotism, a most attractive writer. As he would have considered it dishonest to conceal anything about himself, he has told much that our modern ideas of decorum ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... so small a place as this is apt to become so concentrated as not to be many removes from egotism. I daresay we have been a terrible ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... childhood and the fictions of youth, even when we ourselves have long passed beyond them. It is probable that God himself looks kindly upon the illusions of the human race, so long as they are innocent. There is nothing evil but sin—that is, egotism and revolt. And as for error, man changes his errors frequently, but error of some sort is always with him. Travel as one may, one is always somewhere, and one's mind rests on some point of truth, as one's feet rest upon some point of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... It was in that quarter, quia multum amavit,—because he loved much—that he was regarded as vulnerable by "serious men," "grave persons" and "reasonable people"; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence which overflowed men, as we have already pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to things. He lived without disdain. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the interests of the children,—that guests should be invited with a view to their improvement,—that some intimacies should be chosen and some rejected on their account. But it is not well that all this should, from infancy, be daily talked out before the child, and he grow up in egotism from moving in a sphere where everything from first to last is calculated and arranged with reference to himself. A little appearance of wholesome neglect combined with real care and never-ceasing watchfulness has often seemed to do wonders in this work of setting human beings on their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... ever showered upon him; and he cursed the rottenness of a mind that could even admit such thoughts as those which he had been entertaining. So wrought upon was he by the welter of his emotions, by that fierce strife between his conscience and his egotism, that he came abruptly to his feet, a cry ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... be naturally secreted by a magnanimous nature and a sensitive temperament, absolutely none of that rough-and-tumble kind which is so needful for the conduct of affairs. Fastidiousness is only another form of egotism; and all men who know not where to look for truth save in the narrow well of self will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking. Burke's hatred of Rousseau was genuine and instinctive. It was so genuine ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... adding to his other gifts that of the Christian preacher, who knows how to touch people's sensibilities on behalf of the suffering. To follow in the way of these successes, was the natural instinct of youthful ambition; and it was with no vulgar egotism that Marius, at the age of nineteen, determined, like many another young man of parts, to enter as a student ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... indefinitely: as, "Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself [better, one's self] unspotted from the world."—James, i, 27. But, as its generality of meaning seems to afford a sort of covering for egotism, some writers are tempted to make too frequent a use of it. Churchill ridicules this practice, by framing, or anonymously citing, the following sentence: "If one did but dare to abide by one's own judgement, one's language would be much more refined; but ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... life forces are conveyed from the innermost source of life to different parts and organs of the physical body. The flow of the life currents is impeded and diminished. Such are the actual physiological effects of fear, anxiety and egotism on the physical organism. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Revolution was born of Louis the Fourteenth. His policy—his achievements—his failures, and, still more, his personal character and court deportment, killed monarchy in the hearts of the French people. The prominent ruling characteristic of himself and reign was an all-absorbing egotism. A maelstrom of selfishness, and unconscious of any law of reciprocity to arise from his relations to a common humanity, this chief and example of a numerous aristocracy was the grand centre to which was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the Cardinal—"Yes, WE! that is, OURSELVES;—the Church— WE think, when we hear of heresies and blasphemies that it is we who are 'suffering for righteousness' sake,' but in our egotism we forget that WE are not suffering at all if we are able to retain our faith! It is the very heretics and blasphemers whom we condemn that are suffering—suffering ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... conservatives. They were shocked by the radicalism of Mandeville, the Nietzsche of his day, who derided the generally accepted moralities as shallow delusions, and who by means of a clever fable supported a materialistic theory which implied that in the struggle for existence nothing but egotism could succeed: ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... pedantic; the Prussian school-system was first in square-headed masters, who ruled with rods of iron. Thus, the Prussian National ideal was based on Discipline military in its severity, self-sacrifice and energy. "Throughout Prussia was a spirit of affirmation, expressive of the vigorous National egotism. As time passed, the machine men of olden Prussia were gradually replaced by free-willed, self-conscious citizens taking an enlightened interest in their country; the old-time tutelage headed by the monarchs ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... induces him, without consulting England, without consulting even his own Council, to issue orders by himself to his Generals, to march twenty thousand men, to revenge the insult supposed to be offered to his sister. With a pride and egotism planted in the heart of every King, he considers her being stopped in the road, as a sufficient cause to sacrifice a hundred or two thousand of his own subjects, and as many of his enemies, and to spread ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... adventures, too," he remarked with nonchalance, partly from politeness but mainly in order to avoid the appearance of hurry in his egotism. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual—remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct—that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... being egotistical. In this particular I attempt an improvement on other autobiographies. Other autobiographies weary one with excuses for their egotism. What matters it to you if I am egotistical? What matters it to you though it should ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Ward added the crowning insolent expression of his insane and arrogant egotism. With a pious smirk of his gray, twitching face, he said, "I want you to know, too, Pete, that you can approach me any time without ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... stateliness was so pretty and captivating, that she was not the less loved for all her grand airs. And, indeed, she deserved to be loved; for though she was certainly prouder than Mr. Dale could approve of, her pride was devoid of egotism; and that is a pride by no means common. She had an intuitive forethought for others; you could see that she was capable of that grand woman-heroism, abnegation of self; and though she was an original child, and often grave and musing, with a tinge of melancholy, sweet, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... upon whose career she can look with more of pride and satisfaction than that of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut. A man of sound learning, and many of the highest qualities of statesmanship; he is unpretentious in manner, lives simply, is free from egotism, and full of the generous and manly qualities which inspire confidence and compel friendliness. Few men, of this generation at least,—as will be universally recognized a little later if not now,—have approached nearer ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... claimed that it had become impossible for it to have any relations with Senator Sumner; that he delayed, and indeed suppressed, treaties of the greatest importance; that his egotism had become so colossal that he practically assumed to himself the entire conduct of foreign affairs; and the whole matter reached a climax when, in a large social gathering, Mr. Fish meeting Senator Sumner and extending ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... times. I tell you what it is, it's nice to have people love you, whether you deserve it or not, and this warm-hearted, enthusiastic creature really did me good. Dr. Skinner sent us an extraordinary book to read called "God's Furnace." There is a good deal of egotism in it and self-consciousness, and a good deal of genuine Christian experience. I read it through four times, and, when I carried it back and was discussing it with him, he said he had too. It seems almost incredible ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... her regard. Short of the absolute surrender by the majority of every shred of its rights (which is, of course, what is demanded) there are very few safeguards that we are not prepared to concede to the superstition, the egotism, or even the actual greed of the Orangemen. But it may as well be understood that we are not to be ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... administers to her astounded helpmate. Of Pauline, the Quenus' daughter, we see but little in the story, but she becomes the heroine of another of M. Zola's novels, "La Joie de Vivre," and instead of inheriting the egotism of her parents, develops a passionate love and devotion for others. In a like way Claude Lantier, Florent's artist friend and son of Gervaise of the "Assommoir," figures more particularly in "L'Oeuvre," which tells how his painful struggle ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola |
