"Self-seeking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sacrifice—to have it put upon a low motive from the lower plane of sacrifice in many otherwise kind people. We give our money to an institution of charity, and it is said that it was for notoriety, or self-seeking, or at the expense of our kin. We lead a forlorn hope in politics, or some other arena, to establish a cause or assist a principle, with the certain result of defeat, and we are said to be jealous or malignant. Perhaps we make a book to illustrate some old ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... in financial straits. The source of its power is to be sought elsewhere. Financially bankrupt and numerically unstable, the I.W.W. relies upon the brazen cupidity of its stratagems and the habitual timorousness of society for its power. It is this self-seeking disregard of constituted authority that has given a handful of bold and crafty leaders such prominence in the recent literature of fear. And the members of this industrial Ku Klux Klan, these American Bolsheviki, assume to be the "conscious minority" which is to lead the ranks ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... beneath the Caudine Forks of power. Long enough has a man, who has already given proofs of devotion and abnegation in the important functions of the aedility of Paris, allowed these sheets to call him ambitious and self-seeking. Monsieur Jerome Thuillier, strong in his dignity, has suffered such coarse attacks to pass him with contempt. Encouraged by this disdainful silence, the stipendiaries of the press have dared to write that this ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... feet of the pioneer. His way led directly, unerringly, to the land of freedom. All other ways, and especially the Liberty party way, twisted, doubled upon themselves, branched into labyrinths of folly and self-seeking. "Ho! all ye that desire the freedom of the slave, who would labor for liberty, follow me and I will show you the only true way," was the tone which the editor of the Liberator held to men, who were battering with might and main to breach the walls of the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... to be distinguished, and by which, in their happier moments, they believed they were. If ever they began to have misgivings, there, at any rate, was the example of Lord Hartington to encourage them and guide them—Lord Hartington who was never self-seeking, who was never excited, and who had no imagination at all. Everything they knew about him fitted into the picture, adding to their admiration and respect. His fondness for field sports gave them a feeling of security; and certainly there could be no nonsense about a man who confessed ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from any hardly acquired philanthropic motive, there is no disposition to apply the carefully evolved rules of the charitable societies to his beneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect that the benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example of this is the young man who fills ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... vision can be obtained by one whose nature is not inherently truthful. Any selfish desire dominanting the mind in regard to any thing or person will distort the visions and render them misleading, while a persistent self-seeking spirit will effectually shut the doors upon all visions whatsoever. Therefore, above all things it is essential for the investigator to have an unflinching love of truth, to be resigned to the will of Heaven, to accept the revelations accorded in a spirit of grateful confidence, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... and, indeed, would have been dissatisfied with anything short of a complete logical application of his whole system. He held Brougham to be 'insincere,'[40] a trimmer and popularity-hunter, but a useful instrument. Brougham's astonishing vanity and self-seeking prompted and perverted his amazing activity. He represents the process, perhaps necessary, by which a philosopher's ideas have to be modified before they can be applied to practical application. Brougham, however, could speak generously of men no longer ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the French administrative body at the time when Louis XVI. began to reign, was corrupt and self-seeking. In the management of the finances and of the army, illegitimate profits were made. But this was not the worst evil from which the public service was suffering. France was in fact governed by what in modern times is called "a ring." The members of such an organization pretend ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... more mischievous as demagogue than he was as courtier, lackey, or parliamentary intriguer. Indeed, he is almost certainly less so, for he must at least in some fashion serve, even if only that he may deceive them, those whose servant he should be. At any rate, the purely self-seeking demagogue is certainly a recurrent figure in democratic politics, and of the self-seeking demagogue Aaron ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... alone I am personally acquainted; and the lingering traces of whose old forms of life—so gay, kindly, and suggestive—I saw some thirty years ago, just before they sank under the mammonism, commonplace, critical apery, and cold material self-seeking, which have hitherto been the plague of the present generation. We have become more practical and knowing than our forefathers, but not so wise. We are now a "fast people;" but we miss the true goal of life—that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... much in excess of their population? The war had seemed to me to show that mankind was too combative an animal ever to recognize that the good of all was the good of one. The coarse-fibred, pugnacious, and self-seeking would, I had become sure, always carry too many guns for ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the diplomatic ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... their home in England. Love for the old country was still alive in Colonel Barrington, and it was only after grave deliberation that he had drawn the sword, convinced that he drew it for the right. Doubtless there were some in this great conflict who were self-seeking, but this was certainly not the case with Henry Barrington. He had much to lose, nothing personal to win which seemed to him of any consequence. Broadmead he loved. He had been born there. In due time he ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... sequence except in the business of getting-on (in which he might well have been taken as a model by Samuel Smiles). One thinks of him sometimes as a sort of Deacon Brodie, sometimes as the most innocent sinner who ever lived. For, though he was brutal and snobbish and self-seeking and simian, he had a pious and a merry and a grateful heart. He felt that God had created the world for the pleasure of Samuel Pepys, and had no doubt that ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... All this did but contribute to his disquiet. No longer occupied with definite studies, he often felt time heavy on his hands, and saw himself more obnoxious than ever to the charge of idleness. Lashmar, though possibly his ambition had some alloy of self-seeking, gave an example of intellect applied to the world's behoof; especially did his views on education, developed in a recent talk at the club, strike Dymchurch as commendable and likely to have influence. He asked nothing better than an opportunity of devoting himself to a movement for educational ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... long and eloquently while all men listened, for he reminded them of mighty warriors of old who had not won such glorious fame, and warned them against pride and lack of generosity and self-seeking; and then, ending with thanks and fresh gifts to Beowulf, he bade the feast continue with increased jubilation. The tumultuous rejoicing lasted till darkness settled on the land, and when it ended all retired to ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... God. As Diderot has said, it is sometimes only necessary to be a little mad in order to prophesy and to enjoy poetic ecstasies; and in the case of Schlatter the flower of altruism which often blossoms in the hearts of such "madmen" was manifested in his complete lack of self-seeking and in his compassion for the poor and suffering which drew crowds around him. As to his miracles, we may—without attempting to explain them—state decisively that they do not differ from those accomplished by ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... of sinister aspect, as more or less immoral. Man is required to have no passions. Passion, it is true, is not quite the suitable word for what I wish to express. I mean here nothing more than human activity as resulting from private interests, special, or if you will, self-seeking designs—with this qualification, that the whole energy of will and character is devoted to their attainment, and that other interests (which would in themselves constitute attractive aims), or, rather, all things else, are sacrificed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... habits of the nobility when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of the average provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a commander's environment—the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng of handsome favourites, the jars of wine which, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... among gentlemen! And all this evil, and more than we have described, is often glossed over with such an evangelical phraseology, that what is of the earth earthy is made to appear as if it were heavenly; and the coarsest product of the coarsest and most vulgar vanity, self-seeking, and pride is so painted and misrepresented as to look like love of principle or love of truth. What will put an end to the proud antagonism, the Popery, the Church idolatry of Protestantism? Can it ever be that we shall carry one another's ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... of our Blessed Father's, I am perfectly certain that, whatever they may at first sight seem to mean, they are assuredly the expression of thoughts, utterly unselfish, and totally devoid of the spirit of self-seeking. He had written just before: "Take good heed not to come to the feast of the Holy Cross, which is a million times fuller of exquisite pleasures than any wedding feast, without having on the white robe, spotless, and pure ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... November 6, he proposed that Ministers be heard in the National Assembly, the Archbishop of Bordeaux instigated Montlosier and Lanjuinais to oppose him. Both were men of high character, and both had some attainments; and in their aversion for him, and for his evident self-seeking, they carried a motion forbidding deputies to take office. By this vote, of November 7, which permanently excluded Mirabeau from the councils of the king, the executive was deprived of authority. It is one of the decisive acts of the Constituent Assembly, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... for these men, all of whom she knew. Caius Nepos, selfish and callous; Ancyrus, the elder, avaricious and self-seeking; young Escanes whom she knew to be unscrupulous; Philippus Decius whose ostentation and lavishness she despised. She vaguely wondered why my lord Hortensius ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were, from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... even in his thought. In daily prayer he sought as in his Master's presence to sift from the pure grain of a godly purpose to glorify Him, all the chaff of selfish and carnal motives, to get rid of every taint of worldly self-seeking or lust of applause, and to bring every thought into captivity to the Lord. He constantly probed his own heart to discover the secret and subtle impulses which are unworthy of a true servant of God; and, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Sir Gilbert had his qualms of conscience, too, over having thus sent off Guy Waring, as he believed, to his grave in Cape Colony. He was not at heart a bad man, though he was pushing, and selfish, and self-seeking, and to a certain extent even—of late—unscrupulous. He had his bad half-hours every now and again with his own moral consciousness. But he had learnt to stifle his doubts and to keep down his terrors. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... he was able to win Charlotte Bronte in spite of the fact that his predecessors had inspired in her such hearty contempt. 'I think he must be like all the curates I have seen,' she writes of one; 'they seem to me a self-seeking, vain, empty race.' ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... there was a great deal of mixed motive in the men who went into the war as well as in those who kept out of it. We canonized all that died or suffered in it, but some of them must have been self-seeking and low-minded, like men in other vocations." He found himself saying this in Dryfoos's behalf; the old man looked at him gratefully at first, he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grave offence for which even his brave action was not a sufficient atonement. But he cared little, for his nature was not a courtier's, and even then the English Normans were colder and graver men than those of France, and more overbearing in arms, but less self-seeking, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... good schools, parks, playgrounds, and all the things which make for good citizenship because they give the best part of the man a chance, though they grudge them as a sad waste of money that might be turned to use in "strengthening the organization," which is the sum of all their self-seeking, being their means of ever getting more and more. Hence it is that a mere handful of men and women who rarely or never had other authority than their own unselfish purpose, have in all times, even the worst, been able to put their stamp upon the community for good. I am ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... heart page after page of the country's ballads, and also, in more recent times, is at home with Burns' and Scott's prose and poetry, he has little room and less desire, and still less need, for inferior heroes. So the dead languages and their semi-supernatural, quarrelsome, self-seeking heroes passed in review without gaining admittance to the soul of Watt. But the spare that fired him came at last—Mathematics. "Happy is the man who has found his work," says Carlyle. Watt found his when yet a boy at school. Thereafter never a doubt existed ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... everywhere in nature, and feel His presence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as they come to themselves they come to Him. They tell us that what separates us from Him and from happiness is, first, self-seeking in all its forms; and, secondly, sensuality in all its forms; that these are the ways of darkness and death, which hide from us the face of God; while the path of the just is like a shining light, which ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the nation or more anxious for its good. To a new political society, freshly exposed to the temptations of party struggles for power, no greater service can be rendered than a public life absolutely clear from any suspicion of self-seeking, governed uninterruptedly and long by public spirit, public ends, and a strong sense of duty. Such a service General Church has rendered to his adopted country. During his residence among them for nearly half a century they have become familiar, not in word, but in living ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... help of heaven, victory was ours, and the enemy retreated, and I implored you to let us pursue them together, take vengeance on them together, win together the fruits of any gallant exploit we might achieve, can you accuse me then of self-seeking or self-aggrandisement?" ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... the wily, self-seeking Bill, who would stop at nothing, probably thought his brother had a screw loose, as the saying is, and perhaps that is what the others ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... beginning. Under the cloak of religion British administration continued to display its hate against our people and nationality, and to conceal its self-seeking aims under cover of the most exalted principles. The aid of religion was invoked to reinforce the policy of oppression in order to deal a deeper and more fatal blow to our self-respect. Emissaries of the London Missionary Society slandered the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... high culture, of wide experience, of supreme ability, and, strangest of all, with a keen sense of humour—that such an one should voluntarily step down from high social position at the bidding of a vulgar, selfish, self-seeking, and, according to some hints dropped here and there, grossly immoral man, should, at beck of his fat forefinger, go forth to a strange land to live amid sordid circumstances, and with uncongenial company, to work as a common, farm-labourer, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... been self-seeking and made the most of my position, as was afterwards urged against me. I may have been extortionate and venal, and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs. But always was I loyal and devoted to the King. Never once had I been bribed to aught that ran counter to his interests; never until ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... been little else but self-seeking," he said, half aloud. "For I gave not to the man, but to myself. I clutched at a personal reward, if not of spoken gratitude yet of subjective content. It has not come. I suppose I ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... malignity, self-seeking, brutality, harshness, inhumanity, niggardliness, stinginess, churlishness, illiberality, malevolence, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... isn't myself, Honora, that I'm grieving for! It's those hot-headed, misguided, wayward fellows of mine! They've left the homes I tried to help them win, they've followed a self-seeking, half-mad, wholly vicious agitator, and their lives, that I meant to have flow on so smoothly, will be troubled and wasted. I know so well what will happen! And then, their hate! It hangs over me like a ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... imagination of the eighteenth century was fond of dwelling upon the loneliness of the princely station. Standing above all other men, occupied habitually with weighty matters of state, surrounded by self-seeking flatterers and schemers, how was a ruler ever to hear the truth or to know the blessedness of disinterested friendship? Awful fate to be thus cut off from tender human affection and compelled to tread the wine-press alone! And if ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... ached for the other's evident suffering. Her own conscience was not quite clear for she had permitted Wiley to show his hand without stopping to think of Angie, so determined had she been to learn the depths to which this man would descend in his ruthless self-seeking. She had weighed her cousin shrewdly and she did not believe her capable of deep and lasting affection, yet she shuddered at the thought of any girl's heart in ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... diluted Squire Western, Sir John Middleton, whose horror of being alone carries him to the point of rejoicing in the acquisition of two to the population of London. Excellent again are Mr. Palmer and his wife; excellent, in their sordid veracity, the self-seeking figures of the Miss Steeles. But the pearls of the book must be allowed to be that egregious amateur in toothpick-cases, Mr. Robert Ferrars (with his excursus in chapter xxxvi. on life in a cottage), and the admirably-matched Mr. and Mrs. John ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and abolishing a great many useless and expensive court offices. On the 17th of January 1648 he procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavshaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days later. The Miloslavskis were typical self-seeking 17th century boyars, whose extortions made them generally detested. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them, and the young tsar was compelled to dismiss both them and their patron Morozov. The successful issue of the Moscow riots was the occasion of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... easy task.... In some way or other, says Bishop Wilson, 'every man is conscious of an opposition in him between the flesh and the spirit.'" No one is more keenly conscious of this opposition than St. Paul himself. How is he to bring the evil and self-seeking tendencies of his composite nature into conformity with the law and will of God? "Mere commanding and forbidding is of no avail, and only irritates opposition in the desires it tries to control.... Neither the law of nature nor the ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... that mine arms were round about thy body: now we are no longer altogether children, and I will tell thee that it is many a day since I have longed for this; and now I know that thou longest that our bodies might meet. Belike thou wilt deem me hard and self-seeking if I tell thee that there is more joy in me for the gain of that knowledge than there is sorrow in ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... new science. Who could tell? Franklin had suggested this, half in jest, years before; Condorcet believed and asserted it now. Ignorance and misery, at all events, should come to an end. When kings and a wicked self-seeking aristocracy should be swept away, the divine sense of right, which God had implanted in the people, would rule; there could be no wars; armies and fleets would become useless; taxes would amount to nothing. All ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a domestic story, in which we see the failure of an essentially self-seeking and self-assertive nature to secure happiness to itself or bestow it upon others, and the triumph of gentleness, love, and unselfish service, in the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... engagements to drive you back to your duty, and that you will go in a gallop. What the devil do you suppose that Texans want with a two- faced little icicle like yourself in the United States Senate? What taxpayer has asked you to become a candidate? Despite all your wire-pulling, your trading and self-seeking, and the further fact that you are employing the state machinery to strengthen your pull, you really stand no more show of succeeding Roger Q. Mills than you do of succeeding the Czar of Russia. You ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... greatest and noblest figures of that day,—the Chancelier de l'Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine, and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office. This courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and self-seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to consult with the Connetable de Montmorency. No one ventured to draw him from the reverie in which he was plunged. Robertet, the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the simple student of nature in holy reverence; and while there live sensualists, despots, and men who are wholly self-seeking, I cannot bear to have these sincere workers held up in the least degree to reproach. And let us have truth, even if the truth be the awful denial of the good God. We must face the light and not bury our heads in the earth. I am hopeful that scientific investigation, pushed on and on, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... their sorrow may turn from self-seeking to God and good deeds. But sorrow may come in a trivial nature from trivial causes; the soul may be plunged into despair because one has been denied a gift or a pleasure. The demonstrativeness of grief or sorrow is not at all in proportion to the emotion felt; it ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... relieved by his rejection. If he were not to obtain admission in any capacity to St. Paul's School, he felt more drawn to Tibble's friend the printer; for the self-seeking luxurious habits into which so many of the beneficed clergy had fallen were repulsive to him, and his whole soul thirsted after that new revelation, as it were, which Colet's sermon had made to him. Yet the word heresy was terrible and confusing, and a doubt ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Revising Barrister. Yet, though he was disgusted with the base ingratitude of time-serving politicians, he was by no means disheartened, for he had long since become convinced that the best method of self-seeking was to seek office, and to clamour if that should be refused. Finally, after having paid to have his portrait engraved in a struggling party journal, and having appended to it a description, in which he compared himself to ERSKINE and the younger PITT, he became an annoyance to those who were his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Canadian public life. From Ireland came Dr. William Warren Baldwin, whose son Robert, born in Canada, was less surpassingly able than the younger Bidwell but equally moderate and equally beyond suspicion of faction or self-seeking. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy, King Chilperic reigning over Austrasia; King Sigebert over Neustria. But the power behind the throne lay in the wives of these kings, with whom alone we have to do. Contrasted characters they were,—Fredegonde wicked, faithless, self-seeking; Brunehild patriotic and devoted to the good of her country; yet in the end wickedness triumphed, and honesty died a violent and frightful death. With this preliminary we may proceed with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... colleagues on the Bond of Association, his future bride, had showed themselves fatiguing, perhaps worthless, certainly disheartening and independent accessories to his life. Here, at last, was some one brilliant, stimulating, by no means self-seeking, Quixotic ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... dazzled by the glory of the world, had not clearly discerned the work of the Lord; and therefore he humbled himself before them, and desired the prayers of the saints that God would forgive his self-seeking." His fellow-delinquent Ireton followed in the same repentant strain; both poured forth their souls before God in fervent and extemporary prayer; and "never," so we are assured, "did more harmonious music ascend to the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... race. It was God's message to a people who had refused to listen to his anti-slavery prophets and priests; and its sad, weird, and heart-touching descriptions and dialogues restored the milk of human kindness to a million hearts that had grown callous in an age of self-seeking and robbery of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... preserved. And, on the whole, it is well that from time to time such lessons should be impressed upon the world. It is well that men of lofty genius and pure patriotism should learn, equally with the most shallow empiric or the most self-seeking demagogue, that false steps in politics can rarely be retraced; that concessions once made can seldom, if ever, be recalled, but are usually the stepping-stones to others still more extensive; that what it would have been easy to preserve, it is commonly ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... measure of fidelity, and his energy and experience were guarantees of his competence, though, as a younger member of the great house of Thouars, he belonged by birth to the inner circle of the Poitevin nobility, whose treachery, levity, and self-seeking were proverbial. The powerful Viscounts of Thouars were constantly kept in check by their traditional enemies the Counts of La Marche, whose representative, Hugh of Lusignan, was by far the strongest of the local barons. His cousin, and sometime betrothed, Isabella, Countess ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... bond, between this generous gentleman on the one hand, and the united members of a too often and too long disunited art upon the other, be you the witnesses. Do you attest of everything that is liberal and free in spirit, that is "so nominated in the bond;" and of everything that is grudging, self-seeking, unjust, or unfair, that it is by no sophistry ever to be found there. I beg to move the resolution which I have already had ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... deluding his clients into the carrying on of a long and costly lawsuit for the mere sake of putting money into his own pocket. He lampooned England's allies as well as England's great general; he described the Dutch, whom the Tory ministers had shamefully betrayed, as self-seeking and perfidious traitors, for whose protection we were sacrificing all, until we found out that they were secretly juggling with our enemies for our destruction. No stronger argument could be found to condemn the conduct of the Tory ministers than the mere fact that Swift and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... production and subsistence would also widen and admit additional scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies touching the common fortunes ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... years; the last faint hope of happiness was gone; it would, perhaps, be more accurate to say, of the bright happiness she had planned for herself in her early youth. Unconsciously, she was being weaned from self-seeking in any shape, and her daily life became, if possible, more innocent and pure and holy. One of the canons used to laugh at her for her constant attendance at all the services, and for her devotion to good works, and ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Church with such a flaming vehemence that the heat kindled round the throne of the Chief Bishop himself, Father John escaped without so much as the smell of burning on his garments. None could lay self-seeking to his charge, nor even the smallest of the many vices which in every order raised their heads, rampant and unashamed. It was characteristic of Louis that he should attach to himself men of such unselfish humility and austere pureness of life. God and the Saints ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... failed. He had made himself very agreeable, the single time she had met him; but.... There was Richard's opinion of him: Richard did not like him or trust him; he thought him unscrupulous in business, cold and self-seeking. Poor, poor little Agnes! That such a misfortune should befall just her! Stranger still that she, Polly, should be mixed up ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... much in the air to be convincing. Well, then, let us appeal to experience. Let us see what the systematic cultivation of his natural faculties has done for the child in Utopia. I have already pointed out that the unselfishness of the children—the complete absence of self-seeking and self-assertion—is one of the most noticeable features of the life of their school. Now there is no place for moral teaching on the time-table of the school: and I can say without hesitation that the direct inculcation of morality is wholly foreign ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... individual was rapidly developing, emancipating himself from the State and the group-system of society; but he was developing in a wrong direction. The importance of self, when realised in high and low alike, was becoming self-seeking, indifference to all but self. We have now to see whether philosophy could do anything to relieve this destitution of the Romans in regard ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... colonel's forehead, and Jeff put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't help remembering that his father had called him "son" in a poignancy of sympathy all through the trials of the past, and it hurt to hear it now. It linked that time with this, as Madame Beattie, in her unabashed self-seeking, linked it. Perhaps he was never to escape. A prisoner, that was what he was. They were all prisoners, Madame Beattie to her squalid love of gain, Esther to her elementary love of herself, Lydia—he looked at her as she stood still in the background like a handmaid waiting. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... could ever see her father's and her sister's faces. For her sister, well, it might pass—for there are some things which even a woman like Beatrice can never quite forgive—but she loved her father. She loved his very faults, even his simple avarice and self-seeking had become endeared to her by long and wondering contemplation. Besides, he was her father; he gave her the life she was about to cast away. And she should never see him more. Not on that account did she hesitate in her purpose, which was now set in her mind, like Bryngelly Castle on ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the state is almost unanimous in its condemnation of the late Legislature. * * * As we have said before, the general littleness of the body, its petty conduct in many instances, its trades and combinations, the autocratic methods of self-seeking members, the quarrels, the cheap declamations and intemperate and undignified and unwarrantable public denunciations by members who should have shown a better sense of dignity and decency, the dishonesty in juggling with bills, the unreliability of promises—the general record and conduct of ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... He had always been old and worn-out so long as Pelle could remember. Labor so soon robs the poor man of his youth and makes his age so long! But this very frailty endowed him with a superhuman power—that of the father! He had borne his poverty greatly, without becoming wicked or self-seeking or narrow; his heart had always been full of the cheerfulness of sacrifice, and full of tenderness; he had been strong even in his impotence. Like the Heavenly Father Himself, he had encompassed Pelle's whole existence ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... sheer personal gallantry, and nothing else, have taken a very shallow view of the case, and not condescended to study the details. In his general conception of the best way to overcome the Taepings he was necessarily hampered by the views, wishes, jealousies, and self-seeking purposes of his Chinese colleagues. But for them, his strategy would have been of a very different character, as he himself often said. He had to adjust his means to the best attainable end, and it must be allowed that he did this with remarkable tact and patience—the very ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... stood, not less than the boundless abuse of that already bad principle under the first Stuarts, could not fail to undermine their sense of honor and justice, preparing them at length for a policy of mere self-seeking, carried on by methods always ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... St. Reine. He appeared very desirous of having none but me with him, and told me one day, "If they never spoke to me against you, I should be more easy, and you more happy." In this journey I committed many faults of self-love and self-seeking. I was become like a poor traveler that had lost his way in the night and could find no way, path, or track. My husband, in his return from St. Reine, passed by St. Edm. Having now no children but ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... a place was that court where Daniel was? Half shambles and half pigsty. Luxury, sensuality, lust, self-seeking, idolatry, ruthless cruelty, and the like were the environment of this man. And in the middle of these there grew up that fair flower of a character, pure and stainless, by the acknowledgment of enemies, and in which not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the heroism that led this brave soldier in gray so utterly to forget himself for the sake of doing a deed of mercy to his enemies. There is more grandeur in five minutes of such self-renunciation than in a whole lifetime of self-interest and self-seeking. There is something Christly in it. How poor, paltry, and mean, alongside the records of such deeds, appear men's selfish ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... eagerness to convince and carry his hearers with him, which was singularly effective. His addresses were not only free from all ambition as to ornate or attractive language, but also as to original or characteristic thought. There was such an entire absence of all self-seeking about the man, and he so thoroughly identified himself with the people whose interests he pleaded, that, possessing a fair readiness of speech, and aptness for ad captandum argument, he could not fail to secure the favourable attention of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... disciple." "He that loveth his life, shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." "If thy right eye offend thee, (or cause thee to offend,) pluck it out and cast it from thee." We must follow Christ. Here we are taught that, unless we put away all self-seeking, and willingly surrender the dearest objects of our affections on earth, yea, and our own lives also, if need be, we have no claim to the character of disciples of Christ. The glory of God and the general good must be our ruling ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... realities of history appreciate, has overtaken European history in all its bearings, there are but two things that have retained their vigor and their propagating force in the midst of all that shriveling blight of self-seeking that pervades European life. These two things are science and the people, science and the workingman. And the union of these two is alone capable of invigorating European culture ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... liberates him from free pleasure, and the serenity of form tames down the savageness of life? Eternally uniform in his aims, eternally changing in his judgments, self-seeking without being himself, unfettered without being free, a slave without serving any rule. At this period, the world is to him only destiny, not yet an object; all has existence for him only in as far as it procures ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... petition for the deposition of the king, the history afterwards becomes fragmentary. Such as it is, it manifests a Roman flavor. The nationalists are termed robbers, and the pseudo-Messiahs are branded as self-seeking impostors.[1] After an enumeration of various pretenders that sought to make themselves independent rulers, there is a sudden jump from the first to the tenth year of Archelaus, who was accused of barbarous and tyrannical ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... of self and self-seeking she lifted up her head into the sunlight of a perfect love, a love that suffereth long and is kind, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its own, believeth all things, endureth all ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... prevails among a large class of our wealthy and cultivated people, that to go into public life is to descend to duties beneath them. They judge the men who occupy such positions with insulting severity, classing them in their minds as corrupt and self-seeking, than which nothing can be more childish or more imbecile. Any observer who has lived in the different grades of society will quickly renounce the puerile idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a gentleman's attention. This very political life, which appears ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... oneself; consult one's own wishes, consult one's own pleasure; look after one's own interest; feather one's nest; take care of number one, have an eye to the main chance, know on which side one's bread is buttered; give an inch and take an ell. Adj. selfish; self-seeking, self-indulgent, self-interested, self- centered; wrapped up in self, wrapt up in self[obs3], centered in self; egotistic, egotistical; egoistical[obs3]. illiberal, mean, ungenerous, narrow-minded; mercenary, venal; covetous &c. 819. unspiritual, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the clergy, had some time before gone over to the other party; and he now openly in the church, though invested with the highest civil character in the kingdom, did penance for his obedience to the parliament, which he termed a "carnal self-seeking." He accompanied his penance with so many tears, and such pathetical addresses to the people for their prayers in this his uttermost sorrow and distress, that a universal weeping and lamentation took place among the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... never seen anywhere without one or two or three at her service: it was the most natural thing in the world for people to think as they did. Yet not a human being ever accused Hetty of flirting; her manner was always as open, friendly, and cordial as an honest boy's, and with no more trace of self-seeking or self-consciousness about it. She was as full of fun and mischief, too, as any boy could be. She had slid down hill with the wildest of them, till even ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... growth and stability of this great fraternity, or that its votaries cling to it with such unshaken and unswerving fidelity. Ah! it is no light matter, no small privilege, to be admitted to membership in such an organization—so freeing one's self from the surgings of self-seeking and selfish considerations—free from the trammels of prevailing prejudice and passion—free from the false educational influences that warp the mind and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... of Leopold Travers, his thoughts turned with much kindliness towards his young kinsman. "Mivers and Kenelm," quoth he to himself, "gave me an unfavourable impression of this lad; they represent him as worldly, self-seeking, and so forth. But Mivers takes such cynical views of character, and Kenelm is too eccentric to judge fairly of a sensible man of the world. At all events, it is not like an egotist to put himself out of his way to be so civil ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quite just, darling, there are a great many politicians who are very much looked up to—all the bishops, for instance, and others whom nobody could suspect of self-seeking." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and of business interests and the higher social classes, had the confidence of the people. The King did not. He had their loyalty as their sovereign, but the spiritual and cultural welfare of a colony overseas carried little weight amid the political cross-currents and the self-seeking of a ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... of the spirit; the external clothing of the being, in which Character ultimates itself. If the Character be simple and sincere, the Manners will be at one with it; will be the natural outbirth of its traits and peculiarities. If it be complex and self-seeking, the Manners will be artificial, affected, or insincere. Some persons make up, put on, take off, alter, or patch their Manners to suit times and seasons, with as much facility, and as little apparent ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... and could now depart bravely to work out his penance. Softened and exalted, he little realised that the penance was unnecessary and self-imposed, that the mood which now took on the heroic tone of self-sacrifice was still a mood of self-seeking, that his love for Lena was selfish now as it had always been, and utterly unworthy of the devotion he received. It was true that he loved her, but he loved himself and his ambitions and revenges ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... this case a striking example may be seen of the divine impartiality of the Scriptures. Some persons, with a view to objects of their own, take pleasure in representing ministers of religion as more self-seeking and less generous than those who make no religious profession. The contrast between the Levite and the Samaritan, if this case stood alone, might seem to support their theory. But there is no respect of persons or classes with God; you may learn from the Scriptures—and that, too, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of men. They saw poverty and misery and pain, which came of the evil which man had done upon the earth, and were his punishment, and could be cured by nothing but by the return of each to his Father, and the giving up of all self-worship and self-seeking and sin. But amid all the confusion and among those who had fallen the lowest they found not one who was forsaken, whose name the Father had forgotten, or who was not made to pause in his appointed ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... said the other scornfully. "Then never dare to tell yourself again that you ever loved him. Let that lie cease. Your love was only pretty words and pride and self-seeking, and a miserable streak of passion. What do you care what happens to him? Don't go back. You don't care for him. You never cared. Never, never. And he knows it. He is telling himself so now—at ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... than his ancestors. He married, when no longer very young, Alice, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, a beautiful young heiress from a neighbouring county. "It was the first time an Oke married a Pomfret," my host informed me, "and the last time. The Pomfrets were quite different sort of people—restless, self-seeking; one of them had been a favourite of Henry VIII." It was clear that William Oke had no feeling of having any Pomfret blood in his veins; he spoke of these people with an evident family dislike—the dislike of an Oke, one of the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Louis XVI., a mere boy, began to reign, the whole French administrative body was corrupt, self-seeking, and in the hands of lawyers, a class that dominated almost every phase of government. In general, inefficiency, idleness, and dishonesty had obtained a ruling place in the governing body; the few honest men who had a minor share ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... death. Even monasticism, harshly as we may now judge it, arose, in part at least, through the desire to "endure hardness;" only it turned aside from the hardness appointed in the world without, to choose, and ere long to make, a hardness of its own; and then, self-seeking, and therefore anti-Christian, it fell. Amid all its actual corruption the Church stands forth a living witness, by its ritual and its sacraments, to this fundamental truth of the Cross; and ever and anon from its deepest degradation there emerges clear ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... justly commended Mr. Gaston's conduct in not forcing his own nomination, a course so completely in accord with his character, and his entire devotion to the party welfare. He did not display the least semblance of self-seeking. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... mechanical empiricism. The capable business man who is said to understand the "world" and his fellow-men, has commonly no knowledge of human nature in the larger sense, but merely knows from observation how the average man of a certain limited class is likely to act within a narrow prescribed sphere of self-seeking. Town life, then, strongly favours the education of certain shallow forms of intelligence. In actual attainment the townsman is somewhat more advanced than the countryman. But the deterioration of physique which accompanies this gain causes a weakening of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... face to me,—it was singularly gentle and refined,—not a face to associate with an idea of self-seeking or duplicity. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... born to be, —innocent, and a child. I have washed my robes in the tears of repentance; I can come before the altar whither my guardian angel, my beloved Calyste, has led me. With what tender comfort I give you that name, which the step I now take sanctifies. I love you without self-seeking, as a mother loves her son, as the Church loves her children. I can pray for you and for yours without one thought or wish except for your happiness. Ah! if you only knew the sublime tranquillity in which I live, now that I have risen in thought above all petty earthly ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... I don't see why it should," she said shortly, looking at him in a bewildered, disapproving way. "I didn't know you were that kind. It sounds awfully self-seeking. I do not believe you've guessed right." Her face brightened. "That is it. You've got some idea into your head, and it's evidently far from the correct one. You wouldn't be the Bobby I ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the whole satire has been written in vain is the man whom it is the whole object of the institution of satire to reach. He knows that such a description of him is not true. He knows that he is not utterly unpatriotic, or utterly self-seeking, or utterly barbarous and revengeful. He knows that he is an ordinary man, and that he can count as many kindly memories, as many humane instincts, as many hours of decent work and responsibility as any other ordinary man. But behind all this he has his real ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... opinion—political-partisan for the most part, critical in small part. This opinion was chiefly, though even then not wholly, expressed by a single personality, sometimes dominant, able, unselfish, and in nature a social prophet, but in most instances weak, time-serving, and self-seeking, and partisan, with one eye on advertising, official preferred, and the other on profits, public office, and other contingent ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... cast a gloom upon my character. I had met many men, some of them leaders in Israel, whether by their birth or talents; and who among them all had shown clean hands? As for the Browns and Millers, I had seen their self-seeking, I could never again respect them. Prestongrange was the best yet; he had saved me, had spared me rather, when others had it in their minds to murder me outright; but the blood of James lay at his door; and I thought his present dissimulation with myself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men who were keen, self-seeking, and often unscrupulous, inclined me toward cynicism and suspicion. My editorial life made me an Arab in a sense, for if there were occasion, my hand might be against any man, if not every man. I certainly received many merciless blows, and I was learning to return ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... in the garden, by the beams of the moon, Ukleet, and he was looking as on the watch for her. So she sent to him the little mountain-girl she loved, but Ukleet would tell her nothing; then went she herself, greeting him graciously, for his service was other than that of self-seeking. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my wagons after this semi-tragical interview with that bombastic and self-seeking old windbag, Umbezi, it was to find that Saduko and his warriors had already marched for the King's kraal, Nodwengu. A message awaited me, however, to the effect that it was hoped that I would follow, in order to make report ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... have cause to be humble for! the constant cleaving of defilement to our souls; and even what is partially good in us, how mixed with imperfection, self-seeking, arrogance, vain-glory! A proud Christian is a contradiction in terms. The Seraphim of old (type of the Christian Church, and of believers) had six wings—two were for errands of love, but "with four he covered himself!" It has been beautifully said, "You ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... in the public economy of a people are the workings of self-interest so apparent as in the determination of prices. When the price of a commodity is once fixed by the conflict of opposing interests,(601) the self-seeking of every individual dictates that he should thereby gain as much as possible of the goods of others, and lose as little as possible of his own. In this struggle, the victory is generally to the stronger, and the price ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... truly made, hold good even in that mysterious world beyond the grave. Show me that though the body—dear home and vehicle of love—may die, yet love in its essence remains everlastingly conscious, faithful and complete. Bend my will to harmony with Thine, O Lord, and cleanse me of self-seeking. Ah! but still let me see his face once again, once again, oh, my God—and I will rebel no more. Let me look on him, once again, if only for a moment, and I shall be content. Hear me, I am greatly troubled, I ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... true church, which is but one. I exhort you, brethren, in your comings together, Let all things be done decently, and in order, according to the Scriptures. Let all things be done among you without strife and envy, without self-seeking and vain-glory. Be clothed with humility, and submit to one another in love. Let the gifts of the church be exercised according to order. Let no gift be concealed which is for edification; yet let those gifts be chiefly exercised which are most for the perfecting of the saints. Let your ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... passionate craving for supereminent persons, his passionate abhorrence of democracy, his admiration of strong character, his disposition to work from historical bases rather than from absolute principles, but representing them at once with a prudence of common sense and a prudence of self-seeking and timidity which are alike foreign to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sacerdotal despotism whose devices are disingenuous and dishonourable, and whose power was magnificently displayed in the campaign for Prohibition—a despotism exercised by a body of ignorant, superstitious, self-seeking and thoroughly dishonest men. One may, without prejudice, reasonably defend the Catholic clergy. They are men who, at worst, pursue an intelligible ideal and dignify it with a real sacrifice. But in the ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... people, and results in what is often called "invisible government," government that is carried on out of sight of the people. It opens a door to partisan influences and to control by political "bosses" and self-seeking "interests." In the lower house the committees are appointed by the speaker, who is the presiding officer, and who is always chosen by the members of the majority party in the house from their own number. The senate committees are sometimes appointed by the presiding officer of the senate, who ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... him from these verbal excesses,—perhaps there was also some element of taste involved,—and thus made his arguments more effective than if he had alienated his audiences by indiscriminate attacks on all the institutions of society. No one could justly accuse Frederick Douglass of cowardice or self-seeking; yet he was opportunist enough to sacrifice the immaterial for the essential, and to use the best means at hand to promote the ultimate object sought, although the means thus offered might not be the ideal instrument. It was doubtless this trait that led Douglass, after he separated from ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... as far as he dared the independence of the Slave States, and at the same time on the ruins of the Mexican Republic setting up a mock Empire. In similar spirit has he conspired against German Unity, whose just strength promised to be a wall against his unprincipled self-seeking. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... are whole worlds as yet unexplored and waiting to be won. Do men whimperingly complain that there is no longer a career for genius? Tush! It is enthusiasm that is wanted. Give us that, and the career will follow. But the enthusiasm must be of the real sort—not self-asserting, self-conscious, self-seeking; but earnest, patient, resolute, and reticent: for science, too, needs heroism no less ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... was a greater task than she had anticipated and finally wrote Miss Anthony: "God knows, and you ought to know, that any one who undertakes a convention has put self-seeking one side and is nearer to being a martyr, stake, fagots and all, than any of us care to be unless called by duty with a loud and unmistakable call. I shirked the labor last year and pitied you because so much fell upon you, and out of pure love to you and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... believes that from before the face of God every sorrow shall vanish, that they that sow in tears shall reap in joy, that death is but a mist that for a season swathes the spirit, and that, ever as the self-seeking vanishes from love, it groweth more full of delight—even he who with all his heart believes this, may be mournful over the aching of another heart while yet it lasts; and he who looks for his own death as his resurrection, may yet be sorrowful ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... striking achievement of this sort, Mantegna's head of Cardinal Scarampo (now in Berlin), was not the kind to find favour in Venice. The full-face likeness of this wolf in sheep's clothing brought out the workings of the self-seeking, cynical spirit within too clearly not to have revolted the Venetians, who looked upon all such qualities as impious in the individual because they were the strict monopoly of the State. In the portraits of Doges which decorated ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... the nature of man when we have spoken of him as delighting in independent self-expression, as being self-centered and self-seeking. Man is inherently social in his nature and desires nothing more than the approval of his fellows. That which society approves we do with enthusiasm. We change our forms of amusements, our manner of life, and our daily occupations according to the whims of society. Fifteen years ago ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... to mend in Ireland from 1850, and had continued to do so until the ballot made the country a prey to self-seeking ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Elihu Coleman of Nantucket, a minister of the society of Friends, wrote a book against slavery, published in 1733, entitled, "A Testimony against that Anti-Christian Practice of MAKING SLAVES OF MEN.[378] It was well written, and the truth fearlessly told for the conservative, self-seeking period he ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... coarseness. "Princess Caroline," says Lord Hervey, "had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood." Her figure indeed is one of the bright redeeming visions in all that chapter of Court history. She stands out among the rough, coarse, self-seeking men and women somewhat as Sophy Western does among the personages of "Tom Jones." Her tender inclination towards Lord Hervey makes her seem all the more sweet and womanly; her influence over him is always apparent. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... quoted form a pretty complete revelation. From first to last we see in him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible idealist. His ideals are narrow, and his devotion to them fanatical; but it is devoid, if not of egoism, at any rate of self-interest and self-seeking. As he shrank from applying the money entrusted him to ends of personal luxury, so also he shrank from making his ideas and convictions subserve any personal ambition ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... incapable of any sustained or resolute action, and equally incapable of resisting Louis Philippe after the King had concluded his performance of popular leader, and assumed his real character as the wary and self-seeking chief of a reigning house. Whether the actual course of French policy would be governed by the passions of the streets or by the timorousness of Louis Philippe was from day to day a matter of conjecture. The official answer given to the inquiries of the Austrian ambassador as to the intentions ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of their disagreement it was impossible for them to do without each other. They had many faults; they were both egoists. But their egoism was naive; it knew not the self-seeking of maturity which makes it so repulsive; it knew not itself even; it was almost lovable, and did not prevent them from sincerely loving each other! Young Otto used to weep on his pillow as he told himself stories of romantic devotion of which ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... rest of the philosophes. That there were charlatans among them, vain men, pretentious men, profligate men, selfish, self-seeking, and hypocritical men, who doubts? Among what class of men were there not such in those evil days? In what class of men are there not such now, in spite of all social and moral improvement? But nothing but the ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got the impression that he despises a great ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... thousand dollars as a sort of retaining fee. From what little I have seen of her, she impresses me as a charming girl wholly without experience of a world which, though not altogether wicked, is nevertheless callous and self-seeking. Among other drawbacks, she embarked on a fantastic project with a most disingenuous belief in the good faith of a Frenchman. Now, I admire France as a nation, but where women are concerned, I distrust Frenchmen as a race, and I suspect—mind you, I am merely guessing—but I repeat ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The man who is the last out and the first in when all hands are called. The man who can't do most things and won't do the rest. The pet of philanthropists and self-seeking landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship's company. The independent offspring of the ignoble ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... atmosphere of assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically self-seeking—incoherent... a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... of those who become the unknown fathers of great men. And so, on a salary that would have meant penury to a man of self-seeking tastes, he managed to save always the major part of his earning. At the bank he was a modest but regular visitor to the receiving-teller, and almost a total ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... be," Rom. viii. 7. So that either we must have a reformation displeasing to God, or displeasing to men. It is not the right reformation which is not displeasing to a Tobiah, to a Sanballat, to a Demetrius, to the earthly-minded, to the self-seeking politicians, to the carnal and profane; it is but the old enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent (Gen. iii. 15): nay, what if reformation be displeasing to good men, in so far as they are unregenerate, carnal, earthly, proud, unmortified ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... a man of very different stamp from his predecessors. The quarrels, intrigues, and self-seeking that had been so disastrous a feature during the tenure of office of Child, Waite, and Gayer were abhorrent to him. He was a zealous servant of the Company, whose interests he did his best to promote with the inadequate means at his disposal. In coming up the coast ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... have learned that 'tis not all to be Self-seeking pleasure-hunters; higher far Are works of kindliness and charity Which we can do, whate'er our frailties are. And we have learned that pain and sorrow, though Unwelcome guests, have each ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats |
