"Egoist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imperfectly developed one. While the units of which it is composed have distinct and independent lives within certain limits, they are, outside of those limits, interdependent and inter-related. Man is governed by two great forces. On the one hand, he is essentially an egoist, ever striving to attain individual freedom; on the other hand, he is a social animal, ever seeking association and avoiding isolation. This duality expresses itself in the life of society. There is a struggle between its members ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... caught in certain lights the dark shadow of her hair—hair black, abundant, and elaborately dressed in the fashion of that time. Passionate yet calculating, imperious yet susceptible of control, generous yet given to suspicion, an egoist yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm—she represented a type of feminine character often recognised but ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... rule in married life. Remember, too, that he's a poet. Listen, Dasha, there's no greater happiness than self-sacrifice. And besides, you'll be giving me great satisfaction and that's the chief thing. Don't think I've been talking nonsense. I understand what I'm saying. I'm an egoist, you be an egoist, too. Of course I'm not forcing you. It's entirely for you to decide. As you say, so it shall be. Well, what's the good of sitting ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... solemnly. Indeed, our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang of rogues. One of them, Dick Gilder, might tell him that he (Glandeville) was an egoist and that he ought to have fallen in love with the girl's body, as he (Gilder) had done, instead of her supposed soul; but that did not help matters much, or prevent our feeling that this treatment of Glandeville was no matter for laughter. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... he said, when at last the door was closed, "there's a great deal of sound common sense in what you say. I may be an egoist—I dare say I am. I've been through the proper training for it, and I've started life again on a pretty one-sided basis, perhaps. But—have you ever ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her as yet. Then it suddenly occurred to him that she might have been wet through by the rain yesterday and now lay shaken by fever, and that this must keep her father away, too; a supposition which cheered the egoist more than it pained him, and with a sigh of relief he turned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unoffending heroine, unjustly humiliated in her own eyes and in the eyes of others; he had stood out, in unpardonable guise, the cause—the instrument—of that humiliation. In the bitter knowledge she had confronted him unrelentingly. A spoiled child—an unreasoning feminine egoist. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... enraptured Coqueville was that the casks did not cease. When there were no more, there were still more! The ship that had been lost must truly have had a pretty cargo aboard; and Coqueville became egoist and merry, joked over the wrecked ship, a regular wine-cellar, enough to intoxicate all the fish of the ocean. Added to that, never did they catch two casks alike; they were of all shapes, of all sizes, of all colors. Then, ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... darkness with a new light. He had written much about our shortage of genuine spiritual values; about "the continual frustrations and aridities of American life." He was a member of various groups—the Imagist group, the Egoist group, the Sphericists, other groups piquantly named; versed in the new psychology, playing upon the word "pragmatism" as ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... more important in fact than it is in theory. In theory an Editor's word—subject to the Proprietor's veto—is final. He gives his instructions to the leader-writer, and the leader-writer, presuming that he is not a fool or a headstrong egoist or a man determined to flout his Editor's wishes, obeys them. That is the theory. But there are several mitigating circumstances. In the first place, it is often difficult for an Editor to make his policy quite clear to his staff. Next, the leader-writer, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... character (reputation) is a precious possession. 3. The man seemed to be without conscience (consciousness). 4. The counsel (council) was not wise. 5. It is John's custom (habit) to speak slowly. 6. Her deceit (deception) amazed me. 7. This man is an egoist (egotist). 8. The government does not encourage immigration (emigration). 9. In Mr. E.'s estimate (estimation) the cost of lumber and paint is low. 10. It was only yesterday that I heard of the identification (identity) of the men who robbed Mr. Jones and Mr. ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... but never seen. A man of Minoret's build, and Minoret's wealth, at the head of such an establishment might well be called, without contradiction, the master of Nemours. Though he never thought of God or devil, being a practical materialist, just as he was a practical agriculturist, a practical egoist, and a practical miser, Minoret had enjoyed up to this time a life of unmixed happiness,—if we can call pure materialism happiness. A physiologist, observing the rolls of flesh which covered the last vertebrae and pressed ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... very incarnation of the forces opposed to him and his religion. Holder, as he looked at her, had a flash of fierce resentment that now, of all times, she should suddenly have flung herself across his path. For she was to be reckoned with. Why did he not tell her she was an egoist? Why didn't he speak out, defend his faith, denounce her views ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... countryman's nose was hard to overcome. Never in all his life had he listened to such a frankly cold-blooded argument as that put forth by the insufferable Knicker-bocker. In the end the big New Yorker saw only the laughable side of the little New Yorker's plight. After all, he was a harmless egoist, from whom no girl could expect much in the way of recompense. It mattered little who the girl of the moment might be, she could not hope to or even seek to hold his perambulatory affections. "He's a single example of a great New ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... the displeasure and lack of confidence of his stern father. His nature always revolted against such humiliation, and he tried by bitter mockery to give expression to his injured self-esteem. His heart, which warmed toward everything noble, prevented him from becoming a hardened egoist; but he did not grow any the milder or more conciliatory, and long after he had become a great man and wise ruler, there remained in him from this time of servitude some trace of petty cunning. The lion sometimes, in a spirit of undignified vengeance, did not scorn to scratch ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... is a very peculiar thing. In highly organized intellectual and artistic types it is so often apt to begin with keen appreciation of certain qualities, modified by many, many mental reservations. The egoist, the intellectual, gives but little of himself and asks much. Nevertheless, the lover of life, male or female, finding himself or herself in sympathetic accord with such a nature, is apt ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... quite a different psychological tone. The three I have just mentioned are all too inveterately spirits of mockery even to take seriously their own "sensations and ideas"; and however ironical and humorous an egoist may be with regard to other people's impressions, with regard to his own he is grave, intent, preoccupied, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... medium of 'Philosophical History' in these times, cannot even be not seen: it is misseen; affirmed to have existed,—and to have been a godless Impossibility. Your Norman Conquerors, true royal souls, crowned kings as such, were vulturous irrational tyrants: your Becket was a noisy egoist and hypocrite; getting his brains spilt on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral, to secure the main chance,—somewhat uncertain how! 'Policy, Fanaticism,' or say 'Enthusiasm,' even 'honest Enthusiasm,'—ah ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... not away with the misconception that Narcissus was ever base to a woman. No! he left that to Circe's hogs, and the one temptation he ever had towards it he turned into a shining salvation. No! he had nothing worse than the sins of the young egoist to answer for, though he afterwards came to feel those pitiful ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... publishers concerned have kindly given me permission to reprint some of the poems in this book which appeared originally in "Poetry" (Chicago), "The Egoist" (London), "The Little Review" (Chicago), "Greenwich Village" (New York), the first Imagist anthology (New York: A. and C. Boni. London: Poetry Bookshop), the second Imagist anthology ("Some Imagist Poets," London: Constable and Co. ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... aunt had noticed nothing, and she still hoped that she would be able to so prolong matters, that she would escape without a private interview. She did not know the cause of Leonard's impatience: that he must see her before the day passed. She too was an egoist, in her own way; in the flush of belief of his subjugation she did not think of attributing to him any other motive than his desire for herself. As she had made up her mind on the final issue she did not want to be troubled ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... insisted, a little doggedly. "I have spent too many of my years on the treadmill. A man was born to be either an egoist and parcel out the earth according to his tastes, or to develop like Dartrey into a dreamer.—Curse you!" he added, suddenly shaking his fist at the tall towers of the Houses of Parliament. "You're like an infernal boarding-school, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is the egoist. My love for thee loves itself more than thee; Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist, And makes me live that it may feed on me. In the country of bridges the bridge is More real than the shores it doth unsever; So in our world, all ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... me. There is in egoism, however, a depth to which all but myself are blind. I have found this depth in myself and out of it rises a definition which I must consider cautiously. There is but one egoist and that is He who, intolerant of all but Himself, sets out to destroy all but Himself. Egoism is the despairing effort of man to return to his original Godhood; to return to the undisputed and triumphant loneliness which was His when as a Creator ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... must go, and hastily, frantically. I could not face him when he woke; I should not have known what to say; I should have been abashed, timid, clumsy, unequal to myself. And, moreover, I had the egoist's deep need to be alone, to examine my soul, to understand it intimately and utterly. And, lastly, I wanted to pay the bill of pleasure at once. I could never tolerate credit; I was like my aunt in that. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... behaved toward the Russians, a foreign and therefore perhaps neutral diplomat replied: "The Bulgar will not do anything for people in distress. He is an egoist. He'll let his own father starve rather than sacrifice anything of his own. He has cause to be eternally grateful to the Russians, and now he has a chance to pay back something of what he owes, but not he. He treats the Russian as a beggar and ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... an interviewer who had desired to write his biography. I do not believe that it had ever crossed his mind that the occasion had been anything but a complete success. His enjoyment was evidently to converse, and he had conversed unintermittently for several hours. The man was an egoist, of course, but he had not talked exclusively about himself. Much of his talk had been devoted to other people, but they were all of them the people whom he saw in his own private mirror. I have no doubt that for the time being I was a figure in his dreams, and that I shall ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... EGOIST, a novel by George Meredith, much admired by R. L. Stevenson, who read and re-read it at least ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... If the flowers could talk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided attempts at doing them honor,—as if it were anything but a slander, this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good qualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear them saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees nothing but the reflection of ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... during this harangue. His was the steadfast attitude of the egoist, who sees all life in terms of his own ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Alexandrovna caught her up, hotly and jealously. "Do you know, Dounia, I was looking at you two. You are the very portrait of him, and not so much in face as in soul. You are both melancholy, both morose and hot-tempered, both haughty and both generous.... Surely he can't be an egoist, Dounia. Eh? When I think of what is in store for us this ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... went on, and presently they were criticising novelists, and certain daring essays of Wilkins got their due share of attention, and then they were discussing the future of the theatre. Ann Veronica intervened a little in the novelist discussion with a defence of Esmond and a denial that the Egoist was obscure, and when she spoke every one else stopped talking and listened. Then they deliberated whether Bernard Shaw ought to go into Parliament. And that brought them to vegetarianism and teetotalism, and the young man in the orange tie and Mrs. Goopes had a great set-to ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... ripened, and perhaps toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true thing with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are some - and I doubt if there be any man who can return the compliment. The class of man represented by Vernon Whitford in THE EGOIST says, indeed, the true thing, but he says it stockishly. Vernon is a noble fellow, and makes, by the way, a noble and instructive contrast to Daniel Deronda; his conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but we agree ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and through Rene we divine the inventor of Rene carrying his wounded heart, as in the heroine we can discern some features of his sister Lucile. In all his writings his feelings centre in himself: he is a pure egoist through his sensibility; but around his own figure his imagination, marvellous in its expansive power, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... woman, he took note." Browning's poet, however, apparently "took note" on behalf of a higher power. It is difficult to imagine Mr. Pepys sending his Diary to the address of the Recording Angel. Rather, the Diary is the soliloquy of an egoist, disinterested and daring as a bad ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... pause. We are now face to face with an "egoist" system par excellence. It is, perhaps, the only one that the history of human thought has to chronicle. The French Materialists of the last century have been accused of preaching egoism. The accusation was quite wrong. The French Materialists always preached "Virtue," and preached ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff |
