"Egotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self-renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his happiness and his sufferings ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... proportion of things. I saw that in the combination of influences that had brought Mr. Tottenham to the point of proposing to marry my daughter consideration for me, if it had a place, would be fantastic. Inwardly I laughed at the egotism of raw nerves that had conjured it up, even for an instant, as a reason for gratitude. The situation was not so peculiar, not so interesting, as that. But I answered his stare with a smile; what I had said might very ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... curiosity of the lover became, so to speak, a psychological and literary curiosity. He wanted to know the height that woman had attained, and what were the injuries she thus forgave; he longed to know how these women of the world, taxed with frivolity, cold-heartedness, and egotism, could be such angels. Remembering how the princess had already repulsed him when he first tried to read that celestial heart, his voice, and he himself, trembled as he took the transparent, slender hand of the beautiful Diane with ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... Ha, I have guessed the mischief in your smiles when you talk to the grand equerry, and when he talks to you and you answer him. You would never be unhappy with the duke, and everybody will approve your choice, if you do choose him; but you will never love him. The ice of egotism, and the burning heat of ecstasy both produce indifference in the heart of every woman. It is evident to my mind that no such perpetual worship will give you the infinite delights which you are dreaming of in marriage,—in some marriage ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... of the great type, never "a mean egotist," as he was once slanderously described—and all his faults sprang from egotism, which is in one sense, after all, only another name for greatness. So much absorbed was he in his own achievements that he was unable or unwilling to appreciate the achievements of others. I never heard him speak in high terms of the great foreign actors ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... had set all his animal spirits in motion. I caught a few words in bad French, which satisfied me that he and the German were jeering each other on their respective national peculiarities. Such is man; his egotism and vanity first centre in himself, and he is ready to defend himself against the reproofs of even his own mother; then his wife, his child, his brother, his friend is admitted, in succession, within the pale of his self-love, according to their affinities with the great ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Sawyer, nor perhaps The Innocents Abroad, but we are forgetting much else of Mark Twain. Whitman is not named. His claims are familiar, but in spite of his admirers he seems so charged with a sensuous egotism that he is not apt to be a formative influence in literary history. It is still interesting, however, to remember how frequently he ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... us to treat this dreaded affection with positive and specific remedies in a most satisfactory manner, the horrible pains which characterize this trouble, and the mutilations to which it so frequently leads, only exist in quarters where egotism, the love of lucre and the absence of all conscientiousness prevents physicians from inquiring into the merits of our superior mode of treatment. Is ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... inquire who were the all of whom she spoke, but he could not do it without an egotism which would be distasteful to him. "I can hardly tell;—but I don't think I shall ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... His delight is a feeling that all doors are open to all, that he is no favorite, but the rest are late sleepers, and he only earlier awake. Depth of genius is measured by depth of this conviction. Egotism is incurable greenness. An artist is one who has more, not less, respect for the common eye. The seer points always from his own to a public privilege,—says never, "I, Jesus, have so received," but, "The Son of Man must so receive"; and Shakspeare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... son apparently was still in bed, nor did anyone trouble to hurry him out of it. The father, a Viennese judge en retraite, as Winnington had been already informed by the all-knowing porter of the hotel, was a shrewd thin-lipped old fellow, with the quiet egotism of the successful lawyer. He came up to Winnington as soon as he perceived him, and thanked him in good English for his kindness to Euphrosyne of the day before. Winnington responded suitably and was soon seated at their table, chatting with ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... advantages to Canadian importers of ore in certain stages of manufacture which may strike him as slightly, very slightly, special. Of course there are a good many of them in the country. So that Mr Horace Williams was justified to some extent in his kindly observation upon the excusable egotism of youth. Two or three letters, however, came in while Lorne was considering the relation of plates and rivets to the objects of his deputation. They were all congratulatory; one was from the chairman of the Liberal Association ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... old-fashioned marble mantel hung a life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done his sitter stern justice—one might call the result retribution; and one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely revealing it was. There he sat, solid, successful, informed with a sort of brutal egotism that never gives quarter. In despite of a malevolent determination to look pleasant, his smile was so much more of a threat than a promise that one could wish for his own sake he had scowled instead. He is a throaty man, is Inglesby; and this, with an uncompromising squareness ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... threw himself down once more in his arm-chair; and, tapping his shining hessians with the stem of his long clay in smiling abstraction, began, with all a lover's egotism, to expatiate on the theme that filled ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Revolution was subdued. Without being revolutionary either by nature or inclination, it was in that camp that he had grown up and prospered, and he could not desert it with safety. There are certain defections which skilful egotism takes care to avoid; but the existing state of public affairs, and his own particular position, pressed conjointly and weightily upon him at this juncture. What would become of the revolutionary cause and its partisans under the second Restoration, now imminently ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cultivated ambition in his soul, and taught him that failure meant disgrace. The spur that he applied to the boy acted with equal force on the girl, but with different results. For with ambition the rector sowed the seeds of a deadly egotism, and it found a favorable soil—at least in Sydney's heart. That the boy should strive for himself and his own glory—that was the lesson the rector taught him; and he ought not to have been surprised when, in later years, his son's ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... engaged a companion for the winter. It would be simply a superfluous egotism to say this to the public, except that I have a philanthropic motive for doing so. There are many lonely people who are in need of a companion possessing just such qualities as his; and he has brothers singularly like himself, whose services can be secured. ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... latter could not be imparted to him by men who had renounced the sweetest and most powerful of the social ties. Two ideas, his own self and what was above that self, engrossed his narrow and contracted mind. Egotism and religion were the contents and the title-page of the history of his whole life. He was a king and a Christian, and was bad in both characters; he never was a man among men, because he never condescended but ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to the state-Utopia of 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 police, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... perversion never paralysed or obscured his intellectual powers, though it might lower their aims. With regard to the plan and style of his works, he showed strong good sense and clear judgment. The man who indulged such narrowing egotism, such irrational scorn, would prime and polish without mercy the stanzas in which he uttered them." (Wonderful! that an egotist and a misanthrope should have been kept from defacing his own verses. Then follows our terrible bye-blow.) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... very unpleasant phrase, full of egotism and self-esteem, "I told you so," is even more common in the naive East than in the West. In this case the son's answer is far superior ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... please! But no matter! To their last day Jenkins's clients went about, showed themselves, cheated the devouring egotism of the crowd. They died on their feet, as became men and women ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men's prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be cured of them. My father's do not spring from any drop of bitterness, for he has not one—nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and he naturally partakes the opinions of his cotemporaries, who—the few surviving—believe all foreigners to be a sort of 'outside barbarians,' and especially regard those who ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... DID die—all of them—what would be the satisfaction to me in that? He judges me by himself. But he goes further, he actually pitches into me because, as he declares, 'any decent fellow' would die quietly, and that 'all this' is mere egotism on my part. He doesn't see what refinement of egotism it is on his own part—and at the same time, what ox-like coarseness! Have you ever read of the death of one Stepan Gleboff, in the eighteenth century? I read of it ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... think Mr. Dale liked it," he remarked, smiling. "They are not bad fellows at heart, but they've got the poison in their systems which seems, somehow or other, to become part of the equipment of the politician—self-interest, over-egotism, contraction of interest. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from egotism or conceit, always avoiding allusion to what she had accomplished, or her unfulfilled longings. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... 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
... of them, but he may reasonably claim that he shall not be publicly classified, labelled, catalogued, and placed In the shelves, on the strength of half of his work, and that half arbitrarily selected. If it be permitted to me without excess of egotism to name the masters to whom I went to school in the days of early manhood, so far from being revolutionists and terrorists, they belonged entirely to the opposite camp. Austin's Jurisprudence and Mill's Logic ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... both the hands of the picturesque scamp before him, with an affection that for an instant almost shamed the man who had ruined him. But Tucker's egotism whispered that this affection was only a recognition of his own superiority, and felt flattered. He was beginning to believe that he ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... brought a slight relief to his state of tension to go on wondering, while he watched and listened, just where the mystery lurked. Perhaps, after all, it was in the fact of her blank insensibility, an insensibility so devoid of egotism that it had no hardness and no grimaces, but rather the freshness of a simpler mental state. After living, as he had, as they all had, for the last few days, in an atmosphere perpetually tremulous with echoes ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... hypocrisy, would-be gentility, self-sufficient vanity, fashionable swindling, misanthropy, heartlessness, plain common-sense, knowledge of the world, coarse jealousy, irresolution, impudence, pride of birth, egotism, self-conceit, pusillanimity, ingenuity, roguery, affectations, homeliness, thoughtlessness, pedantry, arrogance, and many more faults and vices, find their representatives. The language which they employ is always natural ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... envy and jealousy; phrenzies of egotism in the vegetable kingdom: strange expressions of formidable hate and love, of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... 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 ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... What matters it that by concentrating all your means of action, availing yourselves of every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and restored the former order of things? Can you restore men's faith in it, or think you can long maintain it by brute force alone, now that all faith in it is extinct? Threatened ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... 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, amounting sometimes to merciless covetousness for what they cannot get,—this ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... another way and dropped into the first handy chair. The truth was as bare as a model. The force of it came to me like a blow between the eyes. Long ago, because of chilblains, I had adopted felt shoes. In that second of time I stood at the door the noiseless footgear cured me of all the egotism I ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... word and action is indispensable to one who would gain the friendship of his audience. Anything that savors of egotism at once creates a feeling of enmity. No one can endure another's consciousness of superiority even though the superiority be real. An appearance of haughtiness, self-esteem, condescension, intolerance of inferiors, or ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... I replied, with all an author's unconscious and simple egotism, "it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange tale will have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as regards the story I intended to ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of adverse circumstances as the combined result of parental egotism and pedantic, pedagogical ignorance, is it wonderful, I would ask, that the ghastly record of the hideous sacrifice of child-life is what it is, and that the young lives which do by chance escape the horrible holocaust, still reap the prevailing harvest of prolific ills of which the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... In literature mere egotism is delightful. It is what fascinates us in the letters of personalities so different as Cicero and Balzac, Flaubert and Berlioz, Byron and Madame de Sevigne. Whenever we come across it, and, strangely enough, it is rather rare, we cannot but welcome it, and do not easily forget it. Humanity will ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... was not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as the vain are—combative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system a passion not native to it. Jasper had expected so much from his marriage with the great man's daughter—counted so thoroughly on her power to obtain ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon the expedition—plenty of noise, plenty of fire, and, if so it must be, I shall disappear in the smoke." Having spoken thus, M. de Beaufort began to laugh; but his mirth was not reciprocated by Athos and Raoul. He perceived this at once. "Ah," said he, with the courteous egotism of his rank and age, "you are such people as a man should not see after dinner; you are cold, stiff, and dry when I am all fire, suppleness, and wine. No, devil take me! I should always see you fasting, vicomte, and you, comte, if you wear such a face as that, you shall ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... accomplished, of his class. In France, his reputation stands very high; and if in England it is not yet equally well-established, it must be attributed to his having written little, and to the absence of that charlatanry and egotism which has brought other cultivators of the Belles Lettres into such universal notice here and on the Continent. M. Dumas, for instance, even had his writings, and those of the numerous staff of literary aid-de-camps to whose bairns he stands godfather, been less diverting, would still have commanded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... weakness of Mademoiselle Prefere; and, thinking only of Jeanne, with the blindness of egotism, kept asking myself all along the road, "What are we going to do ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... of reproach. And justly, from any other point of view than that which the Bible, true to the most penetrating discernment of humanity, opens to us. These ideal forms are not the empty conceits of man's brain, bred from the fumes of his boundless egotism. They are not the clouds that gather and form and break into airy unreality in the atmosphere of earth. They are the shadows falling upon the soul of man from the unseen Realities, which alone have substantial and abiding being. The laws of nature ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... this hour I invite you to seek with me some principle to make our tolerance less chaotic. And, as I began my previous lecture by a personal reminiscence, I am going to ask your indulgence for a similar bit of egotism now. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... of Death Test of Character Character Forming Man the Final Earth Product Superstitions Self-Justice Symbolism Love Ideals of Love The Needs of Woman Man versus Woman Natural Cruelty of the Undeveloped The Worst Sin Reincarnation Processes of Reincarnation Education of Children Egotism Responsiveness Hell The Commonplace Petroleum Law Communism Happiness Pain Foes in the Household The Inner Life Root of Evils Rest in Change Miserliness Special Providence Human Destiny Ethical Law Human Life Animal Likeness Natural ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable, would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was reversing the duty of a Christian and a great ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... humours, how things affected him, what they really were to him, Michael, much more than man, all this Gaston came to know, as the world knew it afterwards in the Essays, often amused, sometimes irritated, but never suspicious of postures, or insincerity. Montaigne himself admitted his egotism with frank humour:—"in favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our private confession, I confess myself in public." And this outward egotism of manner was but the symptom of a certain deeper doctrinal egotism:—"I have no other end in writing but ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... deeply interested in many of the letters he received, and gave his best in his prompt replies; but he evidently also received an immense number of letters from people who did not desire guidance so much as sympathy and communication. The inconsiderate egotism of unimaginative and yet sensitive people is what creates the burden of such a correspondence; and though he answered his letters faithfully and duly, and contrived to say much in short space, yet he felt, as I have ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whip in the country. In the latter field I would gladly have yielded him all honors, but his attentions to Esther were altogether too marked to please either me or my employer. I am free to admit that I was troubled by this turn of affairs. The junior mail contractor made up in egotism what he lacked in appearance, and no doubt had money to burn, as star route mail contracting was profitable those days, while I had nothing but my monthly wages. To make matters more embarrassing, a blind man could ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... not think that the foreigner, after geologizing in my company, would have had any very vehement desire, in the event of a war, to cut me down, or to knock me on the head. I am afraid this chapter would require a long apology, and for a long apology space is wanting. But there will be no egotism, and much ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... student of history it is no new thing that a whole community should be given over "to believe a lie,"—not the less mad, because all mad together. The process by which this state of things is brought about is always substantially the same. Egotism, vanity, disappointed ambition, sectional jealousies, a real or supposed interest or expediency induce them to wish that a wrong course were the right one. They try to convince themselves that it is so, and all such efforts to sophisticate the conscience, ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... Tom my instructor, although he and I were much too good friends to try conclusions on the point, and I was the acknowledged leader of the school. Athletics, indeed, were my strong point, for I may say, almost without egotism, that I had so cultivated my muscles to the sad neglect of my proper studies, that I could swim like a fish, dive like an Indian pearl hunter, run swifter than anybody else, and play cricket and football with the best; but, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Elizabeth Christine, a companion, that they may sing their sorrows to each other. No, I have not the bravery of my kingly brother, to make a feeling, human being unhappy in order to satisfy state politics. No, I possess not the egotism to purchase my freedom with the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... prepared for their adoption; reformers and statesmen are thus in advance of their age, and through high ethical judgment and the inspiration of rectitude, see above the clouds of selfishness and beyond the limits of egotism, into the eternal truth of things. It was this wisdom, sustained by, if not born of, integrity and disinterestedness, that distinguished the highest class of our Revolutionary and Constitutional statesmen, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... perform some years ago, I recognise more fully than I did at the outset the greatness of this difficulty, and I am only too conscious that, at the best, I have succeeded but partially in overcoming it. The egotism which is inseparable from a narrative written, as this necessarily is, in the first person, is perhaps the most obvious of all the defects which it must present to the reader. Quite frankly I may say that, on reading these pages, I am filled with something like confusion by the extent ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... and rigorously to deny him the use (except in their accustomed and orthodox 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
... of Balzac's relations to his mother, Mr. F. Lawton (Balzac) states: "Madame Balzac was sacrificed to his improvidence and stupendous egotism; nor can the tenderness of the language—more frequently than not called forth by some fresh immolation of her comfort to his interests—disguise this unpleasing side of his character and action. . . . And his epistolary good-byes were odd mixtures of ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... to face with the result of her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in arrant egotism once more! Suppose—no, she would suppose nothing. She must believe that all she had done was for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... runs to lees, never gives us the vapid leavings of himself, is never 'weary, stale, and unprofitable,' but always setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some old nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful, for there is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack of something to write about, but because some circumstance that has happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject, and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible illustration ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry of the human always!) had I known—if I had known—I would many times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as Tinsley and Herrera possess, of having aided him ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the dreamer, I can answer that, for he is no less a person than myself;—as I might have told you from the beginning, only that the critics murmur over my consistent egotism;—and as I am positively forced to tell you now, or I could advance but little further with my story. And for the Little People, what shall I say they are but just my Brownies, God bless them! who do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entrusted to you, and that you cannot abuse her submission and weakness without sin. Oh! my dear brother, what proud happiness should be yours! Henceforth, you will no longer live in the selfish egotism of solitude. At all hours you will have a lovable duty before you. There is nothing better than to love, unless it be to protect those whom we love. Your heart will expand; your manly strength will increase a hundredfold. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... character is at its height in the first two books. Coleridge justly compared it to that of Napoleon. There is the same pride, the same Satanic ability, the same will, the same egotism. His character seems to grow with his position. He is far finer after his fall, in misery and suffering, with scarcely any resource except in himself, than he was originally in heaven; at least, if Raphael's description of him ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. 'I'll show him what money can do!' Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate's—spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name—I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... he can violate both the human and the divine law for personal ends, and express himself in fantastic or indecent or impious ways. The older supernaturalism exalts the individualism of the Creator; naturalism the egotism of the creature. I make the contrast not merely to excoriate naturalism, but to point out the interdependence between man's apparently far-separated expressions of his spirit, and how subtly misleading ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... agreed. I shall work very hard, and in a few years, Cynthia, we shall be together, never to part again. Oh, Cynthia," he cried, carried away by the ecstasy of this dream which he had, summoned up, "why do you resist me? I love you as no man has ever loved," he exclaimed, with scornful egotism and contempt of those who had made the world echo with that cry through the centuries, "and you love me! Ah, do you think I do not see it—cannot feel it? You ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... classes. Betwixt the fumes of the brandy which he so freely drank and the folly of the melodramatic parts which he was wont to act, his brain became saturated with a passion for notoriety, which grew into the very mania of egotism. His crime was as stupid as it was barbarous; and even from his own point of view his achievement was actually worse than a failure. As an act of revenge against a man whom he hated, he accomplished nothing, for he did not ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... my father's affections to my life. Not only was I his son, I was his only son. Moreover, I was the only living child of the beloved wife of his youth—all that remained to him of my fair mother. Then I was the heir to his property, the hope of his family, and, without undue egotism, I may say, from what I have been told, that I was a quaint, original, and (thanks to Mrs. Bundle) not ill-behaved child, and that, for a while at least, I should have been much missed in the daily life ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... have prevented my returning. Of 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 be met by a relative. She has a fair ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... bodily, its prosperity, such as it is, has been produced.' This assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers and speakers. It is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. I say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the common folk—of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant Protestant, standing close to the altar, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... moment all seemed lost—his play, his own position, and Helen. Helen would surely drop him. The incredible had happened—he had not merely defeated himself, he had brought battle and pain and a stinging reproof to a splendid, triumphant woman. The enormous egotism involved in this he did not at the moment apprehend. He was like a wounded animal, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... at her with wide eyes and assumed an air of being engaged in desperate conflict. It was evident that his egotism was transforming this conversation into a monstrous wrestling with Apollyon. "Ah! You're a Socialist. They only think of giving people money. But it isn't money people need. Oh, no. 'What shall it profit ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... This feeling on O'Connell's part will 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 eloquence or personal power to Conciliation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... having at once heart and head?" said Julien to himself, on reaching the Palais Savorelli, where Hafner lived, and recalling the Marquis's choler on the one hand, and on the other the egotism of Maitland, of which Florent's last words reminded him. His apprehension of the afternoon returned in a greater degree, for he knew Montfanon to be very sensitive on certain points, and it was one of those points which would be wounded to the quick by the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... though deep, was not very rough,—the wind not blowing right on shore (it was a blunder of the Greeks who missed stays),—the Doctor exclaimed, 'Save him, indeed! by G—d! save me rather—I'll be first if I can'—a piece of egotism which he pronounced with such emphatic simplicity as to set all who had leisure to hear him laughing[2], and in a minute after the vessel drove off again after striking twice. She sprung a small leak, but nothing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... eminent philosophers of the age, who represented the three most vigorous and important Greek schools. It is fair to conclude that he must have become thoroughly acquainted with their spirit, and with the main tenets of each. His own statements, after every deduction necessitated by his egotism has been made, leave no doubt about his diligence as a student. In his later works he often dwells on his youthful devotion to philosophy.[11] It would be unwise to lay too much stress on the intimate connection which subsisted between the rhetorical and the ethical teaching of the Greeks; ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... or nobody else would," he replied, and here, in the passion of his voice there sounded egotism rather than hunger for a woman's love. "But I reckon I'd have struck West anyhow, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... he was elected to the chair of Anatomy in Harvard, a position he held till his resignation in 1882; a successful professor, it is as an essayist, novelist, and poet that he is remembered; the appearance of "The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table," with its quaint humour, fresh thought, and charming egotism took literary America by storm; the "Professor" and the "Poet at the Breakfast-Table" followed in after years, and remain his most widely popular works; "Elsie Venner," a novel dealing with the problem of heredity, "The Guardian ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. 'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher—the highest joys. Genius claims to be ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... quench in my heart that familiar acquaintance in Christ Jesus, which half a year did engender, and almost two years did nourish and confirm,' but also the following striking general statement, which, like many things from Knox, impresses us by a certain straightforward and noble egotism: ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... West and Shee[C] in his mere 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 to praise what was excellent in the works of others; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... phrases," said she with her odd twist of the mouth, so like her grandfather. It was from a more practised philanthropist than the young lady to whom it was addressed, and was in a strain of fulsome adulation, redolent of gratitude for favors to come. Religious and benevolent egotism is impervious to the tiny sting of sarcasm. Mrs. Chiverton looked complacently lofty, and Bessie had not now to learn how necessary to her was the incense of praise. Once this had provoked her contempt, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... concerned with Mendelian speculation, have not reported from what stock his family sprang. Scientific curiosity and nationalistic egotism have compelled modern biographers to become anthropologists. Vergil has accordingly been referred, by some critic or other, to each of the several peoples that settled the Po Valley in ancient times: the Umbrians, the Etruscans, the Celts, the Latins. The evidence cannot be mustered into ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... Morning Herald, with an enigmatic expression on her face, and betaking herself to the skating-pond, cut grapevines with greater assiduity than ever, and with a degree of taciturnity surprising in a person usually so talkative. That she had taken the first step away from the devouring egotism of childhood was proved by the fact that at least part of the time, this vigorous young creature, swooping about the icy pond like a swallow, was thinking pityingly ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not known it." He sat down, and I had a delightful hour's chat with him. One sees the man so plainly in his works, that his readers may almost be said to know him personally. He is thoroughly simple and natural, and those who call him egotistical forget that his egotism is only a naive and unthinking sincerity, like that of a child. In fact, he is the youngest man for his years that I ever knew. "When I was sixteen," said he, "I used to think to myself, 'when I am twenty-four, then will I be old indeed'—but now I am fifty-two, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... words, and, so to speak, in parenthesis, as an event long foreseen without much importance. And yet he owed him a great deal. Patricius was hard pressed, and he took immense trouble to provide the means for his son's education. But with the fine egotism of youth, Augustin perhaps thought it enough to have profited by his father's sacrifices, and dispensed himself from gratitude. In any case, his affection for his father must have been rather lukewarm; the natural differences ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... standing, in part of recent origin, whose existence was founded simply on their power to maintain it. In them for the first time we detect the modern political spirit of Europe, surrendered freely to its own instincts. Often displaying the worst features of an unbridled egotism, outraging every right, and killing every germ of a healthier culture. But, wherever this vicious tendency is overcome or in any way compensated, a new fact appears in history—the State as the outcome of reflection and calculation, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... a trace of egotism, for she and Lorraine both knew that none of the other girls had enough constructive talent or dramatic capability to put the finishing touches on the lines of the play. That was Patty's special forte, just as Clementine Morse was the one best fitted to plan the scenic effects, and ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... upon my neck and ate me up three several 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
... his naive explanation that Hannibal's "more than Punic perfidy" consisted mainly of ambushes and similar military strategies goes to show, as I have said, that whatever is unjust in our author's estimate was rather the result of the prejudiced deductions of national egotism than of facts wilfully or carelessly ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled by Storch's voice. He shuddered slightly and turned his face ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... particular. He has spoken frequently of himself both in verse and prose, and he continually shows that he thought highly of his own endowments; but if he praises himself, he does it with that dignified frankness and simplicity of conscious truth, which renders even egotism respectable and delightful: whether he describes the fervent and tender emotions of his juvenile fancy, or delineates his situation in the decline of life, when he had to struggle with calamity and peril, the more insight he affords us into his own sentiments and feelings, the more ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... then that the true Estabrook went tearing up through the crust of custom, manners, traditions, egotism, smugness, and self-love. From the depths of his personality, the man for whom I have since that moment had a deep regard, then called his soul and it came. He leaned forward and looked through the misty glass in the door, across the wind-swept ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... 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 to the popular ideal of a representative ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... life had Perry been so objectionable to Nelson as he was during those few minutes. The egotism of him to aspire to Frankie's love! And yet there came to Evan the stinging realization that he, himself, had failed to cherish that love. It was not the Bonehead's fault that he was engaged to her—who could blame ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Edith," 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 marry until ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... idiosyncrasies of the men left him undismayed. He perceived the steel of inflexible purpose beneath the windy egotism of Phinuit. The pompous histrionism of Monk, he knew, was merely a shell for the cold, calculating, undeviating selfishness that too frequently comes with advancing years. Nevertheless these two were factors whose ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... comforted him somewhat. Nothing of a scandalous or public demonstration of her feeling about her marriage was imminent. Nevertheless, his pride was hurt. In spite of the fact that he had suspected for a long time that his wife was cold,—was not "won,"—he had hitherto travelled along in complacent egotism. "They were a fairly happy couple" or "they geed as well as most," as he would have expressed it. He had not suspected that Margaret might feel the need of more than that. To-night he had heard and understood the truth,—and it was a blow. Deep down in his masculine ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the King of Prussia, 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 fire, sword and desolation, over the half ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... self-love. Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity, even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... votaries call pure truths, by the innate imperfections of the same. Both propose a reward for mere belief, and a penalty for simple unbelief; rewards and punishments being, by the way, very disproportionate. Thus they reduce everything to the scale of a somewhat unrefined egotism; and their demoralizing effects become clearer to every ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly brought down, a peer of the realm. Her frequent depreciation of Barnet in these terms had at times been so intense that he was sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved at the same low level on which he lived; but prudence had prevailed, for which he ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... As she sat there in the radius of lamp-light which, for so many evenings, had held Dick and herself in a charmed circle of tenderness, she saw that her love for her boy had come to be merely a kind of extended egotism. Love had narrowed instead of widening her, had rebuilt between herself and life the very walls which, years and years before, she had laid low with bleeding fingers. It was horrible, how she had come to sacrifice everything to the one passion ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... made men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known—to wit, patience and fortitude under poverty and distress; humility and beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth: and, in counteraction to that egotism, which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire, Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity, which is their loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge, indeed, becomes the magnificent crown of humanity—not the imperious despot, but ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Berkeley impatiently; to his childish egotism it seemed cruel and intolerable that any extremities should be considered save his own. "You know the lands are mortgaged as deeply as Monti and the entail would allow them. They threatened to foreclose—I think that's the word—and Royal has had God knows what work to stave them off. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... much ridiculed afterwards; but I pledge my word the man intended what he said; moreover, he went on, utterly regardless of surrounding critics, in all the seeming egotism of a warm and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... egotism he was awakened to a different one, by the thought that this day meant war and the change of all things he knew. He realised, with increasing resentment, that music would be neglected. And he wouldn't be able, for example, to camp out. He might ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... could by any philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him; he does not care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having been made ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting irregularities, made itself felt, and found zealous advocates. From this epoch are to be dated the first efforts to establish, in different ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... used to. Resolved, therefore, that, if ever I live to years, I will be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them, if rational, how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking. I am too dogmatical; I have too much of egotism; my disposition is always to be telling of my dislike and my scorn.' What a fine, fresh, fruitful, progressive, and peaceful world we should soon have if all our old and all our fast-ageing men would enter that extract into their diary! How the young would then love and honour and lean upon ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... that of the neurotic, not the primitive. It is megalomania and egotism and the pride of the man in the Bible that waxed fat and kicked. But the results are the same. She wants to destroy and simplify; but it isn't the simplicity of the ascetic, which is of the spirit, but the simplicity of the madman that grinds down all the contrivances ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which he was subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, and to deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked a certain disposition in him to egotism, sentimentality, and dogmatic vehemence. "The bridle and blinkers were never taken off ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... 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. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... it must be," murmured Jim, who was one of her rustic admirers. "Tell her," he continued, in the natural egotism of suffering, "she never did a better deed. ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... into which I have been led at such length will, I trust, not be set down by the reader to an unworthy egotism, but to their true source, a desire to correct a misapprehension to which I may have unintentionally given rise myself, and which has gained me the credit with some—far from grateful to my feelings, since undeserved—of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Brachiano and Flamineo, Webster clearly intended her to pass for a magnificent vixen, a beautiful and queenly termagant. Her boldness is the audacity of impudence, which does not condescend to entertain the thought of guilt. Her egotism is so hard and so profound that the very victims whom she sacrifices to ambition seem in her sight justly punished. Of Camillo and Isabella, her husband and his wife, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... will be conjectured without 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, even when she did not speak, to the feelings by which she ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... or interfered with his scheme of success, she would meet rock-like obduracy, both before and after marriage. She knew that Graydon had a sincere affection for her, and a faith in her which, even in her egotism, she was aware was unmerited—that he had a larger, gentler, and more tolerant nature, and would be easier to manage ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... 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, or ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... full of an egotism that dies hard. I believe that the Reclamation Service idea is an outgrowth of the fine democracy that our fathers brought to New England. I believe that the folks that are going to inherit America can't afford to lose the idea of the Service and I'm going to fight for it now till they get ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... not be misunderstood. This same sentiment can be at times something very different from a mere egotism—not that I mean to say it was such in the present case. Cecil Walpole fully represented the order he belonged to, and was a most well-looking, well-dressed, and well-bred young gentleman, only suggesting the reflection that, to live amongst such a class ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... perhaps the keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati—as he calls them, by a title borrowed from classical phraseology—whether they professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Don Mario's egotism soared to the sky. The great Bishop was actually being advised by him! Hombre! Where would it not end! He would yet remove to a larger town, perhaps Mompox, and, with the support of the great ecclesiastic, stand for election to Congress! He would show the Bishop what mettle he had in ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... opportunity 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 to have thought; ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... come to Stornham, and thus establish the customary social relations between their daughter's home and their own. That this seemed out of the question was owing to the fact that at the outset of his married life Sir Nigel had allowed himself to commit errors in tactics. A perverse egotism, not wholly normal in its rancour, had led him into deeds which he had begun to suspect of having cost him too much, even before Betty herself had pointed out to him their unbusinesslike indiscretion. He had done things he could not undo, and now, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to be quoted, suggests an instructive analysis of the mental qualities and disposition that go to make a good letter-writer—a dash of egotism, sensitiveness to outward impressions, literary charm, the habit of keeping a frank and familiar record of every day's moods, thoughts, and doings, the picturesque surroundings of a strange land. In these journal letters from Samoa the canon of improvisation is to a certain extent infringed, for ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... wonderful. But the sanity of madness is always wonderful—that is why madmen are such superb criminals. It is only a madman who can be really sane. Although I allowed him to see that I knew already something of the truth, he never betrayed himself by even a tremor. He had all the grand egotism of the born criminal. His disguise was impenetrable. He was never sure how far my knowledge went, but not a sign of anxiety did he ever show. We played a game of cross purposes. I used him, under the pretense of requiring his assistance, to keep him by my side, and in the hope that as he saw me draw ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... while resisting her impressions, we receive our principles from her. While the affected decency of our manners does not even grant to nature a pardonable influence in the initial stage, our materialistic system of morals allows her the casting vote in the last and essential stage. Egotism has founded its system in the very bosom of a refined society, and without developing even a sociable character, we feel all the contagions and miseries of society. We subject our free judgment to its despotic opinions, our feelings to its bizarre customs, and our ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... flowers which I cherished, warbled with the birds that I loved. But it quitted me at the door of the world, Stenio. It folded its white wings and veiled its radiant face! In return for my young love, they gave me—sixty years, the dregs of a selfish heart, egotism cowering over its fire, and cold for all its mantle of ermine! In place of the sweet flowers of my young years, they gave me these, Stenio!" and she pointed to her feathers and her artificial roses. "Oh, I should like to crush them under my feet!" and she put out the neatest ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spiritual subjects. Nobody shall ever need to be at the trouble of posthumously searching out and proclaiming my opinions on any topic whatever, apart from personalities. I will not withhold, nor disguise, nor soften them down; and if the charge of egotism be brought, let the accusers lay their hands upon their hearts, and declare that they would not have sanctioned another in performing for me, as a defunct writer, the office which nobody can fulfil half so well, because nobody can do it ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... at him with those blue, ecstatic eyes, so oblivious to his pain that for a moment a sort of impersonal amazement at such self-centredness held him silent. But after the first shock he spoke with a slow fluency that pierced Athalia's egotism and stirred an answering astonishment in her. His weeks of vague misgiving, deepening into keen apprehension, had given him protests and arguments which, although they never convinced her, silenced her temporarily. She had never known her husband in this character. Of course, she had ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... first time in his life met resistance. He was so transported with rage and disappointment that he ordered the slaves from whom Lygia had escaped to be flogged to death, while he set out to find the girl who had dared to thwart his desire. His egotism was so great that he would have seen the city and the whole world sunk in ruins rather than fail of his purpose. For days and days his search was unceasing, and at last he found Lygia, but in making ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... them you repudiate in yourself—a pretty spectacle, truly, of an exalted animal striving to disown the stuff of life out of which it is made, striving by use of the very reason that was developed by evolution to deny the possession of evolution that developed it. This may be good egotism, but it is not ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... as yet busily engaged in recognising acquaintances. Later they would drink freely and gamble, and perhaps fight. Toward all but those whom they recognised they preserved an attitude of potential suspicion, for here were gathered the "bad men" of the border countries. A certain jealousy or touchy egotism lest the other man be considered quicker on the trigger, bolder, more aggressive than himself, kept each strung to tension. An occasional shot attracted little notice. Men in the cow-countries shoot as casually as we strike matches, and some subtle instinct told ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... the encroachments of literary simplisme. The man of whom Delsarte speaks is not confined to such or such a category of the species. He proposes that aesthetics should interpret an all-comprehensive human nature, which is not made up alone of baseness, egotism and duplicity. Though it be subject to perversion, it has its luminous aspects, its radiant sides, and we should not too long turn ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... unseemly. He was pathetic in his anxiety to be very right; and only the assurance that Conkling was implacable took the sting out of the haughty presumption he encountered in that severe gentleman, whose egotism was so lofty it was ever imposing, when it would have been absurd in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... associate him with the transparent coquette, while at the same time manifesting disapproval of her by a fine reserve. Amelia felt herself scanned quietly, coldly, and half curiously, as if she belonged to some strange and hitherto unknown type, and her vivacious egotism began to fail her. She was much relieved therefore when Mildred excused herself and went to her room, for careless, light-hearted, and somewhat giddy Belle imposed no restraint. Roger, however, did not ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... dare-devil hilarity never failed. The solitude of the ranch, long endured, had left its ugly mark on all of them. They were starved for company and excitement; obsessed by strange ideas which they had evolved out of the tumuli of their past experience and clung to with dogged tenacity; warped with egotism; stubborn, boastful, or silent, as their humor took them, but now all eager to break the shell and mingle in the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... parenthesis, another jug of boiling water), "I brought to mind 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... shall be acquitted of egotism, although I add a few words respecting the peculiar embarrassments I have encountered, in composing these volumes. Soon after my arrangements were made, early in 1826, for obtaining the necessary materials from Madrid, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... himself to the charge of egotism, but I must run the risk of that, endeavouring to avoid the scathing criticism ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... that I have been fooled by my own egotism. I am twelve years older than you, Margaret, and there is nothing very romantic or interesting either in myself or my worldly position. Tell me that you do not love me. I am a proud man, I will not sue in forma pauperis. If you ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to him; and it might be said that his ruling passion was the desire of continual change. No man was ever characterised by greater levity or inconstancy of mind. In all things he looked only to himself, and to this egotism he sacrificed both subjects and Governments. Such were the secret causes of the sway exercised by Fouche during the Convention, the Directory, the Empire, the Usurpation, and after the second return of the Bourbons. He helped to found and to destroy every one ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of her imperfections by greater diligence. I never saw anyone so anxious to do a thing perfectly. The great Bertini in Florence said of her—'She will certainly be greater than Angelica Kauffman.' ... 'Alexandra,' he said, 'will rank with men.' The egotism of the creature! You see there are others who ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... has produced in the public opinion of the nations a state of mind which formerly would not have been regarded as possible in our age of internationalism and intellectuality. National egotism and the effort to assert one's own national interests by all and every means are dominating so exclusively each belligerent group that it forms for itself a closed circle of ideas, and under its influence ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Fortunately these efforts can never attain their ultimate objects in a world bristling with arms, where healthy egotism still directs the policy of most countries. God will see to it, says Treitschke, that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... right, and not because it is enacted." It does not even now venture to say with Philo Judaeus, "The good man seeks the day for the sake of the day, and the light for the light's sake; and he labours to acquire what is good for the sake of the good itself, and not of anything else." So far for the egotism, naive and unconscious, of Christianity, whose burden is, "Do good to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Strauss, though a few years afterward he changed his ground entirely. His position in this work was as mediator between reason and revelation. He brought into the conflict concerning Strauss' Life of Jesus an element of heated argument, and egotism, which ripened into his subsequent antagonism to the supernatural school. His entrance upon this field of strife may be comprehended by Schwartz's comparison of him with Carlstadt and Thomas Munzer, who had lived in the exciting period of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... was a boy," the Old Squire added, "I had a great admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte and loved to read of his great battles. Nearly all young people do admire him. But now that I see his motives and his acts more clearly, I regard him as a monster of egotism and brutal ambition." ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... forgotten ourselves by the lovers of good fellowship and good things." "Which we never shall be," said Bob; "for those eccentric tomes of ours must and will continue to amuse a laughter-loving age, when we are booked inside and bound for t'other world." There was not a little egotism, methought, about friend Transit's eulogy; but as every parent has a sort of poetical licence allowed him in praising his own bantlings, perhaps the patronage bestowed by the public upon the English Spy may excuse a little vanity ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... skill, wrestled with Guizot, strength; there men have mingled, have grappled, have fought, have brandished evidence like a sword. There, for more than a quarter of a century, hatred, rage, superstition, egotism, imposture, shrieking, hissing, barking, writhing, screaming always the same calumnies, shaking always the same clenched fist, spitting, since Christ, the same saliva, have whirled like a cloud-storm about ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... faithful to the woman of seventy. Most preposterous! Could any caricature of mine exceed in grotesqueness your sketch of yourself? You are a brave and a generous man all the same: and I suspect it is more hoodwinking than egotism—or extreme egotism—that blinds you. A certain amount you must have to be a man. You did not like my paint, still less did you like my sincerity; you were annoyed by my corrections of your habits of speech; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... In spite of its defects, the Roman administration was far superior to the kingdoms and commonwealths it had supplanted. The time for sovereign municipalities had long gone by. Those little states had destroyed themselves by their egotism, their jealousies, and their ignorance or neglect of individual freedom. The ancient life of Greece, all struggle, all external, no longer satisfied any one. It had been glorious in its day, but that brilliant democratic Olympus of demigods had lost its freshness, and become dry, cold, unmeaning, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... Birthmark Young Goodman Brown Rappaccini's Daughter Mrs. Bullfrog The Celestial Railroad The Procession of Life Feathertop: A Moralized Legend Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent Drowne's Wooden Image Roger Malvin's Burial The Artist of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... use of his third eye. By adding a third angle to his sight, every object he looked at stood out in greater relief. The world looked less flat—more realistic and significant. He had a stronger attraction toward his surroundings; he seemed somehow to lose his egotism, and ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... efforts of a hundred years, the real progress that has been achieved in ameliorating the relations between the social classes at the present day is slight, and sometimes one is impelled to doubt whether there has been any progress at all. The egotism of one side is met by the egotism of the other side. But appeals to mass egotism will no more elevate mankind, than appeals to individual egotism. Appeals to sympathy also will not permanently ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler |
