"Self-indulgent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hoarse and high, and his head bent forward. He spoke as though forgetful of Soolsby's presence: "As the East is from the West, so were we separate from these lovers of this world, the self-indulgent, the hard-hearted, the proud. I chose for the child that he should stay with me and not go to him, to remain among his own people and his own class. He was a sinister, an evil man. Was the child ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her own belongings, she would say an ill-natured word or two. She was mild and forbearing to her inferiors. Her hand was open to the poor. She was devoted to her husband and her children. In no respect was she self-seeking or self-indulgent. But, nevertheless, she appreciated thoroughly the comforts of a good income—for herself and for her children. She liked to see nice-dressed and nice-mannered people about her, preferring those whose fathers and mothers were nice before them. She liked to go about ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... work alone; we must be fellow-workers with Him, by helping forward the growth of holiness, the progress of the spiritual life, the poverty of the Cross, the spreading of His Spirit in opposition to the formal and self-indulgent spirit of the age, and this by every means in our power; and, above all, by multiplying amongst us Catholic schools and institutions. What the future may have in store for the Church in America we cannot ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... to see how men who take sides with dogma give themselves the airs of men who live for duty, while they regard the more curious among their fellows as licentious, trifling, irreverent and self-indulgent. The truth is, there is no greater luxury than dogma. It puts an eminence under the most stupid. At the same time I am not going to deny the pleasures of curiosity. We have only to see a cat looking up the chimney or examining ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... to perform them, that the society of the next few generations can be saved from constant convulsions. As intelligence expands, and a sense of the importance of social co-operation becomes diffused, it is almost certain that the existence of a merely idle and self-indulgent class will no longer be tolerated. Hence, it is as much to the interests of the wealthier classes themselves as of society at large, that their children should be educated with a full sense of their social responsibilities, and equipped with all the moral and intellectual ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... unredeemed by any one manly gift; idle, self-indulgent, false, and without a principle. She was a woman greatly gifted, with many virtues, capable of self-sacrifice, industrious, affectionate, and loving truth if not always true herself. And yet such a word as that from this brute sufficed to please her for the moment. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... in California" may prove of much practical utility, and should be read by all who are smitten with the gold fever. California is no place for the sick, the weak, the self-indulgent, the indolent, the desponding. There must be a willingness to work at anything and everything, and stout muscles to execute the will. Our author estimates that nearly one-third of the emigrants ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... ear; she broke now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fishwife. Strangely in contrast with these violent outlines of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... steps and they were at Helen's home. Mr. Harley himself, a tall, white-haired man, with a self-indulgent face singularly like his son Vincent's, answered the knock, shielding from the wind with one hand the flame of a fluttering ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... whatever is bad in its increase is bad in its birth. Now grief and all other perturbations are doubtless baneful in their progress, and have, therefore, no small share of evil at the beginning; for they go on of themselves when once they depart from reason, for every weakness is self-indulgent, and indiscreetly launches out, and does not know where to stop. So that it makes no difference whether you approve of moderate perturbations of mind, or of moderate injustice, moderate cowardice, and moderate intemperance; for whoever prescribes bounds to vice admits a part of it, which, as ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... more valued because she valued herself so highly, all the more coveted because superior to the sordid motives upon which even he had counted as the chief allies in his suit. In the intense longing of a self-indulgent nature he broke out, seizing her hand as he spoke: "O Miss Marian, do not deny me. I know I could make you happy. I would give you everything. Your slightest wish should be law. I would be ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... clear a conscience to be troubled by any scrutiny. All the evening Arthur's face wore the same look of depression, and Richard wondered what could be amiss. He learned afterward that the mother was so self-indulgent, and took so little care to make the money go as far as it could, that he had not merely to toil from morning to night at uncongenial labour, but could never have the least recreation, and was always too tired when ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... The conviction returned to him with fresh, poignant regret, in the peaceful hush and subdued splendour of the winter night. There were lines in his face which Mad should never have seen there, without which he would have been nearer heaven. There were hard, unbelieving lines, supercilious lines, self-indulgent lines, lines of the earth, earthy, corresponding to hard and gross lines in the spirit within. The respectable, prosperous merchant, had fallen from his original level. He had not attained to the chivalrous, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 'Sensual and self-indulgent—with a grossness that is even patent on his very portrait (and bust), Fox had nevertheless a manner which enchanted the sex, and he was the only politician of the day who thoroughly enlisted the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... evil or of good; and whose character removes the surprise which we might be inclined to feel at the position with respect to Queen Catherine in which she consented to be placed. A harsh critic would describe her, on this evidence, as a self-indulgent coquette, indifferent to the obligations of gratitude, and something careless of the truth. From the letter referring to her, preserved by Cromwell, it appears that she had broken a definite promise at a time when such promises were legally ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Mrs. Crocket, than whom no old woman in the public line was ever more generous, more peppery, or more kind, kept two clean bed-rooms, and could cook a leg of Dartmoor mutton and make an apple pie against any woman in Devonshire. "Drat your fish!" she would say, when some self-indulgent and exacting traveller would wish for more than these accustomed viands. "Cock you up with dainties! If you can't eat your victuals without fish, you must go to Exeter. And then you'll get it stinking mayhap." Now Priscilla Stanbury and Mrs. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... to see?" he screamed at them. "Came out to see? Ye didn't come out at all. None of you. That's what I've come to tell you. For years you've been leading your lazy, idle, self-indulgent lives, eating and drinking, sleeping, fornicating, lying with your neighbours' wives, buying and selling, living like hogs and swine. And is it for want of your being told? Not a bit of it. You are warned again and again and again. Every day gives ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... back in his chair, and thought busily. He felt anxious about his ward, who had entered college early and was now only seventeen. Walter Sherwood was a boy of excellent talent and popular manners, but he was inclined to be self-indulgent and had a large capacity for "enjoyment." His guardian had fondly hoped that he would lead the class in scholarship, but instead of this he was only doing "fairly well" in his studies. To be sure, he excelled in athletic sports, but, as Doctor ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... her husband's death was overwhelming. Her easy, luxurious, monotonous life had been very sweet to her, but her husband had been the dearest part of her life. She had taken little trouble to express her love for him, quite willing that he should take it for granted. She had been self-indulgent and vain; seeking her own ease, spending money and care on her own adornment; but she had not forgotten to make the Squire's life pleasant to him also. Newly-wedded lovers in the fair honeymoon-stage of existence could not have been fonder of each other than the middle-aged ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... aim in life was to have things to suit himself. When they ceased to be agreeable, he was ready for a change, without much regard for the means to his ends. He had always foreseen the possibility of the event which had now taken place, but, like all self-indulgent natures, had hoped ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... toying with a little Berlin wool-work. It involved pain, resistance, a stern revision of things hitherto taken for granted. The secrets which they designed to wring from nature and from life were not likely to be revealed to the self-indulgent and the dilettante. The sisters had a message from the sphere of indignation and revolt. In order that they should learn it as well as teach it, it was necessary that they should arrive on the scene at an evil hour for their own happiness. Jane Eyre ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... seriousness). You know very well, Candida, that I often blow them up soundly for that. But if there is nothing in their church-going but rest and diversion, why don't they try something more amusing—more self-indulgent? There must be some good in the fact that they prefer St. Dominic's to worse places ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... for the theatrical feast set before them in the shape of the "Non-Juror," and would prove none the less disgusted because the play happened to be an adaptation of Moliere's "Tartuffe." As the latter comedy depicts a self-indulgent, crawling hypocrite of the worst type, and is an eloquent sermon against sham, it may be imagined that the Jacobites were not over enthusiastic when they learned that the moral of "Tartuffe" was ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the city. The wealth of the family of the Germains was not equal to their rank, and the circumstances of the family were not made more comfortable by the peculiarities of the present marquis. He was an idle, self-indulgent, ill-conditioned man, who found that it suited his tastes better to live in Italy, where his means were ample, than on his own property, where he would have been comparatively a poor man. And he had a mother and four ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Germany—there is no certain insurance of one single life. This withdrawal would leave Germany organized entirely with reference to a Court, and there is no trustworthy guarantee that the succeeding Royal Personality may not be something infinitely more vain and aggressive, or something weakly self-indulgent or unpatriotic and morally indifferent. Much has been done in the past of Germany, the infinitely less exacting past, by means of the tutor, the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, the wide-seeing power beyond the throne, who very unselfishly intrigues his monarch in the way that ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... her speech brought his head up with a jerk. Instead of colourless harshness, it had a warm fury. It was not that she spoke loudly or on a high key; but it had an unbridled, self-indulgent sound. He got the impression that she put off all censorship from either her ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... domestic in his habits because an infirmity of temper had betrayed him into an attack upon a neighbor, or a neighbor's dog, and it was no longer safe for him to live much out-of-doors. The confinement had softened his temper, but it had rendered him effeminate and self-indulgent. He had, in fact, been spoiled by the boarders, and he now expected to be present at meals, and to be fed with choice morsels from their plates. As the cold weather came on he developed rheumatism, and demanded our ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... see, Fan, how good this is for me? If you think impartially of me, as you recollect me, you will see how soft and indolent I was, how easily I fell into self-indulgent habits, how little I cared to exert myself and try and exercise the influence, etc., a clergyman may be supposed to possess; there was nothing about me to indicate energy, to fit me for working out a scheme and stamping ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now immaturely fall a victim to an enticing face and the cares of a household? Would he be able to sustain his character? One thing was certain. He could never again expect to exercise precisely the same potent influence as he had in the past, over his earth-bound, self-indulgent friends. Self-indulgent people always exacted unusual privations from those who would seek to move them—and Robert's call was clearly to materialists rather than to the righteous. Pusey married, it was true. Keble married. No one thought ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... embonpoint which destroys in middle age so many a fine figure. On the contrary, there is not a superfluous ounce of flesh on that tall, alert figure; it is the figure of a trained athlete rather than the figure one would associate with a nobleman in the end of a self-indulgent and ever-eating and over-drinking century. The features, strong yet gentle, though far from regular, have considerable distinction, and the flowing red beard makes the face stand out in any assembly. Carefully but plainly dressed, erect, perfectly composed, and ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... his school-outfit of clothes were not ready to the last button, so that he could join the procession of schoolward-bound children, already streaming past his door at a quarter past eight. The most easy-going and self-indulgent mother learned to have at least one meal a day on time; and the children themselves during those eight years of their lives had imbedded in the tissue of their brains and the marrow of their bones that unrebelling habit of bending their backs daily to a regular burden of work not selected by themselves—which, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... only ten days old, when he died, Whittenden; but the tradition has come down to me. If he hadn't been so weak, so totally self-indulgent, he'd have been a genius. Even in the worst of his self-indulgence, he had ten times my mother's logic. If he had had one tenth of her will power, he'd have counted. As it was, though,—utter annihilation. He died, and left no record. My mother helped it on, by never mentioning him, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... what he was, he will not forget; lest he should forget that in him, that is, in his flesh—his natural character—dwelleth no good thing; lest he should forget that the good which he does, he does not, but Christ which dwelleth in him; lest he should grow careless, puffed up, self-indulgent; lest he should neglect to subdue his evil passions; and so, after preaching to others, himself become ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... are met with that are disagreeable, meet them as a man should; a woman always does,—or always has on trips taken with me. The "self-pitier," the "self-indulgent," the "fearful" also ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... consideration, and for some days the Abbot thought over in his mind the difficult question of how he should dispose of the gift. On the one hand, it would be pleasant for the monks to be spared so much toil, but, on the other, it would make them lazy and self-indulgent, and the world would find reason for scandal and reproof. So finally he determined to sell the ass, in order to save the expense of his keep, and to put by the money which its sale would fetch. He would save himself from any annoyance and, in addition, ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... say this sort of mad extravagance does good; I cannot think it. It surely matters comparatively little that the insane luxury of the self-indulgent feeds the bodies of so many hundred people if at the same time the mischievous example of their folly and extravagance is demoralizing their hearts and minds and injuring a great ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... confessed the next day when, at one o'clock, Elizabeth found herself the first arrival at his house, that he had been very self-indulgent. ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... flowed at first through the habitude of courtship, he found his sultana no way ready to resign her slave; there were abundance of tears, poutings, and small tempests, there were discontents, pinings, upbraidings. St. Clare was good-natured and self-indulgent, and sought to buy off with presents and flatteries; and when Marie became mother to a beautiful daughter, he really felt awakened, for a time, to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you as upon an instrument; more concerned that you should acknowledge his power than have any depth of feeling." Thackeray, whose opinion is just quoted, calls him "a great jester, not a great humorist." He had lived a careless, self-indulgent life, and was no honor to his profession. His death was like a retribution. In a mean lodging, with no friends but his bookseller, he died suddenly from hemorrhage. His funeral was hasty, and only attended ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... new tendency more decidedly and exclusively. Menander (342-293 B.C.) was one of the first of these poets, and he is also the most perfect of them. The Athens of his day differed from that of the time of Pericles, in the same way that an old man, weak in body but fond of life, good-humored and self-indulgent, differs from the vigorous, middle-aged man at the summit of his mental strength and bodily energy. Since there was so little in politics to interest or to employ the mind, the Athenians found an object in the occurrences of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... he had never before been so thoroughly fascinated and awakened; and it was in accordance with his pleasure-loving, self-indulgent nature to drift on this shining tide withersoever ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... she said, "I have no more time for illness. This is a thing to cure, as a cautery cures—to burn away all idleness and self-indulgent, sick room fancies. See, I am ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... our trouble is that we have been self-indulgent. For decades, we have been voting ever-increasing levels of Government benefits, and now the bill has come due. We have been adding so many new programs that the size and the growth of the Federal budget has taken on ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... graces of the princess whom he fancied he had married. It may seem hard of belief that this man, judging him by his actions at this time, could have had anything of thorough self-forgetfulness and manliness in his nature. But when things were at their very worst, when he appeared to the world as a self-indulgent idler, careless of a noble woman's unbounded love; when his indifference, or worse, had actually driven from his house a young wife who had especial claims on his forbearance and consideration,—there were two people who still believed in Frank Lavender. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... answer varied with my health, varied with my mood and the conduct of the people I was watching. How fine can people be? How generous?—not incidentally, but all round? How far can you educate sons beyond the outlook of their fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-indulgent class above the protests of its business agents and solicitors and its own habits and vanity? Is chivalry in a class possible?—was it ever, indeed, or will it ever indeed be possible? Is the progress that seems ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... noted that Venice had "two aspects, one sensuous and self-indulgent, the other lofty, spiritual, and even severe. Both aspects," he continues, "are in its history and both are also in its art. Titian often represents the former. The loftier, nobler Tintoretto gives us the second. There is something in his greatest pictures, as, for instance, in the Crucifixion, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... wildly impulsive people repent them of their generosities as soon as the magnanimous fervour has cooled. The grandeur of Paragot lay in the fact that he never repented. He was fantastic, self-indulgent, wastrel, braggart, what you will; but he had an exaggerated notion of the value of every human soul save his own. The destiny of poor Blanquette was to him of infinitely more importance than that of the wayward genius that was Paragot. The ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... himself. Every now and then Sandy must have felt alarmed about his health or his figure, for he ate less, and walked gravely and sulkily up and down the verandah for hours, but as soon as he considered himself out of danger, he relapsed into all his self-indulgent ways. No one ventured to offer Sandy anything but the choicest meats, and he was wont to sit up and beg like a dog for a savoury tit-bit. But he would revenge himself on you afterwards for the humiliation, you might ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... quickly was a guaranty of her own metal. She felt something of that satisfaction that strong men feel when they prove, for their own eyes alone, their self-worth. It was the instinct that sends the self-indulgent business man, riding to his work in a limousine, into the depths of the dreadful wilderness to hunt, and that urges the tenderfoot to climb to the crest of ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... looks rapidly," was her constant complaint. As she had just passed thirty there was, in Jane's opinion, not the smallest excuse for this. The remedy, the preventive, was obvious—diet and exercise. But Martha, being lazy and self-indulgent and not imaginative enough to foresee to what a pass a few years more of lounging and stuffing would bring her, regarded exercise as unladylike and dieting as unhealthful. She would not weaken her system by taking less than was demanded by "nature's infallible ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Mrs. Thrale, who had asked him how he did, 'Ready to become a scoundrel, Madam; with a little more spoiling you will, I think, make me a complete rascal[2]:' he meant, easy to become a capricious and self-indulgent valetudinarian; a character for which I have heard him ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... occurrences confined to the humbler walks of life. There, perhaps, less than in any other do they occur. It is in the wealthy, the luxurious, the self-indulgent class that they ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... purpose: he wished, of course, to secure the boy's interest to himself; but he also wished Garth and Natalie to see what a fine, generous fellow he could be when he got half a chance. There was a great deal of the child in the self-indulgent trader; and he had not lived among the breeds for twenty-five years without imbibing many of their characteristics. As to the boy, Garth and Natalie felt not a moment's uneasiness; Charley met Nick's advances with a kind of imitative bluster, that was a ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... for a cloister than a dukedom; but the choice was not open to him, an only son, with the welfare of the Normans dependent on him; and while living in the world, his saintly aspirations did not preserve him from a self-indulgent life at home, or from unjust dealing abroad. But he had many fits of devotion. Once when hunting on the banks of the Seine, he came on the ruins of the Abbey of Jumieges; which had, many years before, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... vain and proud, selfish, self-indulgent, thoroughly insincere, utterly ill-mannered, shockingly ill-informed, astonishingly ill-educated (capable of speaking several languages but incapable of saying a sensible word in any of them), living and flourishing ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the gaiety, the splendor, and the supremacy of the new existence intoxicated the young sovereign somewhat. The pleasures of her capital and the homage of the world captivated her imagination, while the consciousness of power and wealth and personal loveliness inclined her to be self-indulgent and self-willed. In spite of the good counsel of the family Mentor, Baron Stockmar, and of her sagacious uncle, Leopold, she must have committed some errors of judgment—fallen into some follies; she was so young and impulsive—so ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... issue is certain, because of the very nature of God. It is outlined with keen irony. Amos sees in imagination the long procession of sad captives, and marching in the front ranks, the self-indulgent Sybarites, whose pre-eminence is now only the melancholy prerogative of going first in the fettered train. What has become of their revelry? It is gone, like the imaginary banquets of dreams, and instead of luxurious lolling on silken couches, there is the weary tramp of the captive exiles. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... had a little more premeditation before his fault, or a little more repentance after it; that is, while repentance could still be of use. Not that, all things considered, he is not a very fair image of a frank-hearted, well-meaning, careless, self-indulgent young gentleman; but the author has in his case committed the error which in Hetty's she avoided,—the error of showing him as redeemed by suffering. I cannot but think that he was as weak as she. A weak woman, indeed, is weaker than a weak man; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... provided she might have entire charge of him, and his parents somewhat hastily consented. By her he had been well fed and well clothed, but not well educated. She was capricious, fond of gossip, and self-indulgent; and continually she would, in order to be rid of him, send him down amongst the servants, who, as her country residence was in a remote village, were more than usually ignorant. There he imbibed many of their prejudices, and learned to believe in many of their ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... is exactly what Australia is over-stocked with already—a discontented clerk. If he be spoilt by luxury here, do you think he would bear with a rude colony? No. Fulbert is a gruff, obstinate boy, but not idle and self-indulgent; and I am not afraid to undertake him, but ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have heard that from your uncle—self-indulgent, fond of trivial pleasures. Such men never succeed in life. But if you were certain to be Lord Chancellor—if you could this moment prove yourself possessed of a splendid fortune—my feelings would be unchanged. You have lied to me as no gentleman ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and would have been pretty if she had not been much too plump. She wore an extremely smart travelling-dress and a wonderful dust-cloak of cool, pale, thin silk. She was not an elegant person, but her appointments were luxurious and self-indulgent. Her daughter was pretty, and had a slim, swaying waist, soft pink cheeks, and a pouting mouth. Her large picture-hat of pale-blue straw, with its big gauze bow and crushed roses, had a slightly exaggerated ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I am so sorry that I have disturbed you; excuse me; and let me lie here for half an hour to recover myself. I do not wish to be self-indulgent; but I am exhausted. I ran all the way from Brudenell Hall to Baymouth to get—to see—to see—" His voice broke down with a sob, he covered his face with his hands, and shook ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... those who rival thee In his affections. Should thy wedded lord Treat thee with harshness, thou must never be Harsh in return, but patient and submissive. Be to thy menials courteous, and to all Placed under thee, considerate and kind: Be never self-indulgent, but avoid Excess in pleasure; and, when fortune smiles, Be not puffed up. Thus to thy husband's house Wilt thou a blessing prove, and not a curse. What thinks ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the George, then, and I'll try. Poor creatures! but they look tried." As they parted, she added: "I haven't nearly done with you, though, Helen. You have been most self-indulgent. I can't get over it. You have less restraint rather than more as you grow older. Think it over and alter yourself, or we ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... North any hope that their visit might revive some lingering desire he still combated to enter once more the world they represented, that hope would have soon died. Whatever effect this episode had upon the solitary,—and he had become so self-indulgent of his sorrow, and so careless of all that came between him and it, as to meet opposition with profound indifference,—the only appreciable result was a greater attraction for the solitude that protected ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... shame and self-reproach, not merely on every scandal which he may have caused by breaking the moral and social laws of humanity, by neglecting to restrain his appetites, pay his bills, and keep his engagements; but also on every conceited word and look, every gaucherie and rudeness, every self-indulgent moroseness and fastidiousness, as sins against the sacred charge which has been committed to him; and determine with that Jew of old, who, to judge from his letter to Philemon, was one of the most perfect gentlemen of God's making who ever walked this earth, to become ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... delayed, Jane. Freddy is a weak, self-indulgent fool, and is eating his way into the next world. It will be a happy day for you when an apoplectic ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... among rude scenes and rough people, inured him to hardships, and made him apt at expedients; while his intercourse with his cultivated brother, and with the various members of the Fairfax family, had a happy effect in toning up his mind and manners, and counteracting the careless and self-indulgent habitudes of the wilderness. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... the blood of one or both of the parents. They gave him special attractions and laid him open to not a few temptations. Too many young men born to shine in social life, to sparkle, it may be, in conversation, perhaps in the lighter walks of literature, become agreeable idlers, self-indulgent, frivolous, incapable of large designs or sustained effort, lose every aspiration and forget every ideal. Our gilded youth want such examples as this of Motley, not a solitary, but a conspicuous one, to teach them how much better is the restlessness of a noble ambition than the ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... might have married you over and over again; but I was not quite so infatuated. I shall just run across and settle up about this little affair on Wednesday. As you are five miles from the station, as the weather is perfectly awful, as moreover I am a luxurious, self-indulgent baronet and as this story would never get on unless I walked, don't send to meet ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... that income shall be spent, and that in turn affects in the long run the amount of income they will have. Thus also there are limitations, none the less real, because they are often self-imposed and self-indulgent. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... figuratively of a lazy stream. The inert person seems like dead matter (characterized by inertia), powerless to move; the sluggish moves heavily and toilsomely; the most active person may sometimes find the bodily or mental powers sluggish. Slothful belongs in the moral realm, denoting a self-indulgent aversion to exertion. "The slothful hideth his hand in his bosom; it grieveth him to bring it again to his mouth," Prov. xxvi, 15. Indolent is a milder term for the same quality; the slothful man hates action; the indolent man loves ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... and sit for half-an-hour in the arbour under the roses, while I kill the green fly—the aphides, Mrs Champernowne—which increase and multiply at a rate which is absolutely marvellous. Pickle, my boy, I hope you will never grow up as weak and self-indulgent as your uncle. Fill me my ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... we drop to the sensuous inactive side of the Phaeacian world, the luxurious, self-indulgent phase of their life, which is also imaged in their ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... gay man, a voluptuary, and a gambler. His vicious tastes had survived the means of their gratification. His love for his wife had been nothing more than one of those vehement and headstrong fancies, which, in self-indulgent men, sometimes result in marriage, and which seldom outlive the first few months of that life-long connection. Mrs. Marston was a gentle, noble-minded woman. After agonies or disappointment, which none ever suspected, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... To the self-indulgent, the pleasure-loving, the sensual, Spiritualism presents itself under a less subtle disguise than to the more refined and intellectual; in its grosser forms they find that which is in harmony with their inclinations. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... cried Mr. Parr. "Those who are dissatisfied with things as they are because they have been too stupid or too weak or self-indulgent to rise, find it easy to twist the principles of Christianity into revolutionary propaganda. It's a case of the devil quoting Scripture. The brotherhood of man! There has never been an age when philanthropy and organized charity were on such ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... carpenter, a farm-worker, a janitor, a school teacher, a student, and a military commander, and now that he had taken his place in the grand council of the nation, he was not going to begin a life of self-indulgent idleness. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... or a diplomat he would have gone far, but he had been too much occupied with Life as an entertainment, too self-indulgent for work of any order. Having, however, been born with a certain type of brain, it observed and recorded in spite of him, thereby adding flavour and interest to existence. But ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... make boots and shoes and was proud of his skill as a cobbler. He gave up field sports because they were cruel, and renounced tobacco, the one luxury of Mazzini, because he held it unhealthy and self-indulgent. Money was so evil a thing in his sight that he would not use it and did not carry it with him. "What makes a man good is having but few wants," he said wisely. There were difficulties in the way of getting rid of all his property, for the children of the family ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... journey over the bare mountains with my new friend and benefactor. He was a strange gentleman, now jolly enough to make me shake with laughter and forget the sorrow of my parting, now moody for a night and a day; now he was all sweetness, now all fire; now he was abstemious, now self-indulgent and prodigal. He had a will like flint, and under it a soft heart. Cross his moods, and he hated you. I never thought to cross them, therefore he called me Davy, and his friendliness grew with our journey. His anger turned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were then unknown; and Jucundus depended on certain artists whom he imported, especially on two Greeks, brother and sister, who came from some isle on the Asian coast, for the supply of his trade. He was a good-natured man, self-indulgent, positive, and warmly attached to the reigning paganism, both as being the law of the land and the vital principle of the state; and, while he was really kind to his orphan nephews, he simply abominated, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... suspecting Claudius' displeasure, he withdrew into the wilds of Asia, where he came as near to being an exile as afterwards to being an emperor. He was a strange mixture of good and bad, of luxury and industry, courtesy and arrogance. In leisure he was self-indulgent, but full of vigour on service. His outward behaviour was praiseworthy, though ill was spoken of his private life. However, with those who were under him or near him, and with his colleagues he gained great influence by various devices, and seems to have been the sort of man who would more ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the richest Montepulciano, who could not sit long in a room that was not garlanded with flowers, who said he felt lonely in an apartment without a fine cast of the Venus de' Medici in it,—this self-indulgent voluptuary at last committed several forgeries on the Bank of England, and the Old Bailey sessions of July, 1837, sentenced him to transportation for life. While he was lying in Newgate prior to his departure, with other convicts, to New South ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... himself off from the society of mankind to enshroud himself in study and meditation. He who acknowledged a secret tendency to the Epicurean indolence—was he going to live a life of the dilettante and the self-indulgent under cover of holiness? Alone could action save him from selfishness. Others doubtless fulfilled the laws of charity in praying, in mortifying themselves for their brethren. But when, like him, a man has exceptional faculties of persuasion and eloquence, such vigour in ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... should form very unfavorable expectations of the conduct in action. Macota is lively and active; but whether from indisposition or want of authority, undecided. The Capitan China is lazy and silent; Subtu indolent and self-indulgent; Abong Mia and Datu Naraja stupid. However, the event must settle the question; and, in the mean time, it was resolved that the small stockade at this place was to be picked up, and removed to our new position, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... our children do for spirituous or exciting drinks and drugs, and as savages do for tobacco and spirits. But he has also made another discovery, which is, that flesh-eating almost ruins them for labor. Instead of being strong, robust, and active, they soon become lazy, self-indulgent, and effeminate. This is a specimen—perhaps a tolerably fair one—of the natural tendency of such food in all ages and countries. Man every where does best, nationally and individually, other things being equal, on a well-chosen diet of vegetables, fruits, and water. In proportion ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... FAIR: "Maynard was a man who got his marriages inextricably entangled. It was not altogether his fault: his first wife should have been more open with him. If she had not been a bigamist, he would not have been a bigamist.... He was a self-indulgent weakling of the most despicable kind; and Mr. Flowerdew has worked out his character ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... in the case of this boy and girl, the misfortune was aggravated greatly by the peculiarities of the father's character. Mr Amedroz was not a bad man as men are held to be bad in the world's esteem. He was not vicious was not a gambler or a drunkard was not self-indulgent to a degree that brought upon him any reproach; nor was he regardless of his children. But he was an idle, thriftless man, who, at the age of sixty-seven, when the reader will first make his acquaintance, had as yet done no good in the world whatever. Indeed he had done terrible evil; ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... into coarse dissipation, and it might still be hoped that the two youths would drag through without public disgrace; but this was felt to be a very poor hope by those who felt each sin to be a fatal blot, and trembled at the self-indulgent way of life that might be a more fatal injury than even the ban of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... self-indulgent years The outflung heart of youth, Than pleasant songs in idle ears The tumult ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... transient as they were intense. Nothing that was not immediately present to her senses was ever capable of a deep impression upon her spirit, and she had the facility characteristic of the self-loving and self-indulgent of putting aside any matter that was unpleasant. Thus, easily self-persuaded, as we have seen, that this escapade of Richard's was not to be regarded too seriously, and that its consequences were not likely to be gave, she chattered with gay inconsequence of other things—of the dinner-party ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... works industriously, and loves her mother, and feels the obligation, which the poor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not in so much moral danger as other girls of her age who lead idle and self-indulgent lives. The working-girls of the city learn to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with an equal ease, gives up smoking after fifteen years of constant practice; shaves with a conscious effort every morning and is capable of forgetting to do so if intent upon anything else. He is generally self-indulgent, capable of keen enjoyment and quite capable of intemperance, but he has no invariable delights and no besetting sin. Such a man will not become an habitual drunkard; he will not become anything "habitual." But with another ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... and Africa. His worst enemies were always his fellow Mahommedans. After he was defeated by the Christians at Alhandega in 939 through the treason of the Arab nobles in his army (see SPAIN, History) he never again took the field. He is accused of having sunk in his later years into the self-indulgent habits of the harem. When the undoubted prosperity of his dominions is quoted as an example of successful Mahommedan rule, it is well to remember that he administered well not by means of but in spite of Mahommedans. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hers there—touching up his sonnets, &c., with fastidious care; and occasionally giving himself the pleasure of a visit to the Gibsons, and enjoying the society of the two pleasant girls there, he found little time for being with his father. Indeed Osborne was too self-indulgent or 'sensitive,' as he termed it, to bear well with the squire's gloomy fits, or too frequent querulousness. The consciousness of his secret, too, made Osborne uncomfortable in his father's presence. It was very well for all parties ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... queen she was ruler indeed, "the one overmastering influence in his life."[8] From that time on we see her, restraining her husband from his self-indulgent habits, improving his administration, crossing flooded rivers and leading attacks on elephants to save him from captivity; "a beautiful queen, beautifully dressed, clever beyond compare, contriving and scheming, plotting, planning, shielding and ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... nothing of the softness of love. She had no imagination. She was worldly, covetous, and not unfrequently cruel. But she meant to be true and honest, though she often failed in her meaning;—and she had an idea of her duty in life. She was not self-indulgent. She was as hard as an oak post,—but then she was also as trustworthy. No human being liked her;—but she had the good word of a great many human beings. At great cost to her own comfort she had endeavoured to do her duty to her niece, Lizzie Greystock, when Lizzie was homeless. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... working, and its apparent want of visible success. He would have been quite content with preaching simple homely sermons on the obvious but hard duties of daily life, and not seeing much come of them; with finding a slow abatement of the self-indulgent habits of university life, with keeping Fridays, with less wine in common room. The Bisley maxims bade men to be very stiff and uncompromising in their witness and in their duties, but to make no show and expect no recognition or immediate fruit, and to be silent under misconstruction. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... them in the list of means of modern decoration, and indeed it is not necessary, since a well-preserved tapestry of a good period, and of a famous manufacturer or origin, is so costly a purchase that only our bounteous and self-indulgent millionaires would venture to acquire one solely for purposes of wall decoration. It would be purchased as a specimen of ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... tears. The good Abbot had shown a point of his character to which they were strangers. Even Father Eustace had held his spiritual Superior hitherto as a good-humoured, indolent, self-indulgent man, whose chief merit was the absence of gross faults; so that this sacrifice of power to a sense of duty, even if a little alloyed by the meaner motives of fear and apprehended difficulties, raised him considerably in the Sub-Prior's estimation. He even felt an aversion to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Kings' houses, and not either the wilderness or kings' dungeons, are the sunny spots where they spread their plumage. If the gaunt ascetic, with his girdle of camel's hair and his coarse fare, had been a self-indulgent sybarite, his voice would never have shaken a nation. The least breath of suspicion that a preacher is such a man ends his power, and ought to end it; for self-indulgence and the love of fleshly comforts eat the heart out of goodness, and make the eyes too heavy to see visions. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Malbone, self-indulgent rather than selfish, this poor, blind semblance of a moral purpose in Emilia was a great embarrassment. It is a terrible thing for a lover when he detects conscience amidst the armory of weapons used against him, and faces the fact that he must blunt a woman's principles ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... he said to himself, sharply, that his own feelings counted for nothing. Catherine should be tenderly shielded from all avoidable pain, but for himself there must be no flinching, no self-indulgent weakness. Did he not owe every last hour he had to give to the people amongst whom he had planned to spend the best energies of life, and for whom his own act was about to part him ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... degrees of virtue on earth, all these are dwarfed to nothing by the unimaginable abyss of difference which yawns between Heaven and Hell; and the practical upshot of the current eschatology is that all men—the self-sacrificing equally with the self-indulgent, the kind and compassionate equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-minded equally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with the indifferent—are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriously evil liver, those ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... [Footnote: In other words the thirteenth-century monk passed far the greater portion of his time in the open air, except that there was a roof over his head. As time went on, and monks became more self-indulgent, they did not by any means like the draughts and exposure in the cloister, and the old-fashioned open arcades were glazed, and the old open walks were turned into splendid lounges, comfortable and luxurious, such ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of her sight. Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and self-indulgent. She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him. Nor was she unqualified. If she had less learning than school-masters, she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... The announcement, however, was not received seriously and he was assured of the impossibility of the wind blowing through a hill of solid rock, and his brother explained to him that he had been too self-indulgent and consequently imagined the whole affair. A protest of total abstinence failed to inspire confidence, but the brother promised to go the next day to see for himself, and did. The hat was again placed ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Dostoyevsky, and he has singularly few "ideas." It is not that he has no ambition in the way of ideas, but they are incoherent and cheap. The sort of historical speculations he indulges in may be appreciated at their right value on reading A Thousand Years. In later books he is still more self-indulgent in this direction, and many of his "stories" are a sort of muddle-headed historical disquisitions rather than stories in any acceptable sense of the word. Andrey Bely and his famous Petersburg are responsible for this habit of Pilniak's, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... essay upon the character of Ahasuerus, no analysis of the arts of Haman, could so display the indolent, luxurious, self-indulgent, voluptuous monarch, or so illustrate the secret of the favourite's power. The companion of his pleasures, he was careful to minister to all the sensual indulgence that could lead him to forget his duty and the ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... drifted further and further apart from their common love and their common interest, the idealistic man became more self-centred, more unsocial, more fiercely individual, and the emotional and sensual woman became more self-indulgent, more hostile to any philosophy—anarchism such as Terry's, with its blighting idealism—which limited her simple joy in life ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... about forty years old, to strike a balance between the youth of eyes, mouth, and contour, and the age of deep lines and grayish, thinning hair. He had large, frank, blue eyes, a large nose, a strong forehead and chin, a grossly self-indulgent mouth,—there was the weakness, there, as usual! Evidently, the strength his mind and character gave him went in pandering to physical appetites. In confirmation of this, there were two curious marks on him,—a nick in the rim of his left ear, a souvenir ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... consult one's own pleasure; look after one's own interest; feather one's nest; take care of number one, have an eye to the main chance, know on which side one's bread is buttered; give an inch and take an ell. Adj. selfish; self-seeking, self-indulgent, self-interested, self- centered; wrapped up in self, wrapt up in self[obs3], centered in self; egotistic, egotistical; egoistical[obs3]. illiberal, mean, ungenerous, narrow-minded; mercenary, venal; covetous &c. 819. unspiritual, earthly, earthly-minded; mundane; worldly, worldly- minded; worldly-wise; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... comforted. Daniel Thwaite, she believed, never went to church. Here at Yoxham there were always morning prayers, and they went to church twice every Sunday. She had found it very pleasant to go to church, and to be led along in the easy path of self-indulgent piety on which they all walked at Yoxham. The church seats at Yoxham were broad, with soft cushions, and the hassocks were well stuffed. Surely, Daniel Thwaite did not know everything. As she thus built her castles in ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... fired with all divine sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without submitting to their law. That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a "discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of intellect, but warm affections, generous sentiments, and wholesome tastes for humanity and the outdoor world, but his moral fiber, never of the stanchest grain, had been sapped by prosperity. He was self-indulgent in his personal habits and heedless of homely obligations. His ambition was strong, and as the favor of the South had come to be the almost necessary condition of the Presidency, he could not escape the suspicion of courting that favor. He was in substantial agreement ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... of wicked injustice, cruel oppression, base slander, or misery inflicted by unbridled indulgence; whose anger flames in behalf of the injured and ruined victims of wrong; to be in some relation unjust, or oppressive, or envious, or self-indulgent, or a careless talker of others. How wonderfully indignant the penurious man often is, at the avarice or want of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... judgment upon scholarly compositions. Any one and every one who gave him sensual or intellectual pleasure, found his purse always open. He lived in the utmost magnificence, and made Rome the Paris of the Renaissance for brilliance, immorality, and self-indulgent ease. The politicians had less reason to be satisfied. Instead of uniting the Italians and keeping the great Powers of Europe in check, Leo carried on a series of disastrous petty wars, chiefly with the purpose of establishing the Medici as princes. He squandered ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... but very little. The stepmother was indeed afraid of Isabel, though she had endeavoured to conquer her own fear of using authority; and her half-sisters, though they loved her, held her in awe. There was so little that was weak about her, so little that was self-indulgent, so little that was like the other girls around them! It was known that Mr Owen was to come again on a certain day at a certain hour, and it was known also for what purpose he was to come; but no one had dared to ask a direct question as to ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... signora, who seemed not at all well. Clementina ran into her room, and found her dead. She must have died some hours before without a struggle, for the face was that of sleep, and it had a dignity and beauty which it had not worn in her life of self-indulgent wilfulness for so many years that the girl had never seen it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Sir William Gordon of Gight, grandson of James I. of Scotland. After a while her husband rejoined her, but went back to France and died at Valenciennes on the 2nd of August 1791. His wife was not a bad woman, but she was not a good mother. Vain and capricious, passionate and self-indulgent, she mismanaged her son from his infancy, now provoking him by her foolish fondness, and now exciting his contempt by her paroxysms of impotent rage. She neither looked nor spoke like a gentlewoman; but in the conduct of her affairs she was praiseworthy. She hated and avoided ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... avoided," and supposing him to be morally sound he would accordingly abstain. But [Greek:——], being a simple tendency towards indulgence suggests, in place of the minor premise "This is excess," its own premise "This is sweet," this again suggests the self-indulgent maxim or principle ('[Greek:——]), "All that is sweet is to be tasted," and so, by strict logical sequence, proves "This glass is to ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... mood came once more and his eyes darkened into seriousness. "Well, if it amuses him, why not?" he demanded, almost as fiercely as though someone had contradicted old Tom Burton's right to mellow into a self-indulgent decay. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... elemental instinct of humanity, is sanctified by the marriage relation, but unbridled in those who seek above all else their own pleasure, becomes a curse in body and soul. It is not limited to either sex, but men have been more self-indulgent, and have been treated more leniently than erring women. Sexual impurity is wide-spread, but public opinion against it is steadily strengthening, and the tendency is to hold men and women equally responsible. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... are possible'—that he who clings to the good and the holy amidst temptation and trial, will find peace and light within him, though all without be storm and darkness; and that in a right understanding and unfaltering performance of duty—not in the pomps and pleasures of a self-indulgent life, lie our ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... habit of indulgence in epigram had made him rather apt to quiz his friends. But we are to remember that he was encouraged in this, and that a self-indulgent man is only too liable to have the nicety of his sensitiveness spoiled. Certainly, he had a kind heart and good principles. He would lend any man money, or give any man help,—even to the extent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... self-mastery and the most sparing indulgence in the pleasures of sense are the 'philosophic life' which the Greek spirit recommends as the highest. The best Greeks would blame the life of an English clergyman, professor, or philosopher as too self-indulgent; we often forget how frugally and hardily the Greeks lived at all times. But here we have to consider the differences of climate, and the apparent necessity of a rather generous diet for ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... was not my only way; every one told me the Epicureans were sensual and self-indulgent, the Peripatetics avaricious and contentious, the Platonists conceited and vain; about the Stoics, on the contrary, many said they had fortitude and an open mind; he who goes their way, I heard, was the true king and millionaire and wise man, alone ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... economic questions, but by the time Ben worked up to the editorship it was well recognized to be an anticapitalist sheet. The salary of its editor, though not large, was sufficient to enable him to send his younger brother through college, with the result that David, a little weak, a little self-indulgent, a little—partly through physical causes—disinclined to effort, was now a poet, a classicist and an instructor in a fresh-water college. Ben made him an allowance to enable him to live—the college not thinking this necessary for its instructors. ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... persuasions did, however, at last urge her to the point of showing a part of her thoughts and disclosing the thorn that pressed sharpest on her mind. It was, that she had not pleased her mother by doing her best in the studies she had pursued at school. Matilda had always been a little self-indulgent; did not trouble herself with study; made no effort to reach or keep a good place in her classes. Mrs. Englefield had urged and commanded her in vain. Not obstinately, but with a sort of gay carelessness, Matilda had let these exhortations slip; had studied when she was interested, and lagged behind ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... a sport which encourages boys to deny themselves luxuries, to scorn ease, to conquer bodily weariness by the exercise of the will, is not one which should be banished because for some the spirit has triumphed to the hurt of the flesh. In a self-indulgent age when sometimes it has seemed that the gibe of our enemies is true, that the most characteristic English word is "comfort," it is good to retain in our schools some forms of activity in which comfort is never considered ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... that a certain enlightenment and cosmopolitanism were made possible, and private passions and tastes could be gratified without encountering persecution or public obloquy, though not without a general relaxation of society and a vulgarising of arts and manners. That something so self-indulgent and worldly as this ideal of liberalism could have been thought compatible with Christianity, the first initiation into which, in baptism, involves renouncing the world, might well astonish us, had we not been rendered deaf to moral discords by the very ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... refuses to call things by their proper names! Oh! what endless ways it has of putting lying! lying that is done on this day by professing Christians! Oh, the nice, comfortable, self-indulgent ways it has of looking at ungodly trades and practices! What do I mean? I mean trades that cannot be made subservient to the interest of the kingdom of Christ; trades that thrive by ministering either to the vile passions of human nature, or to the ungodliness ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... he said, unsteadily, "that I seemed to you and others a weak and self-indulgent fool. All I can say is, it was not in me to play the tutor and master to ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an unreal being who is to be the "example" of the story, but how every event, adverse or fortunate, tends to strengthen and expand a high mind, and to break the springs of a selfish or merely weak and self-indulgent nature. ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... another burst of passion, and he kicked out at adjacent chairs and banged the floor. He behaved just as I should have expected a great, fat, self-indulgent man to behave under trying circumstances—that is to say, very badly. He spoke of me and my great-grandmother with an utter ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... planning evil, and had no witness; at such times his features seemed to take this peculiar appearance as their natural cast; yet it was scarcely possible to believe that one, before so handsome, could suddenly become repulsive and painful to behold. His self-indulgent and dissipated life had already marked him with some of the symptoms of premature decay. Though still in early manhood, a slight wrinkle or two was perceptible; his cheek was pale when not flushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... good-humor, than almost any face I ever saw. His beauty was of too well born and well bred a type to be unpleasantly sensual; but his whole face, person, expression, and manner conveyed the idea of a pleasure-loving nature, habitually self-indulgent, and indulgent to others. He was my beau ideal of an Epicurean philosopher (supposing it possible that an Epicurean philosopher could have consented to be Prime Minister of England), and I confess to having read with unbounded astonishment the statement in the "Greville Memoirs," ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... first time; and I was instantly struck with the incomparable similitude of all that I saw of him to all that I had conceived from his character and his style. In the broad bold forehead, the strong sense—in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgent and reckless enjoyment—in the quick, small eye under those magnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and of humour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head, which might have been sculptured to take its place among the sages and sovereigns of antiquity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... that talent ought to give. Possibly, the observer might reflect, the gift was of that kind which lays the possessor peculiarly open to her outrageous slings and arrows. Had Mrs. Temperley shown any morbid signs of self-indulgent emotionalism the problem would have been simple enough; but this was not ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... developed the plot of the story which, in a few memorable scenes, attains to truly dramatic scope and power. More admirable than everything else, however, is the subtly realistic treatment of the psychological processes in Fritz Nettenmair. His gradual deterioration, step by step, from self-indulgent joviality, through envy and jealousy, to the hatred of despair that does not even shrink from fratricide, is depicted with masterly insight and consistency. This phase of Ludwig's art strikes us as fresh and modern today, and it must have appeared like a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... once was as a little sweet Savouring the daily bread we all must eat, Lo! it has come to be my only food: And, as a lover of the Indian weed Steals to a self-indulgent solitude, To draw the dreamy sweetness from its root, So from the strong blithe world of valorous deed I steal away to suck this singing weed; And while the morning gathers up its strength, And while the noonday runneth on in ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... lived much with her mother, and had devoted herself particularly to this only brother, a delicate lad—lovable, self-indulgent and provoking—for whom the unquestioning devotion of two women had not been the best of schools. An attack of rheumatic fever which had seized him on leaving Christchurch had scared both mother and ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lay in bed, because he 'had no motive for rising,' Joe Atlee felt that there need be no urgency about taking a degree which, when he had got, he should be sorely puzzled to know what to do with. He was a clever, ready-witted, but capricious fellow, fond of pleasure, and self-indulgent to a degree that ill suited his very smallest of fortunes, for his father was a poor man, with a large family, and had already embarrassed himself heavily by the cost of sending his eldest son to the university. Joe's changes of purpose—for he had in succession abandoned law ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... somewhat fleshy nose, not particularly high in the bridge; by the weakness and looseness of his mouth, and the small and retreating contour of his chin, and by other important indications, that he was selfish by nature, grasping, extravagant, too hopeful, too optimistic, too fond of money, too self-indulgent; that he lacked conscientiousness; that he lacked caution; that he lacked foresight; that he lacked any very keen sense of distinction between what was his and what belonged to others; that he lacked firmness, decision, self-control, will-power. Notwithstanding his lack of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the history of the boyish folly he felt that little excusing was needed for his dead father, for the early marriage seemed but an escapade of a spoiled and self-indulgent boy with a headstrong and sentimental girl, neither of whom had taken a ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... blown away the last rays of it forever. When Pocahontas lay well-nigh senseless in his arms, when her fair face rested on his breast and her breath touched his cheek, he knew, and acknowledged to himself that he loved her with a passionate intensity such as in all his careless, self-indulgent life he had never before felt ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... forget, lest he should forget that the good which he does, he does not—for in him (that is, in his flesh, his own natural character), dwelleth no good thing—but Christ, who dwells in him; lest he should grow puffed up, careless, self-indulgent; lest he should neglect to subdue his evil passions; and so, after having preached to others, himself become ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley |
