"Selfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is to keep Vere just as she is, to preserve the loveliness of childhood in her as long as possible, to keep away from her all knowledge of sin, sorrow, the things that distract and torture the world. But I mustn't be selfish about Vere. I mustn't keep her wrapped in cotton wool. That is unwholesome. And, after all, Vere must have her life apart from me. Last night I realized ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... of Persia B.C. 521—"in the sixth month, in the first day of the month." Chap. 1:1. In this message the prophet sharply reproves the people for their indifference to the cause of God's house and their selfish devotion to their own private interests, which have brought upon them the divine rebuke. Chap. 1:2-11. The effect of his words in exciting both rulers and people to renew the work upon the temple is added. Chap. 1:12-15. The second message "in ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... am I about? Am I not all this time arraigning my own heart?—I know I am, by the remorse I feel in it, while my pen bears testimony to her excellence. But yet I must add (for no selfish consideration shall hinder me from doing justice to this admirable creature) that in this conversation she demonstrated so much prudent knowledge in every thing that relates to that part of the domestic management which falls under the care of a mistress of a family, that I believe she has ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... them no more attention than he bestowed on the other heaps of rubbish lying on the ground. He was well fed, and that exasperated them still more; and now how splendid it was that one of themselves had struck a hard blow at the selfish merchant's purse! It gave them all the greatest pleasure. The Captain's discovery was a powerful instrument in their hands. Every one of them felt keen animosity toward all those who were well fed and well ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... to Charity's next resting-place, after all, for she also returned in a few days to New York. She was restive under the goad to return to France. She repented her selfish neglect of the children of all ages she had adopted abroad. One thing held her back—the dread of putting the ocean again between her ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved while he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... It seems so selfish to have one. I am anything—a fay, a sprite, an elf." She freed her hands with a sudden twist and ran ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... do anything you wish. You underrate yourself, Amy. You have woman's highest charm. There is a stupidity of heart which is far worse than that of the mind, a selfish callousness in regard to others and their rights and feelings, which mars the beauty of some women worse than physical deformity. From the day you entered our home as a stranger, graceful tact, sincerity, and the impulse of ministry have characterized ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... need not break your heart for that. You will get over it before you have been married a year. Look at me; I was as shy as any of you at first going off, but now I can speak my mind; and a good thing too, or what would become of me among the selfish set?" ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... remember well the one thing I didn't like when it first came along; and that was the new sort of Christmas celebration Dad and the others planned when I was ten or eleven. You know what Christmas means to such kids, and I guess we were all selfish together, because we didn't use our heads. Well, the Sunday school proposed that instead of us all getting something we should all give something. It looked pretty cheap to us little fellows at first, and our teacher had all he could do to hold us in line. But let me tell you, every ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... me, Manikawan, I shall never forget your example of patience and encouragement and self-effacement. It has built for me new ideals. It has taught me that there are other things to live for than the mere attainment of pleasure and the gratification of selfish desires. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... returned Mrs. Campbell, "and I only wish you had it in your power to do more for her, and in this perhaps I am selfish. I felt badly about her being in the poor-house, but truth compels me to say, that it was more on Ella's account than her own. I shall give Ella every advantage which money can purchase, and I am excusable I think for saying that she is admirably fitted to adorn any station in ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... upon this old, cool peace, This painted peace of ours, With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, With garish flowers? Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, Selfish old Skin-and-bone? Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... infinitely worthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of Cottage Grove Avenue and its like Chicago contained,—not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved and cleaned, it would be bearable. But the selfish rich and the ignorant poor make ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of course; but I never did see one that didn't think of himself first. It is their selfishness that causes all the sorrow of the world to women. We needn't have lost your angel mother but for Mr. Anderton's selfishness—a kind, hard, rough man—but as selfish ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... perfect artist in his own special sphere our age has produced, few will be disposed to deny: and that they have momentous lessons to teach us all,—that they may by sheer antagonism rouse some from dreams of selfish vanity and corruption, and awaken within some germ of better and purer elements of life,—will scarcely be disputed. But it is not from these, or such as these, that the highest and noblest, the purest and most penetrative, the most extended and enduring teaching and elevation of the ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... potatoes in comparison with the European one, especially as our own industrial recuperation is so closely connected with European relations, while the Far East cuts a negligible figure. To my mind the real danger to set out upon selfish exploitation of China: intelligent self-interest, tradition and the fact that our chief asset in China is our past freedom from a predatory course, dictate a course of cooperation with China. The danger is that China will be subordinated and sacrificed ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... soldiery cannot protect a state, but their own hearts and arms must be enlisted unless they would be buried in its ruins. It wakes up the dormant dynamical powers of courage and heroism, and checks for a moment the selfish individualism that was taking the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Government grew more steady, more resolute, and more self-reliant, a sickening doubt seemed to becloud the ill-concealed hope of our ruin. It was not long until the brave and deluded rebels of the South learned that there was no confidence to be placed in the cruel and selfish calculation which encouraged their desperate resistance with the show of sympathy, but would not avow an open support or make a manly ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... public right must henceforth take precedence over the individual interests of particular nations, and that the nations of the world must in some way band themselves together to see that right prevails as against any sort of selfish aggression; that henceforth alliance must not be set up against alliance, understanding against understanding, but that there must be a common agreement for a common object, and that at the heart of that common object must lie the inviolable rights ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... life-blood of the land, but even the engineers and bankers who quickened its sluggish circulation. This movement was styled a national movement; and its abettors raised that cry of "Egypt for Egyptians," which has had its counterpart wherever selfish patriots seek to keep all the good things of the land to themselves. The Egyptian troubles of the year 1882 originated partly in feelings of this narrow kind, and partly in the jealousies and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... for me, and although I am, I hope, neither more selfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that. Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at Corgarff Castle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household. Why was I there at all? What was I there to accomplish? ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... laws against murderous assaults by his officers. They should content themselves with fencing his Honor in, or, if necessary, putting a ring in his nose. He has as much right to be Judge Grier as George Washington had to be George Washington, and is no more selfish in following the instincts of his nature, than Washington was in ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... that to faith all things are possible; in the second, the ideal is social, it is that of the reformer who is deluded to believe that one resounding deed of terror and self-immolation for the cause of the people will suffice to overthrow the selfish existing order, and create for the toiling masses a new heaven upon earth. No deeper tragedies have been conceived by Bjoernson than these two, the tragedy of the saintlike Pastor Sang, who believes that the miracle of his wife's restoration to health has at last in very truth ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... of pride or petulance repressed, A selfish inclination firmly fought, A shadow of annoyance set at naught, A measure of disquietude suppressed, A peace in importunity possessed, A reconcilement generously sought, A purpose put aside, a banished thought, A word of self-explaining unexpressed,— Trifles they seem, these petty soul-restraints; ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... deadly foes that lurked by day and by night along the pathway of the wary and the unwary appealed to the spirit of adventure which breathes strong in the heart of every red-blooded son of primordial Adam. Yet, though he loved it, he had not let his selfish desires outweigh the sense of duty that had brought him to a realization of the moral wrong which lay beneath the adventurous escapade that had brought him to Africa. His love of father and mother was strong ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you in the arms of another man I feel within me a deep desire, a real lust for murder. But you would throw me into the last pit of hell and damnation, if you were to repay the truths I have told you and given you with lies, lies, lies. You must not, you dare not, imagine for a minute that I am so selfish and vulgar as not to be able to understand that a change might come over your heart. But that is one thing; telling a lie and living a lie is quite another. It is impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Unconscious like trees in a forest, which, overshadowed by their neighbours, are stunted for lack of air and sunshine. By means of autosuggestion we can supply them with the power needed for growth and bring them to fruition in our conscious lives. However old, however infirm, however selfish, weak or vicious we may be, autosuggestion will do something for us. It gives us a new means of culture and discipline by which the "accents immature," the "purposes unsure" can be nursed into strength, and the evil impulses attacked at ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... I might have known it." The woman sighed, avoided his helpless stare, and tossed her head resentfully. "You never loved him as I do, and you put your own selfish and worldly aims first." She rose stiffly and stalked across the room to the silken bell-pull and gently drew it downward. "You'll want to go to your room before supper. Lucy will show you where it ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... and lay down in his berth, but not to sleep. The pain in his arm was severe enough to keep him awake, but it was no worse than his heartache. It was a tender heart, not yet calloused by constant pursuit of selfish aims. That state would certainly be arrived at, on the road he was travelling, but he was still young and his very soul was longing to go back to his father and Lawyer Ed. Again and again he tried to comfort himself with the promise that he would make up to them for ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... gentleman that I know as little of this treacherous bullet as you; that for all I am bound to secrecy, my sincerest desire is to protect Miss Westfall from the peculiar consequences of this damnable muddle, to clear up the mystery of the bullet, and for more selfish reasons to protect her from the romantic folly of the man with ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... once a proud and selfish monarch, named King Robert, who ruled over the kingdom of Sicily. One of his brothers was the mighty Pope Urbane, and the other the rich Emperor Valmond, and King Robert spent as lavishly and held even a more magnificent court than either of them. But the Sicilian ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... Let me speak, Constance. If there be a fault or a folly in the matter, it is mine. You hate me; you have cause. I have—been vain and selfish. I thought, like many another woman, I could play ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... novel has this one great counterpoise of undoubted good to set against all the manifold disadvantages and shortcomings of romantic literature—that it always appeals to the true internal promptings of inherited instinct, and opposes the foolish and selfish suggestions of interested outsiders. It is the perpetual protest of poor banished human nature against the expelling pitchfork of calculating expediency in the matrimonial market. While parents and moralists are for ever saying, 'Don't marry for ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... influence her equals? For in everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented, handsome, deferential—but persistently amused at her, irrevocably indolent, hopelessly selfish. ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... precarious living on a foreign soil, bandits, proscribed for acts of violence, abounded. Thus the habits which had been created through centuries of political ferment, subsisted when the nation was at rest in servitude, assuming baser and more selfish forms of ferocity. The end of the sixteenth century witnessed the final degeneration and corruption of a mediaeval state of warfare, which the Renaissance had checked, but which the miseries of foreign invasions had resuscitated by brutalizing the population, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "Can't you do something to pass away a tedious hour now and then?" The first feeling was of vexed regret that they should have come into her head at that moment; then conscience said that was very selfish. There was a struggle. Ellen stood with the door in her hand, unable to go out or come in. But not long. As the words came back upon her memory, "A charge to keep I have," her mind was made up; after one moment's prayer for ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... there was such a hope, as something selfish will often mingle with our noblest and purest emotions, it arose unconscious of Eveline herself, who, in the full assurance of implicit faith, and fixing on the representative of her adoration, eyes in which the most ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... been prejudiced against him. She is a silly, selfish woman. So far as I could judge she cared little for her first husband, who was a thousand times too good for her; but strangely enough she appears to have had something like a real affection for this man Mulready, who, between ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... sometimes thought that the Crosbys had more than their age and social training fitted them to use wisely, but I've never known them to go far astray. They've done foolish things, but I've never known either to do a wrong or selfish thing. Money is a terrible test of character, but I think the twins will ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... civil society, as medicine cannot serve for food; but they may influence it with advantage, because they point out the direction, though not the measure, in which reform is needed. They oppose an order of things which is the result of a selfish and violent abuse of power by the ruling classes, and of artificial restriction on the natural progress of the world, destitute of an ideal element or a moral purpose. Practical extremes differ from the theoretical extremes they provoke, because the first are both ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... it well for him to read the books and think the thoughts of the past year? He could not escape except by brutally tearing himself by the roots from his parents' lives. It was all so hopelessly selfish on ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... cried, springing up from a midnight reverie in my hut. Every selfish argument for my own safety had passed in review before my mind, and something so akin to judicious caution, which we trappers in plain language called "cowardice," was insidiously assailing my better self, I cast logic's sophistries to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... everywhere depositing its mud—which chokes and does not fertilise. We have athletic clubs, we have a free library, we are better drained and cleaner and healthier and more bookish, with all, than in the old times; but for politics—alas! A base level of selfish and purblind ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... And sought His untrod forests and the hills, My free companions of no guile nor art— Their holy strength is more than rocks and clay; I sought the comfort loneliness instills: Dear Christ! She spoke her own vain, selfish heart. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... bear this relation to the general welfare; thus virtue means courage in a soldier, probity in a merchant, and chastity in a woman. But if we turn from the morality required of all to the type regarded as perfect and ideal, we find no such correspondence to the benefits involved. The selfish imagination intervenes here and attributes an absolute and irrational value to those figures that entertain it with the most absorbing and dreamful emotions. The character of Christ, for instance, which even the least orthodox among us are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... forgetful, naively selfish, and sincerely affectionate; he had a good heart and a quick intelligence which he expended piecemeal day by day. People forgave him everything because they were so glad to see ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... himself a very small piece, though she knew he liked it better than anything, down to the good-nature with which he gave his last bit of cheese to the lame old setter, that had limped down to see after them, everything in his behaviour was just according to her own heart, and totally unlike the selfish greediness of what she called 'common schoolboys.' And then, when, instead of going back to his fishing directly after dinner, he asked her to walk with him as far as the bridge and watch the trout leap, she was the very happiest and proudest of little sisters. ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... his own interests. Can he even partially rise superior to prudential considerations, as he has to some extent to the claims of appetite? Is it possible to develop the unselfish out of the purely selfish? And if so, how is this to be accomplished? It is not accomplished in the animal; it is but very incompletely accomplished in man. It will be ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... labor in the highest branch of industry, and if this is not granted impartially the doctrine of protection proclaimed by the founders of our government, supported for more than a hundred years of wonderful progress, will be sacrificed by the hungry greed of selfish corporations, who ask protection for great establishments and refuse to grant it to the miner, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... is that it places everything in the hands of a class of people who can always inflict what they can never suffer. Whether what they inflict is, in their intention, good or bad, they become equally frivolous. The case against the governing class of modern England is not in the least that it is selfish; if you like, you may call the English oligarchs too fantastically unselfish. The case against them simply is that when they legislate for all men, they ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... they believe there is an honest, earnest purpose in the Administration to extinguish the rebellion by force of arms, they will sustain it. What they would do if ever they should come to the conviction that the national existence is in peril through incapacity, selfish personal ambitions or treachery on the part of the Administration, it is not necessary to predict. The conjuncture is not likely to arrive. Of one thing, however, you may be sure: the great loyal body ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... consider the action of Savonarola in another place. Meanwhile, it is not too much to affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with princes like those whom he has idealized, Italy could not be free. Hypocrisy, treachery, dissimulation, cruelty are the vices of the selfish and the enslaved. Yet Machiavelli was led by his study of the past and by his experience of the present to defend these vices, as the necessary qualities of the prince whom he would fain have chosen for the saviour of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... chivalrous as any man ought to be. I admire a woman in her true place as much as any man—and would fight and die for her. But for these men that forget their manhood, these Marc Antonies who yield up their sound reason and their manly strength to the wiles and tears and charms of selfish and ambitious Cleopatras, I have nothing but contempt. There are plenty of them around in all ages of the world, and they generally glory in their shame. Of course brother Thomas did not enjoy very much my mean opinion of his conduct—and as for sister Ann, ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... in this strain for some time, when she became very grave. Ronald suspected that, although she might not have been unwilling to come, it was not only her husband's state of health which had induced her to accompany him. He knew how selfish and tyrannical Colonel Armytage always was, and he suspected that he had not given his wife the choice of remaining behind. Edda, as she watched her mother's countenance, grew silent, and a shade of melancholy also stole over her features. Mrs ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the government of Muda Hassim. Let our influence be of the mildest kind; let us, by supporting the legitimate government, ameliorate the condition of the people by this influence; let us pay every honor to the native princes; let us convince them of our entire freedom from all selfish views of territorial aggrandizement on the mainland of Borneo, and we shall enjoy so entire a confidence that virtually the coast will become our own without the trouble or expense of possession. I have impressed it on the Rajah Muda Hassim and Pangeran Budrudeen, that the readiest ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... bitterly hard for Larry missed his uncle's support woefully in this dark hour. Ruth, Granny seemed to know, oftener indeed, than she did Tony to the latter's keen grief though she acknowledged the justice of the stab. For she had gone her selfish way leaving the stranger to play the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... advanced the parish developed a selfish, jealous and exclusive gild life of its own, especially under the operation ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... letter of Mrs. CARLYLE'S just published, the wife of the Chelsea sage describes a cat as "a selfish, immoral, improper beast." This has given no little satisfaction in canine circles, where the deceased lady is being hailed as a human being with the insight ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... murder be to these, and on my soul, Because I knew their risk, and warned them not. You'll think I'm right when tramp of armed men, And rumble of the guns disturb you in your sleep. Then, in the calmer judgment night-time brings, You'd be the first to blame the selfish care That left a little band of thirty men A prey to ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... declaration? Has he not been to us, in our destitute orphanage, more than a husband and a brother? Did a father ever bear more patiently with the foibles and imperfections of his children? Was a father ever less selfish than he has been? Has not his loving arm embraced ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... which fails is bad enough, for it discourages many people from making a second attempt, but the false cooperative is a greater menace to the cooperative movement. The private promoter with his selfish interests rigs up a scheme to look like cooperation, but the actual purpose is to provide a channel whereby thousands of dollars will flow from the pockets of the working people into those of the ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... think, Mr. Grim," began she, breathing hard, and steadying herself against the table at which she stood, "that you were a very selfish man—an embodiment of selfishness, absolute and supreme, but I did not believe that you ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... gallant fight he has made for four years—a harder contest than he will ever have in the sterner field—then we despair of the material which West Point is turning out. If this be true, it is training selfish, snobbish martinets—not knightly soldiers, not Havelocks, Hardinges, and Kearneys—but the lowest type of disciplined and educated force and brutality—the Bluchers and Marlboroughs. We scarcely believe this, however, and we know that any young ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... was courteous and not displeased to be a little lionised, for his delicacy is not of the most susceptible. He talked about Spain and the Spaniards; the lowest classes of whom, he says, are the only ones worth investigating, the upper and middle class being (with exceptions, of course) mean, selfish, and proud beyond description. They care little for Roman Catholicism, and bear faint allegiance to the Pope. They generally lead profligate lives, until they lose all energy and then become slavishly superstitious. He said a curious thing of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... nothing of being allowed to poison the infants and women in his own family. What would be said of a man who introduced poison in any degree into the food or drink of his child? Is the poisoning of the household atmosphere by the ignorant, thoughtless, or selfish smoker morally more defensible? Tobacco injures health through hereditary influence. The tobacco user begets, more certainly than the non-user, puny children with disordered nervous conditions. Luckily for our race, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... selfish desire to see her again, however, would take him in quest of Reddy. He was one of those superior characters, was Tommy, who got his pleasure in giving it, and therefore gave it. Now, Reddy was a worthy girl. In suspecting her of overreaching him he had maligned her: she had taken what he offered, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... hate, murder, and a whole bevy of devils. The prevalence of adultery in any country has always been a sign and a cause of social insincerity, division, and revolution; where a people has learnt to connive and laugh at it, and to treat it as a light thing, that people has been always careless, base, selfish, cowardly,—ripe for slavery. And we must say that either the courtiers and Londoners of James and Charles the First were in that state, or that the poets were doing their best ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... their time shelling our particular ones. It is to be hoped that they have used up their ammunition for the present, as I believe they are rather short. Such a night as it was; blowing a raging gale; but one gets very selfish, and we only remarked: "What an awful night in the trenches! Please God the Germans do not attack! Thank God we are not in them to-night!" and that was all. I wonder how long this war will go on. It never seems to come to an end, does it? I walked yesterday afternoon ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... is the true Patriot who always does what is in his Power for his Country's Service without any selfish Views or Regard to private ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... the current reports respecting transportation deserved no credence, and were unsafe as foundations of public policy. Often, from the most selfish motives, the most delusive statements had been forwarded by prisoners. He instanced a woman from Liverpool, who arrived with her four children, allured by the representation of her husband, and sent out by the charity of his prosecutors; ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... for any sacrifice but this betrayal of the women and children to whom they owed an everlasting faith. And a manlier lot of men never spoke in a manlier way. Not a petty word was uttered. Their thought was not for themselves. Their grief was not selfish. Their protests had a dignity in pathos that shook me ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... that? You're only too good to me. You see," said the girl, "what a return I have made for your trust. I knew you didn't want to go to the veglione. If I hadn't been the most selfish girl in the world I wouldn't have let you. But I did. I forced you to go, and then, after we got there, I seized every advantage, and abused your kindness till I wonder I didn't sink through the floor. Yes; I ought to have refused to dance—if I'd had a spark of generosity ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... one of you. I don't care what you apparently are. Some of you may be greedy and grasping, and some may be tyrannical and overbearing, or weak and negative; with no backbone or grit or will; or you may be vain, selfish, ambitious, self-conceited, carrying your head too high; or you may be one who lives to dance; loves the whirl and excitement of pleasure; or you may be one who loves to enjoy eating and drinking ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... is; this one small city of about nine hundred beings. The civilization of Mars was older than that of Earth, but it was a dying one. This was what remained of it: one city, nine hundred people. They were waiting for Earth to make contact, for a selfish reason and ...
— Earthmen Bearing Gifts • Fredric Brown
... natural that you should side with father against me, and it is also natural that I should decide in favor of myself. You may say that on my part it is selfishness, and I may say that it is more just than selfish. But you must not say that I ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... in the plains," he said. "It is a barbaric and stupid instinct that makes them destroy their own property for the sake of hampering us. As we approach Moscow we shall find that the more civilized inhabitants of the villages, enervated by an easy life, rendered selfish by possession of wealth, will not abandon their property, but will barter and sell to us and find themselves the victims of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... this is merely an economical plan of reason, for the purpose of sparing itself trouble, and an attempt of a purely hypothetical character, which, when successful, gives an appearance of probability to the principle of explanation employed by the reason. But a selfish purpose of this kind is easily to be distinguished from the idea, according to which every one presupposes that this unity is in accordance with the laws of nature, and that reason does not in this case request, but requires, although we are quite ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... selfish fellow. He was always willing anybody should divide good things with him, but was never willing, himself, to divide with anybody else. He was never willing to play with others, for fear he would not be treated right. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... were coming down to fell them at once. They must be housed. One of the vacant farms, not yet let, was to be got ready for them. She made preliminary arrangements by telephone. Then, after a hasty lunch, at which the Squire did not appear, and Mrs. Gaddesden was more than usually languid and selfish, Elizabeth rushed off to the village on her bicycle. The hospital Commandant was waiting for her, with such workpeople as could be found, and the preparation of the empty house for fifty more beds was well begun. Elizabeth was frugal, but resolute, with the Squire's ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The settled Koriaks are those who have lost their deer and been forced to locate where they can subsist by fishing. The former are kind and hospitable; the latter generally the reverse. Poverty has made them selfish, as it has made many a white man. All are honest to a degree unusual among savages. When Major Abasa traveled among them in the winter of 1865, they sometimes refused compensation for their services, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not in mine own esteem, By poor deceit or selfish greed debased. Let me be clean from secret stain and shame, Know myself true, though false as hell I seem — Know myself worthy, howsoe'er disgraced — Know myself right, though ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... at sight of the evils which he attributed to Lord Castlereagh's policy. It was not the colleague, but the minister, that he wished to stigmatize together with his policy, which appeared to Lord Byron inhuman, selfish, and unjust. It was this same policy that caused ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... classes to allot some share in the public lands to the common people. The old and famous aristocracy of birth and rank had made a stubborn resistance, but it knew the art of yielding. The later and more selfish aristocracy was unable to learn it. The character of the people was changed by the sterner motives of dispute. The fight for political power had been carried on with the moderation which is so honourable a quality of party contests in England. But the struggle for the objects ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... fearless with children, believing that, like the lower orders of life, they have little power to observe that anything is amiss, and therefore are neither apt to be repelled nor curious and suspicious. This in a sense is true, and yet their instincts are keen. But Mr. Alvord was not selfish or coarse; above all he was not harsh. To Johnnie he only seemed strange, quiet, and unhappy, and she had often heard her mother say, "Poor Mr. Alvord!" Therefore, when he said, "I don't go to church; if I had a little girl like you to sit by me, I might feel differently," her ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... wife had stunned him. It was not until the fire of sacrifice had died into parched ashes that its earlier banality became clear. He realized then that he had given his love to a phantom. By one of nature's miracles a vain and selfish creature was gifted in the artistic portrayal of the finer emotions. He had worshiped the actress, the mimic, not the woman herself. At any rate, that was how he read the repellent notion that he should bargain with any man for ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... will find that they have double rewards for all which they do. It is a great thing to earn the blessing of him that is ready to perish; and those who do that know most of its value. It is a pity it should not be oftener enjoyed, since it is within reach of us all. Those who are selfish and greedy, mean, and grasping, cannot know it; but those who are benevolent, kindly, sympathetic, and liberal, are the people to whom life gives of its ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... thoughtfully: "This is a strange world," she soliloquized. "Let philosophers air their utopian theories about its containing the elements of universal happiness. I know that human nature, as it is now constituted, is too selfish and mean to arrive at a state of absolute perfection. Truly, 'men are a little breed.' 'But, in the future, when that which is whispered in secret shall be proclaimed upon the housetops,' all our griefs and wrongs shall be recompensed. Oh, weary women, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... I exclaimed, passionately; "the evil will be there all the same, whether I feel it or not. Men and women will be struggling in their misery and sin, only I shall be too selfish to care." ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... wealth always desire to make a partition of their patrimony. After effecting a partition they fight with each other, deluded by wealth. Then again, enemies in the guise of friends cause estrangements between ignorant and selfish men alter they become separated in wealth, and pointing out faults confirm their quarrels, so that the latter soon fall one by one. Absolute ruin very soon overtakes the separated. For these reasons the wise never speak approvingly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... she should be able to hear of him, and to satisfy herself that he still thought of her. On the other, she was really a little afraid of the winter voyage. She had never even seen the sea, and had a kind of mysterious awe of it. Stronger, however, than any selfish feeling was a keen anxiety which had taken possession of her with regard to her mother's health, the feebleness of which became daily more apparent; so that her double wishes neutralized each other, and she could scarcely tell whether if the ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... I confess it. It's your own fault. After all that waiting, that hopelessness, I am now so happy! And happiness makes one selfish. It's your fault! ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... Benevolence, "it is more blessed to give than to receive"? Has God enriched you with this world's goods? Seek to view yourself as a consecrated medium for dispensing them to others. Beware alike of penurious hoarding and selfish extravagance. How sad the case of those whose lot God has made thus to abound with temporal mercies, who have gone to the grave unconscious of diminishing one drop of human misery, or making one of the world's myriad aching hearts happier! How the example of Jesus rebukes the cold and calculating ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... himself and God as ruling the world. Boastfully declaring that he was the greatest of all men and that he ruled by divine right, the former German emperor brought upon the world the greatest evil that has ever befallen it through selfish ambition for himself, his family, and for the German autocracy; the other claiming to be a common man, a servant of men, seeking no riches, no throne, no personal power, entirely unselfish, gave his life at last to save a united democracy. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... dear girl, Philip, and has as much firmness of purpose as ever, but don't you see she has just discovered that she is fond of society? Don't you let her see you are selfish about it, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... backgammon when it is mid-winter and there has been no curling, and the book club is all amiss. Lilias insists upon the card, because the parties are by no means always merry affairs, and she says that otherwise we would slip them off on each other, and pick and choose, and be guilty of a great many selfish, dishonourable proceedings." ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Fremont that his independence caused him to clash with selfish interests, and he was sacrificed. He was selected for the Trans-Mississippi command by the Blairs, evidently with the expectation that he would bend to their wishes. He soon showed that he was his own master, and the trouble began. ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... the least selfish and most devoted of human beings, yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered, and the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed upon her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... question dumfounded him for the moment; but what she suggested (though it might be selfish in him to agree to it) would be the best thing that could happen to him. So he lied ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... therefore, dearest mother; you have no cause for endless weeping: nor have you on your own. You cannot grieve for me on selfish grounds, in consequence of any personal loss to yourself; for you were ever eminently unselfish, and unlike other women in all your dealings with your sons, and you were always a help and a benefactor to ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... said I take no selfish interest in this resistance to the railroad. But I do take an unselfish one. It is precisely because I passionately wish to improve the minds of the populace, and because I am spending my own mind, strength, and fortune, wholly ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that she had cared for Harry Green—from a distance—that capricious and perverse young person would have declined to retire from the field of strife. After all, Betty admitted to herself, it was not wholly a service of sacrifice she was granting her friend. There was something of a selfish motive ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... silent until the latter had announced that almost the first thing that she had noticed was that we children were of a selfish, jealous disposition, and that Georgia was very cross when her little Johnnie came home wearing a hat that grandpa had bought him. Then I turned upon her saying, "Mrs. Stein, you forget that Georgia has not ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... he might secure for Elizabeth a vast auriferous colony, the proceeds of which might rival the revenues of Mexico and Peru. But we must not make the mistake of supposing him to have been so wise before his time as to perceive that the real wealth which might paralyse a selfish power like that of Spain would consist in the cereals and other products which such a colony might ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... robbers could hide securely. On this wild road their victim might lie and bleed to death. By these paths across the glen the priest and the Levite could "pass by on the other side," discreetly turning their heads away from any interruption to their selfish duties. And in some such wayside khan as this, standing like a lonely fortress among the sun-baked hills, the friendly half-heathen from Samaria could safely leave the stranger whom he had rescued, provided he paid at least a part of his ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... her father and her goodness. He already recognized that dominant passion in her, her unselfish adoration of her father—a father who sat all day behind bolted doors trifling with metals and gases and little spinning, noiseless wheels. The selfish to the unselfish, the dead to the living, the dwarf to the giant, and the sinner to the saint—this is the world and they that ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... may object that it is selfish to consider his own comfort when he has work to do for others. But expending too freely of our nervous energies, even in a good cause, is like giving to charity so much of our substance that we in turn are obliged to ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Jane. It would burn my fingers. Always I would think that if you had not been hard and miserly this same money would have saved my mother's life. No! I loathe your money. Keep it or throw it to the dogs, if you won't give it to the boy it belongs to. But don't you dare to will your selfish hoard to me." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... were—and moderate, on the whole—it surprised him to find no one to embody them. It sometimes seemed to him that the traditional race of Englishwomen had become extinct. Those he met were either brilliant and hard, or handsome and horsey, or athletic and weedy, or smart and selfish, or pretty and silly, or sweet and provincial, or good and grotesque. With the best will in the world to fall in love, he found little or no temptation. Indeed, he had begun to think that the type ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... awhile forbear,— And with the homely Past compare Your tinselled show and state! Mark, if your selfish grandeurs cold On human hearts so firm a hold For ye, and yours, create As they possessed, whose breasts though rude Glowed with the warmth of brotherhood For all who toiled, through youth and age, T' ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... calling herself a free and loyal Republican without spot or blame, and declaring that the cold and selfish cruelty of Target had inflamed her heroism and roused her sensibility, asked permission to assist M, de Malesherbes in defending the King. The Assembly passed to the order of the day on this request.—BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, "Annals," edit. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pure knowledge, in order to escape from evil and to conquer it. Lao sought it, as his book shows, to attain power. At this point the two systems diverge. Buddhism is generous, benevolent, humane; it seeks to help others. Tao-ism seeks its own. Hence the selfish morality which pervades the Book of Rewards and Punishments. Every good action has its reward attached to it. Hence also the degradation of the system into pure magic and spiritism. Buddhism, though its course runs so nearly parallel, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... according to Vera all men did. Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera, judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and selfish, ascribe common ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... boxing his ears furiously. "Selfish little wretch! So this is the result of all the kindness I have lavished on you. Let go at once"—and tearing at his baby wrists with all her might, she succeeded in loosening them, and the next instant he ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... painful scrutiny to which, in modern times, the characters of great men are subjected; everything he ever did, or said, or thought, has been published; and yet it would be difficult, in the whole course of his life, to point out one act, one word, one thought, that could be called mean, untrue, or selfish. From the beginning to the end Schiller remained true to himself; he never acted a part, he never bargained with the world. We may differ from him on many points of politics, ethics, and religion; but though we differ, we must always respect and admire. His life is ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... dangers and not fall? In religious communications in our house, I am apt to look for any intimation that I could appropriate of a shortened pilgrimage; but very little of the sort has occurred: indeed, I expect my selfish wish will not be gratified, of escaping early from this toilsome world; but how rash and ungrateful are such thoughts! how much better all these things are in my Father's hands! Oh, if I may be there too in the form of passive ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... great criminals of the world are not these wild beasts, who break through all laws, whose selfishness takes the form of the bloody knife, the firebrand, or the bludgeon; but those who, equally selfish, corrupt the foundations of government and create laws and conditions by which millions suffer, and out of which these murderers and robbers naturally and ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Bethia's care. He was ashamed because of it; but he could not help wondering whether it would be paid still, or whether they would take the books away or leave them where they were. He did not like to speak to his mother. It seemed selfish and ungrateful to think about it even; but he could not keep it out ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... for Landis here," she continued. "There is no company for miles, and only her father and I at home. She did not want to leave us. But I told her we were used to the quiet and were company for each other. I miss her, of course, but it would have been selfish to have kept her here. She must live her own life and have her own experiences, and I can't expect her to be satisfied with ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... whom he is interested in is extremely self-conscious and thinks that she is being purposely slighted unless she is the center of everything. Others, both boys and girls, are excessively irritable, very suspicious, inordinately selfish, hysterical, vainglorious, or in other ways show lack of self-control and emotional stability. Later in life such conditions may lead to intense misery. Nevertheless traits of this sort are often combined with very fine qualities in other respects. This renders it extremely hard to decide whether ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... office, make to each other requisitions to retain places they would be most reluctant to quit; his great and splendid discovery would long since have been represented to government. Expectant mediocrity would have urged on his claims to remuneration, and those who covered their selfish purposes with the cloak of science, would have hastened to shelter themselves in the mantle of his glory.—But the philosopher may find consolation for the tardy approbation of that Society, in the applause of Europe. If he was insulted by their medal, he escaped the pain of seeing his name ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... past life—the barrier between us, which the change in our names and the lapse of ten years had raised, must have been broken down; the recognition must have followed. But I never even thought of it; and for this simple reason—I was in love with her. The purely selfish idea of winning my way to her favorable regard by taking instant advantage of the new interest that I had awakened in her was the one idea ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... was published in 1891. Still more briefly summarized it depicts an unfriendly, almost hostile attitude on the part of Russell and Lyons, deceit and evasion by the former, selfish British policy, and throughout a blind following on by France, yielding to Russell's leadership. The American proposal is regarded merely as a simple and sincere offer to join in supporting an improved international ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... react upon one another. He gains much morally whose eyes are opened to the innumerable traces of the Divine beauty with which he is surrounded, and there are aesthetic joys which are necessarily unknown to a soul which is selfish and gross—still more to a soul from which the glories of revealed religion are hidden, either through unbelief or sluggish indifference. Yet, on the whole, it may be said that sanctity is benefited by art more than art is by sanctity, especially where we deal with so limited a medium ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... inability to see his way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him—he was, in fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!—but awkward he was, and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and covered him with ink simply for ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... compassionate tones with which a pious minister of the Church reproves some abandoned and hoary sinner,—"am I to understand that you would commend to your son the adoption of deliberate falsehood for the gain of a selfish advantage?" ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have been taken for brother and sister. His eyes were almost as blue as hers, and his brow, where it had not been exposed to the weather, as fair. She knew of his victory over himself. Almost at the same time with herself, he had cast behind him a weak, selfish, frivolous life, assuming a manhood which she understood better than others. Therefore, she had for him a tenderness, a gentleness of regard, which her other friends of sterner natures could not inspire. Indeed, so sisterly was her feeling that she could have put her arms about his ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... have not been solely devoted to business and the promotion of their own selfish welfare is evidenced by the remarkable growth of their numerous Societies based upon the extension of fellowship among Scots in the New World and for the collection and distribution of charitable funds among the poor and needy ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black |
