"Disinterested" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elder of these two, a son, was named Roswell Francis, a combination of the names of Field's father and mother, with the change of a vowel to suit his sex; the younger, his second daughter, was christened Ruth, after Mrs. Gray, in whose home Field had found, more than a score of years before, the disinterested affection of a mother, "a refuge ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "A very disinterested request, no doubt, my little son," Elsie said laughingly, as she rose and took his hand to lead him from the room; "but it is high time both you and Gracie were in your nests. So bid good-night, and we ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... who failed to meet their pecuniary engagements honestly. Even if he forgave her for deceiving him—which was in the last degree improbable—he was the sort of man who would suspect her of other deceptions. He would inquire if she had been quite disinterested in attending at his bedside, and saving his life. He might take counsel privately with his only surviving partner, Mrs. Wagner. Mrs. Wagner might recall the interview in the drawing-room, and the conversation about Jack; and ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... READY THE WREATHS by Fannie Hurst (Cosmopolitan Magazine). The artistic qualities in Miss Hurst's work which have commended themselves to such disinterested critics as Mr. Howells are revealed once more in this story, in which Miss Hurst accepts the shoddiness of background which characterizes her literary types, and reveals the fine human current that runs beneath it all. I am not sure that Miss Hurst has not diluted her substance a little too much ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... suggestions of our merely human passions and instincts, we ease our hearts of Love by heaping treasures and the choicest gifts of fancy in the laps of those whom we most dearly cherish. We take no credit to ourselves for such precious prodigalities; for they are the inevitable and disinterested outpourings of affection. They are received as such. And when we cast our eyes abroad and behold the loving prodigality of a divine hand, we accept the manifestation, are made happy in the consciousness of being beloved, and, constituted as we are in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... time after the publication of "The Bible in Spain," the Tories being still in power, this individual, full of the most disinterested friendship for the author, was particularly anxious that he should be presented with an official situation, in a certain region a great many miles off. "You are the only person for that appointment," said he; "you understand a great deal about the country, and are better acquainted with the two ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... of your pursuers, then, are beginning to discover that you are not a young lady easily persuaded into believing herself an angel, and capable of fancying them the most chivalrous and disinterested of men." ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... debt which the Greeks themselves acknowledged, it remains true to regard science and philosophy alike as in essence an original creation of the Greek genius. What grew up in Greece during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. was the spirit of disinterested inquiry proceeding on rational methods. By the term disinterested I mean detached from ulterior objects. Geometry for the Greek was something more than the art of land measurement, astronomy something more than a means of regulating the calendar or foretelling an eclipse. It was a study of the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... abused, beaten, and struck with whips along the main street of Mulinuu. There was no punishment, there was even no inquiry; the three Consuls winked. Only one man was found honest and bold enough to open his mouth, and that was my old enemy, Mr. Cedercrantz. Walking in Mulinuu, in his character of disinterested spectator, gracefully desipient, he came across the throng of these rabblers and their victims. He had forgotten that he was an official, he remembered that he was a man. It was his last public appearance in Samoa to interfere; it was certainly his best. Again, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carelessly. "Well, Ben is doing well in Cabot & Van Meter's, so he's no trouble to your mother. As for the two boys, I know nothing about them, one way or the other. But you, as you are a girl, and the only one not provided for, why, I shall show a little kindness in your direction. It's wholly disinterested and quixotic, I know," added Mrs. Chatterton, with a sweeping gaze at the walls and ceilings, "for me to give myself a thought about you or your future. And I shall never receive so much as a thank you for it. But I've passed all my life ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... returned Mr. Minford, "and fully appreciate the noble motives of your conduct. Your appearance convinces me that you are entirely disinterested. But I should feel ashamed to take money from you, without giving some security for its repayment. I shall therefore insist upon making over to you a certain interest in the invention, the most valuable of modern times, which lies almost finished behind those screens. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... I have some very nasty failings and I do not shrink from owning them. My desire is to represent myself as I am, and I must admit that it was not entirely owing to disinterested motives that I now took the secret stand I did in Miss Tuttle's favor. To prove her innocent whom once I considered the cause of, if not the guilty accessory to her sister's murder, now became my dream by night and my occupation by day. Though I seemed to have no sympathizer in this effort ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... disinterested persons anxious to attend the drawing of the famous lottery was even greater than the number of ticket-holders, consequently the streets were thronged with people. Whole families, and even whole villages, had come to the city, in the hope that their journey would not be in vain. Only to think ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... goodness to her, and spoke with more warmth than 'twas her wont and opined 'twould be a glorious afternoon for their ride in the forest! He had kept his eyes steadily from her; for 'twas his mood to play the disinterested and unconcerned; but at this innovation on her part he raised ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... and weakly tries to please everybody by differing from nobody. That trimming to catch all winds never gains any. Mr. Facing-both-ways is not a powerful evangelist. The motive of becoming all things to all men must be plainly disinterested, and the assimilation must have love for the souls concerned and eagerness to bring the truth to them, and them to the truth, legibly stamped upon it, or it will be regarded, and rightly so, as mere cowardice or dishonesty. And there must be no stretching ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... ambassadors could not well press their point—it went by default. It is the misfortune of Orientals generally, that in all their controversies with the English, the latter have been the historiographers, and therefore, in almost every step of their aggressive career, appear as disinterested champions of justice, seeking the improvement of semi-civilized peoples, by inflicting upon them wholesome and merited chastisement. Let it be conceded that the charges against the Japanese which we find in the Blue Book ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reports of commanding officers are no doubt often colored, if not by their own interests and inclinations, at least by their enthusiasm and partial view of their own purposes; and even the description of disinterested reporters and eye witnesses may be distorted and exaggerated, either by their own peculiarities of excited imagination, or from their imperfect opportunities for observation. But in cases where numerous witnesses are questioned, and cross examined under the solemnities of judicial proceeding, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... terrible, and always much to be feared; and that people would say the Abbe Dubois abused the mastery he had over him, and that this was evidence of dependence would draw down upon him hatred, disdain, and shame, the results of which were to be dreaded. I concluded by saying, that I spoke to him as his disinterested servitor; that his absence or his presence at this consecration would change in, nothing the fortune of the Abbe Dubois, who would be Archbishop of Cambrai all the same without prostituting his master in the eyes of all France, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Hamil. They both knew perfectly well that Virginia's advances were anything but disinterested. For, alas! even the men of her own entourage were now gravitating toward the Cardross family; Van Tassel Cuyp was continually wrinkling his nose and fixing his dead-blue eyes in that direction; little Colonel Vetchen circled busily round and round that centre of attraction, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... such gratitude; and never before had Thornton Lyne been less disinterested in his attentions. There was a hot bath—which Sam Stay could have dispensed with, but which, out of sheer politeness, he was compelled to accept, a warm and luxurious breakfast; a new suit of clothes, with not two, but four, five-pound ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... harshly, perhaps, by others, it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before history; this deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things, entirely disinterested; an epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the sharing of the same shadows confers the right to praise it; it is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in exile: "This one flattered ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Scott had intrusted his own case, giving him the fullest details, and leaving in his possession for safe keeping the proofs which were soon to play so important a part; and Mr. Sutherland, the attorney retained by Scott, had been present at the inquest, apparently as a disinterested spectator, but, in reality, one of the most ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a passionate soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep: "The time will come when you will be convinced that my passion is pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole weight of my sorrows." But when the devil appears, he declares ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Except the pay of a couple of hundred men, who spend their money in the country, England has neither directly nor indirectly made a shilling out of it, and I don't believe you will find in history a more successful and more disinterested ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... you behaved well—you behaved gallantly. I never doubted but you would distinguish yourself, and your praise is now in every man's mouth. It has been my theme of late. I will not say I was perfectly disinterested in the encomiums I bestowed. You were a son of Nassau Hall, and reflected honour on the place of my education. You were my classmate and friend, and reflected honour on me. I make no doubt but your promotion will be taken care of. The gentlemen ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... forms the object of my study, will not have been entirely in vain; and that the lovers of human progress, the believers in the capacity of nations for self-government and self-improvement, and the admirers of disinterested human genius and virtue, may find encouragement for their views in the detailed history of an heroic people in its most eventful period, and in the life and death of the great man whose name and fame are identical ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were other young females with her, who were asked for water, but refused; and that Rebekah reproved them for their churlishness. Her civilities were connected essentially with her promotion, though she had no selfish purpose in view: they resulted solely from a pure and disinterested ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... The island was to be restored to the Knights of the Order of St. John and placed under the protection of a third Power other than France and England. But the reconstitution of the Order was no less difficult than the choice of a strong and disinterested protecting Power. Lord Hawkesbury proposed that Russia be the guaranteeing Power. No proposal could have been more reasonable. The claims of the Czar to the protectorate of the Order had been so recently asserted by a treaty with the knights that no other conclusion seemed feasible. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... as now the Nucingens lived at the higher end of financial society, and the Baron de Nucingen made it a point of honor to treat the honest banker well. His disinterested virtue looked ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to them for some reinforcement for his own ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... bondmen by her own heroism. Harriet was a woman of no pretensions, indeed, a more ordinary specimen of humanity could hardly be found among the most unfortunate-looking farm hands of the South. Yet, in point of courage, shrewdness and disinterested exertions to rescue her fellow-men, by making personal visits to Maryland among the slaves, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Manyuema. Appetite returned, and instead of the spare, tasteless, two meals a day, I ate four times daily, and in a week began to feel strong. I am not of a demonstrative turn; as cold, indeed, as we islanders are usually reputed to be, but this disinterested kindness of Mr. Bennett, so nobly carried into effect by Mr. Stanley, was simply overwhelming. I really do feel extremely grateful, and at the same time I am a little ashamed at not being more worthy of the generosity. Mr. Stanley has done his part with untiring ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... each other in mortal combat now happily united to hunt down a common prey. And sure enough, in miserable caverns and cellars hitherto overlooked, shunning daylight, a few men in skullcaps and prayingshawls were found, dragged out into the disinterested sunlight with their families and exterminated. It was at this time the Grass crossed the Urals and leaped the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... grateful to the savior of her child's life, and ready to show the feeling by the little means in her power. Could he have looked into her heart, he would have seen that there was more than mere gratitude there. Holden's conduct, so different from that of other white men; the disinterested nature of his character showing itself in acts of kindness to all; his seclusion; his gravity, which seldom admitted of a smile; his imposing appearance, and his mysterious communings with some unseen power—for she had often ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... ignominiously to Yedo, he is said to have determined to fight no more, but to yield everything. A member of his second council went to him and said, "Sir, the only way for you now to retrieve the honour of the family of Tokugawa is to disembowel yourself; and to prove to you that I am sincere and disinterested in what I say, I am here ready to disembowel myself with you." The Tycoon flew into a great rage, saying that he would listen to no such nonsense, and left the room. His faithful retainer, to prove his honesty, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... large family; twenty of his brothers and sisters perished in a plague. The licentiousness of his early life, the astuteness of his intellect, and the worldliness of his aims, contrast with the singularly disinterested character of the saint on whom he conferred the highest honours of the Church. But he accomplished by diplomacy and skill what Catherine had begun. If she was instrumental in restoring the Popes to Rome, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... not trouble me either. Absolutely disinterested friends I do not seek, as I should only find them among idiots or somnambulists. As to those whose interests are base, they do not know how to conceal their motives from me. For the rest, I am not so unreasonable as to object to a fair account being taken of my wealth in estimating the value ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... is plumed by the prisoners, whom he daily visits in his mission of good. There was something so frank and gentle in this young man's demeanor-something so manly and radiant in his countenance-something so disinterested and holy in his mission of love—something so opposite to the coldness of the great world without—something so serene and elevated in his youth, that even the most inveterate criminal awaited his coming with ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Generations, to bondage, to unrequited toil through life? 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' This single passage of Scripture should cause us to have respect to the rights of the slave. True Christian love is of an enlarged, disinterested nature. It loves all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, without regard to colour or condition." "Georgiana, my dear, you are an abolitionist; your talk is fanaticism," said Mr. Peck in rather ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... of the future policy of this government as it is necessary now to forecast, and in the spirit of these principles I may, I hope, be permitted with as much confidence as earnestness, to extend to the governments of all the republics of America the hand of genuine disinterested friendship and to pledge my own honor and the honor of my colleagues to every enterprise of peace and amity that a fortunate ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... realizing what would probably be his fate, history holds him a hero and calls his death a martyrdom. He was not one of those popularity-seeking, self-styled patriots who are ever mouthing "My country, right or wrong;" his devotion was deeper and more disinterested. When he found his country wrong he willingly sacrificed himself to set her right. Such unselfish spirits are rare; in life they are often misunderstood, but when time does them justice, they come into a fame ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... employed by agents, that there is constant and enormous imposition on the public and an incredible outlay on poor stoves, that soon burn out or break, while they devour fuel beyond calculation. If some benevolent and scientific organization could be formed that would, from disinterested motives, afford some reliable guidance to the public, it probably would save both millions of money and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... did not take long for the sympathetic eyes of Frank and Inza to see that the ardent love of Berlin Carson for the young woman, who had proved herself to be unworthy of him, though now extinguished, had left him moody and disinterested ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... visited two or three friends, to have a last interview with them; in one case to invite a person to join the people of God; in another, to urge the necessity of family-prayer; a third was a young person apparently in dying circumstances, and a fourth was a quaker friend, whose disinterested friendship endears her to me.—Visited the Lady Mayoress at the Mansion House, and felt quite at ease. Had an opportunity of dropping a word in her ear, which she seemed to ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... a short, fat individual wearing a chiton as if he had slept in it for three or four weeks. His face was puffy and his golden hair was ruffled. His eyelids seemed to have acquired a permanent half-mast, and beneath them the eyes were bleary and disinterested. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... like Sam's condescension at his wedding-feast, overtopped the mark; but it was erring on the safe side. Who would not sink the man in the gentleman? After all, perhaps the sages and wits were not altogether disinterested: almost every one of them filled Sam Winnington's famous sitter's chair, and depended on Sam's tasteful pencil handing down their precious noses and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... give a fresh impetus to some impulse with which Rigdon had been temporizing. He recurred to it at once. "You contemplate giving it to the public," he said to Gordon; "why not try its effect on a disinterested listener ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... deed in one sense," said Valentine. "You have proved yourself generous and disinterested. Heaven grant that you may ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... my convalescence that the fate of the Texian expedition to Santa Fe was decided; and as the real facts have been studiously concealed, and my intelligence, gained from the Indians, who were disinterested parties, was afterwards fully corroborated by an Irish gentleman who had been persuaded to join it, I may as well relate them here. Assuming the character of friendly traders, with some hundred dollars' worth of goods, as a blind to their real ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... know itself and regard itself and achieve intellectual appreciation in man. While all nature below man is wise only to its own ends and goes its appointed way as void of self-consciousness as the stone that falls or the wind that blows, the mind of man attains to disinterested wisdom and turns upon itself and upon the universe the power of objective thought; it ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... the termination of eight of the pastorates of the Old South Church. Well might Anna term her "a Sister of the Old South." She was in 1817 the President of the Old South Charity School, and is described as a "disinterested friend, a judicious adviser, an affectionate counsellor, a mild but faithful reprover, a humble, self-denying, fervent, active, cheerful Christian." Jonathan Mason was not only a deacon, but a prosperous merchant ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... solid foundation whatever for the assertion that Luther later on retracted his book against Erasmus or abandoned its doctrine, —a fact at present generally admitted also by disinterested historians. (Frank 1, 129. 135. 125.) In his criticism of the Book of Confutation, dated March 7, 1559 Landgrave Philip of Hesse declared: "As to free will, we a long time ago have read the writings of Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam as well as their respective replies; and, although in ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Homer the better for the use of the schoolboys of the ideal city, is ready to sacrifice much of that graceful polytheism in which the Greeks anticipated the dulia of saints and angels in the catholic church. He does this to the advantage of a very abstract, and as it may seem disinterested, certainly an uninteresting, notion of deity, which is in truth:—well! one of the dry sticks of mere "natural theology," as it is called. In this he was but following the first, the original, founder of the Eleatic ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... connection to permit to the practical experience and judgment of business men some recognized scope in the deliberations, as I understand was freely done in England. I am entirely certain that the spokesmen for the business community would give their time, their best thought and their disinterested service to the task of co-operating in devising a wise and fair scheme of taxation as fully, readily and patriotically as they have done and are doing to the task of placing ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... say: I have been insipid in my sermons, and remiss in my conduct; having been more solicitous, during the exercise of my ministry, to advance my family than to build up the Lord's house, I will preach hereafter with fervor and zeal. I will be vigilant, sober, rigorous, and disinterested. Let the miser say: I have riches ill acquired. I will purge my house of illicit wealth. I will overturn the altar of Mammon and erect another to the supreme Jehovah. Let the prodigal say: I will extinguish the unhappy fires by which I am consumed and kindle in my bosom ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... "How disinterested of you!" She looked the isolated couple over. "The girl is all right, but I don't like the mother. She is well dressed—oh, correct from tip to toe—but not ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the most interesting chapters in "Liza"—one which may be skipped by readers who care for nothing but incident in a story—describes a conversation which takes place between the hero and one of his old college friends. The sketch of the disinterested student, who has retained in mature life all the enthusiasm of his college days, is excellent, and is drawn in a very kindly spirit. But in "Fathers and Children" an exaggeration of this character is introduced, serving as a somewhat scare-crow-like embodiment ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... as deputy of Treves and speedily became known by his works (Rubezahl and the Red Leaf). He also speedily discovered the immense mistake made by the Germans in resting their hopes upon France. It was indeed a strange delusion to suppose the vain and greedy Frenchman capable of being inspired with disinterested love for all mankind, and it was indeed a severe irony, that, after such repeated and cruel experience, after having for centuries seen the French ever in the guise of robbers and pillagers, and after breathing such loud complaints against the princes who had sold Germany to France, that ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... glad she's ashamed of it. As far as I can find out, it does not seem as if Mr Null has any intention of coming here for some time; and, as I said before, I do very much want to know something about him—that is from a disinterested outsider. One cannot expect a recently married young woman to give a correct ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... democratic leadership but to contribute material aid and brains in suppressing the submarine, and to build ships enough to keep Britain, France, and Italy from starving. We are looked upon by all the Allies, and I believe justly, as being a disinterested nation, free from the age-long jealousies of Europe. And we can do much in bringing together and making more purposeful the various elements represented by the nations to whose aid ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beautiful eyes had no joy in them. She had realised two things as a result of her interview. The opportunity she had looked forward to had materialised, and she had seized it with both hands. But the goodness of Elas Peterman to herself possessed none of that disinterested kindliness she had hitherto believed. Furthermore, there was dawning upon her that which her mirror should have told her long ago. She was beginning to understand that her work, her capacity, her application, counted far less in the favour of her chief than did those ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a disinterested and ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... liquor ever could approach me! But it is thou, disinterested comrade, Bearest the rainy ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... can give you expert and disinterested advice on investments and can in addition offer you a selection of well-chosen season bonds of whatever character a discussion of your affairs may disclose as being ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... absolutely disinterested in the selection which we are now discussing and that fact I wish to emphasize particularly, as we are about to take a vote which we can easily anticipate by the one we had a few minutes ago, in order that the ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... individuals, and the stringent appeals of private friends, which could not have been refused if wished, which dared not be neglected. An exception, the Jews' Hospital, was the emanation of a noble mind, and, backed by disinterested perseverance, induced all to contribute to so bold an undertaking, commencing from the highest: its sphere of benefit is, however, very limited. Unfortunately, few among us investigate whether any good, or what, ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... The President, if he is clear and narrow rather than clear and broad, if he sometimes plays the bigot, if he is a good field officer rather than the great man of affairs we need—yet he is earnest, disinterested, able, a patriot. And Congress does its best—is at least eloquent and fires the heart. Our crowding needs are great and our resources small; it does what it can. The departments work hard. Benjamin, Mallory, Randolph, Meminger—they are all good men. And the railroad men and the engineers ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in executing with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge: that others, not having been so fortunate, could not be so disinterested; and therefore their accusations could spring from no other source than faction, and envy to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... seeks undue private benefits through governmental aid, and public places are claimed as rewards of party service, I would have our universities and colleges persuade the people to a relinquishment of the demand for party spoils and exhort them to a disinterested and patriotic love of their government, whose unperverted operation secures to every citizen his just share of the safety and prosperity it ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... great mistake (that their abilities of mind are lost, if not employed in the pursuit of wealth or power) engages them in the ways of fortune and interest, which usually leave but little freedom or leisure of thought for pure disinterested truth. And such who give themselves up frankly, and in earnest to the full latitude of real knowledge, are not everywhere to be met with. Wonder not, therefore, that I wish so much for you in my neighbourhood; I should be too happy in a friend of your make, were you within my ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Wilberforce, Thornton, and his own father. He estimated most highly, not perhaps more highly than they deserved, the value of the services rendered by them in awakening the conscience of the nation. In their persistent and disinterested labours he recognised a manifestation of the great social force of Christianity. But a belief that Christianity is useful, and even that it is true, may consist with a profound conviction of the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... only the island of Formosa. The indemnity was on the other hand increased by H. taels 30,000,000. For the time the integrity of China seemed to be preserved, and Russia, France and Germany could pose as her friends. Evidence was, however, soon forthcoming that Russia and France had not been disinterested in rescuing Chinese territory from the Japanese grasp. Russia now obtained the right to carry the Siberian railway across Chinese territory from Stryetensk to Vladivostok, thus avoiding a long detour, besides giving a grasp on northern Manchuria. France ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of sentences. This added to impressiveness of scene. Crowded House sitting breathless; Members opposite leaning forward lest they might miss a phrase. Everyone conscious that at the door also listening were jealous France, the wily Turk, the interested Egyptian, the not entirely disinterested CZAR, and the other Great Powers concerned for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... declared that sentiment to the world, and we trust that the reprobation with which this transaction has been met, will, in future, lead all Powers, whoever they may be, who may be induced to violate treaties, to consider that they will meet with the disinterested protest of England, so that her character shall stand before the world untarnished by any act of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... are too selfish; they think more of themselves than of us; while you, now, think only of me. I am all your life to you. And I will take nothing more from you. I want to prove to you how disinterested I am." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... scarcely do without me. You cannot think how much I am esteemed and beloved here. People say that I am disinterested as well as steady and polite, and praise my manners. Every one knows me. As soon as they heard my name, the two Herrn Silbermann and Herr Hepp (organist) came to call on me, and also Capellmeister Richter. ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... forget fifty acts of disinterested kindness, Marjorie, it does not follow that I am to do the same." By which it will appear that Miss Du Plessis had her orders to rub it in pretty hot to her friend, and was rubbing it in accordingly, even though it did smart. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Republic. In all the different representations of Socrates, whether of Xenophon or Plato, and amid the differences of the earlier or later Dialogues, he always retains the character of the unwearied and disinterested seeker after truth, without which he would have ceased to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... when he thought it unfavourable? Perhaps he means to marry her, and to sacrifice to her innocence and her attractions all plans of ambition, and all views of aggrandizement:—thrice happy Henrietta, if such is thy prospect of felicity! to have inspired a passion so disinterested, may humble the most insolent of thy superiors, and teach even the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors—floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... matter? Let people talk, and when you reappear in better condition they will understand. You know I never gave you a word of advice which the whole world could not hear. I always helped you, and you always found the most disinterested approval here in your home. But you will admit that human strength ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... of its being a boarding-house,—a community. In such communities, from the inevitable intercourse over the social board, your circle of acquaintance is always liable to be extended rather than improved. In them there is no escape from the disinterested offers of those who would be your perpetual friends. I am still under lasting obligations to a man who, at a boarding-house in which I sojourned for but three days, forced on me a pipeful of an extremely choice and luxurious kind of tobacco, to dilate on the properties of which he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... only one, in which such a deed can be said to have been by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and that is that God did not interfere to save Jesus from the last dread ordeal. He allowed wickedness to do its worst, and thereby made the disinterested nobleness of the character of Jesus all the clearer. In such a time as that in which Jesus lived such a life as His was sure to end on a Calvary of some kind, unless He ran away from it, or God supernaturally intervened to save Him. Neither event happened. If Jesus had ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... not gain the support of William of Orange because he was distrustful of its objects. The members were young and imprudent, and many of them were not at all disinterested in their desire to secure the broad lands belonging to the Catholic Church. Their wild banquets were dangerous to the whole country, since spies sat at the board and took note of all extravagant phrases that might be construed into disloyalty. Orange himself held meetings of a very different ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... on the upward path, the true hierophant of the mysteries of God, is love[10]. Love has been defined as "interest in its highest power";[11] while others have said that "it is of the essence of love to be disinterested." The contradiction is merely a verbal one. The two definitions mark different starting-points, but the two "ways of love" should bring us to the same goal. The possibility of disinterested love, in the ordinary sense, ought never to have been called in question. "Love is not love" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... scheme of the Trustees with respect to the settlement of Georgia was made public, the well-wishers of mankind in every part of Britain highly approved of an undertaking so humane and disinterested. To consult the public happiness, regardless of private interest, and to stretch forth a bountiful hand for relief of distressed fellow-creatures, were considered as examples of uncommon benevolence and virtue, and therefore worthy of general imitation. The ancient Romans, famous ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... of being loved for my own sake; or, at least of knowing that I was so loved. If I had come with my rank and my fortune in my hand, as it were—one of the good matches of the year—what security could I ever have felt in the disinterested love of the girl who chose me? As plain John Hammond I wooed and was rejected; as plain John Hammond I wooed and won; and the prize which I so won is a pearl above price. Not for worlds, were the last year to be lived over ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... from other berths to hear the conclusion of the story. One head, a female one, instantly disappeared on my looking around, but a certain tremulousness of her window-curtain showed an unabated interest. The only two utterly disinterested men were the One Man ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Mallinson. From the clash of two natures so thoroughly different as those of the two men, played off against one another with all the delicate manipulation of Miss Le Mesurier's experienced hand, there was much enjoyment to be anticipated for the purely disinterested spectator which he intended to be. Of the probable denouement he formed no conception, and in fact avoided purposely any temptation to do so. He preferred that the play should unroll itself in a series of delightful surprises. The one question which he asked himself at this time was whether ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... charges are weighing upon me. Before thinking of myself I must provide for the comfortable existence of my mother and my dear children in Paris, and I can also not avoid paying Belloni a modest salary for the services he renders me, although he has always shown himself most nobly disinterested on my behalf. My concert career, as you know, has been closed for more than two years past, and I cannot resume it imprudently without serious damage to my present position and still more to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... glory of Ali is the constant burden of their strain. He was destined, and, according to some accounts, designated, for the caliphate by the prophet; but while the others were fiercely pushing their own interests, Ali was watching the remains of Mahomet with pious fidelity. His disinterested magnanimity, on each separate occasion, declined the sceptre, and gave the noble example of obedience to the appointed caliph. He is described, in retirement, on the throne, and in the field of battle, as transcendently ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... administered by people who were racially and traditionally different from you. You left your immigration problems to sentimentalists and money-makers. You left the law-making to money-makers. You refused to serve the nation in a disinterested, future-seeing way which was your duty if you wanted your institutions to live. You descendants of New England are quitters. And you are going to lose your dam ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... sugar, the concentric waves of a smile of anticipatory gratitude. It was Francoise, motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor like the statue of a saint in its niche. When we had grown more accustomed to this religious darkness we could discern in her features a disinterested love of all humanity, blended with a tender respect for the 'upper classes' which raised to the most honourable quarter of her heart the hope of receiving her due reward. Mamma pinched my arm sharply and said in a loud voice: "Good morning, Francoise." At this signal my fingers parted and I let ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... fall helplessly into the workhouse because they are good far nothing; but there are also men who are there because they are strongminded enough to disregard the social convention (obviously not a disinterested one on the part of the ratepayer) which bids a man live by heavy and badly paid drudgery when he has the alternative of walking into the workhouse, announcing himself as a destitute person, and legally compelling the Guardians to feed, clothe and house him better than he could feed, clothe ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... with Miss Thornhill," said the professor in a low voice. "She has convinced me that in this affair you have acted from a wholly disinterested point of view. A mistaken idea of chivalry, perhaps. The infatuation of the moment for a pretty face—a thing to which all men with red blood in their veins are susceptible—a pleasant thing that I would be the last to want banished ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the beneficent powers and processes of the Unseen Time. That and no other is the mood in which our sight is most likely to pierce the obscuring mists from which the new era begins to emerge. When we have said so much as this, it remains as true as before that Mr. Greg's faculty of disinterested speculation, his feeling for the problems of life, and his distinction of character, all make it worth while to put something about him on record, and to attempt to describe him as he was, apart from the opaque influences of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... Mr. Washington Custis, grandson of Mrs. General Washington, was the daughter of Mr. William Fitzhugh, of Chatham. Scarcely is there a Christian lady in our land more honoured than she was, and none more loved and esteemed. For good sense, prudence, sincerity, benevolence, unaffected piety, disinterested zeal in every good work, deep humanity and retiring modesty—for all the virtues which adorn the wife, the mother, and the friend—I never ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... months passed here in Rome seem to me an age; and have taxed me to that extent that I look forward to home as a place of rest and repose. When I think of the fears, anxieties, and labors undergone I say to myself—enough for this time. On the other hand, when I remember the warm and disinterested friends God has given us on account of these difficulties, and the happy issue to which His providence has conducted them, my heart is full of gratitude and joy. To me the future looks bright, hopeful, full of promise, and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... completely mastered, and on which he held forth at length authoritatively. He began by challenging the impartiality of Boutan, whom he knew to be a fervent partisan of large families. He made merry with him, declaring that no medical man could possibly have a disinterested opinion on the subject. Then he brought out all that he vaguely knew of Malthusianism, the geometrical increase of births, and the arithmetical increase of food-substances, the earth becoming so populous as to be reduced to a state of famine within two centuries. It was the poor's own fault, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... out of this masquerade, something beyond mere frivolous enjoyment, then the means would have justified the end, and neither would have cause for reproach. How fitting, too, for Diana and Bellew, both of the same world and social position, to find each other in such a disinterested way. Really, it looked as if everything were for the best in the best of all possible worlds. It was only when Sarle's clear gaze was upon her that April's soul stirred with a sense of guilt and a longing to discontinue the deceit, harmless as it was. His simple, candid personality ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley |
