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More "Egotistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrived at the sum of 56,750, a final conference was held at Buthrotum between Ali and the Lord High Commissioner. The latter then informed the Parganiotes that the indemnity allowed them was irrevocably fixed at 150,000! The transaction is a disgrace to the egotistical and venal nation which thus allowed the life and liberty of a people to be trifled with, a lasting blot on the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... entirely on each other and it is very interesting being thrown with people of so many different nationalities. I have been living so fully it seems to me for the last three or four years and still always a crescendo. I don't know why I always write so much about myself—egotistical youth—but how I realize my youth. Even while youth itself makes my head whirl, I stand back within myself and say almost sadly—it is youth. It is sad in a way because I know that the reaction of great interest upon me is youth, and not ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... off; I don't stick to my friends and bore them with my affairs like that egotistical hussy, Jane Bazalgette. I amuse myself, and leave them to amuse themselves; that is my notion of politeness. I am going to see my pigs fed, then into the village. I am building a new blacksmith's shop there (you must come and look at it the first thing to-morrow); and at six, if you ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... possessed of no other weapon, he is compelled to cultivate patience and good temper. Also, health and strength are conducive to equability of temper, and hence the domestic popularity of the man of brawn above the one of brain, who is not infrequently exacting and crossly egotistical in his family relations where the other would be ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... had thought before writing the letter I am now apologizing for, I could not have failed to see that you write to me because you would relieve my loneliness as far as you are able. But I did not think: I yielded to my mood, and see now that my letters are disgracefully egotistical, and very often absurd; for have I not begged of you to remember that since God will hold me responsible for your soul, it would be well that you should live a life of virtue and renunciation, so that I shall be saved the humiliation ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... stationed in and around Namur, was attacked on the 14th of June, 1815.[10] Napoleon afterward observed in his memoirs that he had attacked Blucher first because he well knew that Blucher would not be supported by the over-prudent and egotistical English commander, but that Wellington, had he been first attacked, would have received every aid from his high-spirited and faithful ally. Wellington, after being repeatedly urged by Blucher, collected his scattered corps, but neither completely nor with sufficient rapidity; ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... representation to listening audiences behind the footlights, but in the increased study of life in its exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with the tendency, of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world itself, either into an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered association of more or less independent figures united only in a rebellious and contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the Hyde Park barracks, and saw much of the drill sergeant's method. Generally speaking, he is a stout man with the walk of an egotistical pigeon. His voice is one of the most extraordinary things in nature: if you can distinguish it from the bark of a dog, you are clever. They tell me that the privates, after a little practice, can—which gives one a higher opinion of their intelligence ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... full of sound thought, and his deportment modest, dignified, and unpretending.... Possessed of a high order of talent, enriched by stores of information, General Hayes is one of the few men capable of accomplishing much without any egotistical assertion of self." General James M. Comly had said: "More than four years' service in the same command gave the writer ample opportunity to know that no braver or more dashing and enterprising ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... come those desires and motives that one shares perhaps with some social beasts, but far more so as a conscious thing with men alone. These desires and motives all centre on a clearly apprehended "self" in relation to "others"; they are the essentially egotistical group. They are self-assertion in all its forms. I have dealt with motives toward gratification and motives towards experience; this set of motives is for the sake of oneself. Since they are the most acutely conscious motives in unthinking men, there is a tendency on the part of unthinking ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... got through, and was now known to the entire world. Everybody's eyes were fixed on Peking. There was nothing else spoken of. That made us stronger than anything else. Poor human nature—we are so egotistical! ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... you were very egotistical for a while, Brainard, and that is a fact. And you didn't appreciate how much her nature demanded. But I do not think you are responsible for your wife's present condition. If there is any comfort in that statement, you are ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... her that letter is,—egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not foolish—narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an inexpressible charm. Yes, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of the curiosities, pictures, &c., collected by Mr. Croker at 'Rosamond's Bower,' which it is unnecessary further to refer to; indeed, although intended for private circulation only, it was not completed, as Mr. Croker was led to believe it might appear but an egotistical ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... wish you were. I don't like that sort of attitude towards serious things; and I don't understand what you mean about looking on at one's own life. It sounds brutally detached, not to say egotistical." ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... of this nature; the calm heroism of the seventeenth century, and the insane devotion of the nineteenth, were alike its fruits. The voyageur possessed it, in common with all his countrymen. But in him it was not noisy, turbulent, or egotistical; military glory had "neither part nor lot" in his schemes; the conquests he desired to make were the conquests of faith; the dominion he wished to establish was the dominion ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... machinery of existence, walked through the midst of sleeping London and did nothing. But then none of them were fanatics, for Thornduck stated that the fanatics fell early to sleep, thus proving that the motives behind their fanaticism were egotistical, and a source of satisfaction to themselves. He made a point of visiting the homes of some of them. Philanthropists, too, ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... dollars to Edwards if he would go after them and bring them back. Edwards asked my advice, and I encouraged him to go, telling him how to take and bring back his prisoners." (Reflective pause.) "You can't imagine me living alone, now, can you? Such an egotistical fellow as I am, and fond of ladies' society. You ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... "Because that would be egotistical, and the prime ingredient of my specific against getting stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote, the very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Sellers—a sort of "oldest inhabitant" of the river, who made the other pilots weary with the scope and antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. He contributed paragraphs of general information and Nestorian opinions to the New Orleans Picayune, and signed them "Mark Twain." They were quaintly egotistical in tone, usually beginning: "My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans," and reciting incidents and comparisons dating ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... friends. People call me a Socialist, because I am trying to find out what I really do think on certain economic and social subjects. I doubt that I shall ever bring up underneath any precise label, and yet some people would think it egotistical that I insisted upon being a class to myself. I very much doubt that I hold Mr. Hardwick's opinion exactly in any particular." He looked at the girl with a sort of urgency which she scarcely comprehended. "Miss Sessions," he said, "I wear my hair longer than most men, and the barber is always ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... there was no appeal, and they were received with neither more nor less respect than those of St. Louis at Vincennes. But it must be said to his credit that his predilection for this walk was not entirely egotistical: it also led to the Marsh of the Grange Bateliere, whose black and gloomy waters attracted a great many of those dragon-flies with the gauzy wings and golden bodies which children delight to pursue. One of Bathilde's greatest amusements was to run, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... over it, pen in hand, ready to reply. She put on her imperious look, and said she forbade my writing, if I grew gloomy over it. She feared my letters were only the outpourings of a disappointed spirit. Indulgence in grief she considered weak, foolish, unprincipled, and egotistical. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... rough and bearlike—boorish," she thought, as she remembered that the man had not removed his hat in her presence. "He called me names. He is uncouth, cynical, egotistical. He thinks he can scare me into leaving his Indians alone." Her lips trembled and tightened. "I am a woman, and I'll show him what a woman can do. He has lived among the Indians until he thinks he owns them. He is hard, and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... but as the drudge, the human pack-horse; she prepares the food, and her husband devours it regardless of her needs; he may boast of his "old woman" as being "nina mimi heca" (swift or good to work) for that is the only accomplishment required in his selfish, egotistical mind. "The Indian woman comes into the world under a species of protest—every Indian parent desiring to have boys, rather than girls, hence she grows up into a condition of servitude." "In the Indian nation to purchase a wife is the honorable way, all other ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... Amphillis was summoned to do all the plain and uninteresting parts. The result of this preoccupation would have been very stale pastry on the counter, if her father had not seen to that item for himself. Ricarda was less excited and egotistical, yet ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... themselves to a makeshift simper. She could take nothing—no better, no broader perception of anything than fitted her own small faculty; so that though she must have recalled or imagined that he had still, up to lately, had interests at stake, the rapid result of her egotistical little chatter was to make him wish he might rather have conversed with the French waiter dangling in the long vista that showed the oriental cafe as a climax, or with the policeman, outside, the top of whose helmet peeped above the ledge of a window. She bewailed her wretched money to excess—she ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... exclaimed the count, looking at the astute face of his companion, "to be a most agreeable man. Your face pleases me, M. Malicorne, and you must possess some indisputably excellent qualities to have pleased that egotistical Manicamp. Be candid and tell me whether you are not some saint descended ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "I'm not such an egotistical ass as to imagine a woman of your sort could be genuinely in love with a man of my sort," replied he. "So, I'll see to it that we keep away from each other. I don't wish to be tempted to do ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... not be angry with me that I cannot become for you that which you wish. I shall certainly not marry. I am too happy in my own home for that. Ah! this to be sure is egotistical, but I cannot do otherwise. Forgive me! I am so very much, so heartily attached to you; and I should never be happy again if you love ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the other papers already mentioned, Mr. Burroughs has written a number of critical essays on life and literature, published in Indoor Studies, and other volumes. He has also taken his readers into his confidence in An Egotistical Chapter, the final one of his Indoor Studies; and in the Introduction to the Riverside Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of his ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... recount many more adventures somewhat similar to those I have described, but I do not wish to bore my readers or appear egotistical in their eyes. The only comparison I would make in regard to our doings in those days is with the work done by the blockading squadron during the civil war in America; for if ever men required plucky endurance and self-denial it was the poor fellows who had to keep, or ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... company. He accepted the young farmer's invitation to supper, and the result proved unlucky in more directions than one. During this meal Clem railed in surly vein against the whole order of things as it affected himself, and made egotistical complaint as to the hardness of life; then, when his host began to offer advice, he grew savage and taunted Will with his own unearned good fortune. Blanchard, weary after a day of tremendous physical exertion, made ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... all comes from a passionate antagonism to the war. He is not a pacifist exactly—he is not a conscientious objector. He is just an individualist gone mad—an egotistical, hot-tempered man, with all the ideas of the old regime, who thinks he can fight the world. I am often really sorry for him—he is so preposterous. But the muddle and waste of it all drives me crazy—you know I always was ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... given some specimens of Monsieur de Galgenstein's sober conversation; and it is hardly necessary to trouble the reader with any further reports of his speeches. They were intolerably stupid and dull; as egotistical as his morning lecture had been, and a hundred times more rambling and prosy. If Cat had been in the possession of her sober senses, she would have seen in five minutes that her ancient lover was a ninny, and ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Halberd, Fifteenth Century View of Alexandria, Sixteenth Century Village Feast, Sixteenth Century Village pillaged by Soldiers Villain, the Covetous and Avaricious Villain, the Egotistical and Envious Villain or Peasant, Fifteenth Century Villain receiving his Lord's Orders Vine, Culture of the Vintagers, The, Thirteenth Century Votive ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... developing self-consciousness, and in time it would become human. On our way back from Heligoland, where we were entertained on the emperor's yacht at the naval manoeuvres, we paid another visit to our monkey house. The poor, misguided brute had died of starvation. It had become so vain, so egotistical, so superior, that it refused food and wasted away in a corner, gazing at itself, a hairy Narcissus, or rather the perfect type of your modern Superman, who contemplates his ego until his brain sickens ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... churchyards. The young poet uses death as an antithesis; and when he shocks his reader by some flippant use of it in that way, he considers he has written something mightily fine. In his gloomiest mood he is most insincere, most egotistical, most pretentious. The older and wiser poet avoids the subject as he does the memory of pain; or when he does refer to it, he does so in a reverential manner, and with some sense of its solemnity and of the magnitude of its issues. It was in that year of revelry, 1814, and while undressing ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... accomplished author of Caleb Stukely. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her sensations, and what dresses she wears, and how thin she is, and so on. But with all her faults, she is unquestionably a very accomplished and clever writer. Her criticisms on subjects relating to art, and especially her original and sparkling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... end, unless I may be permitted to supplement its meagreness by one or two personal—not to say egotistical—reminiscences. The death of Mr. Mill senior, in 1836, had occasioned a vacancy at the bottom of the examiner's office, to which I was appointed through the kindness of Sir James Carnac, then chairman of the Company, in whose gift it was. Within a few months, however, I was transferred to a newly-created ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess A—— had by no means a bad heart, but she was capricious, like a woman who had been spoiled by the world, as well as being avaricious and egotistical, like all old people, who have seen their best days, and whose thoughts are with the past, and not the present. She participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls, where she sat in a corner, painted and dressed ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... 'all I can say is, that such marks of confidence must be very gratifying to a professional man. I don't wish to say anything that might appear egotistical, gentlemen, but I'm very glad, for your own sakes, that you came to me; that's all. If you had gone to any low member of the profession, it's my firm conviction, and I assure you of it as a fact, that you would have found yourselves in Queer Street before this. I could have wished my noble ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself; but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... implied that he found them in my talk. As a matter of fact it was my inquiring attitude that he loved, the knowledge that there was no detail that he could give me about himself, his impressions and experiences, that was unlikely to interest me. I would not for the world imply that he was egotistical or complacent, absolutely the reverse, but he possessed an articulate soul which found its happiness in expression, and I liked to listen. I feel that these are complicated words to explain a very simple relation, and I pause to wonder what is left to me if I wished to describe his commerce ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... see how this affects me, or proves, as you say, that I should be more egotistical," replied Miss Nellie, continuing, with feminine perversity, to feign innocence and ignorance, that she might keep Fred longer on a topic at once so flattering ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... goodness implanted in the human heart by the Creator forbid the plutocratic man to be what the plutocratic scheme of life implies. He is often merciful, kindly, and generous, as I have told you already, in spite of conditions absolutely egotistical. You would think that the Americans would be abashed in view of the fact that their morality is often in contravention of their economic principles, but apparently they are not so, and I believe that for the most part they are not aware ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... each other, and were changed. Again, how I conducted myself towards them; and how, and how far, and for how long a time, I thought I could hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements which I had made, and with the position which I filled.... It is not at all pleasant for me to be egotistical nor to be criticised for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... you and heckle you and make a fool of you, and I'll roll you up in a ball and blow you out the window, and turn old Hassoun loose for an Egyptian holiday that will make old Rome look like thirty piasters! You pinheaded, pretentious, pompous, egotistical, niminy-piminy—" ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... may suspect it, the charming, gracious, and cultured Mr. Balfour is the most egotistical of men, and a man who would make almost any sacrifice to remain in office. It costs him nothing to serve under Mr. Lloyd George; it would have cost him almost his life to be out of office during a period so exciting as that of the Great War. He loves office more ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... again why I hate you," returned Sara. "I told you once. But you are too superior, too one-sided, too egotistical, to see anyone but yourself!" He ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... some previous existence, in order to analyse death so clearly. And all these officers, who walk in the Valley of the Shadow, have their selfish ambitions, their absurd social distinctions, and their overweening, egotistical vanity. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but, though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name was Garfield. [Laughter and applause]. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... me very egotistical, but I DO wish you to tell me what you, and Aunty, and Madre think of "Sunflowers and a Rushlight," when you read it. I fear it has rather scandalized my Aunt, who is staying with us. She is obviously ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... might experience under like circumstances, he yet was imbued with the sense of caution that is necessary to all creatures of the wild if they are to survive. Should necessity require, Tarzan could face Numa in battle, although he was not so egotistical as to think that he could best a full-grown lion in mortal combat other than through accident or the utilization of the cunning of his superior man-mind. To lay himself liable to death futilely, he would have ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Fil-de-Soie, an egotistical philosopher, who thieved to provide for the future, was a good deal like Paccard, Jacques Collin's satellite, who had fled with Prudence Servien and the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs between them. He had no attachment, he condemned ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... with a laugh. He was copying the address of the solicitors from the summons, but could not help pausing to reply to this egotistical remark. "Why, Mr. Morley, what do you know of such work?" he ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... works at this time of day would be suspiciously like a post-mortem examination, resulting possibly in a verdict of temporary insanity—if not, indeed, of felo de se—so wilful and wrongheaded were the vagaries of this 'rough, egotistical Yankee,' as he has been called: Herman Melville is replete with graphic power, and riots in the exuberance of a fresh, racy style; but whether he can sustain the 'burden and heat' of a well-equipped and full-grown novel as deftly as the fragmentary autobiographies he loves to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... fainting brother to perish in the sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety,—nay, more, for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed, permitted and absolved the crime of murder by 'shoving the drowning man into the sea,' to be swallowed by the waves. Cain! Cain! where is thy brother? And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... or of his work as a concrete case of production. One phase of this is the individual's estimate of his own powers. We may inquire what is the man's appreciation of his own worth. This is precarious because of two difficulties. There is an egotistical element in individuals. It is inherent as a historical agent of self-preservation. Most of us are like primitive groups. The ethnologist expects to find every tribe or horde of savages claiming to be THE PEOPLE. They ascribe superior qualities to their group. In their names for their group ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... ideas of its rulers, even as sand or as water is shaped by wind. And this submissiveness to reshaping belongs to the old conditions of its soul life,—old conditions of rare unselfishness and perfect faith. The relative absence from the national character of egotistical individualism has been the saving of an empire; has enabled a great people to preserve its independence against prodigious odds. Wherefore Japan may well be grateful to her two great religions, the creators and the preservers of her moral power to Shinto, which taught the individual to think ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... spoke was usually of ourselves or of each other, so that if any one had been at so much pains as overhear us, he must have supposed us the most egotistical persons in the world. It befell one day when we were at this practice, that we came on a discourse of friends and friendship, and I think now that we were sailing near the wind. We said what a fine thing friendship was, and how little we had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up into Shandon's cheeks and his eyes hardened. It would be so easy to quarrel again with this man; the very sight of him, supremely egotistical and contemptuous, stirred a natural dislike into something very close to positive hatred. But these days he was making it his business to hold himself in check, he was turning his back against the old headlong ways, and he ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... of his domestic wretchedness has come. He was as manfully patient and silent as one might have expected in a man upright, firm, and self-reliant as he was tender. I do not think it is good for men, and especially for women, to indulge in egotistical sentimentality, and to believe that such a woman as Agnes Duerer could utterly thwart and wreck the life of a man like Albrecht. It is not true to life, in the first place; and it is dishonouring to the man, in the second; for although, doubtless, there are men who are driven to destruction or heart-broken ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... peril; and this good and tender friend by an immense effort hastened to throw himself into the Emperor's arms, and his Majesty pressed him to his heart as if to thank him for rousing such gentle emotions at a moment when danger usually renders men selfish and egotistical. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... very picturesque and interesting figure, is Gabriele d'Annunzio—very much in earnest, wholly sincere, but fanatical, egotistical, intolerant of the rights or opinions of others, a visionary, and perhaps a little mad. I imagine that he would rather have his name linked with that of that other soldier-poet, who "flamed away at Missolonghi" nearly a century ago, than with ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical^, overwise^, pretentious, priggish; egotistic, egotistical; soi-disant &c (boastful) 884 [Fr.]; arrogant &c 885. unabashed, unblushing; unconstrained, unceremonious; free and easy. Adv. vainly &c adj.. Phr. how we apples swim! [Swift]; prouder than rustling in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... all the newspapers! I was extremely chagrined at this intelligence; but, from that time, thought it all too late to be the herald of my own designs. And this, added to my natural and incurable dislike to enter upon these egotistical details unasked, has caused my silence to my dear M- -, and to every friend I possess. Indeed, speedily after, I had an illness so severe and so dangerous, that for full seven weeks the tragedy was neither named nor thought of by ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of a writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every page, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... miserably morbid period of their life. On awaking from such delirium to the sane and healthful realities of manful toil, they will discover the hollowness of that sneering, scowling, wailing, declamatory, egotistical, and bombastic misanthropy, which, in the eye of their unripe judgment, wore the air of a philosophy so profound."[166] The time will also come when Carlyle will be revealed to all in his true character: as the theologian preaching a pagan creed; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... general account of the burning of Troy, still the "quorum pars magna fui" is, evidently, the great inducement to his chattering:—accordingly, he keeps up Queen Dido to a scandalous late hour, after supper, for the good folks of Carthage, to tell her an egotistical story, that occupies two whole books of the AEneid.—Oh, these Heroes!—I once knew a worthy General—but ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... at her in astonishment. She loved her like an egotistical mother, proud of her beauty, as a person is proud of a fortune, too pretty still herself to become jealous, too indifferent to plan the schemes with which they charged her, too clever, nevertheless, not to have full consciousness ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... creatures to awaken the emotion of love within my child's breast—so extraordinary was the veneration I had for him, that although I started out on this narrative by saying it was Paragot's story and not my own I proposed to tell, I hope to be pardoned for a brief egotistical excursion. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... hands—how gently I applied the blazing match to its fragrant contents—how affectionately I placed the amber mouth-piece between my lips, and propelled the thick wreaths of smoke in circling eddies to the ceiling:—to dilate upon all this might savour of an egotistical desire to exalt my own merits—a species of puffing I mortally abhor. Suffice it to say, that when I had smoked the pipe of peace, I was heartily congratulated by the chairman and the company generally upon the manner in which I had acquitted myself, and I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... confession is made more significant by the author's subsequent comment on it. 'Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... driven back by overwhelming numbers of Arabs, but as many times we dashed forward again, determined to strike a fatal, irrisistible blow at the power of the egotistical and fanatical chieftain whose depredations had earned for him the appelation of "The Pirate of the Niger." Every nation in Western Africa, save the dwellers in the mystic land of Mo, existed in daily fear of raids by his ruthless armed bands, who, travelling ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... "It is this egotistical minority," said Gabriel, having arrived at this point, "who have falsified truth, endeavouring to persuade the majority of workers that work is a virtue, and that the only mission of man on earth is to work till he perishes. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... library. A colossal statue of Goethe, by an Italian artist, was the first thing I saw. What a head the man had I a Jupiter of a head. And what a presence! The statue is really majestic; but was Goethe so much, really think you? That egotistical spirit shown in his Diary sets me in doubt. Shakspeare was not self-conscious, and left no trace of egotism; if he knew himself, he did not care to tell what he knew. Yet the heads are both great and majestic heads, and would indicate ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... us, and for the first time—if I had not been so egotistical it had appeared to me before—I guessed that his somewhat professional interest in Belle Treherne had developed into a very personal thing. And with that thought came also the conception of what a powerful antagonist he would be. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... because the sequel proved that they were neither. Six months after I had come to them they went away and left me. They never asked me to accompany them. They made no arrangements for me to stay behind. They evidently did not care what became of me. Such egotistical indifference to the claims of friendship I had never before met with. It shook my faith—never too robust—in human nature. I determined that, in future, no one should have the opportunity of disappointing my trust in them. I selected my present mistress on the recommendation of a gentleman ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... a false training and the reading of stilted romances. The thought of studying the girl's character, of doing and being in some degree what would be agreeable to her, never occurred to him. That kind of good sense rarely does occur to the egotistical, who often fairly exasperate those whom they would please by utter blindness to the simple things which ARE pleasing. Miss Lou had read more old romances than he, but she speedily outgrew the period in which ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... with a hideous clarity that even the excuse of motive was denied him. It was a sense of personal loss which had driven him out on to that canal path, a murderer at heart. It was something of which he had been robbed, an acute and burning desire for vengeance, personal, entirely egotistical. It was not the wrong to the woman which he resented, had there been any wrong. It was the agony of his own personal misery. He rose from his bed and stamped up and down his little chamber in a ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... great, fat, egotistical slab of meat! What do you mean by that? I like you, Lea, we have plenty of fun and games together, but surely you realize that you aren't the kind of girl one takes home ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... realise himself as standing alone in the gap of loss, the only hope left to affection and to ambition. This premature development, amid the most melancholy surroundings, of the sense of personal importance—not in any egotistical sense, but as a sheer matter of fact—had robbed a nervous and sensitive temperament of natural stores of gaiety and elasticity which it could ill do without. Aldous Raeburn had been too much thought for and too painfully loved. But for Edward Hallin he might well have acquiesced at manhood ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... jolly, though very egotistical. He talked for hours about the war and what he had done to win his honours; and we noticed particularly a feature of his conversation. His memory failed him sometimes. By which I do not mean that he told us anything contrary to fact; but he ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... on Larry. The big painter, in his full-blooded, boyish fashion, fairly gasconaded over the success of his exhibit. Larry smiled at the other's exuberant enthusiasm. Hunt was one man who could boast without ever being offensively egotistical, for Hunt, added to his other gifts, had the divine gift of being able ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... to appear seeking credit for a courage, or rather a coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may be pardoned if I pause to indulge in one or two egotistical remarks. ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not yet sufficiently hardened to reckless outrage, as to perpetrate such an audacious robbery on one who was publicly known to be a friend to the insurgent cause. We say, up to a certain time Arroyo preserved these egotistical scruples; but that time terminated on the day and hour when, in the presence of his old master, and the whole household of Las Palmas, he was forced to endure the terrible insults inflicted upon him by the dragoon ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Sir John Ferringhall—very stupid, very respectable, very egotistical. But, after all, what does that matter? He is very much taken with me. He tries hard to conceal it, but ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and before condemning unqualifiedly in the cases where he deserts him and harks back to Roman authorities we must remember that Livy was a strong nationalist, one of a people who, despite their conquests, were essentially narrow, prejudiced, egotistical; and, thus remembering, we must marvel that he so fully recognises the merit of his unprejudiced guide and wanders as little as he does. All told, it is quite certain that he has dealt more fairly by Hannibal than have Alison and other English historians ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... to speak with Benedetto. She brought her companions, both male and female, with her. No longer young, but still frivolous, half superstitious, half sceptical, egotistical but not heartless, she was devoted to the consumptive daughter of her old coachman, Having heard of the Saint of Jenne and his miracles, she had arranged this excursion, partly for amusement, partly to satisfy ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... to the publication of sporting adventures—they always appear to deal not a little in the marvellous; and this effect is generally heightened by the use of the first person in writing, which at all events may give an egotistical character to a work. This, however, cannot easily be avoided, if a person is describing his own adventures, and he labours under the disadvantage of being criticised by readers who do not know him personally, and may, therefore, give ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... her upbringing; he had brought her to her first communion, and tried hard, and quite in vain, to instil into her the wholesome mysticisms of the Christian faith; and the more efforts he made, the more sharply was he aware of the hard, egotistical core of the girl's nature, of Hester's fatal difference from ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... back to prose and reality by the major. Mrs. Mayburn had been condoling with him, and he now turned and said, "I hope, my dear sir, that you may never carry around such a barometer as I am afflicted with. A man with an infirmity grows a little egotistical, if ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... each other, but join hands to overthrow the man who blocks their path, but which unite simply without blending; and that Puritan faction, of divers minds, fanatical, gloomy, unselfish, choosing for leader the most insignificant of men for such a great part, the egotistical and cowardly Lambert; and the faction of the Cavaliers, featherheaded, merry, unscrupulous, reckless, devoted, led by the man who, aside from his devotion to the cause, was least fitted to represent it, the stern and upright Ormond; and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... was not undeserved, for he was assuredly the foremost gladiator of the whig party, and had given proofs of more varied ability than any living politician or lawyer. But the dignified eloquence of which he was capable on rare occasions was here submerged in a flood of egotistical rhetoric, which carried him away so far that he assumed a political independence which his colleagues deeply resented, and even spoke of the king in a tone of patronage. Having lowered himself in public opinion by these speeches, especially at Inverness ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... been in every country of the world, and mixed with people of note in each. His anecdotes were always pungent, personal without being egotistical, and savoured always with a certain dry and perfectly natural humour. I found myself both interested and fascinated by his constant flow of reminiscences, and yet at times my attention wandered. For within a few yards of us were seated the man ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... egotistical and unnecessary. I merely meant to say that I was in a peculiar, almost abnormal state of mind, that evening. The spirit had, as it were, been drawn outwards, and perhaps slightly dislocated, by those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the center of the stage and wants to be the whole show. To seek petty, immediate triumphs instead of earning and waiting for the big, silent approval of one's own conscience and of those who understand, is a mark of inferiority. It is also a barrier to usefulness, for an egotistical man is necessarily selfish and a selfish ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... the captain of the nine; "but I have my doubts. Roy is too egotistical to listen to advice and coaching, and he entertains the mistaken idea that curves and speed are all a pitcher ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... to be sheer conceit on the part of Podbury. His successes with punch were making the man egotistical. I did not believe that he had heard of these interesting points before, whatever he said to the contrary. At any rate, they were quite new to his wife and daughters and aunts. So I turned my attention to them, and told ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... most peculiar man," said Mlle. Moiseney, indignantly, to Antoinette. "He is shockingly egotistical. He has confiscated M. Larinski. The idea of employing such a man as that to play bezique! He ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn't white eyes and pink hair (yellow, I mean, of course)—his style, you know, being dark and stern, he likes the downy, waxy kind. All this is shockingly egotistical; but the question is, who that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear with daylight; even cross children are wheedled into quietness, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... being egotistical. In this particular I attempt an improvement on other autobiographies. Other autobiographies weary one with excuses for their egotism. What matters it to you if I am egotistical? What matters it to you though it should matter ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... learning, and his care in production must be acknowledged; but his poems are very little read, and, in spite of his own prophecies, are doomed to the shelf rather than retained upon the table. Like Wordsworth, he was one of the most egotistical of men; he had no greater admirer than Robert Southey; and had his exertions not been equal to his self-laudation, he would have ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... time was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent Assembly—between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the vanquished genius of the aristocracy, personified ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... method. The Pope, a lonely man upon an ill-established throne, surrounded by rivals whom his elevation had disappointed, was compelled to rely on the strong arm of adventurers with whose interests his own were indissolubly connected. The profits of all these schemes of egotistical rapacity eventually accrued, not to the relatives of the Pontiffs; none of whom, except the Delia Roveres in Urbino, founded a permanent dynasty at this period; but to the Holy See. Julius II., for example, on his election in 1503, entered into possession of all that Cesare Borgia ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... excess of bitterness, labouring under an egotistical sense of wrong. "He's the last man I should wish to meet, as I have good reason to know. If it hadn't been for that I should have come to you a month ago—immediately after this trouble of mine. As it is, I kept away until despair left me no other choice. Una, ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... she did not devote her superior resources to the invidious exhibition of superior splendour. Like a wise sovereign, the revenues of her exchequer were applied to the benefit of her subjects, and not to the vanity of egotistical parade. As no one else on the Hill kept a carriage, she declined to keep one. Her entertainments were simple, but numerous. Twice a week she received the Hill, and was genuinely at home to it. She contrived to make her parties proverbially ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eternity beyond the grave. Where hope ends despair steps in; and Philip, with reckless vehemence, flung himself, as it were, into its arms. His was an excitable nature; he had never thought of any one but himself, but labored with egotistical zeal to cultivate his own mind and outdo his fellows in the competition for learning. The sullen words in which he called himself the most wretched man on earth, and the victim of the blackest ill-fortune, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... effort of his will, Donald conquered the trembling that had seized upon his body, and—on his third attempt—calmly lit the cigar. But his thoughts were running like a tumultuous millrace. "Blind, egotistical, self-confident fool," they shouted. "That something like this should have happened is the most natural thing in the world, and it has been farthest ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... had stood there before; but it was in the chilly month of November. I was young then, and I was very ambitious. The little Ohio town whose obscurity I had hoped to transform into fame—ah! these mad dreams of egotistical boyhood—did not resent my leaving it. It still stands where it was—stands still. I seem to have gone on, and yet I return to that little, dull, dilapidated town in my thoughts, for it was there I enjoyed the purple visions of music, where I fondly believed that I, too, might go forth into ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Eugenie, firmly. "I am not intended to become the slave of a hypocritical and egotistical man. You are aware that my inclination pushes me toward the stage, where my voice, my beauty, and my independent spirit will assure me success. The time has now arrived when I must decide: here, the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... man she could admire, respect, or love. He was narrow, egotistical, selfish, and with the pitiful vanity of a worn-out roue. Frodsham Park was in a lonely, mountainous part of England, bordering on Wales; and this man would look upon his wife as a nurse and companion, and the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the Wear, the Tees, the Humber"—why is that, for instance, sticking up among my ferns and wild flowers? It is not only useless but misleading, for the Humber is not another Tweed. I sometimes fancy the world may be mad—yet that seems egotistical. The fact remains that for the greater part of my young life Mr. Sandsome got an appetite upon us from nine till twelve, and digested his dinner, at first placidly and then with petulance, from two until five—and we thirty odd boys were sent by our ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... think me egotistical, but I can't help looking under the surface and going to the bottom of things. So I learn more about men in Wall Street and what they are at than most. This is my thirty-fourth year of sixteen and seventeen hours a day and three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... really, several great nobles were richer than the king. They knew it, used it, and never deprived themselves of the pleasure of humiliating his royal majesty when they had an opportunity. It was this egotistical aristocracy Richelieu had constrained to contribute, with its blood, its purse, and its duties, to what was from his time styled the king's service. From Louis XI.—that terrible mower-down of the great—to Richelieu, how many families had raised their heads! How many, from Richelieu ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a charmingly expressive face and a good figure. His hair is now snow-white, but otherwise he is not old in his looks. His manners are somewhat precise, and after the old school. He is fond of admiration, and is accounted egotistical, although reserved in general society. His talk, like his writings, is a good deal upon out-of-the-way subjects, and is often deemed unintelligible by those unfamiliar with his thought. To his enthusiastic admirers it seems like inspiration. He is still busy with his pen, although ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... we, as a nation, are following closely this golden mean, that our wisdom has enabled us to discover that which for so many ages has remained hidden from men, were simply egotistical bombast; for it were to assert that with us human nature had lost its fallibility and human judgment become unerring. Yet we may safely assert that no system exists at the present day which so clearly tends toward the attainment of such a mean, and which contains within itself ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... came home, and went up after Master James. He was a powerful man, Father Montfort, and an excellent climber. Yes, poor old Jim! he did not climb again for several days. Well, as I was saying, after all this very egotistical digression, I found the box in question some forty years ago. I withdrew the—a—contents—and substituted for them my totem. The ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... read Eckermann's Goethe—it promised to be a most interesting work. Honest, simple, single-minded Eckermann! Great, powerful, giant-souled, but also profoundly egotistical old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe! He was a mighty egotist. He thought no more of swallowing up poor Eckermann's existence in his own, than the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... man, about thirty years of age, with straight black hair, brushed upright from his forehead; his countenance gave the idea of eagerness and impetuosity, rather than cruelty or brutality. He was, however, essentially egotistical and insincere; he was republican, not from conviction, but from prudential motives; he adhered to the throne a while, and deserted it only when he saw that it was tottering; for a time he belonged to the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Notice, too, as bearing on the limits of Paul's part in the gift, the propriety and delicacy of the language in his statement of the ultimate purpose of the gift. He does not say 'that I may strengthen you,' which might have sounded too egotistical, and would have assumed too much to himself, but he says 'that ye may be strengthened,' for the true strengthener is not Paul, but the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... one, and this hour of sunshine in her clouded day called forth all its vivacity. But Fanny was not only clever, lively, and amiable; her conduct and manners occasionally displayed traits of spirit—nay, of pride; the latter, however, of a generous rather than an egotistical description. Nothing was so certain to call it forth as any tale of meanness or oppression. One morning Miss Sharpe had been relating an anecdote of a gentleman in the neighborhood who had jilted (odious ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Irregular Horse, of which we have heard much from Kaffirs, who tell us that Thorneycroft's Rifles and the "Sakkabulu boys," who are now identified as the South African Light Horse, have been in the front of every fight. It may seem egotistical to let this personal note stand, but I take the incident to be an illustration of the spirit that animates English youth ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... with old Miss Humby (our neighbour from Beccles) and try and listen as she warbles her ancient ditties. I play whist laboriously. Am I not trying to do the duties of life? and I have a right to be garrulous and egotistical, because I have been reading Montaigne ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suggestive of impurity. And I asked myself how much love and passion was represented by all those heaps of flowers shivering in the bleak wind. To how many loving ones, and how many indifferent ones, and how many egotistical ones, would all those thousands and thousands of violets go! In a few hours' time they would be scattered to the four corners of Paris, and for a paltry copper the passers-by would purchase a glimpse and a whiff of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... long to have a letter from you; of you I have heard often—but of and from, though they may be both brothers of the family of the prepositions, are very different in meaning. I have not written one word of Caroline or Ellen. Am I not incurably egotistical? The former declares she is sure you will have no time to read a letter from her, with such a volume as mine, and Ellen says she has no time by this opportunity. I told her she ought to get up as I did, she ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... If this sound egotistical we are sorry, for it is not meant in that way. We believe that each and every individual should judge for him or herself, considering ourselves fortunate that our ideas and tastes ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... commended itself to him on no principle of practical efficacy. He had care enough to drown, Heaven knew, but against any temptation to fly to the bottle in order to swamp it he was proof. His very cynicism, selfish, egotistical as it might be in its hard and sweeping ruthlessness, was a safeguard to him in this connection. That he, Laurence Stanninghame, to whom the vast bulk of mankind represented a commingling of rogue and ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... viability to a society of nations worthy of the name. By joining the Covenant with the Peace Treaty, and turning the former into an instrument for the execution of the latter, thus subordinating the ideal to the egotistical, Mr. Wilson deprived his plan of its sole justification, and for the time being buried it. The philosopher Lichtenberg[339] wrote, "One man brings forth a thought, another holds it over the baptismal font, the third begets offspring with it, the fourth stands at its ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the despotism he exercised upon all. There was not a Jesuit who did not disapprove the violence of his conduct, or who did not fear it would injure the society. All hated him, as a minister is hated who is coarse, harsh, inaccessible, egotistical, and who takes pleasure in showing ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... "The egotistical old moghul, with a vanity which even his anomalous situation with the British had not impaired, wished to assure himself that he would be worthily succeeded, and the prince was equally solicitous concerning the advancing ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... replies Eleanor hotly, "you can't bear me to have a friend that is not of your own choosing! My taste wasn't a thing to be shuddered at when I married you, was it? A selfish, egotistical——" ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... be better. The manner in which Wordsworth met this proposal indicated the limit of his absorption in himself—his real desire only to dwell on his own feelings in such a way as might make them useful to others. For he rejected the plan as too egotistical—as emphasizing the succession of moods in the poet's mind, rather than the lessons which those moods could teach. His objection points, at any rate, to a real danger which any man's simplicity of character incurs by dwelling too attentively ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... great egotistical brute! How strange the madness that binds a woman to the man to whom she first surrenders! I sometimes think it is the most blind, pathetic and tragic instinct that ever shadowed the soul of a human being. It is degrading. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... favorable to his promotion; and he was strongly inclined to place Knox at the head of the military staff, Pinckney second, and Hamilton third. This inclination produced some dissentions in his cabinet, when the jealous irritability of his temper, and his egotistical reliance upon his own judgment, made him resolve to change the order of the major-generals. When this subject, and the fact that the president intended to appoint an adjutant-general without the chief's concurrence, came before Washington ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the remedy would not be a proper, even if a good, one, it may well be asked, What right has a man to treat a wife as a vial of medicine? Well does Mr. Acton inquire, "What has the young girl, who is thus sacrificed to an egotistical calculation, done that she should be condemned to the existence that awaits her? Who has the right to regard her as a therapeutic agent, and to risk thus lightly her future prospects, her repose, and the happiness of the remainder ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... him to her needs, and to persuade herself that she was succeeding in doing it! She would set forth to him elaborately how much he had improved; how much gentler and more human he was—in contrast with that blind and stupid and egotistical and impossible person she had first known. And with what bitterness Thyrsis would hear this—and how he had to struggle to suppress his feeling! For he knew that those qualities which were so hateful to her, were but the foam cast up to the surface ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... sobbed on his pillow, "she wasn't worth your love. I just knew it from the start. She's a selfish—egotistical—" a thin, feverish hand stayed the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... accordance with Dantes' request, he began to speak of other matters. The elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like that of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful and important hints as well as sound information; but it was never egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows. Dantes listened with admiring attention to all he said; some of his remarks corresponded with what he already knew, or applied to the sort of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I was egotistical enough to follow my own idea. It would have taken too much time to hunt up all the drivers of hacks in the city, and I could not even be sure she had made use of a public conveyance. No, sir; I bethought me of another way by which I might reach this woman. You had shown me those spangles. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... unwonted strain upon it now, as in that time foregone, when every beat cried out, "Heave the weight! charge up the hill! We're equal to it. If we're not, we'll die submerged in our own red fount." He was not taking age with any sense of egotistical rebellion; but it irked him like an unfamiliar weight patiently borne and for no reward. The sense of the morning of life was upon him; yet here he was fettered to his traitorous body which was surely ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... very trivial all these "reminiscences" appear! How egotistical the pen that presumes upon anything like a popular interest in their perusal! But to the social and political reformer, as to the Kanes and Livingstons, trifles teach the relations of things, and indicate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... admiration all the kindling fires of voluptuousness. And yet, the burning impulses of love beat not in her frozen bosom; never could a surprise of either the heart or the senses disturb the stern and pitiless schemes of this intriguing, egotistical, and ambitious girl. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... happiness for himself. Passion for the woman was dead. Her beauty revolted him; her character he loathed and despised. "It is amazing to me," he wrote in deep contrition and humility, "that such an egotistical, conscienceless blackguard as I, should have been given the inestimable boon of your wonderful love!—to be allowed to retain in my keeping such a pure and faithful heart! It is my most treasured possession. My feeling for Honor ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... was talking rapidly and loudly. She had at once taken the center of the room, and her laughter rang in free and egotistical peals above ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... bound M. Berthelot and myself together was unquestionably of a very rare and singular kind. It so happened that we were both of an essentially objective nature; a nature, that is to say, perfectly free from the narrow whirlwind which converts most consciences into an egotistical gulf like the conical cavity of the formica-leo. Accustomed each to pay very little attention to himself, we paid very little attention to one another. Our friendship consisted in what we mutually ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the Wells Fargo Agent rightly interpreted as meaning that the posse had failed to catch their quarry. At first a glint of satisfaction shone in Ashby's eyes: not that he disliked Rance, but rather that he resented his egotistical manner and evident desire to overawe all who came in contact with him; and it required, therefore, no little effort on his part to banish this look from his face and make up his mind not to mention the subject ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... much that is quite unfit for, and untrue of, people who live in the ordinary relations of life. I don't think I like the book quite so much as I did. There is a hot-house, egotistical air about much of its piety. Other persons are, ordinarily, the appointed means of learning the love of God; and to stifle human affections must be very often to render the love ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... glimpse of human needs and the plain issues of life. The other is the egotist whose eye is always filled with his own figure, who investigates his motives, and hesitates and finicks, till Death knocks him on the head and there is an end of him. Of the two give me the second, for even a narrow little egotistical self is better than a formula. But I pray to be delivered ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... learn how far the fascinations of self-delusion were capable of deluding and swaying stronger wills and more cultivated minds.... We both learned, by observing him, that an ignorant mujik, like an egotistical Minister, if granted the semblance of authority for any length of time, will demoralize the finest organization in the world.... That was the lesson both Alice and I acquired from Rasputin.... And I am accepting Rasputin as a standard to estimate ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... many more adventures somewhat similar to those I have described, but I do not wish to bore my readers or appear egotistical in their eyes. The only comparison I would make in regard to our doings in those days is with the work done by the blockading squadron during the civil war in America; for if ever men required plucky endurance and self-denial it was the poor fellows who had to keep, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... all its vivacity. But Fanny was not only clever, lively, and amiable; her conduct and manners occasionally displayed traits of spirit—nay, of pride; the latter, however, of a generous rather than an egotistical description. Nothing was so certain to call it forth as any tale of meanness or oppression. One morning Miss Sharpe had been relating an anecdote of a gentleman in the neighborhood who had jilted (odious ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the mob by his sensibility; the professor differs from the mob by his insensibility. He has not sufficient finesse and sensitiveness to sympathize with the mob. His only notion is coarsely to contradict it, to cut across it, in accordance with some egotistical plan of his own; to tell himself that, whatever the ignorant say, they are probably wrong. He forgets that ignorance often has the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... whole pro and con about genius, and views, and achievements, and ambition, et coetera. 1st. As to the poetical character itself (I mean that sort, of which, if I am anything, I am a member; that sort distinguished from the Wordsworthian, or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se, and stands alone), it is not itself—it has no self—it is everything and nothing—it has no character—it enjoys light and shade—it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and as Hal walked along toward the outposts in the direction from which he had so recently come, he whistled blithely to himself. It was a mission well done, and the lad, although by no means egotistical, ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... scanty record must end, unless I may be permitted to supplement its meagreness by one or two personal—not to say egotistical—reminiscences. The death of Mr. Mill senior, in 1836, had occasioned a vacancy at the bottom of the examiner's office, to which I was appointed through the kindness of Sir James Carnac, then chairman ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... around them at home. Certainly matches are now and then projected which it is the duty of a parent to oppose; but there are two kinds of opposition, a conscientious and sorrowful opposition, and an egotistical and captious opposition, and men and women, in their self-deception, may sometimes mistake the one for the other. 'Marry your daughters lest they marry themselves, and run off with the ploughman or the groom' is an axiom of worldly wisdom. Marry your daughters, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... them!" responded Paulo, with enthusiasm. "I must fulfil this great task of my life, or die! Away, now, with all wavering or hesitation! What must be, shall be! They shall not say of the man who took compassion upon the deserted and threatened orphan and raised her for his own egotistical wishes, and pusillanimously failed to finish the work he began! No, no, history shall not so speak of me. It shall at least represent me as a brave man capable of sacrificing his heart and his life for the attainment of his higher ends! Seal these letters, Cecil. They contain my last will, and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... been comrades, Eleanor—fellow-workers—friends. You have come to know me as perhaps no other woman has known me. I have shown you a thousand faults. You know all my weaknesses. You have a right to despise me as an unstable, egotistical, selfish fool; who must needs waste other people's good time and good brains for his own futile purposes. You have a right to think me ungrateful for the kindest help that ever man got. You have a right as Miss Foster's ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man! egotistical, proud, unobservant, Since I with man's grief dare to sympathise thus; Why scoff?—fellow-creature I am, fellow-servant Of God, can man fathom God's ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in the parlour, under orders not to enter till the bell rang. She had heard all, and wondered whether it was innocence or subtlety that had walked in and out of Bernard's trap. She remembered Hyde was much like other fourth-year University men except that he was not egotistical and not shy: he had altered away from his class, but in what direction it was difficult to tell: there was no deciphering the pleasant blankness of his features or the conventional smile ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... it he felt that Adriance had divined the thing needed and had risen to it in his own wonderful way. The letter was consistently egotistical, and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was just what she had wanted. A strong realization of his brother's charm and intensity and power came over him; he felt the breath of that whirlwind of flame in which Adriance ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... room, and this valise belonged to Parnell! The English members talked of Parnell's aberration and carelessness concerning his luggage; and all hands agreed that O'Shea, whoever he was, was a fool—a hot-headed, egotistical rogue, trying to win fame for himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... was usually of ourselves or of each other, so that if any one had been at so much pains as overhear us, he must have supposed us the most egotistical persons in the world. It befell one day when we were at this practice, that we came on a discourse of friends and friendship, and I think now that we were sailing near the wind. We said what a fine thing friendship was, and how little we had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a spark of sympathy for Harry—a callow, egotistical dealer in currants. He ought to have blown out his brains a year ago. He has behaved in a most unconscionable manner. How does he expect me to break the news to Carlotta? His selfishness is appalling. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... ballad-making a lost art? That it is a lost art there can be no question. Nobody who is painfully acquainted with the rambling, egotistical pieces of dreary versification, passing for modern "ballads", will ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... glory in the times of wasteful liberality of Henry III.'s reign. Then, really, several great nobles were richer than the king. They knew it, used it, and never deprived themselves of the pleasure of humiliating his royal majesty when they had an opportunity. It was this egotistical aristocracy Richelieu had constrained to contribute, with its blood, its purse, and its duties, to what was from his time styled the king's service. From Louis XI.—that terrible mower-down of the great—to Richelieu, how many families had raised their heads! How many, from Richelieu ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by wind. And this submissiveness to reshaping belongs to the old conditions of its soul life,—old conditions of rare unselfishness and perfect faith. The relative absence from the national character of egotistical individualism has been the saving of an empire; has enabled a great people to preserve its independence against prodigious odds. Wherefore Japan may well be grateful to her two great religions, the creators and the preservers of her moral power to Shinto, which taught the individual ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... that I did not become purely egotistical, until I began to mingle again with "the crowd, the hum, the shock of men." Henceforth I shall not be able to promise you any other topic than my own experiences. My individuality is thrust upon my notice momently by my isolation in this crowd. In solitude I did not dream what a contrast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... good and bad of manners, namely what helps or hinders fellowship. For fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... neither has fire been able to wither nor water to quench their honest zeal. But this good soul on being sprinkled laid down his arms; he was commonplace. Moreover, he was guilty of something beside cowardice. He let a small egotistical pique sully as well as betray a great cause. "The justices have thrown cold water on my remonstrance—very well, gentlemen, torture your prisoners ad libitum; I shall interfere no more; we shall see which was in the right, you ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... stimulants or the society of intimate friends, and even these are only temporary, and the latter seldom within my reach, and the former I abstain from partly on principle, but more from a fear of consequences. Every one has a thorn in the flesh, and this is mine; but I am egotistical, if not selfish, in inflicting it upon others. I begin to think I have mistaken my way both to my own happiness and the affections of others. My strongest passion has always been the desire to be loved—as the French call it, 'le besoin d'etre aime.' ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... proved that they were neither. Six months after I had come to them they went away and left me. They never asked me to accompany them. They made no arrangements for me to stay behind. They evidently did not care what became of me. Such egotistical indifference to the claims of friendship I had never before met with. It shook my faith—never too robust—in human nature. I determined that, in future, no one should have the opportunity of disappointing my trust in them. I selected ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... instant's breathing time was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent Assembly—between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the vanquished genius of the aristocracy, personified in Louis XVI. and the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... proved very jolly, though very egotistical. He talked for hours about the war and what he had done to win his honours; and we noticed particularly a feature of his conversation. His memory failed him sometimes. By which I do not mean that he told ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... am getting up a subscription for myself. This sounds, put shortly, egotistical. On the contrary, it is Cosmopolitanly Philanthropical. If I am enabled to teach my doctrines for nothing, I shall, then, be slave to no man, no, not even to myself, as represented by my own necessities. May I head the list with a sum worthy your munificence ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... irritated him somehow, though he had started with the noblest intentions, and he seemed glad to find an outlet for justifiable indignation. "He's such a spasmodic creature," said Widgery. "Rushing off! And I suppose we're to wait here until he comes back! It's likely. He's so egotistical, is Dangle. Always ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... I'll explain," said Alaire, turning to the men. "Longorio declares he won't have me except as his wife, and I think he means it. He is amazingly egotistical. He has tremendous ambitions. He thinks this war is his great opportunity, and he means to be President—he's sure of it. He loves me, but he loves himself better, I'm sure. Now, don't you see? He'll have to choose one ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Sam Chong Lung, and he offered four hundred dollars to Edwards if he would go after them and bring them back. Edwards asked my advice, and I encouraged him to go, telling him how to take and bring back his prisoners." (Reflective pause.) "You can't imagine me living alone, now, can you? Such an egotistical fellow as I am, and fond of ladies' society. You ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... talking rapidly and loudly. She had at once taken the center of the room, and her laughter rang in free and egotistical peals ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... himself in these vain, silly vaporings, the result of a false training and the reading of stilted romances. The thought of studying the girl's character, of doing and being in some degree what would be agreeable to her, never occurred to him. That kind of good sense rarely does occur to the egotistical, who often fairly exasperate those whom they would please by utter blindness to the simple things which ARE pleasing. Miss Lou had read more old romances than he, but she speedily outgrew the period in which she was carried away ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... no excuse to offer for this long and egotistical anecdote, except the pendant which Maloney used to attach to his ultra-marine stories—"The point of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... and of the old Flag, is all right, Jud, and I'm mighty glad to find that you have such views," Hal continued. "But you mustn't be too severe on a fellow like Bunny Hepburn. He simply can't rise above his surroundings, and you know what a miserable, egotistical, lying, slanderous fellow his father is. Bunny's father hates the country he lives in, and would set everybody to tearing down the government. That's the kind of a brainless anarchist Hepburn is, and you can't expect his dull-witted son to know any ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... moment, obtains the mastery of a man are very rare. Sometimes in the case of a boy, whose nerves are more sensitive than a man's, and whose habit of self-control is less formed, a sudden shock will upset his mental balance. Sometimes a very egotistical man will succumb to danger long drawn out. The same applies to men who are very introspective. I have seen a man of obviously low intelligence break down on the eve of an attack. The anticipation of danger makes many men "windy," especially officers who are responsible for other lives than ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... very egotistical?" she asked, in the gay tone which gave him relief from the sense of oppressive elevation ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... he felt that Adriance had divined the thing needed and had risen to it in his own wonderful way. The letter was consistently egotistical and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was just what she had wanted. A strong realization of his brother's charm and intensity and power came over him; he felt the breath of that whirlwind of flame in which Adriance passed, consuming all in his path, and himself ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... to all, but especially to his dependants, were arrogant, egotistical and overbearing. He was utterly destitute of sympathy or compassion. There was no room for either in a soul so full of self. In his opinion there was no one on earth, neither king nor Kaiser, saint nor hero, so important ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... more about that little girl. 'Alice is a very nice and sensible girl. I like her very much. She helps me to get out of myself and to be happy. I have never known before what a good thing it was to be happy,—perhaps because I have tried so hard to be so. I believe that I have been selfish and egotistical.' Freddie don't furgit his words," the old man paused to say. "'I have always thought too much of myself, and not enough of others. That was the reason that I was not strong enough to live down the opposition in Dexter. It seems that, after all your kindness ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... they could make no answer, for they had never studied such abstract questions. And one thing they did know: that those who hesitated to admit the necessity of gigantic reforms were branded by the Press as ignorant, narrow-minded, prejudiced, and egotistical, and were held up to derision as men who did not know the most elementary principles of political and economic science. Freely expressed public opinion was such a new phenomenon in Russia that the Press was able for some time ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... straightforward, honest, kind and truthful. He was dogmatic in his religious beliefs, combative by nature and never happier than when fighting the Devil in his own corner, as he expressed it. Furthermore, he was haughty, stubborn and egotistical, and these traits of character I inherited from him. But while I honestly inherited combativeness, stubbornness and egotism from my father, these characteristics became very objectionable to him when displayed by myself. So ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... went on: "I think Edith every bit as good looking, more so in some ways. Now that I have heard an unprejudiced opinion I can express mine, which you have known all along. You see, mother, people say we are a self-centered and egotistical family. I have ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... With tastes cultivated to their extremest capacity, and a philosophy of happiness essentially material, this old man permitted no hour to pass by without gleaning some sensual enjoyment from it, that a less egotistical person might never have discovered. An epicure in all things, he had attained to a sort of self-worship, which would have been sublime if applied to the First Cause of all that is beautiful. His splendid person was held in reverence, not because it was made in the image of his God, but for the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... ordinarily he would have destroyed many of them in a day's travel. But unless Jolly Roger gave him a signal, or he was hungry, he would pass a snowshoe unconcernedly. This phase of Peter's development interested Jolly Roger greatly. The outlaw's philosophy had not been punctured by the egotistical "I am the only reasoning being" arguments of narrow-gauged nature scientists. He believed that Peter possessed not only a brain and super-instinct, but also a very positive reasoning power which he was helping to develop. And the process was one that ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... said, "you must think it strange of me to be so egotistical—to speak all the time so much of my likes and dislikes. To you I have been a little more outspoken ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out of his pockets like water, but although he was already in a position to borrow, he did not do so. He merely marked time, deriving a grim amusement at the way his popularity grew as his currency dwindled. It was a game, enjoyable so long as it lasted. Egotistical he knew himself to be, but it was a conscious fault; to tickle his own vanity filled him with the same satisfaction a cat feels at having its back rubbed, and he excused himself by reasoning that his deceit harmed nobody. Meanwhile, with feline alertness he waited for a mouse ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... expressive face and a good figure. His hair is now snow-white, but otherwise he is not old in his looks. His manners are somewhat precise, and after the old school. He is fond of admiration, and is accounted egotistical, although reserved in general society. His talk, like his writings, is a good deal upon out-of-the-way subjects, and is often deemed unintelligible by those unfamiliar with his thought. To his enthusiastic admirers it seems like inspiration. He is still busy with his pen, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... valuable to me. But aside from that, I'll give you this advice anyway:—secure another lawyer in any case, one without antagonistic personal interests, if you can find another in San Mateo besides me. See, I'm frank! That may sound egotistical, but really I'm the only free man of the lawyers here. And I've paid for my liberty!" He made a sweeping gesture to indicate his shabby office. "If I had taken orders, I could have been county attorney and probably a judge. But I respect myself ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... disguise from myself that I am a slave, and a wretched one, and that his career has entailed this curse of servitude upon me. But away with this! You must think me, Miss Temple, the most egotistical of human beings; and yet, to do myself justice, I never remember having spoken of myself ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... was not favorable to his promotion; and he was strongly inclined to place Knox at the head of the military staff, Pinckney second, and Hamilton third. This inclination produced some dissentions in his cabinet, when the jealous irritability of his temper, and his egotistical reliance upon his own judgment, made him resolve to change the order of the major-generals. When this subject, and the fact that the president intended to appoint an adjutant-general without the chief's concurrence, came before Washington in official ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... move on lent a certain triumphant note to Hegel's satire; he was sure it all culminated in something, and was not sure it did not culminate in himself. The system, however, as it might strike a less egotistical reader, is a long demonstration of man's ineptitude and of nature's contemptuous march over a path paved with good intentions. It is an idealism without respect for ideals; a system of dialectic in which a psychological flux (not, of course, psychological science, which would involve terms ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... he went on, "is one of those thoroughly conceited, egotistical men who will probably listen to no one. You see, I have found out a little about him already. But they tell me that her social position means a great deal to your aunt. Neither her birth nor her friends could save her if Fischer drags your uncle to ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cell. He aped no coxcombical contempt of pleasure, no fanatical disdain of wealth; hospitable, and even sumptuous, in his habits of life, he seemed desirous of proving that truly to be wise is honestly to enjoy. The fragments of his verses which have come down to us are chiefly egotistical: they refer to his own private sentiments, or public views, and inform us with a noble pride, "that, if reproached with his lack of ambition, he finds a kingdom in the consciousness of his unsullied name." With all these qualities, he apparently united much of that ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... story myself, a story in which I am both actively and intimately interested; and how, unless I speak of my own self, are you going to learn anything about me? I have nobody to describe me, so I must be what you call "egotistical." ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... story, Papa Ravinet, the second-hand dealer, was going to his dinner. If he had gone down as usually, by the front staircase, no noise would have reached him. But Providence was awake. That evening he went down the back stairs, and heard the death-rattle of the poor dying girl. In our beautiful egotistical days, many a man, in the place of this old man, would not have gone out of his way. He, on the contrary, hurried down to inform the concierge. Many a man, again, would have been quieted by the apparent calmness of the Chevassat couple, and would have been satisfied with ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... unconditioned life, which the Byronic hero vainly seeks, and not finding, he fills the world with stormy complaint, is least of all likely to offer itself in any approximate form to men penetrated with gross and egotistical passions to their inmost core. The Byronic hero went to clasp repose in a frenzy. All crimson and aflame with passion, he groaned for evening stillness. He insisted on being free, in the corroding fetters of resentment and scorn for men. Conrad sought balm for disappointment of spirit in vehement ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... not merely by their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same characteristics; not always good, not always pleasant, not always genial, but always associated with something that ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... which pleases the senses. This theory, issuing from the philosophy of sensation of the school of Locke and Condillac, only explains the idea and the feeling of the beautiful by disfiguring it. It is entirely contradicted by facts. For it converts it into desire, but desire is egotistical and insatiable, while admiration is respectful, and is its own ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical[obs3], overwise[obs3], pretentious, priggish; egotistic, egotistical; soi-disant &c. (boastful) 884[Fr]; arrogant &c. 885. unabashed, unblushing; unconstrained, unceremonious; free and easy. Adv. vainly &c. adj. Phr. " how we apples swim! " [Swift]; " prouder than rustling in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Tarzan felt no such fear of the lion as you and I might experience under like circumstances, he yet was imbued with the sense of caution that is necessary to all creatures of the wild if they are to survive. Should necessity require, Tarzan could face Numa in battle, although he was not so egotistical as to think that he could best a full-grown lion in mortal combat other than through accident or the utilization of the cunning of his superior man-mind. To lay himself liable to death futilely, he would have considered as reprehensible as to have shunned danger in time of necessity; but when ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she could admire, respect, or love. He was narrow, egotistical, selfish, and with the pitiful vanity of a worn-out roue. Frodsham Park was in a lonely, mountainous part of England, bordering on Wales; and this man would look upon his wife as a nurse and companion, and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... audiences behind the footlights, but in the increased study of life in its exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with the tendency, of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world itself, either into an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered association of more or less independent figures united only in a rebellious and contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... for us, and I thrust his majesty King Francis into it rather unceremoniously. Now you must know that all this time Mrs. Waldoborough had not the remotest idea but that she was treating me with all due civility. She is one of your thoroughly egotistical, self-absorbed women, accustomed to receiving homage, who appear to consider that to breathe in their presence and attend upon them is sufficient honor and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... that of "a National Secular lecturer, of whom the sceptics were greatly proud." Dr. Hitchens evidently takes this gentleman at his own estimate. That he thinks the sceptics were greatly proud of him is intelligible; it is quite in keeping with his shallow, vulgar, And egotistical nature. But the truth is "the sceptics," in any general sense, were not proud of him. He was a very young man, with a great deal to learn, who had a very brief career as a Secularist in East London. In a thoughtless moment ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... possessive pronoun here and elsewhere, let it signify also the life of my life-partner—is beyond the range of ordinary experience, since it is immune from the ferments which seethe and muddle the lives of the many, I am assured that a familiar record will not be deemed egotistical, I am scolded because I did not confess with greater zeal, I am ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... talk about in that first talk between them that could make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not; at least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was very egotistical, as the talk of children generally is—about herself and her aunt and her home and her friends—all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger—Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... darned Puritan collar! I'll harry you and fluster you and heckle you and make a fool of you, and I'll roll you up in a ball and blow you out the window, and turn old Hassoun loose for an Egyptian holiday that will make old Rome look like thirty piasters! You pinheaded, pretentious, pompous, egotistical, niminy-piminy—" ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... not the science of principle, but of exigencies; and that principles are, of course, by a free and powerful nation, never to be sacrificed to exigencies. The exigencies pass away like the bubbles of a shower, but the nation is immortal: it must consider the future also, and not only the egotistical dominion of the passing hour: it must be aware that to an immortal nation nothing can be of higher importance than immortal principles. Again, in the same address Washington explicitly says, in reference to his policy of neutrality, that "with him a predominant motive has been ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... by the accomplished author of Caleb Stukely. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her sensations, and what dresses she wears, and how thin she is, and so on. But with all her faults, she is unquestionably a very accomplished and clever writer. Her criticisms on subjects ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... find both French and English more selfish than we are. But they have different ways of showing it. The Englishman is exclusive, and reserved; the Frenchman egotistical. Reserve may seem dignified; but it often covers a great deal of cold self-love; while French egotism—not EGOISME—is often mingled with much naivete and bonhommie {sic}. Both nations, however, are more selfish than the Italians, or Germans, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... do not be angry with me that I cannot become for you that which you wish. I shall certainly not marry. I am too happy in my own home for that. Ah! this to be sure is egotistical, but I cannot do otherwise. Forgive me! I am so very much, so heartily attached to you; and I should never be happy again if you love not hitherto ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... he kept watch upon Laura's every movement. His other shoulder stole the bloom from many a lovely cheek that brushed him in the surging crush, but he noted it not. He was too busy cursing himself inwardly for being an egotistical imbecile. An hour ago he had thought to take this country lass under his protection and show her "life" and enjoy her wonder and delight—and here she was, immersed in the marvel up to her eyes, and just a trifle more at home in it than he was himself. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... said Eddring. "It's accident, largely; and surely it was not your fault that I blundered on these matters. It was rather fate, or the occasional good fortune of the innocent. You covered up your trail fairly well; but a criminal will always leave behind him some egotistical mark of his crime, either by accident or by intent. You left marks all along your trail, Decherd—there, there, keep quiet. I don't want to use force with you. I'm not going to be the agent of justice. But it won't be altogether healthy for the man on whose shoulders ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... rise at the egotistical rogue; moreover, ever since his wound he had felt gusts of irritability. However, he bit his lip and said, "There go two words to that bargain; tell me first, is it true what men say of you Rhenish thieves, that ye ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... he is very like Ernest, and perhaps a wife destitute of self-assertion and without much individuality would have spoiled him as Harriet has spoiled John. For I think it must be partly her fault that he dares to be so egotistical. Helen, is the dearest, prettiest creature I ever saw. Oh, why would James take a fancy to Lucy! I feel the new delight of having a sister to love and to admire. And she will love me in time; I feel sure ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... remarkable. In "the classical field" he describes himself "truly as nothing," and learned to read Homer in the original with difficulty. He preferred Homer and Aeschylus to all other classical authors, found Tacitus and Virgil "really interesting," Horace "egotistical, leichtfertig," and Cicero "a windy person, and a weariness." Nor did he take much to metaphysics or moral philosophy. In geometry, however, he excelled, perhaps because Professor (subsequently Sir ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... often led to consider the whole as new. It is, therefore, necessary to exercise a proper discrimination lest injustice be done to the various laborers in the same field of invention. I trust it will not be deemed egotistical on my part if, while conscious of the unfeigned desire to concede to all who are attempting improvements in the art of telegraphy that which belongs to them, I should now and then recognize the familiar features of my own offspring ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... hour of his need Lodovico Sforza found himself without friends or credit, and he had to pay the price of the sly, faithless egotistical policy he had so long ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess A—— had by no means a bad heart, but she was capricious, like a woman who had been spoiled by the world, as well as being avaricious and egotistical, like all old people, who have seen their best days, and whose thoughts are with the past, and not the present. She participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls, where she sat in a corner, painted and dressed in old-fashioned style, like a deformed but indispensable ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... evident that he despised his master with a passionate contempt. It was evident also that Purcell had shown a mean and unreasoning jealousy of his assistant. The English tradesman inherits a domineering tradition towards his subordinates, and in Purcell's case, as we know, the instincts of an egotistical piety had reinforced those of the employer. Yet Mr. Ancrum felt some ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I recognize the egotistical and rude old baron. Well," continued he, "I will conduct you myself to Versailles, and will ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... ball was nearest the mark. From his judgments there was no appeal, and they were received with neither more nor less respect than those of St. Louis at Vincennes. But it must be said to his credit that his predilection for this walk was not entirely egotistical: it also led to the Marsh of the Grange Bateliere, whose black and gloomy waters attracted a great many of those dragon-flies with the gauzy wings and golden bodies which children delight to pursue. One of Bathilde's greatest amusements was to run, with her green net in her hand, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... still. "Sick people are terribly, egotistical, and I suppose it's my conceit of having been the centre of the universe so lately that makes me mention it." And here she laughed a little at herself, showing a charming little peculiarity in the catch of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wherefore we accept with some gladness the duty of life, are rare and uncertain, and hard of detection. Sorrows seem noble, and lofty, and fraught with deep mystery; with mystery that almost is personal, that we feel to be near to us. Consolations appear egotistical, squalid, at times almost base. But for all that, and whatever their ephemeral likeness may be, we have only to draw closer to them to find that they too have their mystery; and if this seem less visible and less comprehensible, it is only because ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "oldest inhabitant" of the river, who made the other pilots weary with the scope and antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. He contributed paragraphs of general information and Nestorian opinions to the New Orleans Picayune, and signed them "Mark Twain." They were quaintly egotistical in tone, usually beginning: "My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans," and reciting incidents and comparisons dating as far ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... be sheer conceit on the part of Podbury. His successes with punch were making the man egotistical. I did not believe that he had heard of these interesting points before, whatever he said to the contrary. At any rate, they were quite new to his wife and daughters and aunts. So I turned my attention to them, and told ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and I would not much mind telling you. Of course I studied you before I came here. Even hunger would not make me sit in a tavern beside a fool, or a snob, or (with a faint blush) a libertine. But to tell one's own story, that is so egotistical, for one thing. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of a common site for their nests, which might suggest an attempt at communistic interests among the Anthophorae, these Bees, therefore, obey the egotistical law of each one for himself and do not know how to band themselves together to repel an enemy who threatens one and all. Taken singly, the Anthophora does not even know how to dash at the enemy who is ravaging her cells and drive him away ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... there is one consolation that I will bring into exile, if I may so call that house of misery—a clear conscience, a heart whose still small voice tells me that I have done no wrong to upbraid myself with. This is the consolation that I have,—that my conscience is clear. I know it appears somewhat egotistical for me to speak thus, but it is a source of consolation for me that I have nothing to upbraid myself with, and I will now say in conclusion, that if my sufferings can ameliorate the wrongs or the sufferings of Ireland. I am willing to be offered up as a ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... facts, how very trivial all these "reminiscences" appear! How egotistical the pen that presumes upon anything like a popular interest in their perusal! But to the social and political reformer, as to the Kanes and Livingstons, trifles teach the relations of things, and indicate the methods and courses of action that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... him more tenderly than she did any of them, next to her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole family of brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither egotistical nor ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly allowed them to have their way, and only asked that they would also leave him undisturbed to follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive inclinations. He was ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... be caught on the rebound, and marry some 'dusky bride' or ruddy-cheeked dairymaid?" said Lady Luce, with a little laugh of scorn. "You don't know Drake. He's the last man to marry beneath him. If I were not afraid of seeming egotistical, dear, I would say that he has known me too long and loved me too well——But there! don't let us talk any more about it. The gods may send him to my side again. If they do, I shall avail myself of their gracious favor and get ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... if you flatly refuse to drink my health, I'll have to drink it alone, and that's rather egotistical, isn't it?" ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... blood-stained iron rod flung among the nettles. The abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for which he took it—if he had a purpose—was abandoned. He was certainly an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have released some long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may have flooded whatever scheme of action ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... contrary, to the secret but carefully concealed consternation of Rex and Lance, the prime movers in the matter, Mr Dale seemed more than half disposed to yield to Brook's jesting entreaties that he would make one of the party. It almost seemed as though this intensely selfish and egotistical individual were at last becoming ashamed of his own behaviour and had resolved upon ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... those desires and motives that one shares perhaps with some social beasts, but far more so as a conscious thing with men alone. These desires and motives all centre on a clearly apprehended "self" in relation to "others"; they are the essentially egotistical group. They are self-assertion in all its forms. I have dealt with motives toward gratification and motives towards experience; this set of motives is for the sake of oneself. Since they are the most acutely conscious motives ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... too implicitly in your interest in me and mine, ever to have nothing to say to you; but my sayings will be rather egotistical, for the monotony of my life affords me few interests but those which centre in my family, the head of which left me ten days ago, with his brother, for their southern estate. I have since had a letter, which, as it affords an accurate picture ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... great works of public utility, than his realm had known for a thousand years; and his duty was done as diligently and conscientiously as if he had known that conscience was the voice of a supreme Sovereign, and duty the law of an unerring and unescapable Lawgiver. Alone among a race of utterly egotistical cowards, he had the courage of a soldier, and the principles, or at least the instincts, worthy of a Child of the Star. With him alone could I have felt a moment's security from savage attempts to extort by ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... marriage. Its hurried and almost clandestine character deeply offended her; and the young wife during her visit had foolishly made a point of exhibiting her power over her husband, while both of them seemed possessed by that egotistical spirit which insists on their whole world seeing how vastly superior their love is to any other love that ever had been. Undoubtedly the young couple were offensive to everyone, and Mrs. Hatton said they had proved to her perfect satisfaction the propriety and even the necessity for the retirement ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... is powerless now; and I suppose the next will be like unto her. Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn't white eyes and pink hair (yellow, I mean, of course)—his style, you know, being dark and stern, he likes the downy, waxy kind. All this is shockingly egotistical; but the question is, who that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear with daylight; even ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
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