"Egotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talk about Altruria, but that I might hear her talk about herself. You must understand that the essential vice of a system which concentres a human being's thoughts upon his own interests, from the first moment of responsibility, colors and qualifies every motive with egotism. All egotists are unconscious, for otherwise they would be intolerable to themselves; but some are subtler than others; and as most women have finer natures than most men everywhere, and in America most women ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... at all. We were in new rooms, in a new building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, demanding ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... probity, Chateaubriand, the satirical genius; there, Thiers, skill, wrestled with Guizot, strength; there men have mingled, have grappled, have fought, have brandished evidence like a sword. There, for more than a quarter of a century, hatred, rage, superstition, egotism, imposture, shrieking, hissing, barking, writhing, screaming always the same calumnies, shaking always the same clenched fist, spitting, since Christ, the same saliva, have whirled like a cloud-storm about thy serene ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of egotism! Steer clear of them as far as you can. The only place where the first person is permissible is in passages where you are stating a view that is not generally held and which is likely to meet ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... what you think of me," the girl interrupted recklessly. "If I did I wouldn't be here. I'd hide behind the conventional rules of the game and let you blunder along. But I can't. I'm not gifted with your blind egotism. Whatever you are, that Bill of yours loves you, and if you care anything for him, you should be with him. I would, if I were lucky enough to stand in your shoes. I'd go with him down into hell itself gladly ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... such egotism can scarcely still be called stubbornness. And in such a case you would scarcely be under obligations to him; obligations, Colonel, which might work injury to the whole country. Besides, he has no chance of being ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... particular. He has spoken frequently of himself both in verse and prose, and he continually shows that he thought highly of his own endowments; but if he praises himself, he does it with that dignified frankness and simplicity of conscious truth, which renders even egotism respectable and delightful: whether he describes the fervent and tender emotions of his juvenile fancy, or delineates his situation in the decline of life, when he had to struggle with calamity and peril, the more insight he affords us into his own sentiments and feelings, the more ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... explained to Margaret, "is one of those serious, absorbed men who concentrate entirely upon themselves. It isn't egotism; it's genius." ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... to appear before God, from whom, as some said, he looked for reward, and others for pardon. But Nimes, that city with the heart of fire, was quiet; like the wounded who have lost the best part of their blood, she thought only, with the egotism of a convalescent, of being left in peace to regain the strength which had become exhausted through the terrible wounds which Montrevel and the Duke of Berwick had dealt her. For sixty years petty ambition had taken the place of sublime self-sacrifice, and disputes about etiquette succeeded mortal ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... them, with supreme egotism, was so sure that he would win her heart that he plotted this murder of her brother so that she would have the whole estate to bring to him—a terrible price for a dowry. My love meter tells me, however, that Anitra has something to say ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... anguish. Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her life on the spot, that she might never be another's,—that neither man nor woman should ever triumph over him,—the proud, ambitious man, defeated, humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which only the most vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her lover? It was not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd complications, if anybody was foolish enough to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... dutiful services rendered to his preceptor, endued with forgiveness of disposition, engaged in the worship of the deities, possessed of a tranquil soul, pure (in body and mind), enlightened, observant of all duties, and freed from every kind of egotism, that man who makes a gift of a cow unto a Brahmana, certainly attains to great merit through that act of his, viz., the gift, according to proper rites, of a cow yielding copious milk. Hence, one, with singleness of devotion, observant of truth and engaged in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... worship of pleasure and intellectuality,—Greece of the fourth century, Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth,—were not enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After sudden outbursts of genius and creativeness, he wanders away in the direction of license and egotism; the degenerate artist and thinker makes room for the sophist and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... love, or rather in my egotism, I have dreaded to tell you before. I shut my eyes to this hour, and yet I knew that it must come; this morning they were opened. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the talent and materials that are at hand, and so I am going to tell now how the Roycroft Shop came to start; a little about what it has done; what it is trying to do; and what it hopes to become. And since modesty is only egotism turned wrong side out, I will make no special endeavor to conceal the fact that I have had something to do with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... man. As he left the room he heard the sick man ejaculate: "Well thank God, Pickwick will be out in ten days, anyway!" No young author ever sprang into more sudden and brilliant fame than "Boz," and none could have remained more thoroughly unspoiled, or so devoid of egotism under success. His own opinion of his fame, and his estimate of its value, may be quoted here: "To be numbered amongst the household gods of one's distant countrymen, and associated with their homes and quiet pleasures; to be told that in each nook and corner of ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... efficacy egoism, egotism eldest, oldest elemental, elementary elude, evade emigrate, immigrate enough, sufficient envy, jealousy equable, equitable equal, equivalent essential, necessary esteem, respect euphemism, euphuism evidence, proof exact, precise ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... is that of the neurotic, not the primitive. It is megalomania and egotism and the pride of the man in the Bible that waxed fat and kicked. But the results are the same. She wants to destroy and simplify; but it isn't the simplicity of the ascetic, which is of the spirit, but the simplicity of the madman that grinds down all the contrivances of civilization to ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... of Balzac's relations to his mother, Mr. F. Lawton (Balzac) states: "Madame Balzac was sacrificed to his improvidence and stupendous egotism; nor can the tenderness of the language—more frequently than not called forth by some fresh immolation of her comfort to his interests—disguise this unpleasing side of his character and action. . . . And his epistolary good-byes ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... legitimate possession, without which there would be only one war of all against all, was gone; politicians had already thrown off the mask in Poland; the lust of aggrandizement had prevailed . . . . The indissoluble bond connecting morals and politics being broken, the result was to make egotism the prevailing principle of public as well ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... an adorable shyness at the apparent egotism of her idea, "since you seem to want me for the central figure in everything, suppose we start a story like this: Suppose I am left here at the Lazy A with my mother to take care of and a ranch and a ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... is, with the possible exception of that of Egypt, the oldest in the world. And yet, it has contributed but little to the advancement of mankind. Their system of education has failed to stimulate national and individual progress, has fostered narrow egotism, and has excluded external suggestion. It is studied rather for its negative lessons, and therefore suggests practices which the student of education will do well to avoid. The result in China furnishes the best argument against a method of instruction that appeals ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... bidding of the pantaloon of a fair. Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the vanity of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give effect to their own polished effrontery.[B] Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the knot," which threw the youthful bridegroom into ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... 1884, nothing has befallen me worthy of a polite reader's attention. I have endured the drudgery incident to earning a living; I have enjoyed the relaxations every wise man makes for himself. But I should be guilty of unpardonable egotism if I supposed that I myself was the only, or the most, interesting subject presented in the foregoing pages, and I feel I shall merely be doing my duty in briefly recording the facts in my possession concerning the other persons who have figured ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... the gospel of Christ requires is made up of all that is lovely, is formed upon the highest model, but it is not composed of the insensibility, the anger, the pride, the egotism, the worldliness, which is so common among men. It is not the cold indifference of modern moralists; it is not the rank and scepticism of modern doubters, nor yet the intellectual rashness and moral phantoms of modern scientists. These have done all they could to take ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy or not happy, opulent or beggared, she had in her heart a pure, untainted sentiment, the highest of all human feelings because the most disinterested. Love has its egotism, but motherhood has none. La Marana was a mother like none other; for, in her total, her eternal shipwreck, motherhood might still redeem her. To accomplish sacredly through life the task of sending a pure soul to heaven, was not that a better thing than a tardy repentance? ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... his tone was resentful. He found himself wondering whether it was an excess of egotism or of humility that made ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... do you say to a good long walk?" cried Constance. "I must talk to you seriously about a great many things, beginning with egotism." He set forth with alacrity, rejoicing ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... husbands) for the sex. Mrs. TODD has not as yet been irresistibly seized by the movement; but if TIMOTHY knows himself, he longs for the day when the seizer may come. Although TODD—who is the writer of this epistle—says it, who perhaps shouldn't, lest the shaft of egotism be hurled mercilessly at him, he does unhesitatingly say that to aid this movement he would make the greatest of sacrifices. He is willing to sacrifice his wife and other female relations upon the sacred altar of the movement, and contribute liberally ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... policy—his achievements—his failures, and, still more, his personal character and court deportment, killed monarchy in the hearts of the French people. The prominent ruling characteristic of himself and reign was an all-absorbing egotism. A maelstrom of selfishness, and unconscious of any law of reciprocity to arise from his relations to a common humanity, this chief and example of a numerous aristocracy was the grand centre to which was to be directed every affection and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the philosophers and the patriots. What happened in the last century will happen again whenever and wherever human society ceases to be held together by the idea of Duty. It is not the discontent of Labour which makes me most anxious as to the future. It is the egotism of Capital, educated and encouraged into egotism by the false doctrines of what is called Liberalism in this country, and provoked into egotism by the equally egotistic discontent of Labour. What I most value in the work of M. Harmel is the courage and precision ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... said this, the lad could not help smiling at the unconscious egotism displayed by the skipper in his last remark; Ned's own private opinion being that, with a man of such inexhaustible resource as the engineer had proved himself to be, at the helm of affairs, the little ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... some of both. But that's a monk's life, and even a monk has a cell of his own, and a bit of garden to play with; and he can think upon a God that is his very own, an Israelitish Providence; and, in his egotism, be content. Yes, with a cell and a book and a garden and an intimate God, one should be satisfied to forego even health. But I hold with old Cicero that the "whole glory of virtue is in activity," and therefore I call ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... competent for a Gascon whose gasconading was understood to be without any motive beyond that of vanity and egotism, and without any incidence to effects, to say, in the way of mere foolery, many things which an English statesman could not then so well endorse. And in case his personality were called in question, there was the mountain to retreat to, and the saint of the mount, in whose behalf the goose ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... remark that Byron's moral perversion never paralysed or obscured his intellectual powers, though it might lower their aims. With regard to the plan and style of his works, he showed strong good sense and clear judgment. The man who indulged such narrowing egotism, such irrational scorn, would prime and polish without mercy the stanzas in which he uttered them." (Wonderful! that an egotist and a misanthrope should have been kept from defacing his own verses. Then follows our terrible bye-blow.) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... have something to do with their having groups wars. The egotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression, so the egotism of the groups is extremely ferocious and active. Is this one of the reasons why ants fight so much? We have seen the same phenomenon occur in certain nations of men. And the ants commit atrocities in and after their ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... or two 'that can quench in my heart that familiar acquaintance in Christ Jesus, which half a year did engender, and almost two years did nourish and confirm,' but also the following striking general statement, which, like many things from Knox, impresses us by a certain straightforward and noble egotism: ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... these acts we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the account of the first year of your married life, so very painful to you. You have paid dearly for the glory of marrying a famous artist, one of those men in whom fame and adulation develop monstrous egotism, and who under penalty of shattering the frail and timid life that would attach itself to theirs, must live alone. Ah! madame, since the commencement of my career, how many wretched wives have I not beheld in the same cruel position as yourself! ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... good morals alike follow the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them." Egotism and selfishness are the bane of both. True politeness consists in considering the pleasure of others as a thing in itself, without regard to your own advantage. If an attention is paid, a gift given, a service rendered, these should be done solely for the recipient's ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... them until they left their blessing. The trumpet sounded in my ears for the tournament of life; but I could not bear the weight of my armor. In the midst of duties and responsibilities which I clearly comprehended, I found myself yielding to the absorbing egotism of sickness. I could work only when the sharp rowels of necessity ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not arrested," he said. "See, that octogenarian, old West. He wheeled ill-oiled, squeaking barrows and hacked at the garden paths when I was a Harchester boy. He wheels the one and hacks at the other even yet—a fact nicely lowering to one's private egotism, when you come to consider it. Why, then, my good friend, perjure yourself or strive to mince matters? The work of the world will be done whether I'm here to direct the doing of it or not.—Granted I am tough and in personal knowledge of ill-health a neophyte. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... diabolic enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say to that, reader?); and yet in their behalf, we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism—for nationality it was not. Suffren, and some half dozen of other French nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the mischief they could (which was really great), are names justly reverenced in England. On the same principle, La Pucelle d'Orlans, the victorious enemy of England, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... country "as the plumed knight," although on looking back we search in vain for any trait of knightliness or chivalry in him. For a score of years he filled the National Congress, House and Senate, with the bustle of his egotism. His knightly valor consisted in shaking his fist at the "Rebel Brigadiers " and in waving the "bloody shirt," feats which seemed to him heroic, no doubt, but which were safe enough, the Brigadiers being few and Blaine's supporters many. But where on the Nation's statute book do you find now ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Henrietta and Arabel are quite well and at home; George on circuit, always obliged by your proffered hospitality; and Charles John and Henry returning from a voyage to Alexandria in papa's own vessel, the 'Statira.' I set you an imperfect example of egotism, and hope that you will double my I's and we's, and kindly trust to me ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... meridian of his fame as an orator, and should therefore have become blase to the extremity of being absolutely seared and case-hardened against all impressions whatever appealing to his vanity or egotism, did absolutely (credite posteri!) blush like any roseate girl of fifteen. And that this was no accident growing out of a momentary agitation, no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... "an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life." In moods of exaltation, and especially in the presence of nature, this contact of the individual soul with the absolute is felt. "All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God." The existence and attributes of God are not deducible from history or from natural theology, but are ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the absolutely last degree of egotism manifested by the Philadelphia players, I could not but admire such a ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... drawn every fibre, every feather. I was stirred up to action by the merry sound of voices and the clamp of rustic feet coming home for the mid-day meal. I knew I must go down to dinner; I knew, too, I must tell Phillis; for in his happy egotism, his new-fangled foppery, Holdsworth had put in a P.S., saying that he should send wedding-cards to me and some other Hornby and Eltham acquaintances, and 'to his kind friends at Hope Farm'. Phillis had faded away to one among ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is all by the way; and for the egotism which is, I fear me, displayed in this foreword, I can but plead, not only the difficulty of writing a preface at all, when one has no personal inclination that way, but the nervousness which must beset a writer who is directly addressing ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... Her brutal egotism was a good joke. They expected nothing else from her. She was like an animal whose cruelty and cunning one could ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of skins for hours, striving to put from himself the delightful conviction that had presented itself so suddenly. Through all his efforts to convince himself that his impressions were the result of self-conceit or a too willing egotism, there persistently ran the tantalizing memory of her simple confession. When at last he slept it was to dream that a gentle hand was caressing his forehead and loving fingers were running through his hair. For a while the hand was Grace Vernon's, then ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... attachment. In the prime of life, brave and active, handsome and fond of show, he had all the qualities which render a chief popular with the multitude; "but popularity, when not based upon great benefits, is transient; it is founded upon a principle of egotism, because a whole people cannot have personal sympathies." Ambition led him to desert the royal cause which he had served for nine years; and vanity blinded him to the dangers that surrounded him in the midst of his triumphs, even when proclaimed emperor ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... unusual: he had taught his benevolence to pour its warm tide exclusively through one channel; so that there was nothing to spare for other great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attachments, unless they could minister in some way to the terrible egotism which he mistook for an angel of God. Had Hollingsworth's education been more enlarged, he might not so inevitably have stumbled into this pitfall. But this identical pursuit had educated him. He knew ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has had the patience to follow the enforced, but unwilling, egotism of this veritable history (especially if his studies have led him in the same direction), will now see why my mind steadily gravitated towards the conclusions of Hume and Kant, so well stated by the latter in a sentence, which ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... according to Machiavelli's standard of political morality—self-reliant, using craft and force with cold indifference to moral ends, bent only upon wringing for himself the largest share of this world's power for men who, like himself, identified virtue with unflinching and immitigable egotism. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... who rely upon me. Brave and worthy people! how little do they know how much their happiness costs me! Adieu, a tender adieu, my beloved Clemence. It is a consolation to me to see you as afflicted as myself at the fate of my child, for thus I can say our sorrow, and there is no egotism in my suffering. Sometimes I ask myself, with fear, what would become of me without you, in the midst of such grievous circumstances? Often these thoughts make me still more sad at Fleur-de-Marie's fate; for you remain ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... gamble, and perhaps fight. Toward all but those whom they recognised they preserved an attitude of potential suspicion, for here were gathered the "bad men" of the border countries. A certain jealousy or touchy egotism lest the other man be considered quicker on the trigger, bolder, more aggressive than himself, kept each strung to tension. An occasional shot attracted little notice. Men in the cow-countries shoot as casually as we strike matches, and some ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... while he lived had had no greater faults than he, with better grace their modern representatives might indulge their genius for his defamation. At best, as we might suppose, it is the little men, the men of narrow range and narrow heart—men dwarfed by egotism, bigotry, and self-conceit—who see the most of these defects. Nobler minds, contemplating him from loftier standpoints, observe but little of them, and even honor them above the excellencies of common men. "The proofs that he was in some things like other men," says Lessing, ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... inferior to another thing." No man has ever asserted the surpassing dignity and importance of the American citizen so boldly and freely as Mr. Whitman. He calls himself "teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism." He begins one of his chants, "I celebrate myself," but he takes us all in as partners in his self-glorification. He believes in America as the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... difficulty, and Ismail, tolerant enough, had been tempted to compel her to leave the country, but, with a zeal which took on an aspect of self-opinionated audacity, she had kept on. Perhaps her beauty helped her on her course—perhaps the fact that her superb egotism kept her from being timorous, made her career possible. In any case, there she was at Assiout, and there she had been for years, and no accident had come to her; and, during the three months she was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... knowledge concerning him. I claim in no wise to have been his intimate; such a thing was not possible in my case for quite apparent reasons; and I doubt if Longfellow was capable of intimacy in the sense we mostly attach to the word. Something more of egotism than I ever found in him must go to the making of any intimacy which did not come from the tenderest affections of his heart. But as a man shows himself to those often with him, and in his noted relations with other men, he showed himself without blame. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... romances, I should have left you without seeing you again, but that would have been a virtue beyond my strength, because I am a weak and vain man, fond of the tender, kind, and thankful glances of my fellow-creatures. On the eve of departure I carry my egotism so far as to say, 'Do not forget me, my kind friends, for probably you ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the wicked is also become deep; my aversion to Sarah increases, doubtless with my grief for the death of my child. I imagine that this bad mother has neglected her; that her ambitious hopes once ruined by my marriage, the countess, in her selfish egotism, has abandoned our child to mercenary hands, and that my daughter perhaps died from want of care. It is also my fault; I did not then know the extent of the sacred duties of paternity. When the true ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... infinite though unconscious labour to set back on its feet. A tangible object passes complete into my brain with the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place that it does in space; for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the universe. When I think of hills, I think of the upward strength I tread upon. When water is the object of my thought, I feel the cool shock of the plunge and the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body. The pleasing changes ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... standpoint of morals or religion. We may call it what we choose, but one thing is certain, there can be no worthy character where we have not established some right to respect ourselves. And this right must be born and reared, not out of egotism, nor in religious professions, but in the findings of a cultivated conscience on the motives and actions of our everyday life. A man may have many things, and many things pre-eminently worth having—but as a question of character, if he have not the right to respect himself, that is ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... confide, from whose love and sympathy she could draw the strength which at this point she so greatly needed. She had a husband, a lover, a mother—to none of these could she go with the truth. It needed all Sally's egotism to make the truth seem capable of justification, or indeed to make it seem even credible, so different is the standard by which we judge our own actions from that which we apply to others. Sally saw everything so much in relation to ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... used to her mother's ways—her brilliancy—her pointed manner of going at things—her quick change of thought—of mood, and even of temperament. An outsider would have judged Mrs. Westmore to be fickle with a strong vein of selfishness and even of egotism. Alice only knew that she was her mother; who had suffered much; who had been reduced by poverty to a condition straitened even to hardships. To help her the daughter knew that she was willing to make ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... not to paint landscapes, but figures—and figures not of physique, but of soul—the delineation of character being the dramatist's business. Here is Shakespeare always accurate. To argue with him savors of petulancy or childish ignorance or egotism. Some people ourselves have met had no sense of character, as some have no sense of color. They do not perceive logical continuity here, as in reasoning, but approach each person as an isolated fact, whereas souls are a series—men repeating men, women repeating women, in large measure, as ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... to people in his own class of life there was always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism. What Carlyle called the 'armed neutrality' of social intercourse oppressed him. He felt himself to be in the enemy's camp. In his eyes there was always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his interlocutor and weighing ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... persons. Of such things, of such persons, I firmly maintain, however, that I was never an enthusiastic votary. It would be more to my credit, I suppose, if I had been. More would be forgiven me if I had loved a little more, if into all my folly and egotism I had put a little more naivete and sincerity. Well, I did the best I could, I was at once too bad and too good for it all. At present, it's far enough off; I have put the sea between us; I am stranded. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... it's not," he said easily. "The morbidity is in being afraid to look at it. It was morbid to struggle frantically, the way I did all the spring, trying to resist the irresistible thing that was drawing you along your true path. It was a cancerous egotism of mine that was trying to eat you up, live you up into myself. That, thank God, has been cut out of me! I think it has. Don't misunderstand me, though. I'm not going to relinquish anything of you that I can keep;—that I ever had ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Sargent might paint a lady of the London fashionable world; his brush would divine and emphasize, as Ibsen's pen does, the disorder of her nerves, and the ravaging concentration of her will in a sort of barren and impotent egotism, while doing justice to the superficial attractiveness of her cultivated physical beauty. He would show, as Ibsen shows, and with an equal lack of malice prepense, various detestable features which the mask of good manners had concealed. Each artist would be called a caricaturist ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... afraid to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self-renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his happiness and his sufferings entirely ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... older, more corpulent, less able to withstand exertion and fatigue, fonder of affluence and ease. On the other hand, every fresh success had confirmed his belief in his own ability and had further whetted his appetite for power until his ambition was growing into madness and his egotism was becoming mania. His aversion from taking the advice of others increased so that even the subtle intriguers, Talleyrand and Fouche, were less and less admitted to his confidence. The emperor would brook the appearance of no actor on the French stage other than ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... chamber, played among the flowers which I cherished, warbled with the birds that I loved. But it quitted me at the door of the world, Stenio. It folded its white wings and veiled its radiant face! In return for my young love, they gave me—sixty years, the dregs of a selfish heart, egotism cowering over its fire, and cold for all its mantle of ermine! In place of the sweet flowers of my young years, they gave me these, Stenio!" and she pointed to her feathers and her artificial roses. "Oh, I should like to crush ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... manner and rectitude of feeling—his temper so even and kindly—his courage so heroic—that he is unquestionably the most amiable and interesting of the dramatis personae, preferable to D'Artagnan, to whom premature worldly wisdom gives a hardness bordering upon egotism. While Aramis is sighing sonnets to his mistress, and Porthos parading on the crown of the causeway in all the glory of gold lace and embroidery, Athos sits tranquilly at home, and says, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... troops into the country, by which he, moreover, ingratiated himself with the allies. The majority of his countrymen thanked Heaven for their deliverance from French oppression, and if, in their ancient spirit of egotism, they neglected to aid the great popular movement throughout Germany, they, at all events, sympathized in the general hatred toward France.[4] The ancient aristocrats now naturally reappeared and attempted to re-establish the oligarchical governments of the foregoing ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... ordinary interest to the intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should have shown a great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... looked much older than his fifty-three years, he made it his habit to listen rather than talk. His wide fame as a criminologist and consulting detective had implanted no egotism in ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... quickly out here," said Hawke. "You have not been long enough in India to case-harden into the cursed egotism of this hard-hearted land, and remember, age, crawling on, has indurated old 'Fraser-Johnstone.' He was never an amiable character. What do the ladies of the city say of this strange social situation? I never knew that the old beast had a ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... society, and yet left behind her nothing but the memory of a memory. Her function, her reputation, were singular, and not altogether reassuring: she was a talker, she was the talker, she was the genius of talk. She had a magnificent, though by no means an unmitigated, egotism; and in some of her utterances it is difficult to say whether pride or humility prevails—as for instance when she writes that she feels "that there is plenty of room in the Universe for my faults, and as if I could not spend time in thinking of them when so many things ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... without danger. But men and their personal interests can never be assailed with impunity. Personal interest is the prime mover of public opinion and feeling; and however degrading the truth may appear, it is not to be disputed. After a great national catastrophe this baleful egotism is particularly evident. Dignified passions become extinct for want of fuel; and the human mind, destitute of external occupation, works inward upon itself, and begets selfishness, the true pestilence of the soul. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the same ez she allus wos, unless more so," returned Minty, with an honest egotism that carried so much conviction to the hearer as to condone its vanity. "But I kem yer to do a day's work, gals, and I allow to pitch in and do it, and not sit yer swoppin' compliments and keeping HIM from packin' his duds. Onless," ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Revolution these "arrivists,'' as one would call them to-day, were numerous. Camille Desmoulins wrote in 1792: "Our Revolution has its roots only in the egotism and self-love of each individual, of the combination of which the general interest ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... of an egotist so intensely egotistical as to be quite unconscious of his egotism; forever thinking of himself—forever oblivious of others except as they ministered to his self-interest; filled up to the lips with the feeling of his rights and privileges; but entirely empty of any notion of his duties and responsibilities. With him it was ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... violate both the human and the divine law for personal ends, and express himself in fantastic or indecent or impious ways. The older supernaturalism exalts the individualism of the Creator; naturalism the egotism of the creature. I make the contrast not merely to excoriate naturalism, but to point out the interdependence between man's apparently far-separated expressions of his spirit, and how subtly misleading are our highly prized distinctions, how dangerous sometimes that ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... I have beaten from the heads of one or two of your friends," he replied, "that which their egotism leads them to imagine are brains. No, if you take me alive, Pesita, you will have to kill me to ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... point where the mind and meaning of the man worked according to the law of his life was at the eye, where the monocle was caught now as in a vise. Behind this glass there was a troubled depth which belied the self-indulgent mouth, the egotism speaking loudly in the red tie, the jewelled finger, the ostentatiously ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Moschatel, Weakness Moss, Maternal Love Mosses, Ennui Motherwort, Concealed Love Moving Plant, Agitation Mulberry, White, Wisdom Mushroom, I Can't Trust You Musk Plant, Weakness Myrobalan, Privation Myrrh, Gladness Myrtle, Love Narcissus, Egotism Nasturtium, Patriotism Nemophila, Success Nettle, Stinging, You Spiteful Nettle Burning Slander Nettle Tree, Conceit Night Convolvulus, Night Nightshade, Dark Thoughts Oak (Live), Liberty Oak Leaves ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and—this may seem egotism on my part—I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... satire. He lets us see that all this luxury is a little cloying and perhaps not a little enervating. He suggests (although he takes care never to say it) that perhaps wealth and birth are not really the best the world can offer. The amiable egotism of the hero of In the Express, and the not unkindly selfishness of the heroine of that most Parisian love-story, are set before us without insistence, it is true, but with an irony so keen that even he who ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... natures, there is a lavish and uncalculating recklessness which scorns self unconsciously and though there is a fear which arises from a loving heart, and is but sympathy for others—the fear which belongs to a timid character is but egotism—but, when physical, the regard for one's own person: when moral, the anxiety ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it's nice to have people love you, whether you deserve it or not, and this warm-hearted, enthusiastic creature really did me good. Dr. Skinner sent us an extraordinary book to read called "God's Furnace." There is a good deal of egotism in it and self-consciousness, and a good deal of genuine Christian experience. I read it through four times, and, when I carried it back and was discussing it with him, he said he had too. It seems almost incredible that a wholly ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... somewhat amused by this prologue, which seemed to spring partly from the egotism of a self-made man, partly from an instinctive unwillingness to embark upon the confession to which he was committed. However, he was far from being bored. "I'm about thirty myself," he remarked, "and I'm worth about thirty cents. But ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... born of the Universal Mind and its optimistic tenets, and by slow degrees lashed herself into a scientific replica of a nervous tantrum. Described in unscientific language, she was a mere shaking bundle of injured and angry egotism. In the language of her creed, she was a suffering, striving martyr. Her martyrdom, moreover, led her to order breakfast served to her in her own room. It also led her to eat hungrily, in the intervals of making her toilet ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the general standard of intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity, even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Though their attitudes were elegant and their movements graceful, their faces lacked frankness; it was easy to see that they belonged to a world where polite manners form the character from early youth, and the abuse of social pleasures destroys sentiment and develops egotism. ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... not talk of them even with those who knew their secret spring. His minister had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort of devotees,—persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence. How could he speak with the old physician and the old black woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to strike dumb ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... de corps in so small a place as this is apt to become so concentrated as not to be many removes from egotism. I daresay we have been a terrible ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come in danger in the midst of developed society. Yet no one of those factors involves just the necessity of crime. The same kinds of brains might simply show stupidity or credulity or inconsiderateness or brutality or stubbornness or egotism, and might by each of those factors decrease their chances in the community without directly running into conflict with the law. The criminal is therefore never born as such. He is only born with a brain which is in some directions inefficient and which thus, under certain ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients; but, here and there, a student of human nature found it delightfully whimsical. Sometimes it appeared that this spice of egotism sprang from a blackguardly sense of humour that found joy in the abounding weaknesses and simplicity of the people he imposed upon, but, on the other hand, it would be sufficient to show that Mr. Crips was inspired only with gross selfishness or ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... always as dangerous as its frown; and, to complete the picture, the idle, laughing, thoughtless, and yet inflammable group that surrounded the buffoon, to the unaccountable medley of human sympathies, of sudden and fierce passions, of fun and frolic, so inexplicably mingled with the grossest egotism that enters into the heart of man: in a word, to so much that is beautiful and divine, with so much that would seem to be derived directly from the demons, a compound which composes this mysterious and dread state of being, and which ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... rest of the fellows at the time, not excepting even Tom my instructor, although he and I were much too good friends to try conclusions on the point, and I was the acknowledged leader of the school. Athletics, indeed, were my strong point, for I may say, almost without egotism, that I had so cultivated my muscles to the sad neglect of my proper studies, that I could swim like a fish, dive like an Indian pearl hunter, run swifter than anybody else, and play cricket and football ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a person of strong passions, great energy in business, and admiration of physical beauty in the opposite sex; it also indicates love of children, home and wife, or husband. When not well developed there is a lack of love for home, children, wife or husband; and in a man, it indicates egotism and laziness,—in a ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... "'Observe my egotism. Because I, Gertrude Oliver, have lost a friend, it is incredible that the spring can come as usual. The spring does not fail because of the million agonies of others—but for mine—oh, can the universe ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... out and took a meditative walk, his thoughts returning to the question which had been put before them last night: Theo Warrender for his tutor, to come daily for his lessons, and then to go away. With the unconscious egotism of a child, Geoff would have received this as perfectly reasonable, a most satisfactory arrangement; and indeed it appeared to him, on thinking it over, that his mother's suggestion of a payment in kindness was on the whole somewhat absurd. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... been foolish enough to grant this to England!" cried Napoleon, with a sneer. "In their blind hatred against me they grant more territory in Germany to their most dangerous enemy, that England may spread still further the vast net of her egotism, and catch all Germany in it, flood the country with her manufactured goods, and drive the commerce of the continent into British hands! Ah, those gentlemen will soon perceive what a mistake they have committed ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Superstitions Self-Justice Symbolism Love Ideals of Love The Needs of Woman Man versus Woman Natural Cruelty of the Undeveloped The Worst Sin Reincarnation Processes of Reincarnation Education of Children Egotism Responsiveness Hell The Commonplace Petroleum Law Communism Happiness Pain Foes in the Household The Inner Life Root of Evils Rest in Change Miserliness Special Providence Human Destiny Ethical Law Human Life ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... he must also be of the right sort. He must have the hall-mark of the inevitable white man stamped upon his soul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand carelessness of odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day in the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand niggers. For such are the things that have made the white man inevitable. Oh, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... bewilderment of her household, wandered about the house in utter idleness, never stopping; saying to herself reasonably, "I must find something to do. Now is the time to be doing something;" wondering with that helpless, childlike egotism of people in great distress, how the sun happened to be shining so brightly out-of-doors, the birds singing quite ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... fact, be this domination as selfish in its nature and as brutal in its form as it may. Whether its aim be to uplift or to degrade its subjects, whether it be clean or filthy, of heaven or of hell, a stress of generous purpose or a mere emphasis of egotism,—what pause do you make to inquire concerning this? The appearance is, that any sovereignty, in these democratic days, is over-welcome to your hunger to admit of pause; and a rule, whose undisguised aim is, not to supplement the strength of the weak, but to pillage them of its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... The apparent egotism in the constant use of the first person will, I trust, be excused by the explanation that I write of matters and events known almost entirely from personal observation, reports of subordinate officers to myself, or personal knowledge ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and proclaim ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... consolations and influences of a life beyond the grave. Yes, in that tale that is told, in that skeptic history, there is indeed a great moral. It shows how meaningless and how mean, how treacherous and false, is that man's life who hangs upon the balance of a cunning egotism, and moves only from the impulses of selfish desire-without religion, without virtue, repudiating the idea of morality, and practically ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... even with the man he said he loved. Those who would know Oscar Wilde as he really was will read that piece of rhetoric with care enough to notice that he reiterates the charge of shallow selfishness with such venom, that he discovers his own colossal egotism and essential hardness of heart. "Love," we are told, "suffereth long and is kind ... beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things"—that sweet, generous, all-forgiving tenderness of love was not in the pagan, Oscar Wilde, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... knows—who knows?" he said to Dart, as they stood and talked together afterward, "Faith as a little child. That is literally hers. And I was shocked by it—and tried to destroy it, until I suddenly saw what I was doing. I was—in my cloddish egotism—trying to show her that she was irreverent BECAUSE she could believe what in my soul I do not, though I dare not admit so much even to myself. She took from some strange passing visitor to her tortured bedside what was to her a revelation. ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in him; he does not care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having been ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... principles embraced before the multitude are prepared for their adoption; reformers and statesmen are thus in advance of their age, and through high ethical judgment and the inspiration of rectitude, see above the clouds of selfishness and beyond the limits of egotism, into the eternal truth of things. It was this wisdom, sustained by, if not born of, integrity and disinterestedness, that distinguished the highest class of our Revolutionary and Constitutional statesmen, culminating in Washington, and in no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... remarks on this subject, we should remember with gentleness the order of society from which our nurses are drawn; and that those who make their duty a study, and are termed professional nurses, have much to endure from the caprice and egotism of their employers; while others are driven to the occupation from the laudable motive of feeding their own children, and who, in fulfilling that object, are too often both selfish and sensual, performing, without further interest than is consistent with ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... passage, and an unabashed magnificent masculine egotism speaks in every line of it. Whenever I read it I think of the little girl in Punch whose little brother called to her, "Come here, Effie. I wants you." And Effie answered, "Thank you, Archie, but I wants myself!" Herr Riehl quotes the passage at the end of his own exhortations ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... things, we have a tendency toward smugness, shortsightedness and egotism. The man who makes but one mistake a year because he makes but two decisions is wrong fifty per cent of the time. Yet he self-satisfiedly considers himself superior to the Thoracic because he has caught the latter in six "poor deals within six months." ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... passion that finds its expression in this rhetoric, the devotees of ethical science call egotism. But this egotism is the only true remedy for egoism, spiritual avarice, the vice of preserving and reserving oneself and of not striving to perennialize oneself by ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... action, the secret aspirations, the besetting sins that made up the inner life he had been leading beside her. Moor wrote with an eloquent sincerity, because he had put himself into his book, as if feeling the need of some confidante he had chosen the only one that pardons egotism. Here, too, Sylvia saw her chameleon self, etched with loving care, endowed with all gifts and graces, studied with unflagging zeal, and made the idol ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... matters it that by concentrating all your means of action, availing yourselves of every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and restored the former order of things? Can you restore men's faith in it, or think you can long maintain it by brute force alone, now that all faith in it is extinct? Threatened and undermined on every side, can you hold ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... fought with him, that enthroned Nelson in the affections of his men; nor will it escape observation that the warmth, though so genuine, breathes through words whose quietness might be thought studied, were they not so transparently spontaneous. There is in them no appeal to egotism, to the gratified passion for glory, although to that he was far from insensible; it is the simple speech of man to man, between those who have stood by one another in the hour of danger, and done their duty—the acknowledgment after the event, which is the complement ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the difference. Either their neighbours, if better off, had not long ago begun as meagrely, or else they lacked those advantages of culture or social standing which the Rexfords could boast. Such are the half conscious refuges of our egotism. But with the introduction of this new element it was different. Not that they drew any definite comparison between themselves and their new neighbours—for things that are different cannot be compared, and the difference on all points was great; but part of Trenholme's prophecy ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... absolutely free from egotism or conceit, always avoiding allusion to what she had accomplished, or her unfulfilled longings. But she once ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... you've had your adventures, too," he remarked with nonchalance, partly from politeness but mainly in order to avoid the appearance of hurry in his egotism. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled by Storch's voice. He shuddered slightly and turned his face toward ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Good healthy egotism in literature is the red corpuscle that makes the thing live. Cupid naked and unashamed is always beautiful; we turn away only when some very proper person perceives he is naked and attempts to better the situation by supplying him a coat of mud. The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Foxden. He had formerly been well acquainted with the Reverend Charles Clifton, late pastor of a church in that place. He might deal wisely with the evil intelligence, or, possibly, the infatuated egotism, which controlled that unfortunate man. Dr. Burge would possess his soul in calmness in presence of the singular epidemic which was then running through Foxden, as it had previously run through, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine—he confounds my clumsiness in the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have felt it intolerable to come home just like his neighbors. So he returned to the Hatton district as if he had condescended to accept some pressing invitation to do so. It was, however, almost the last exhibition of his overweening youthful egotism. His mother's best carriage was at the station for Mrs. Henry Hatton and family; his mother's gigs and wagons there for his servants and baggage. Two or three of the village societies to which he had belonged or did yet belong crowded the railway platform. They cheered him when he ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stand by them. It had been the dream of her life to get out and away, but in that moment she knew that wherever she went, she would always come back. Others might help from the top, but she could help understandingly from the bottom. With the magnificent egotism of youth, she outlined gigantic schemes on the curtain of the night. Some day, somehow, she would make people like the Clarkes see the life of the poor as it really was, she would speak for the girls in the factories, in the sweatshops, on the stage. She would be an interpreter between ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... life,—alack for him!—and he never finished sowing them. His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. 'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher—the highest joys. Genius claims to be loved, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... allowing any one, no matter who, to approach her while preparing it. He took the most minute precautions to protect himself against that form of death. He was ill in his bed and alone, and he had therefore the leisure to think of his own security,—the one necessity clear-sighted enough to enable human egotism ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... principles should happen to clash with his predilections. How would he behave in a tight place? He was a fashionable young man with the tastes of his class, and she thought she had detected in him once or twice a touch of that complacent egotism which is liable to make fish of one foible and flesh of another, as the saying is, to suit convention. In short, were his moral ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... she hurried out into the garden; and in surrendering herself to the superbly unconscious egotism of childhood, found passing respite from the torment of her own thoughts. But it was some time before Mrs Conolly returned to her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... sedulously cultivated ambition in his soul, and taught him that failure meant disgrace. The spur that he applied to the boy acted with equal force on the girl, but with different results. For with ambition the rector sowed the seeds of a deadly egotism, and it found a favorable soil—at least in Sydney's heart. That the boy should strive for himself and his own glory—that was the lesson the rector taught him; and he ought not to have been surprised when, in later years, his son's ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... death, it seemed to me that the whole analogy of Nature was against it. When the candle burns out the light disappears. When the electric cell is shattered the current stops. When the body dissolves there is an end of the matter. Each man in his egotism may feel that he ought to survive, but let him look, we will say, at the average loafer—of high or low degree—would anyone contend that there was any obvious reason why THAT personality should carry on? It seemed to be a delusion, and ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time. Melancthon speaks of him with respect and commendation. Erasmus also bears testimony in his favour; and the general voice of his age proclaimed him a light of literature and an ornament to philosophy. Some men, by dint of excessive egotism, manage to persuade their contemporaries that they are very great men indeed: they publish their acquirements so loudly in people's ears, and keep up their own praises so incessantly, that the world's applause is actually taken by storm. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Resolved, therefore, that, if ever I live to years, I will be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them, if rational, how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking. I am too dogmatical; I have too much of egotism; my disposition is always to be telling of my dislike and my scorn.' What a fine, fresh, fruitful, progressive, and peaceful world we should soon have if all our old and all our fast-ageing men would enter ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... fellow man. He had gone into the trial with the assured confidence of an innocent man who is still young enough to rely absolutely upon the justice of the law. In spite of the array of damaging evidence presented by the prosecuting attorney, and the opinionated egotism of Mr. Gooch which rendered him unpopular with judge and jury, Donald's victory was almost assured, when the rumor of the People's Bank failure swept the court room. In the instant wave of suspicion that rose against Basil Sequin, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... an imaginative mind. She saw herself as the heroine of an absorbing story, the living of which story she enjoyed to the utmost, while every incident and every person contributed to its interest. Quite unconsciously, with unintentional egotism, the Schoolmarm had a way of standing off and viewing herself, as it were, through the rosy glow of romance. Yet she was not a complex character—this Schoolmarm. She had no soaring ambitions, though her ideals for herself and for others were of the best. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... the interesting particulars of his panoramic picture of the Storming of Seringapatam, which, the first of its class, was known half over the world. We must not, however, be misunderstood—there was neither personal nor family egotism in the Porters; they invariably spoke of each other with the tenderest affection—but unless the conversation was forced by their friends, they never mentioned their own, or each other's works, while they were most ready to praise what was excellent in the works of others; they ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... exhibit instead of as a messenger with a message worth delivering. Do you remember Elbert Hubbard's tremendous little tract, "A Message to Garcia"? The youth subordinated himself to the message he bore. So must you, by all the determination you can muster. It is sheer egotism to fill your mind with thoughts of self when a greater thing is there—TRUTH. Say this to yourself sternly, and shame your self-consciousness into quiescence. If the theater caught fire you could rush to the stage and shout ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... this necessity of preservation engender in individuals egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... and preserving her name absolutely untouched by scandal through a long and brilliant career, she deserves a place among distinguished women. She evidently had no idea of being forgotten, and completed twenty chapters of autobiography—its florid egotism at once its fault and its charm—besides keeping a diary in later years, and preserving nearly all the letters written to her, and even cards left at her door. But on those cards were the names of Humboldt, Cuvier, Talma and the most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... conviction forced itself upon him that he was not figuring to great advantage in this adventure. Distinctly a humiliating sensation to one who ordinarily was by way of having a fine conceit of himself. It requires a certain amount of egotism to enable one to play the exquisite to one's personal satisfaction; Maitland had enjoyed the possession of that certain amount; theretofore his approval of self had been passably entire. Now—he could not deny—the boor ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... slaughterhouse they looked on and made their judgments in silence, each one by himself, with a little surprise and a great deal of irony. Through a disdainful reaction against the mental condition of the herd they fell back into a kind of egotism, intellectual and artistic egotism, an idealistic sensualism, where the tracked and hunted ego vindicated its rights against human fellowship. Laughable fellowship, which made itself manifest to these adolescents only in the shape of finished murder, one undergone in common! A precocious ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland |
