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Disinterested   Listen
adjective
Disinterested  adj.  Not influenced by regard to personal interest or advantage; free from selfish motive; having no relation of interest or feeling; not biased or prejudiced; as, a disinterested decision or judge. "The happiness of disinterested sacrifices."
Synonyms: Unbiased; impartial; uninterested; indifferent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disinterested" Quotes from Famous Books



... have a last interview with them; in one case to invite a person to join the people of God; in another, to urge the necessity of family-prayer; a third was a young person apparently in dying circumstances, and a fourth was a quaker friend, whose disinterested friendship endears her to me.—Visited the Lady Mayoress at the Mansion House, and felt quite at ease. Had an opportunity of dropping a word in her ear, which she ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... best intentions it was impossible for Mr. Spreckels to look at matters from a disinterested standpoint, and the minister should have grasped this fact, instead of sending as facts to his Government statements that were merely the views of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 55, November 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Weston, smiling, "you give him credit for more simple, disinterested benevolence in this instance than I do; for while Miss Bates was speaking, a suspicion darted into my head, and I have never been able to get it out again. The more I think of it, the more probable it appears. In short, I have made a match between Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... the reader follows fascinated. Every scene is strange, terrible, or dramatic. Yet, remarkable as are the scenes, the actor is the more extraordinary; a type without comparison in modern times and with few likenesses in history. Rare and precious is the truly disinterested man. Potentates of many lands and different degree—the Emperor of China, the King of the Belgians, the Premier of Cape Colony, the Khedive of Egypt—competed to secure his services. The importance ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... not prevent him from doing justice to the opponents of Caesar is proved by his portrait of Q. Lutatius Catulus, the best leader of the optimates, and whom he pronounces to have been the most moderate and disinterested of all the great men of his day,—"indeed," he adds, "there is perhaps no character in the history of the Commonwealth which commanded more general esteem, or obtained more blameless distinction in political ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... her hand seemed the signal for the release of the pent-up forces. The worn body, the worn nerves, the weakened will gave way, and Kate Marcy burst into a paroxysm of weeping that gradually became automatic, convulsive, like a child's. There was no damming this torrent, once released. Kindness, disinterested friendship, was the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... if it wins, not so much by touching the conscience of the masters as by exciting the sympathy of disinterested onlookers. The spectacle of men suffering for a principle and not hitting back is a moving one. It obliges the power holders to condescend to explain, to justify themselves. The weak get a change of venue from the will of the stronger to the court of public opinion, ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... that the Gospel abolished slavery, although it does not say a single word which would proclaim this abolition. Why, if the doubt were possible, would not diversity of opinions be also possible among disinterested judges? To speak only of France, see the synods of our free churches, which continually stigmatize both Swedish intolerance and American slavery; see an address signed three years ago by the pastors and the elders of five hundred and seventy-one French churches, which has gone to ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... it would puzzle a disinterested person to decide which of those savage deeds was more "satanic" than the other, and to imagine why Jezebel is now dragged forth to "shake her gory locks" as a frightful example to the American women who ask for recognized right to self-government. I submit, that if Jezebel is a disgrace ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... by Fannie Hurst (Cosmopolitan Magazine). The artistic qualities in Miss Hurst's work which have commended themselves to such disinterested critics as Mr. Howells are revealed once more in this story, in which Miss Hurst accepts the shoddiness of background which characterizes her literary types, and reveals the fine human current that runs beneath it all. I am not sure that Miss Hurst has not diluted her substance ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... rake attempts to force the lady, Freeman, a man of sense, intervenes with sword drawn and gives him a stern lecture. In the end, when Tremilia, giving her hand to Freeman, turns out to be an heiress who had assumed the Quaker garb to make sure of getting a disinterested husband, the error of Railton's ways becomes apparent. At the same time his cast mistress, whom he had succeeded in marrying off to a ridiculous old Justice, is impressed by Tremilia's "great Example." "How conspicuous a thing is Virtue!" says she, in an ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker

... dangers that beset her, if she still wished for rescue. If he regretted the underground and underhand steps through which that money could alone come into his possession, he consoled his still protesting conscience with the claim that it was, after all, only a battle of wit against disinterested wit. For, self-delusively, he was beginning once more to regard all organized society and its ways as a mere inquisitorial process which the adventurous could ignore and the keen-witted could circumvent. Warfare, such as his, must be ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... maintenance of order and discipline; intimate with the Indian character, customs, and principles; habituated to the hunting life; guarded, by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous, that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves; with all these qualifications, as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... time of her glory, life was not a habit, but an experiment. Even the conservative Romans were infected. They fell under the sway of Greek thought. When a practical man of business becomes intimate with an artist, he is never the same man again. The thought of that disinterested mode of life haunts his dreams. So Rome, though she had paid little regard to the other ancient peoples with whom she had had traffic and war, put herself to school to the Greeks. She accepted the Greek pantheon, renamed the Greek gods and goddesses, and translated and adopted ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... occasions, precludes the supposition of the majority so employed being seasoned hospital attendants, having constitutions impenetrable to contagion. Those questions are now well understood as to yellow fever, about which so much misconception had once existed. The proofs by disinterested authors (by which I mean those unconnected with quarantine establishments, or who are not governed by the expediency of the case) in the West Indies, America, and other places, show this in a clear light; but the proofs which have for some time past appeared in various journals respecting the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... contrast may conventionally be, Marguerite is never impossible or unnatural. Her chief companion of her own sex, Prudence Duvernoy, though, as might be expected, a good deal of a proxenete, and by no means disinterested in other ways, is also very well drawn, and assists the general effect more than may ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... up. Her chum and roommate, Edith Wilmer, was sitting on the bed watching her in that calm disinterested fashion peculiarly maddening to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... know, O royal sage, whether any fault is incurred by one who from interested or disinterested friendship imparts instructions unto a person belonging to a low order of birth! O grandsire, I desire to hear this, expounded to me in detail. The course of duty is exceedingly subtile. Men are often seen to be stupefied in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... honour, of a piece with thy generosity to thy Rose-bud and her Johnny; and to a number of other good actions in pecuniary matters: although thy Rose-bud's is, I believe, the only instance, where a pretty woman was concerned, of such a disinterested bounty. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... patiently explored the properties of the triangle, the circle, and the ellipse, simply for pure love of truth, they laid the corner-stones for the arts of the architect, the engineer, and the navigator. In like manner it was the disinterested work of investigation conducted by Ampere, Faraday, Henry and their compeers, in ascertaining the laws of electricity which made possible the telegraph, the telephone, the dynamo, and the electric furnace. The vital relations between pure research and economic gain have at last worked themselves ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... have changed my mind; tell him that my affection for my father has overcome my love for him; say I will never marry—that my heart is his, and never will or can be another's. But then again—he, the noble-minded, the brave, the generous, the disinterested—alas! I know not what to do, Lanigan, nor how to act. If I remain here, they will strive to force this odious marriage on me; and then some fearful catastrophe will happen; for, sooner than marry Whitecraft, I would stab either him or myself. Either that, Lanigan, or I should go mad; for do you ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... have not yet been sufficiently prepared for this disinterested operation. As ye have proved this night that ye are not yet purged of the feelings and prejudices of a vicious education, I will perform this office for you all, and set you an example, by which ye may hereafter profit. To begin, then, with you—(addressing himself to a corpulent ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... Sir Howard had 'phoned to ask me if I could induce Harley to run down, but my friend had expressed himself as disinterested in a common case of elopement. Now, as Wessex spoke, I glanced aside at Harley, wondering if the fact that so celebrated a member of the C.I.D. as Detective-Inspector Wessex had been put in charge would induce him ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... than consult your mother, aunt, or other discreet relative that has your welfare at heart, from whom you may reasonably expect the best and most disinterested advice; and this it will be well for you to be guided by. Women of mature years can judge far better than you whether a man is likely to make a good husband. You should likewise quietly and cautiously make your own observations among your ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... handsome, you will have an enormous fortune, and you have evidently had your own way all your life. A girl, such as you are, may either make a magnificent marriage or a ridiculous and humiliating one. Neither American young women, nor English young men, are as disinterested as they were some years ago. Each has begun to learn what the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... do we commonly hear about the contrast between college education and the education which business or technical or professional schools confer? The college education is called higher because it is supposed to be so general and so disinterested. At the "schools" you get a relatively narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the "colleges" give you the more liberal culture, the broader outlook, the historical perspective, the philosophic atmosphere, or something which phrases of that sort try to express. You are made into ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... cannot tell you here," writes the latter, "the many, many instances in which Banim has shown his friendship since I wrote last; let it suffice to say, that he is the sincerest, heartiest, most disinterested being that breathes. His fireside is the only one where I enjoy anything like social life or home. I go out (to Brompton Grove) occasionally in an evening, and talk or read for some hours, or have a bed, and ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... last-named power is disinterested in pursuing this policy is not for a moment to be supposed. The price she has ever demanded for her protection has been one too willingly paid by these lawless mountaineers, an unremitting hostility to Turks and Turkey. For centuries this was open and undisguised on the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... of all the hotels of which I had any experience in the United States, and they were not a few, is Barnum's, in that city: where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time in America (this is a disinterested remark, for I never use them); and where he will be likely to have enough water for washing himself, which is not at all ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... and she became more composed. It was necessary above all things to make sure that Madame was not being victimized by an impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself as a disinterested friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at the hour appointed and to do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet—if indeed he existed—to forgo his rights on the lady who had so innocently taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... by a large majority, chose Dr. Kalopothakes, editor of the "Star of the East," for their President. In May, the venerable missionary was invited by the king to administer the Lord's Supper in the palace; which was no more than an act of public justice towards one of the oldest, most disinterested, and self-sacrificing of the friends ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester in a feudal castle; our camp would ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... consequences of Pope Boniface the Eighth's excommunications; his displeasure having before then produced dreadful effects in the conspiracy of Bajamonti Tiepulo; which was suppressed, and he killed, by a woman, out of a flaming zeal for the honour and tranquillity of her country: and so disinterested too was her spirit of patriotism, that the only reward she required for a service so essential, was that a constant memorial of it might be preserved in the dress of the Doge; who from that moment obliged himself to wear a ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... being deeply affected. The mention of Greece fills the mind with the most exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is susceptible. Superior skill and refinement in the arts, heroic gallantry in action, disinterested patriotism, enthusiastic zeal and devotion in favor of public and personal liberty are associated with our recollections of ancient Greece. That such a country should have been overwhelmed and so long hidden, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... know—the inward approval, and all that. Well, I'm afraid I like the other kind: the drums and wreaths and acclamations. If I were Mr. Peyton, for instance, I'd much rather win the competition than—than be as disinterested as Mr. Darrow." ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... any alleged violation of any of these rules, the senior officer of the room shall appoint a Court[7] to consist of thirteen disinterested officers, who shall fairly try and determine the matter, and in case of conviction the offender's rations shall be stopped, or the commander of the prison be requested to confine the offender in a cell according ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... ceased to exist, its own explanation being that it died of the loss of novelty. "The arrears of subscriptions seem," it says, "to confirm an observation that has sometimes been made, that in Scotland every disinterested plan of public utility is slighted as soon as it loses the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... of priggishness and provinciality. I mean, of course, Matthew Arnold. Against Mill's "liberty" and Carlyle's "strength" and Ruskin's "nature," he set up a new presence and entity which he called "culture," the disinterested play of the mind through the sifting of the best books and authorities. Though a little dandified in phrase, he was undoubtedly serious and public-spirited in intention. He sometimes talked of culture almost as if it were a man, or at ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... other hand, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw out-Wagners Wagner in denunciation, and declares the C symphony childish, inept, mere Rossini badly done. Now, I can understand Sir George Grove's enthusiasm; for Sir George to a large extent discovered Schubert; and disinterested art-lovers always become unduly excited about any art they have discovered: for example, see how excited Wagner became about his own music, how rapt Mr. Dolmetsch is in much of the old music. But I can understand Wagner's attitude no better than I can the attitude of Mr. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... dreamed of a single State of Spanish South America, of a great community with a single heart. It is not surprising that he found opponents to this scheme, the chief of these being Chile and Buenos Aires. Even in his own country these stupendous plans of his, though they were conceived in a disinterested and loyal spirit, led to troubled and harassing times. Thus revolutions against his authority broke out in Venezuela, and even in parts of Colombia itself. International complications followed. In 1827, Peru declared war against Colombia, alleging that ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... succeed, they will rule the roast for a long time; it will be impossible to refuse them anything; to owe the crown to them would be contracting too great an obligation." It always appeared to me that she wished her own family to counterbalance the claims of the emigrants by disinterested services. She was fearful of M. de Calonne, and with good reason. She had proof that this minister was her bitterest enemy, and that he made use of the most criminal means in order to blacken her reputation. I can testify that I have seen in the hands of the Queen a manuscript copy of the infamous ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... disinterested, sincere republican, inaccessible to seduction, he is a human obstacle. We must make our way around him, since we cannot ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... let us understand that he and his companions required food, and were not entirely disinterested in pressing us to have a feast on the provisions they had brought. On seeing the deer and the ducks we had shot, their eyes brightened. Aboh and Shimbo were both very good cooks, and immediately set to work to dress both the venison and the vegetables. Their only regret ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... an agreement declaring a certain New York house to be "the sole authorized publishers and issuers" of their works. Now, had that house volunteered its advice to the Secretary of State of that day, he would scarcely have regarded it as sufficiently disinterested to be qualified for the office it had undertaken; and yet, if any advice in the present case has been asked, it would seem that it must have been from houses that now look forward to filling the place then occupied by that single ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey

... own level and disgrace her as well as yourself. Thank God, my eyes are now opened to your true character. No self-respecting woman could afford to allow her name to be associated with yours. You are as incapable of disinterested friendship as you are of common honesty." Coldly she added: "I hope you quite understand that henceforth my house is closed to you. If we happen to meet in public, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... think it important that perfectly respectable and perfectly disinterested witnesses should see you, in my house, in the character of a lady who ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... an ablebodied pauper. There are men who fall helplessly into the workhouse because they are good far nothing; but there are also men who are there because they are strongminded enough to disregard the social convention (obviously not a disinterested one on the part of the ratepayer) which bids a man live by heavy and badly paid drudgery when he has the alternative of walking into the workhouse, announcing himself as a destitute person, and legally compelling the Guardians to feed, clothe and house him better than he could feed, clothe and ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... it was required of me to pose as a rabid loyalist, and so did not, being known as disinterested and indifferent, and perhaps for that reason not suspected. My friends were from necessity among the best among the loyalists—from choice, too, for I liked them for their own sakes, and it was against their cause ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... accomplished Madame Lier, who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts by her serpentine dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan would always be indebted for the handsome sum which had been the result of her disinterested efforts in promoting ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... no doubt that Mr. Peter Margerison will be equally happy to give you his valuable advice in the business. He is your counsellor in these matters, isn't he. An excellent adviser, of sound judgment and most disinterested honesty!" ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit, that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices, to the formation and administration of the Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... weeks go by: each one of our characters pursues his part. Pandarus is very proud of his; what could one reproach him with? He does unto others as he would be done by; he is disinterested; he has moreover certain principles of honour, that limit themselves, it is true, to recommending secrecy, which he does not fail to do. Can a reasonable ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand." Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humor of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... complete. Successful herself, she wanted all her friends to be successful; but Beverley, to her discomfort, remained a cheery failure, and worse, absolutely refused to snub Sellers. It was not as if Sellers' advice and comments were disinterested. Beverley was simply the instrument on which he played his songs of triumph. It distressed Annette to such an extent that now, if she went upstairs and heard Sellers' voice in the studio, she ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... not a Russian in all Siberia who dared to cheat one of these fierce savages, with the blade of a long lance ten inches from his breast bone. Honesty was emphatically the best policy, and the moral suasion of a Chukchi spear developed the most disinterested benevolence in the breast of the man who stood at the sharp end. The trade which was thus established still continues to be a source of considerable profit to the inhabitants of Anadyrsk, and to the Russian merchants who come there every year ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... Scaramouche must be vastly other than he had hitherto appeared, or else that great lady and he would never have used such familiarity with each other. Imagining him no better than he was, Climene had made him her own. And now she was to receive the reward of disinterested affection. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... I was bitterly disappointed. The lesson was a hard one, but salutary. I took no more disinterested advice; I bought no more property. There are too many agents between a woman and the thing she aims at, for her ever to attain it without danger of discomfiture. The experience, as you may guess, put me in no amicable mood towards Mr. Seabrook. Just think of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... various notices and discoveries, not all of equal importance, allowed himself to be drawn into some little exaggeration of praise; but we cannot blame him. Admiration, when applied to such noble, perfectly innocent, and disinterested subjects, is truly a spark of the sacred fire: it produces research that a less ardent zeal would quickly leave aside, and sometimes leads to valuable results. However, it would be well for those who, following M. Payen's example, intelligently understand and greatly admire Montaigne, to remember, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... contribution to pure theory. It is rather to be viewed as a translation into abstract terms of the hatred with which Marx regarded the system that coins wealth out of human lives, and it is in this spirit, rather than in that of disinterested analysis, that it has been read by its admirers. A critical examination of the theory of surplus value would require much difficult and abstract discussion of pure economic theory without having much bearing upon the practical truth ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... hand, it is impossible for me to forget the disinterested charity, and tender solicitude, with which many of these poor heathens, from the sovereign of Sego, to the poor women, who at different times received me into their cottages, sympathized with my sufferings, relieved my distress, and contributed to my safety. Perhaps this acknowledgment is ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... in face of divers orders of truths—that here we should ignore the physiological explanation, and retain and taste only the emotions of this nuptial flight, which is yet, and whatever the cause, one of the most lyrical, most beautiful acts of that suddenly disinterested, irresistible force which all living creatures obey and are wont to call love? That were too childish; nor is it possible, thanks to the excellent habits every loyal mind ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... conscientiousness, to the public service. With such a character, with such opportunities, what high hopes must have danced before him, what radiant visions of accomplished duties, of ever-increasing usefulness, of beneficent power, of the consciousness of disinterested success! Some of those hopes and visions were, indeed, realised; but, in the end, the career of Sidney Herbert seemed to show that, with all their generosity, there was some gift or other— what was it?—some essential ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... the story we are led to feel that Maeterlinck's spirit is one of grave and disinterested attachment to the highest moral beauty, and his seriousness, his serenity and his extreme originality impress even those who are bewildered by his graces and ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... Disinterested patriot, he would receive no pay for his military services. Refusing gifts, he was glad to guide the benefaction of a grateful state to educate the children of his fallen braves in the institution at Lexington which yet bears his name. Without any of the blemishes ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... anxious only about their offspring, to put us mortals out of countenance and to give us a bad name? considering these examples for us to follow, while disgrace justly attaches to our inhumanity, for mankind only is accused of having no disinterested affection, and of not knowing how to love except in regard to advantage. For that line is greatly admired in the theatres, "Man loves man only for reward," and is the view of Epicurus, who thinks that the father so loves his son, the mother her child, children their parents. Whereas, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... "I am grateful, even for the smallest kindness; I have not often met with disinterested generosity. But she had an end in view—I must say it once for all. She wanted to make use of me to bring shame on Marcus and grief on his mother. You surely must know it; for why should you have thought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... care of an old man, whom the near prospect of death rendered perfectly disinterested, wholly selfish as his own life had been, Louis's heart was bent upon saving his son from the first error which he himself had committed on mounting the throne. "Gentlemen," said Dunois on rising from table at the funeral-banquet held at the abbey ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a People. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... the earlier special works upon the disease. A part of his testimony has been occasionally copied into other works, but his expressions are so clear, his experience is given with such manly distinctness and disinterested honesty, that it may be quoted as a model which might have ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... of conveying such a serious sum of money out of his native country into the hands of the false English. But patriotism, as it is the fairest, so it is often the most suspicious mask of other feelings; and many who knew Bailie Macwheeble concluded that his professions of regret were not altogether disinterested, and that he would have grudged the moneys paid to the LOONS at Westminster much less had they not come from Bradwardine estate, a fund which he considered as more particularly his own. But the Bailie protested he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... But on his way to the governor's mansion, a little later, he could not help wondering if he had been altogether candid in making it. The offices in the up-town sky-scraper were not exclusively a railroad social centre where the disinterested voter could come and have the facts ladled out to him without fear or favor on the part of the ladler. They had come to be also a rallying-point for a heterogeneous crowd of ward-workers, wire-pullers, and small politicians, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... for a moment. All her anger had subsided. She looked at Rnine with the surprise which one experiences when confronted with certain persons who are unlike their fellows, more capable of performing unusual actions, more generous and disinterested. She realised perfectly that he was acting without any ulterior motive or calculation, that he was, as he had said, merely fulfilling his duty as a gentleman to a woman who ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... the admiration of distinguished European thinkers and writers: Carlyle accepted his friendship and his disinterested services; Miss Martineau fully recognized his genius and sounded his praises; Miss Bremer fixed her sharp eyes on him and pronounced him "a noble man." Professor Tyndall found the inspiration of his life in Emerson's fresh thought; and Mr. Arnold, who clipped ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... inaugural act of public charity in the spirit of charity. We must remember that no charitable or beneficent institutions of any kind, grounded on disinterested kindness, existed amongst the Pagan Romans, and still less amongst the Pagan Greeks. Mr Coleridge, in one of his lay sermons, advanced the novel doctrine—that in the Scriptures is contained all genuine and profound statesmanship. Of course ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... was willing, without any very close enquiry, to take upon trust all the assertions so confidently put forth on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah, the hostile machinations of Dost Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than once previously referred) "the reconstruction of the social edifice" in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were at best, have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... I've found a disinterested female in a coaxing mood," replied this modern Diogenes. He came from behind the counter, pretending to believe her, and ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... said, "it is, of course, very kind of you to come to me in this disinterested manner. You don't seem to have anything to gain by it, so I will accept your attitude as being a bona fide one. I will, if I may, be equally frank with you. I met both Mr. Parker and his daughter last night for the ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... entering into a strict friendship with this captain, who was an honest, plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with him, and carried a small adventure with me, which, by the disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably; for I carried about 40 pounds in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to buy. These 40 pounds I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my relations ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... give a more favourable answer to your letters. Emily is now quite out of danger. Since the day you forced yourself, with such a disinterested regard for her health and reputation, into her room, she grew (no thanks to your forbearance) gradually better. I trust that she will be able to see you in a few days. I hope this the more, because she now feels and decides that it will be ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pure and perfect graces, the disinterested virtues, the unselfish virtues—obedience, mercy, chivalry, beneficence, magnanimity, heroism,—in one word, self-sacrifice—beautiful these are: but are they necessary? are they mere ornaments? or are they sacred duties? The duty ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... to each other," here interposed Endicott didactically. "The rules of primero moreover demand that if there are but two players, a third and disinterested party shall ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... It was my only chance of being loved for my own sake; or, at least of knowing that I was so loved. If I had come with my rank and my fortune in my hand, as it were—one of the good matches of the year—what security could I ever have felt in the disinterested love of the girl who chose me? As plain John Hammond I wooed and was rejected; as plain John Hammond I wooed and won; and the prize which I so won is a pearl above price. Not for worlds, were the last year to be lived over again, would I have one ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... last thing that Mrs. Stowe expected for her disinterested labor, but it suits the world's notion of the fitness of things that this was not altogether wanting. For the millions of copies of Uncle Tom scattered over the world the author could expect nothing, but in her own country her copyright yielded her a moderate return ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... a truly disinterested man, was grounded in nobler motives. This was an effort made by an eminent Polish scholar and patriot to wrest American citizenship for political purposes. He had been an instructor at various Russian and German ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... have this happen I did my best not to confuse with a disinterested opinion. But indeed Mrs. Ricker and Kitton was seldom in need of an opinion, as was proved that night by the appearance of this notice in the ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,—to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... have appeared in a more resplendent light had he not succeeded a brother singularly endowed, and whose death was considered to be a public calamity. Of Francis, Duke of Bedford, who was summoned away in his thirty-seventh year, Fox said: "In his friendships, not only was he disinterested and sincere, but in him were to be found united all the characteristic excellencies that have ever distinguished the men most renowned for that virtue. Some are warm, but volatile and inconstant; he was warm too, but steady ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... society to speak of in Carlingford," said Reginald. "It is like most other country towns. If you like it we shall be sure your liking is quite disinterested, for ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... must take sides. One cannot be really neutral in this war. Every country is interested in the result, either actively now or later on, when the struggle is decided. One cannot be disinterested; ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... cool water; we assimilate ourselves to the new element, and cease to have any necessary pre-occupation with our person. We devote our attention undisturbed to our environment, to which we now feel ourselves superior by being able to view it in an objective and disinterested fashion, instead of being oppressed by it, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... exchanged glances, and Sahwah wriggled in her chair. "Wouldn't you like a committee to arrange that?" she asked, trying to make her voice sound natural and disinterested. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... respected the laws which governed his body. Facts were his prey. He threw himself into them with a kind of piratical ardour; took them by the throat, wallowed in them, worried them like a terrier, and finally assimilated them. They gave him food for what he liked best on earth: "disinterested thought." They "formed a rich loam." He had an encyclopaeic turn of mind; his head, as somebody once remarked, was a lumber-room of useless information. He could tell you how many public baths exited in Geneva in pre-Reformation ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... merchandise, it is necessary to free him from the perils of competition and satisfy his monopolistic instincts: can you do it? It is necessary, further, to interest the consumer in the repression of fraud, which, so long as the producer is not utterly disinterested, is at once impossible and contradictory. Impossible: place on the one hand a depraved consumer, China; on the other a desperate merchant, England; between them a venomous drug causing excitement and intoxication; and, in spite of all the police in the world, you will have trade in opium. Contradictory: ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... triumphantly through some of the most difficult phases of its existence, by such self-sacrificing and noble patriots as Colonel W.R. Roberts, of New York, its late President, and James Gibbons, Esq., of Philadelphia, its present Vice President—than whom two more disinterested and sterling Sons of the Sod do not exist—its basis enlarged and strengthened, we say, by such men as these, and the able and truehearted Senators that surrounded them, the Brotherhood, at the close of the war, was in a condition sufficiently exalted ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... in all such public duties, Mr. Harrison was a person of rarest quality and worth; absolutely disinterested in his zeal, unwearied in exertion, always ready, never tiresome, never absurd; bringing practical sense, kindly discretion, and a most wholesome element of good-humored, but incorruptible honesty, into ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Temperance Hall the captain yielded, a somewhat reluctant assent, to the attendance of the troupe. They performed before a highly pleased and encouraging audience, and had no occasion to blush at the report of the entertainment in the papers. At any rate many a disinterested resident in the cause of temperance was induced to unbutton his ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... had come to be my position about all that was called optimism, pessimism, and improvement. Before any cosmic act of reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance. A man must be interested in life, then he could be disinterested in his views of it. "My son give me thy heart"; the heart must be fixed on the right thing: the moment we have a fixed heart we have a free hand. I must pause to anticipate an obvious criticism. It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with a decent ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... to her though (as it's always useful to be); and Mary would sometimes laugh and sometimes cry at my flirting with Magdalen. This I thought proper very quickly to check. "Mary," said I, "you know that my love for you is disinterested,—for I am faithful to you, though Miss Crutty is richer than you. Don't fly into a rage, then, because I pay her attentions, when you know that my heart and my promise are engaged ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... come only from the disinterested efforts of those who bring to the task pure motives ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... Francois, as to the class of vessel to which they belonged, and which we were in turn preparing to pursue. As might be expected, we got from them nothing but contradictory reports; but they all agreed in giving us the most conscientious and disinterested advice, not to think of irritating her, as we should most certainly be blown out of the water. We read this backwards. If she were strong enough to take us, it was their interest that we should engage her, and thus ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... have no fear of any sensitiveness on Miss Gladden's part," said Houston quickly, "in the first place, their voices are altogether different, there is no comparison between them; and in addition, Miss Gladden's regard for Lyle is so disinterested and unselfish, there would be no room for any feeling of that kind. We must all acknowledge that Lyle certainly has a wonderful voice; as I said before, I have ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... together, which has not yet attracted the attention it deserves, because the opposite set of evils are only beginning now to rise into general and formidable activity. This is the fixing the mind, and still more the heart of Europe, for so long a period, on generous and disinterested objects. Whoever has attentively considered the constitution of human nature as he feels it in himself, or has observed it in others,—whether as shown in the private society with which he has mingled, or the public concerns of nations he has observed,—will at once ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... satisfaction I had in your letter. Your approbation of my conduct makes me believe much the better of you and myself; and I assure you that that approbation came to me very seasonably. Such proofs of a warm, sincere, and disinterested friendship were not wholly unnecessary to my support at a time when I experienced such bitter effects of the perfidy and ingratitude of much longer and much closer connections. The way in which you take up my affairs binds ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... together," continued Mr. Slocum, "and we are forced to accept the Hennessey girl's statement. The reason you suggest for Richard's not saying anything on the subject may suffice for us, but it will scarcely satisfy disinterested persons, and doesn't at all cover another circumstance which must be ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... twenty feet away stood Colonel Grand, twirling a light walking-stick and surveying the throng with disinterested eyes. He had seen and ignored Ernie, but had failed to recognize the young man ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... and valuable to their possessors. If there were 110 or 120 people willing to possess and pay for a certain class of books, the secret of keeping up the pressure from without and the value of the books, was to limit the number of members and participators to 100. There is nothing noble or disinterested in this. The arrangement has no pretension to either of these qualities; nor, when we come to the great forces which influence the supply and demand of human wants, whether in the higher or the humbler departments, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... likewise behaved to us with the most disinterested humanity: he attended everyone with the utmost care, for which I could not prevail on him to receive any payment, or to render me any account, or other answer than ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... and extortions of their rulers. Mr. Brailsford, of course, puts his case much better than I can, in any brief summary of his views. He has earned and won the highest respect by his power as a brilliant writer, and by his disinterested and consistent championship of the cause of honesty and justice, wherever and whenever he thinks it to be in danger. Nevertheless, in this matter of the Egyptian war I venture to think that he is mistaking the tail for the dog. Diplomacy, I fancy, was not wagged by finance, but used finance ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... holding up the distant mark of attainable perfection, we shall enter more fully toward the close of this address. We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of thinking and disinterested patriots.[6] These are the men who have encouraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistible habits, and made their duty a necessary part of their self-interest, by the long-continued cultivation of that moral taste, which derives our most exquisite pleasures from the contemplation ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... founder of the Colony, and in the measures which he pursued for its advancement, defence, and prosperity. I was, however, surprised to learn that no biography had been published of the man who projected an undertaking of such magnitude and importance; engaged in it on principles the most benevolent and disinterested; persevered till its accomplishment, under circumstances exceedingly arduous, and often discouraging; and lived to see "a few become a thousand," and a weak one "the flourishing part ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... lain dormant in Manyuema. Appetite returned, and instead of the spare, tasteless, two meals a day, I ate four times daily, and in a week began to feel strong. I am not of a demonstrative turn; as cold, indeed, as we islanders are usually reputed to be, but this disinterested kindness of Mr. Bennett, so nobly carried into effect by Mr. Stanley, was simply overwhelming. I really do feel extremely grateful, and at the same time I am a little ashamed at not being more worthy of the generosity. Mr. Stanley has done his part with untiring energy; ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... nor Doyle, nor for the matter of that the Major, would have known in the least what I was talking about. A man like that about the place would be a great comfort to me. I should have some one to talk to. I wish I could get you all to understand that I'm acting in this whole business from purely disinterested and altruistic motives. I don't want to get rid of Simpkins. You and Doyle ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... bliss of sympathy and a congenial environment. And what had Almeria done? Revenged herself? Tormented all around her? Clung with wild passion to a selfish resolve? Not at all. She had made the best of a wreck of life, and deserved a blessing on a new voyage. She had sought consolation in disinterested tenderness for her fellow-sufferers, and she deserved to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... to the Queen as one of her regular attendants everywhere in the Highlands, and remained in her service until his death. "He has all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-minded, kind-hearted and disinterested; always ready to oblige; and of a discretion rarely to ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... truth; and it is hard to weaken the effect of the exact truth by any subtlety of interpretation, though it can, sometimes, be done. With painstaking care Steger went over all the ground of Stener's long relationship with Cowperwood, and tried to make it appear that Cowperwood was invariably the disinterested agent—not the ringleader in a subtle, really criminal adventure. It was hard to do, but he made a fine impression. Still the jury listened with skeptical minds. It might not be fair to punish Cowperwood for seizing with avidity upon a splendid chance to get rich quick, they thought; ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... them were accompanied by prowlers, bristling and snarling as they looked at the alien ship. A few men were deliberately making themselves visible not far away, going about unimportant tasks with only occasional and carefully disinterested glances toward the ship. They were the bait, to lure the first detachment into the center ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... as disinterested in her feelings as she affected to be. She remembered that the curiosity of Hetty had been indulged in connection with this chest, while her own had been disregarded, and she was not sorry to possess an opportunity of being placed on a level with her less gifted sister ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... doubt a Platonic sort of religion, a worship of the ideal apart from its power to realise itself, which has entered largely into the life of Christians; and the more mystical and disinterested they were, the more it has tended to take the place of Hebraism. But the Platonists, too, when left to their instincts, follow their master in attributing power and existence, by a sort of cumulative worship and imaginative hyperbole, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... discourage the illusion. Nay, the enthusiasm of the charming woman before him was contagious. "Thanks to your father's disinterested liberality," he resumed, "I am now in comparatively prosperous circumstances. I came not merely to discharge a debt; believe me, it is no common gratitude I feel! Doubtless you inherit all your father's wealth—doubtless it is but little ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... concern was nothing; and to be joyful in a plenty, and sorrowful for a famine, that did not increase or diminish, by one half loaf, the equable sufficiency of his own supply. Thus there remain unaltered all the disinterested hopes for mankind and a better future which have been the solace and inspiration of his life. These he has set beyond the reach of any fate that only menaces himself; and it makes small difference whether he die five thousand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... where you are,—accept a friend's disinterested advice," remarked Betterson. "If your boy had been on the right side of the fence, minding his own business,—you will bear with me if I am quite plain in my speech,—my boy would have had no occasion to soil his ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... were old friends of my parents; and upon Mr. Gray's accepting the executorship of my father's estate, Mrs. Gray felt, I am pleased to believe, somewhat more than a friendly interest in the two boys, who, coming from rural New England life into the great, strange, fascinating city, stood in need of disinterested friendship and prudent counsel. I speak for my brother and myself when I say that for the period of twenty years we found in Mrs. Gray a friend as indulgent, as forbearing, as sympathetic, as kindly suggestive and as disinterested as a mother, and in ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... will bring their influence to bear on our national life. Their example and their influence will lead to the silent and "pacific penetration" of the Society in which they live. And the Catholics throughout Canada cannot stand aloof, disinterested in the upbuilding of the Western Provinces, where the Canada of to-morrow is being created. There indeed the clash of ideals is more marked, the fermentation of thought is stronger, issues are more vital. Our national life, to a great extent, will depend on ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... of Pierre de l'Estoile are a great magazine of the gains of the writer's disinterested curiosity. The Lettres of D'Ossat and the Negotiations of the President Jeannin are of importance in the records ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... Sir Lionel were really in difficulties, her own present annuity—all that she could absolutely call her own—her one hundred and eighty-nine pounds, seventeen shillings and threepence per annum—would not help them much. Sir Lionel was at any rate disinterested in his offer; that at least was clear ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... original, was wholly lost in their translation. The editor has heard that a translation of it was begun in the Spanish and Italian languages, but he has seen no such translation. Dr. Kennicot spoke loudly of our author's readiness and disinterested zeal to oblige. Even the stern Mr. Hollis mentions him in his memoirs with some degree of kindness. No person was more warmly attached to his friends. With his affectionate and generous disposition, no one was more ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... conviction fixed itself in Crane's mind that, no matter how strong or disinterested his love for Allis might be, he would win her only by diplomacy. After all, he was better versed in that form of love-making, if it might ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... speaking with difficulty, "what I have often found—myself—that it helps one sometimes, to throw oneself altogether into something outside one's own life, in a large disinterested way. Afterwards, one comes back to one's own puzzles—with ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... their audience, make a very unsafe calculation. The taste and critical faculty of that public are in their fulness of vigour. Old Europe is more bound by traditions, more weary, more blase, in her judgment, not always sincere or disinterested. In America the national pride is warmly felt, and the national artists enjoy high honour. The Americans know how to offer an exquisite hospitality, but woe to the man who seeks to impose on them! They profess a cult, a ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... complaining of inattention. He grew to be a favorite among the bus men who came to know him and sought to do him honor. The poor of London blessed him as he walked by—with reasons, probably, not wholly disinterested. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... and great services. My political hostility to him was never in the smallest degree tainted by personal ill-will. After his fall from power a cordial reconciliation took place between us: I admired the wisdom, the moderation, the disinterested patriotism, which he invariably showed during the last and best years of his life; I lamented his untimely death, as both a private and a public calamity; and I earnestly wished that the sharp words which had sometimes been exchanged between us ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... noble instincts could make a man; but that he was d'un esprit mediocre, and utterly at a loss how to turn affairs to profit at critical junctures—never knew what was coming, no political foresight. Mistake in putting Louis Philippe on the throne sans garantie in 1830; misled by his own disinterested character to think better of public men than he ought to have done. Great personal integrity shown by Lafayette during the Empire, and under the Restoration: not to be cajoled by ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... would not, appreciate the domestic festivities of this sacred season. What, he asked, could be more delightful, more perfect than such a gathering as this, of the family circle round the Christmas hearth? He spoke with feeling, and it may be said with disinterested feeling, for he had not joined his family circle himself this Christmas, and there was a vacant place by the hearth ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... themselves, being put under the same care and management as the other branches of the public patrimony, will produce more and be better collected than heretofore; and the public is a gainer of upwards of 100000l. per annum by this disinterested bounty of his majesty. The civil list, thus liquidated, together with the four millions and three quarters, interest of the national debt, and the two millions and a quarter produced from the sinking ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... brought him a real maturity. Such is the abnormal state of men of action. They live entirely in the present, and their genius concentrates on one point. The hours of their existence are not connected by a chain of grave and disinterested meditations. They succeed themselves in a series of acts. They lack interior life. This defect is particularly visible in Napoleon, who never lived within himself. From this is derived the frivolity of temperament which made him support easily the enormous load of his evils and of his faults. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... sometimes visit the pious sisters upon whom devolves the real burden of this charity, to reward them by your sympathy for their disinterested labors?" ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... I made him of fidelity and redoubled zeal. I disowned any intention of asking for any remuneration, except the favour of being permitted to stand before him; and I looked so humble, and talked in so disinterested a manner, that if he ever could have believed a Persian, I ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... harshly, perhaps, by others, it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before history; this deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things, entirely disinterested; an epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the sharing of the same shadows confers the right to praise it; it is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in exile: "This one flattered ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... recent developments, Mr. Sweeny's course does not seem so purely disinterested as it once did. He was in full control of the city funds on the memorable Black Friday of two years ago last summer, and sworn testimony taken by a committee of Congress shows that he had a share in the doings of that eventful day. To what extent the money in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... himself by the excessive subtlety of his mind.' This is the charitable view to take. But some who knew him long and well put another construction upon this facile self- deception. There were, and are, honourable men of the highest standing who failed to ascribe disinterested motives to the man who suddenly and secretly betrayed his colleagues, his party, and his closest friends, and tried to break up the Empire to satisfy an inordinate ambition, and an insatiable craving for power. 'He might ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... pursuit therefore became first an art, and then a trade. In proportion as the professors of each became more expert in their particular craft, they became less respectable in their general character. Their skill had been obtained at too great expense to be employed only from disinterested views. Thus, the soldiers forgot that they were citizens, and the orators that they were statesmen. I know not to what Demosthenes and his famous contemporaries can be so justly compared as to those mercenary troops who, in their time, overran Greece; or those who, from ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... door of a spirit and beer shop at the lower end of Market or High Street, Plymouth, may be seen the following very salutary aid disinterested piece of advice. It is printed in the triangle formed by the spread of a gigantic pair of compasses, which gives name to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various

... age. In a few states, females at eighteen may make a will of real and personal estate. In a few states, personal estate may be willed verbally, if the will is within a specified time reduced to writing, and subscribed by disinterested witnesses. In Ohio such will must be written within ten days after the speaking of the testamentary words. A will of this kind ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... course was entirely generous and disinterested. Most visitors to art galleries have ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... for reform. Economics at its highest level is the search for truth. It has its place in any system of higher education as has pure natural science, apart from any immediate or so far as we may know, any possible, utilitarian application. It is a disinterested philosophy of the industrial world. Though it may not demonstrably be a means to other useful things, it is itself a worthy end. It helps to enrich the community with the immaterial goods of the spirit, and ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... he says, "Real criticism obeys an instinct prompting it to know the best that is known and thought in the world." "In order to do or to be this, criticism," he says, in italics, "ought to be disinterested." He points out how much English criticism is not disinterested. He says, "We have the Edinburgh Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the Tories, and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... in consequence of a new desire of pleasure, distinct from the desires of particular objects, are essential to egoism. The idea of an alter-ego, i.e., of a community with others which makes their interests our own, and hence the rise of a love for them,—which is not merely disinterested as the animal appetites are disinterested, because they tend directly to their objects without any thought of self, but disinterested in the sense that the thought of self is conquered or absorbed, is essential to altruism. Each of these tendencies may in its matter, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... that of all the friends of liberty, only to adopt such measures for the public welfare as were sanctioned by law. This letter gave rise to warm debates between the Right and Left in the assembly. Though dictated only by pure and disinterested motives, it appeared, coming as it did from a young general at the head of his army, a proceeding a la Cromwell, and from that moment Lafayette's reputation, hitherto respected by his opponents, became ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... Netherlands—the prospect of making the Rhine its natural boundary towards Germany. Thus shamefully were the rights of Germany sacrificed by the German States to this treacherous and grasping power, which, under the mask of a disinterested friendship, aimed only at its own aggrandizement; and while it boldly claimed the honourable title of a Protectress, was solely occupied with promoting its own schemes, and advancing its own interests amid ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... glory to its pinnacle, and establish his power upon victory. In his idea everything was to be sacrificed to the personal glory of his successes. He conceived a project of attack by crossing the Rhine. Moreau, modest and disinterested, accepted the general plan of the war, and subordinated his operations to those of the First Consul; in his military capacity independent and resolute, he persisted in passing the Rhine at his pleasure. Bonaparte was enraged. "Moreau would ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt



Words linked to "Disinterested" :   impartial, disinterestedness



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