"Self-seeking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of nature in holy reverence; and while there live sensualists, despots, and men who are wholly self-seeking, I cannot bear to have these sincere workers held up in the least degree to reproach. And let us have truth, even if the truth be the awful denial of the good God. We must face the light and not bury our heads in the earth. I am hopeful that scientific investigation, pushed on and on, will ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... existing institutions, but for all that his work was profoundly revolutionary. They who call on those who have left their first love to return to it are seldom obeyed, but their voice is often welcomed by the corrupt and self-seeking crowd which is eager, after the fashion of birds of prey, to tear the carcase from which life has departed. A large party was formed in England, especially amongst the greater barons, which was anxious to strip the clergy of ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... assuredly! And what a contempt I have for the virtuous indignation of men who, overmoral themselves, judge haughtily of others; yet, if you look into their souls you discover that they are heartless and self-seeking villains. ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... devil do you suppose that Texans want with a two- faced little icicle like yourself in the United States Senate? What taxpayer has asked you to become a candidate? Despite all your wire-pulling, your trading and self-seeking, and the further fact that you are employing the state machinery to strengthen your pull, you really stand no more show of succeeding Roger Q. Mills than you do of succeeding the Czar of Russia. You have managed to get thus far, not on your own merits, but solely because you are ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... rather odd, that one of the first questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But, to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we stood in a position ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his back to the mantel-piece, and looked down upon her. He thought of the great, wide world: its thorny ways, its deserts, its bitter waters, its unrighteousness, its self-seeking greeds, its weaknesses, its under and over reaching, its unfaithfulness; and then again of this—child, thrust all at once a thousand miles into it, with never—so far as he could see—an implement, a weapon, a sense of danger, or a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Roman history. It begins in Egypt with a picture of Antony fascinated by the Egyptian queen. The urgent needs of the divided Roman world call him away to Italy. Here, once free of Cleopatra's presence, he becomes his old self, a reveler, yet diplomatic and self-seeking. From motives of policy he marries Octavia, sister of Octavius Caesar, and for a brief space seems assured of a brilliant future. But the old spell draws him back. He returns to Cleopatra, and Octavius in revenge ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the spark that kindled in many minds ambition, cruelty, bloodthirstiness, self-seeking and jealousy—producing the morale, in a word, of the Spain of sixty years ago. Some sided with the Queen Regent Christina, and rallied round the child-queen because they saw that that way lay glory and promotion. Others flocked ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... organized body of knowledge to which all its servants contribute and in which they share, so Socialism insists upon its ideal of an organized social order which every man serves and by which every man benefits. Their common enemy is the secret-thinking, self-seeking man. Secrecy, subterfuge and the private gain; these are the enemies of Socialism and the adversaries of Science. At times, I will admit, both Socialist and scientific man forget this essential ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... average," she said, coolly. "Nearly all men and women are alike—worldly, selfish, self-seeking. Look at my father," she went on, as coolly as before. "He thinks of nothing but money; he has spent his life fighting, scrambling, struggling for it; and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... thus by the blunder of a servant, he met this little vexation with the characteristic effrontery which had served his turn so well in the endless intrigues of his self-seeking career. Without altering his attitude a hair's breadth, one leg in a silk stocking advanced, his head twisted over his left ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Hampshire. I heard of it—deserved to be shot, by heaven! You think you have got hold of the Duke, and you throw me over. You imagine, I dare say, that I will allow my wife to be talked about to further your interests—you self-seeking young dog! As long as he lent the Company his name, I permitted a great many things. Do you think me a blind idiot, sir? But now she must learn to be satisfied with people who 've got no titles, or carriages, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered; "but he teaches more than that. I knew a girl in Paris who studied with him. She was quite intricate and self-seeking when she began. And in six months he had changed her whole nature. She became elemental and direct, and," she put her hands together and threw them apart with the gesture which he knew so well, "and splendid! Like ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... me to the second great danger to our modern civilisation, and that is War. We have over-developed war. While we have left our peace organisation to the niggling, slow, self-seeking methods of private enterprise; while we have left the breeding of our peoples to chance, their minds to the halfpenny press and their wealth to the drug manufacturer, we have pushed forward the art of war on severely scientific and Socialist ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... who become the unknown fathers of great men. And so, on a salary that would have meant penury to a man of self-seeking tastes, he managed to save always the major part of his earning. At the bank he was a modest but regular visitor to the receiving-teller, and almost a total stranger to ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... air to be convincing. Well, then, let us appeal to experience. Let us see what the systematic cultivation of his natural faculties has done for the child in Utopia. I have already pointed out that the unselfishness of the children—the complete absence of self-seeking and self-assertion—is one of the most noticeable features of the life of their school. Now there is no place for moral teaching on the time-table of the school: and I can say without hesitation that the direct inculcation of morality is wholly foreign ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Lord implicitly taught. Nay, the suggestion is not perhaps far-fetched that, as Cardinal Beauchamp had great possessions, he took this occasion to testify how in his heart he slighted them. Or again—for history seems to prove that he was not an entirely scrupulous man, nor entirely untainted by self-seeking—that his tribute to Noble Poverty may have been the assertion, by a spirit netted among the briars of this world's policy, that at least it saw and suspired after the way to ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and France. As for Germany, the prospects of the Netherlands were not flattering. The Reforming spirit had grown languid, from various causes. The self-seeking motives of many Protestant princes had disgusted the nobles. Was that the object of the bloody wars of religion, that a few potentates should be enabled to enrich themselves by confiscating the broad lands and accumulated treasures ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... comprehend nor measure yet. But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise—it would appear to be some self-seeking deception. ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... no false sentiment here; there is no self-seeking. The guards are down. The soul of the man stands forth as it is. In the Valley of the Shadow his own simple declaration of his sincerity, his own revelation of the unselfish quality of his devotion to the greatest movement of his generation, will be the standard ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... these ideals of service from which every taint of self-seeking and commercialism have been eliminated—do you think that these are mere figments of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry Holden out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in California. Go to any agricultural college in this broad land and ask the scientists who are ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... administration. This was naturally in Pulteney's power. But Pulteney suddenly remembered having said long ago that he would accept no office, and he declared that he would positively hold to his word. At a moment of excitement, it would seem, and stung by some imputation of self-seeking, Pulteney had adopted the high Roman fashion, and announced that he would prove his political disinterestedness by refusing to accept any office in any administration. The King consulted Walpole during all these arrangements, and Walpole strongly ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... betrayed the joyless spirit, the broken heart. At these times, when they were alone together, waiting Stephen Whitelaw's coming home to tea, Mrs. Tadman's heart, not entirely hardened by long years of self-seeking, yearned towards her kinsman's wife; and the secret animosity with which she had at first regarded her changed to a silent pity, a compassion she would fain have expressed in some form or other, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... burdens by limiting the privileges of foreign traders and abolishing a great many useless and expensive court offices. On the 17th of January 1648 he procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavshaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days later. The Miloslavskis were typical self-seeking 17th century boyars, whose extortions made them generally detested. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them, and the young tsar was compelled to dismiss both them and their patron Morozov. The successful issue of the Moscow riots was the occasion of disquieting disturbances ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to cast a gloom upon my character. I had met many men, some of them leaders in Israel, whether by their birth or talents; and who among them all had shown clean hands? As for the Browns and Millers, I had seen their self-seeking, I could never again respect them. Prestongrange was the best yet; he had saved me, had spared me rather, when others had it in their minds to murder me outright; but the blood of James lay at his door; and I thought his present dissimulation with myself a thing below pardon. That ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was certainly inopportune; but it is almost needless to add—now that it is possible to review his whole career, as well as all the circumstances which marked this crisis in it—that he was not actuated by a self-seeking spirit. Looking back in after life, Lord John frankly admitted that he had committed an error in resigning office under Lord Aberdeen at the time and in the manner in which he did it. He qualified this confession, however, by declaring that he had committed a much greater error in agreeing to ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... a large class of our wealthy and cultivated people, that to go into public life is to descend to duties beneath them. They judge the men who occupy such positions with insulting severity, classing them in their minds as corrupt and self-seeking, than which nothing can be more childish or more imbecile. Any observer who has lived in the different grades of society will quickly renounce the puerile idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a gentleman's attention. This very political life, which appears unworthy ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... murdered in that very fortress, outside the Porto a Faenza, which he had counseled Alessandro to construct for the intimidation of the Florentines.[1] The historians with the exception of Nerli agree in describing him as a pleasure-loving and self-seeking man, whose many changes of policy were due, not to conviction, but to the desire of gaining the utmost license of disorderly living. At the same time we cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental qualities, a princely bearing, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... secure the foremost places, and hence the others' anger at what they thought an unfair attempt to push in front of them. What a contrast between Jesus, striding on ahead with 'set' face, and the Twelve unsympathetic and self-seeking, lagging behind to squabble about pre-eminence! We have in this incident two parts: the request and its answer, the indignation of the Ten and its rebuke. The one sets forth the qualifications for the highest place ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... in 1872.) The Fatality of Self-Seeking in Editors and Authors. (Printed with the "Miscellanies" in the "Recollections of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... exhorted to remember that "leaders qualified to hold their own in the sharp competition of professional life are a great, if not the greatest, need of the coloured race in this country. Over wide areas most of their clergy are illiterate, immoral, self-seeking, bitter sectarians, and the most determined opponents of every kind of improvement. So, too, the lack of lawyers, editors and physicians of sufficiently broad and thorough training to be able to defend their weaker ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... useful country life. The passionate and reckless self-consciousness of Catullus is succeeded in the next generation by the calm sweet hopefulness of Virgil; in passing from the one poet to the other, we feel that we are leaving behind us an age of over-sensitive self-seeking and entering on one in which duty and honour, labour on the land and hard work for the State, may be reckoned as things more likely to make life worth living than all the accumulated ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... three years. Throughout the existence of the Bureau its chief commissioner was General O.O. Howard. While the principal officers were undoubtedly men of noble purpose, many of the minor officials were just as undoubtedly corrupt and self-seeking. In the winter of 1865-6 one-third of its aid was given to the white people of the South. For Negro pupils the Bureau established altogether 4,239 schools, and these had 9,307 teachers and 247,333 students. Its real achievement has been thus ably summed up: "The greatest success ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... of mark, sagacious bishops, experienced generals, magistrates learned in the law: he held it to be his duty and his interest to hear their advice. And they were not without influence: one or two were noted as able to restrain his self-seeking will. But the main affairs he kept in his own hands. All that he undertook he conducted with great foresight and as a rule he carried it through. Foreigners regarded him as cunning and deceitful; to his own people his successful prudence seemed to have something supernatural about it. If ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... question of how far they will prove able to get out of the habits and traditions of their former social state, how far they will be able to take generous views and make sacrifices and unselfish efforts, and how far they will go in self-seeking or class selfishness regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the posture of the peoples ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... might have given herself without reserve to the rapture of her idyl; but her circumstances were peculiar. Rosie was obliged to be practical, to look ahead. A fairy prince was not only a romantic dream in her dreary life, but an agency to be utilized. The least self-seeking of drowning maids might expect the hero on the bank to pull her out of the water. The very fact that she recognized in Claude a tendency to dally with her on the brink instead of landing her in a place of safety compelled her to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... times we have had as a family—what happy jaunts when you took me in those early days, dressed in a sailor suit, when you went hunting pictures. Yet, for all the damnability of what I now witness, I was never quieter in my heart. To have surrendered to an imperative self-denial brings a peace which self-seeking never brought. ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... Diderot has said, it is sometimes only necessary to be a little mad in order to prophesy and to enjoy poetic ecstasies; and in the case of Schlatter the flower of altruism which often blossoms in the hearts of such "madmen" was manifested in his complete lack of self-seeking and in his compassion for the poor and suffering which drew crowds around him. As to his miracles, we may—without attempting to explain them—state decisively that they do not differ from those accomplished by means of suggestion. The cases of blindness ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... volume, the reader acquire a more just idea of the grammar which is displayed in English grammars, he will discover at least one reason for the title which has been bestowed upon the work. Such as the book is, I present it to the public, without pride, without self-seeking, and without anxiety: knowing that most of my readers will be interested in estimating it justly; that no true service, freely rendered to learning, can fail of its end; and that no achievement merits aught with Him who graciously supplies all ability. The opinions expressed in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... these men, all of whom she knew. Caius Nepos, selfish and callous; Ancyrus, the elder, avaricious and self-seeking; young Escanes whom she knew to be unscrupulous; Philippus Decius whose ostentation and lavishness she despised. She vaguely wondered why my lord Hortensius ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thee with their tales of dire intent. Francos: (striking his breast): Fear not, they soon shall feel how vain it were To seek to trick one who, in halls of state, Hath met the wiles of shrewd, self-seeking men, But to ward off attack with virtue's shield. Captain and Seldonskip approach. Captain: Most noble potentate, as I my rounds Of observation make, it pleasures me Most mightily, to make obeisance to The one so honored by his ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... friendship. Their characters were in fact profoundly antipathetic. Rousseau we know,—sensuous, impulsive, extravagant, with little sense of the difference between reality and dreams. Grimm was exactly the opposite; judicious, collected, self-seeking, coldly upright. He was a German (born at Ratisbon), and in Paris was first a reader to the Duke of Saxe Gotha, with very scanty salary. He made his way, partly through the friendship of Rousseau, into the society ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... look of sorrow worn. The tears that freely fell were not of grief, but tears of yearning love, of sympathy, of solemn joy and gratitude to God for such a life in its rounded completeness, such an example and testimony, such fidelity to conscience, such recoil from all self-seeking, such unswerving devotion to duty, come what might of peril or ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... character forbids that we should think of him for a moment as devoted to the gathering of worldly wealth. He came to minister unto, not to serve himself. Self-seeking was foreign to his nature. A great truth was spoken by the scoffers. "He saved others, himself he ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... for whom, if the Hesea's tale be true, I did once lay down my royal rank and dare the dangers of an unsailed sea; O thou whom in ages gone I would have sheltered with my frail body from the sorceries of this cold, self-seeking witch; O thou whom but a little while ago at my own life's risk I drew from death in ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Democracy. All had thus their fair share. Under Responsible Government, with all power in the hands of the Legislative Assembly, the balance would be overthrown and the democracy would be supreme. To Haliburton, control by the democracy meant control by the crafty, self-seeking professional politician, as he saw him, or thought he saw him, in the neighbouring United States. The people, well meaning, but ignorant and greedy, were at the mercy of the appeals to prejudice and pocket of these wily knaves. Government should be the affair of the enlightened minority, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... don't deny that: nothing makes a man so selfish as work. But I was not self-seeking: it seemed to me that I had put justice above self. I tell you life meant something to me then. Do you see that dirty little bundle of ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of the average provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a commander's environment—the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy, King Chilperic reigning over Austrasia; King Sigebert over Neustria. But the power behind the throne lay in the wives of these kings, with whom alone we have to do. Contrasted characters they were,—Fredegonde wicked, faithless, self-seeking; Brunehild patriotic and devoted to the good of her country; yet in the end wickedness triumphed, and honesty died a violent and frightful death. With this preliminary we ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... Congress assigned to Russia. Indeed he did everything possible, short of a grant of absolute independence, which at that time would have been absurd, to conciliate public opinion in the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. Unfortunately the experiment proved a complete failure, largely owing to the factious and self-seeking Polish nobility who have always been the worst enemy of their country. Alexander after a time lost patience, and in 1820 he felt compelled to withdraw some of the liberties which he had conferred in 1815. After this the breach ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... the limitation and inversion of the spiritual man, all his faculties and powers are inversions of the powers of the spiritual man. In a single phrase, his self seeking is the inversion of the Self-seeking which is the very being of the spiritual man: the ceaseless search after the divine and august Self of all beings. This inversion is corrected by keeping the Commandments and Rules, and gradually, as the inversion is overcome, the spiritual ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. All motives of time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. He becomes the almoner of the treasure-house of Light and Knowledge. He must exemplify what he teaches. If he can impart his knowledge, or assist an aspiring and worthy brother, it must be in the way he has himself received it, "without money and without price," ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... that's quite just, darling, there are a great many politicians who are very much looked up to—all the bishops, for instance, and others whom nobody could suspect of self-seeking." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'tis not all to be Self-seeking pleasure-hunters; higher far Are works of kindliness and charity Which we can do, whate'er our frailties are. And we have learned that pain and sorrow, though Unwelcome guests, have each a work ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... virtue only of the petty people: there it is said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":—they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... its decline surrounded me with a beneficent, a calming influence; I felt it in the silence of the shady lane, in the pure air, in the blue sky. It is difficult to retain the memory of the conflicts, miseries, temptations and crimes of men's self-seeking existence when one is alone with the charming serenity of the unconscious nature. Breathing the dreamless peace around the picturesque cottage I was approaching, it seemed to me that it must reign everywhere, over all the globe of water and land and in the hearts of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary: hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution: selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. On the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances: pure thoughts crystallize ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... crisis. Not merely was Hienfung dying, but it had become known to Prince Kung and his friends that he had left the governing authority during the minority of his son, a child of less than six years of age, to a board of regency composed of eight of the least intelligent and most arrogant and self-seeking members of the imperial family, with Prince Tsai at their head. The emperor died on August 22. A few hours later the imperial decree notifying the last wishes of the ruler as to the mode of government was promulgated. The board of regency assumed the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... from me my heart's blood, because he bound up my arm when it was bruised? Because he helped me some steps on earth, is he to imprison me afterwards in hell? Good! No, he is not good in wishing so to destroy us. He is bad, greedy, covetous, self-seeking, a very dog, and by the living God he shall die like a dog unless you will free me from his fangs. You have not answered me. Will you tell me that you will discard him as a suitor for your hand? If you will say so, he ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... heroical than you or I. Indeed, neither Florian nor Adhelmar was at strict pains to act as common-sense dictated, and Falstaff is scarcely describable as immaculate: Villon thieved, Kit Marlowe left a wake of emptied bottles, and Will Sommers was notoriously a fool; Matthiette was vain, and Adelais self-seeking, and the tenth Marquis of Falmouth, if you press me, rather a stupid and pompous ass: and yet to each in turn it was granted to love greatly, to know at least one hour of magnanimity when each was young in the world's ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... President Wilson did much to maintain the idealism that jostled national self-seeking in the final drafting of the treaties. Though he lacked the political brilliance of Lloyd George and had not the suppressed but irresistible vehemence that characterized Clemenceau, his very simplicity of argument availed much. He was not destined to carry ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... some revealing, sealing word, but the presence of the mother restrained him. Helen, recognizing the returning tide of his love, to which she related no self-seeking, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... so fought the fight and kept the faith of a working man of letters. It is rendered to the most distinguished poet, of his country and generation, still remaining with us and still in full voice. It is rendered to the comrade—to the man who, with his modesty and fortitude and the absence of self-seeking—with the quips and quirks that cover his gravest moods, with his attachment for the city which has given him that which Lamb so loved, "the sweet security of streets"—it is rendered, I say, to the man who best preserves ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... truly made, hold good even in that mysterious world beyond the grave. Show me that though the body—dear home and vehicle of love—may die, yet love in its essence remains everlastingly conscious, faithful and complete. Bend my will to harmony with Thine, O Lord, and cleanse me of self-seeking. Ah! but still let me see his face once again, once again, oh, my God—and I will rebel no more. Let me look on him, once again, if only for a moment, and I shall be content. Hear me, I am greatly troubled, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and eloquently while all men listened, for he reminded them of mighty warriors of old who had not won such glorious fame, and warned them against pride and lack of generosity and self-seeking; and then, ending with thanks and fresh gifts to Beowulf, he bade the feast continue with increased jubilation. The tumultuous rejoicing lasted till darkness settled on the land, and when it ended all retired to ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... organs and incorporations special to these same Accessions. All this can and does progress, but mostly slowly, intermittently, with short violent paroxysms of excess and long sleepy reactions of defect, with one-sidedness, travesties, and—worst of all—with worldly indifference and self-seeking. The grace and aid of the Simultaneous Richness are here also always necessary; nor can these things ever really progress except through a deep religious sense—all mere scepticism and all levelling down are ...
— Progress and History • Various
... t'other. I dare say, now, that your experience is much the same?' I did not answer this and after a pause he went on, still staring out of window, 'I believed in the Lord's Anointed, for my part: but allowing, for argument's sake, the right's on that side, there's enough villainy and self-seeking mixed up with it to poison an honest man. . . . I shouldn't wonder now that there's something to ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... succeeding generation, which shall prepare still more capably for still better generations to follow. We are passing as a race out of a state of affairs when the unconscious building of the future was attained by individualistic self-seeking (altogether unenlightened or enlightened only by the indirect moralizing influence of the patriotic instinct and religion) into a clear consciousness of our co-operative share in that process. That is the essential idea my New Republic would personify and embody. In the past ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... He had not the temperament which, when once possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he had none—none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... commit a certain act, though to do so would be easy and advantageous, and detection not to be feared? Why should the moral consciousness of the higher races accept the principle which places self-sacrifice above self-seeking? There is only one explanation for this paradoxical phenomenon: it is that, as men rise in the moral scale, there dawns on them the sense of a law that is not of this world, an Ought-to-be, which speaks with a strange authority, and will not be denied; and when this authority is properly ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... faith in the heart's renewed fruitfulness is itself among the autumn blossomings, the hidden compensations. Young folk, and those who never outgrow youth's headlong and blind self-seeking, cannot conceive such truths. For youth has no experience of change; and what it calls the Future is but the present longing or present dread projected forward. Hence youth lacks the resignation which comes of knowing that our aims, our loves, ourselves, will alter; and that we shall not eternally ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... house of Leopold Travers, his thoughts turned with much kindliness towards his young kinsman. "Mivers and Kenelm," quoth he to himself, "gave me an unfavourable impression of this lad; they represent him as worldly, self-seeking, and so forth. But Mivers takes such cynical views of character, and Kenelm is too eccentric to judge fairly of a sensible man of the world. At all events, it is not like an egotist to put himself out of his way to be so civil to an old fellow like me. A young man about town must have ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... people of France from the autocratic tyranny of the Bourbons, saw the power go from their clean hands to the grimy ones of lustful demagogues, who knew no law save their own passions of bitter hatred against all classes that were not as self-seeking, as ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... eyes were fixed upon the mission alcove. She knew, only too well, that Althea's invitation to dinner had not been disinterested. She had learned to know that Althea was not only snobbish, but self-seeking as well. For whatever she gave she demanded value received. Evelyn had been in the living-room when Grace and Elfreda returned from their shopping. She had heard them discussing the dinner, and had lost no time in slipping on her wraps and carrying ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the sacredness of fact and reality. Who has not observed inferior original power achieving greater results even in the intellectual field itself, where the superior understanding happens to have been unequally yoked with a self-seeking character, over scenting the expedient? If Hume had been in the early productive part of his life the hypocrite which he wished it were in his power to show himself in its latter part, we may be tolerably sure that European ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... for the remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment; there ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... opened to the almost universal corruption about him. Enlightened by the shrewd comments of the old sergeant, the quiet penetration of his father's glance, which saw everything, he soon realized that fraud and self-seeking were become the ruling impulse in Beausejour. "Like master, like man" was a proverb which he saw daily fulfilled. Vergor thought more of robbing than of serving his country, and from him his subordinates took their ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the few go to church to be made better men, and not by fine writing, but by significant ideas, which may come in a homely garb, so they be only pervaded with affectionate piety, but which can come to us only from one who has laid all ambitious self-seeking on the altar of God. There is a power of persuasion in every minister who follows God as a dear child, and who walks in love, as Christ loved us, which the hardest heart cannot long resist,—which will win the congregation, however ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her conscience to offer Maxwell reparation for the wrong she thought she had done him when she had once decided that he was too self-seeking and self-centred, and had potentially rejected him on that ground. The first thing she did after they became engaged was to confess the wrong, and give him a chance to cast her off if he wished; but this never seemed quite reparation enough, perhaps because he laughed and said that ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... plebianism,—a dangerous factor in any republic. It means the mixing of ignoble blood with good, a gradual lowering of ideals until a general level of sordidness, individualism in its most selfish and self-seeking form, and political corruption, are the inevitable results. You, your Excellency, are an autocrat. It is odd that your principles should coincide so closely with ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... more mischievous as demagogue than he was as courtier, lackey, or parliamentary intriguer. Indeed, he is almost certainly less so, for he must at least in some fashion serve, even if only that he may deceive them, those whose servant he should be. At any rate, the purely self-seeking demagogue is certainly a recurrent figure in democratic politics, and of the self-seeking demagogue Aaron Burr was ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... fall and ruin were still more precipitate. Scarcely was he installed in his threefold authority when his troubles commenced. He had never been heartily accepted by his nobles, many of whom were ambitious and self-seeking, and considered him in the light of a usurper. The nation itself was composed of antagonistic races, Szeklers, Saxons, Hungarians, &c., and where he pleased one race he displeased the other. The Poles, too, were only watching ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... from inactivity and degeneration, and this, even at the immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and ease to the individuals composing it. The male labour movement is, directly and in the first place, material; and, or at least superficially, more or less self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction on society by saving the poorer members from degradation and dependency and want is undoubtedly wholly social and absolutely essential for the health and continued development of the human race. In the Woman's Labour Movement ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... creed was the real cause of the civil strife. "Take from the Catholic army," said he, "all those actuated by pure zeal for the church or for the king and country, and you will not have enough men left to form one company." It is strange that beneath the evil passions and self-seeking of the champions of each party he could not see the fierce flame of popular heroism and fanaticism; but that he, and thousands of men like him, could not do so, and could not enter, even by imagination, into the causes {233} which, but a half century earlier, had ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a patriot or a self-seeking politician? Give evidence. How could he justify the means that he used to win Brutus? In what respect did he surpass Brutus? What case did he make against Caesar? How far was he right? What weakness and what strength does ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... Mr. Chamberlain. At one time he was regarded by some of his opponents as a political fire-eater—a democratic despot who would have decapitated kings and queens without a tinge of remorse, and slain wicked Tories with the sword. He was, however, never the ungenial, self-seeking, aggressive person some of his foes may have fancied him. He was always an affable, pleasant, agreeable man, who could be civil and even polite to his adversaries, especially when political fighting was ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... forehead, and Jeff put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't help remembering that his father had called him "son" in a poignancy of sympathy all through the trials of the past, and it hurt to hear it now. It linked that time with this, as Madame Beattie, in her unabashed self-seeking, linked it. Perhaps he was never to escape. A prisoner, that was what he was. They were all prisoners, Madame Beattie to her squalid love of gain, Esther to her elementary love of herself, Lydia—he looked at her as she stood still in the background like a handmaid ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... somewhere about 1840 down to to-day, a great many worthy people who have been afraid of the Pope and the influence of Catholicism in this country, and have been exceedingly jealous of the influence of foreigners, especially of those of the Roman Catholic Church. Self-seeking political adventurers and demagogues have not been slow to take advantage of this feeling for their own purposes. They have, for some reason, always preferred to make their political movement in secret societies. The Catholic vote had generally been cast for the Democrats, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... he said, with that queer courage which never deserted him, even if it were based entirely upon self-seeking and self-interest. He threw his head back with the characteristic action with which he always swallowed his medicine, and went ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... advice to his protege are worldly wise in their way, and suggestive of honour as befitting the creed of a gentleman, they are not such as much influence a shrewd reasoner like Randal, whom the example of the playground at Eton had not served to correct of the arid self-seeking, which looked to knowledge for no object but power. A man tempted by passions like Audley, or seduced into fraud by a cold, subtle spirit like Leslie, will find poor defence in the elegant precept, 'Remember to act as a gentleman.' Such ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that it is not the grosser passions and forms of vice alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the truth. Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice—in a word, the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form—will effectually hinder the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of the truth; for they will incline him to seek a religion which flatters him and promises ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Majesty has done them the favor of appointing Don Pedro de Acuna as governor and captain-general, and president of the royal Audiencia, this has greatly pleased and satisfied them, on account of the good reputation which he has of being an excellent soldier, and not at all self-seeking. Therefore his arrival is desired, because it is very necessary for all and [illegible in MS.] for the matters of war, in which many mistakes have been made up to the present time—which I will not mention, however, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... daughter; Amelius had taken the girl to her dying mother's bedside. With his idiotic Socialist notions, he would be perfectly capable of owning the truth, if inquiries were made. The unblemished reputation which John Farnaby had built up by the self-seeking hypocrisy of a lifetime was at the mercy of a visionary young fool, who believed that rich men were created for the benefit of the poor, and who proposed to regenerate society by reviving the obsolete morality of the Primitive Christians. Was it possible for him to come to terms with ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... only makes room for another. True, "Punch" killed the craze for sunflowers and long necks; but then "Punch" invented it. It was merely made to be destroyed brilliantly, like a Chinese cracker or a Roman candle. Folly is older than "Punch's" jokes, and will survive them. Snobbery and self-seeking, pettiness and stupidity, envy, hate, and all uncharitableness, were no secret to the mummies in the British Museum. "Unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again." Are there not a hundred sayings in Ecclesiastes and Menander, in Horace and Moliere, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... been in financial straits. The source of its power is to be sought elsewhere. Financially bankrupt and numerically unstable, the I.W.W. relies upon the brazen cupidity of its stratagems and the habitual timorousness of society for its power. It is this self-seeking disregard of constituted authority that has given a handful of bold and crafty leaders such prominence in the recent literature of fear. And the members of this industrial Ku Klux Klan, these American Bolsheviki, assume to be the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... was a time to subordinate individual or group selfishness to the national good, that time is now. Disunity at home—bickerings, self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual these are the influences which can undermine the morale of the brave men ready to die at ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... never see God or heaven. But He is teaching you better. As long as you follow His gentle leadings, and the pure impulses of your own heart, all will be well. But as soon as you begin to take counsel of the world and its self-seeking spirit, you will find yourself in trouble. If we wish to prosper and be happy in God's world, we must do His will. This is good, sound common sense, which the experience of every age has borne out. It often seems ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... and needy could turn; and so long as the rules of the Orders were observed in the spirit and in the letter, they were a genuine help towards a life of self-devotion, of self-abnegation whereof the ultimate motive was not always a subtle form of self-seeking. But as time passed, the monasteries became the recipients of the bounty of pious benefactors. Their inhabitants, in spite of ascetic regulations, found that life was none so hard—at least in comparison with that of serfdom or villeinage; luxuries were not less available than to the laity. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... self and self-seeking she lifted up her head into the sunlight of a perfect love, a love that suffereth long and is kind, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its own, believeth all things, endureth ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... fixed and limited, and only built upon their foundation. But how should this be the meaning? For this seems a needless exhortation; what church would not readily yield an especial honor to apostles and evangelists above pastors and teachers? This would savor too much of self-seeking in the apostle, and providing for his own honor. This implies that the text hath reference to apostles and evangelists, whereas it evidently speaks only of ordinary ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... is always abundant material for an indictment on the ground of bad character. The Americans of the revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking, vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify, and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition in the case ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... anything against it, my dear, for my Alan says it must be done, and there is no use in trying to turn him. It is the right method for peace of conscience, as the good Mr. Baxter said, and that must be my apology, though I am sure you will not think it was nothing but sinful self-seeking that made ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... therefore, the heavy war arrow was used, and this is to be taken as the effective range for fighting purposes of the old archery.[70] No measures could have been invented more effective than this vigorous arming to repress the self-seeking tendencies in the mercantile classes which I have mentioned as beginning to show themselves. Capital supported by force may make its own terms with labour; but capital lying between a king on one side resolved ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... relations with Korea, so far as it has been carried above—namely, to the close of the Empress Kogyoku's reign (A.D. 645)—discloses in the Korean people a race prone to self-seeking feuds, never reluctant to import foreign aid into domestic quarrels, and careless of the obligations of good faith. In the Japanese we see a nation magnanimous and trustful but ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... but the beginning. Under the cloak of religion British administration continued to display its hate against our people and nationality, and to conceal its self-seeking aims under cover of the most exalted principles. The aid of religion was invoked to reinforce the policy of oppression in order to deal a deeper and more fatal blow to our self-respect. Emissaries of the London Missionary Society slandered the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... upon any less ground than faith and humble obedience to a divine commandment, he had meditated a murder and not a sacrifice. In our late bloody and lamentable wars, how many drew swords on either side, from the purest and most honourable motives? How many from the culpable suggestions of ambition, self-seeking, and love of plunder? Yet while they marched in the same ranks, and spurred their horses at the same trumpet-sound, the memory of the former is dear to us as patriots or loyalists—that of those who acted on mean or unworthy promptings, is either execrated ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... motive of the seer, the more lucid will be the visions accorded. No reliable vision can be obtained by one whose nature is not inherently truthful. Any selfish desire dominanting the mind in regard to any thing or person will distort the visions and render them misleading, while a persistent self-seeking spirit will effectually shut the doors upon all visions whatsoever. Therefore, above all things it is essential for the investigator to have an unflinching love of truth, to be resigned to the will of Heaven, to accept the revelations accorded in a spirit of grateful confidence, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... have been taken as a model by Samuel Smiles). One thinks of him sometimes as a sort of Deacon Brodie, sometimes as the most innocent sinner who ever lived. For, though he was brutal and snobbish and self-seeking and simian, he had a pious and a merry and a grateful heart. He felt that God had created the world for the pleasure of Samuel Pepys, and had no doubt that ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... trade union movement, as a whole in the United States, has not yet shown a thorough comprehension of the economic system of which it is a part; it has, therefore, often erred in its efforts to end an evil or injustice. Particular unions and leaders have often pursued mean, short-sighted and self-seeking policies—which have reflected upon the whole movement. Much like other economic groups, when their own interest has not coincided with the general interest, they have frequently put ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... singularly effective. His addresses were not only free from all ambition as to ornate or attractive language, but also as to original or characteristic thought. There was such an entire absence of all self-seeking about the man, and he so thoroughly identified himself with the people whose interests he pleaded, that, possessing a fair readiness of speech, and aptness for ad captandum argument, he could not fail to secure the favourable attention ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mysterious warning of her presence in my waking moments (as in Shetland)? Always at the time when my heart opened most tenderly toward her and toward others—when my mind was most free from the bitter doubts, the self-seeking aspirations, which degrade the divinity within us. Then, and then only, my sympathy with her was the perfect sympathy which holds its fidelity unassailable by the chances and changes, the delusions ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... States, and at the same time on the ruins of the Mexican Republic setting up a mock Empire. In similar spirit has he conspired against German Unity, whose just strength promised to be a wall against his unprincipled self-seeking. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... what men would think out of his weak and evil mind, both before, and during, but more especially after his preaching. And that poisoned and corrupted and filled the pulpit with death to Rutherford, in a way and to a degree that nobody but a self-seeking preacher will believe or understand. Rutherford often wondered that he had not been eaten up of worms in his pulpit like King Herod on his throne, and that for the very same ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... service: it was the most natural thing in the world for people to think as they did. Yet not a human being ever accused Hetty of flirting; her manner was always as open, friendly, and cordial as an honest boy's, and with no more trace of self-seeking or self-consciousness about it. She was as full of fun and mischief, too, as any boy could be. She had slid down hill with the wildest of them, till even her ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... life. From Ireland came Dr. William Warren Baldwin, whose son Robert, born in Canada, was less surpassingly able than the younger Bidwell but equally moderate and equally beyond suspicion of faction or self-seeking. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... in its earliest stages is essentially an egoistic and ungenerous proceeding. Even Mr. Withers must have been self-seeking once or twice in his life, else had he never had a son to mourn. So, since life in this world is for the living, and his own life was likely to go on many years after Mr. Withers had been gathered to the reward of ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... stooping somewhat, absent occasionally, going about with his chin stuck out before him, as though he were seeking something,—he knew not what. A more generous fellow, who delighted more in giving, hesitated more in asking, more averse to begging though a friend of beggars, less self-arrogant, or self-seeking, or more devoted to his profession, never lived. He was a man with prejudices,—kindly, gentlemanlike, amiable prejudices. He thought that a clergyman should be a graduate from one of the three universities,—including Trinity, Dublin; and he thought, also, that a clergyman ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Cornwall, Oswald on the other. These characters are in various degrees individualised, most of them completely so; but still in each group there is a quality common to all the members, or one spirit breathing through them all. Here we have unselfish and devoted love, there hard self-seeking. On both sides, further, the common quality takes an extreme form; the love is incapable of being chilled by injury, the selfishness of being softened by pity; and, it may be added, this tendency to extremes is found again in the characters of Lear and Gloster, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... friendship maintained to the end between these two leaders of thought—free as their intercourse was from any smallest trace of self-seeking or jealousy. When in 1874 I spent some time with Lyell in his Forfarshire home, a communication from Darwin was always an event which made a "red-letter day," as Lyell used to say; and he gave me many indications in his conversation of how strongly ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... gentleman on the one hand, and the united members of a too often and too long disunited art upon the other, be you the witnesses. Do you attest of everything that is liberal and free in spirit, that is "so nominated in the bond;" and of everything that is grudging, self-seeking, unjust, or unfair, that it is by no sophistry ever to be found there. I beg to move the resolution which I have already had ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... empiricism. The capable business man who is said to understand the "world" and his fellow-men, has commonly no knowledge of human nature in the larger sense, but merely knows from observation how the average man of a certain limited class is likely to act within a narrow prescribed sphere of self-seeking. Town life, then, strongly favours the education of certain shallow forms of intelligence. In actual attainment the townsman is somewhat more advanced than the countryman. But the deterioration of physique which accompanies this gain ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... of Friends, wrote a book against slavery, published in 1733, entitled, "A Testimony against that Anti-Christian Practice of MAKING SLAVES OF MEN.[378] It was well written, and the truth fearlessly told for the conservative, self-seeking period he ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... the psychological side, the further assumption of a general selfishness or self-seeking as the principal motive of the individual in the economic sphere. Oddly enough this assumption—the most warrantable of the lot—was the earliest to fall under disrepute. The plain assertion that every man looks out for himself ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... apart. That moment was over, and now he had bidden his wife good-by and was riding through the cold gray mist to do his weary, hopeless best for an obstinate, foolish, impracticable king, and to put some heart, if it were possible, into a dwindling handful of unprincipled, self-seeking, double-minded men. The day was full of omens, and they were all against him. Twice a hare ran across the road, and Grimond muttered to himself as he rode behind his master, "The ill-faured beast." As they passed through Glenfarg, a raven followed them for a mile, croaking weirdly. ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... rest of the philosophes. That there were charlatans among them, vain men, pretentious men, profligate men, selfish, self-seeking, and hypocritical men, who doubts? Among what class of men were there not such in those evil days? In what class of men are there not such now, in spite of all social and moral improvement? But nothing but the conviction, among the average, that ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... an experience that would have been nothing to most men beyond its relief, but to Peter Simon it was a word from the eternal heart, which, in every true and quiet mood, speaks into the hearts of men. When we cease listening to the cries of self-seeking and self-care, then the voice that was there all the time enters into our ears. It is the voice of the Father speaking to his child, never known for what it is until the child begins to obey it. To him who ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... admire the heroism that led this brave soldier in gray so utterly to forget himself for the sake of doing a deed of mercy to his enemies. There is more grandeur in five minutes of such self-renunciation than in a whole lifetime of self-interest and self-seeking. There is something Christly in it. How poor, paltry, and mean, alongside the records of such deeds, appear men's selfish strivings, self-interests' ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... often it is that the dearest friends fall out about money! This has been so often noticed that it has become a common saying, "Have no money dealings with your friend." Even near relations become bitter, and are estranged, over some provision in a will. All this arises from self-seeking. Each cares for himself, and not ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... for a very long period. But as time went on negligence and self-seeking crept in. Those whose duty it was to superintend, threw more and more responsibility on their inferiors in office, and in time it became rare for the rulers to interfere or to interest themselves in any of the operations. This was the beginning of the evil days. The members ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... of the people. The King did not. He had their loyalty as their sovereign, but the spiritual and cultural welfare of a colony overseas carried little weight amid the political cross-currents and the self-seeking ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... the spirit realm. If you and I wish to have business transactions in this upper world of spirit-life we must be governed by this same law. To have power in our lives over sin and selfishness, and passion, and appetite; over tongue, and temper, and self-seeking ambition; to have power in prayer, and in winning others over from sin to Jesus Christ, one must first lay down ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... of the most melancholy chapters in the history of human thought. Nowhere else has knowledge, supposedly impartial, consciously or unconsciously placed itself so unscrupulously at the service of ambitious and self-seeking politicians. Indeed, it might almost be said that the various theories of race have never been put forward save with the object of advancing some claim or other. The writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Anglo-German, afford perhaps the most repulsive ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... one, without rousing his neighbor or seeking companionship, set out again on his way, with that selfishness which made our rout one of the most horrible dramas of self-seeking, melancholy, and horror which ever was enacted under heaven. Nevertheless, at about seven or eight hundred paces from our shelter we, most of us, met again and walked on together, like geese led in flocks by a child's wilful tyranny. ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her King from his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing. All she would take for herself—if the King would grant it—was leave ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... saw poverty and misery and pain, which came of the evil which man had done upon the earth, and were his punishment, and could be cured by nothing but by the return of each to his Father, and the giving up of all self-worship and self-seeking and sin. But amid all the confusion and among those who had fallen the lowest they found not one who was forsaken, whose name the Father had forgotten, or who was not made to pause in his appointed moment, ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... worth, however, that he was able to win Charlotte Bronte in spite of the fact that his predecessors had inspired in her such hearty contempt. 'I think he must be like all the curates I have seen,' she writes of one; 'they seem to me a self-seeking, vain, empty race.' ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... fears and hates—the opposites of faith and hope and love—arise from our lower nature and hide from us the face of our Father in heaven; but He has not changed. He is always ready to bless us when we turn again to Him—turn in truth and love, children, not in terror and self-seeking. So, dear ones, when clouds and storms darken the atmosphere, think of the sun that is shining above them; and when doubts and fears and sorrows and temptations come, think of the love and wisdom and power of our Father in heaven, and ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... concerns himself for another's need? How can that prayer be of help, good, acceptable and a common prayer, or a work of the Holy Day and of the assembled congregation, which they make who make their own petty prayers, one for this, the other for that, and have nothing but self-seeking, selfish prayers, which ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... earliest striking achievement of this sort, Mantegna's head of Cardinal Scarampo (now in Berlin), was not the kind to find favour in Venice. The full-face likeness of this wolf in sheep's clothing brought out the workings of the self-seeking, cynical spirit within too clearly not to have revolted the Venetians, who looked upon all such qualities as impious in the individual because they were the strict monopoly of the State. In the portraits of Doges which decorated ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... longer; but she was enabled without dismay or complaint to prepare for death. She was a humble, believing Christian. Her life had been passed in the performance of home duties, and the cultivation of domestic affections, without any self-seeking or craving after applause. She had always sought, as it were by instinct, to promote the happiness of all who came within her influence, and doubtless she had her reward in the peace of mind which was ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... though not so high As love which Heaven with single eye Considers. Equal and entire, Therein benevolence, desire, Elsewhere ill-join'd or found apart, Become the pulses of one heart, Which now contracts, and now dilates, And, both to the height exalting, mates Self-seeking to self-sacrifice. Nay, in its subtle paradise (When purest) this one love unites All modes of these two opposites, All balanced in accord so rich Who may determine which is which? Chiefly God's Love does in it live, And nowhere ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... this evil, and more than we have described, is often glossed over with such an evangelical phraseology, that what is of the earth earthy is made to appear as if it were heavenly; and the coarsest product of the coarsest and most vulgar vanity, self-seeking, and pride is so painted and misrepresented as to look like love of principle or love of truth. What will put an end to the proud antagonism, the Popery, the Church idolatry of Protestantism? Can it ever be that we shall carry one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... There were problems enough even had he received loyal support from the crown and the company. With the English and Dutch in full rivalry, he saw that an aggressive policy of expansion and settlement became each year more imperative. Instead, he was called on to withstand the cabals of self-seeking traders who shirked their obligations, and to endure the apathy of a government which was preoccupied with ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... range—the appointment of the judiciary, the superintendence of the administration of the business affairs of the nation, the guidance of our international affairs. Therefore the President must be a keen judge of men capable of distinguishing the honest, efficient servant of the nation from the self-seeking politician; he must resist political pressure; he must be national in his patriotism and breadth of vision; he must know our foreign relations intimately, that the continuity of policies may not be broken and the efficiency of our foreign service weakened thereby. He must ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... leave the secession issue in doubt almost to the last moment of a four years' contest, as it is now well known it was. Probably the one saving fact in all those years was that the young soldiers of the republic—and they were nearly all young then—knew little and cared less about the wrangling of self-seeking politicians and visionary doctrinaires in the rear, but fought steadily on to the end, never doubting for a moment the final triumph. I have never been able to recall a single instance of doubt manifested by any soldier in the field, though I did know a very ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... have been put back twenty-five years, there could have been no Russo-Japanese war, and China, instead of being, as she now is, a third-rate Power, might have held the premier position in Asia, as Japan so splendidly and skilfully does now. But, as so often happens, greed and dishonesty, self-seeking and cowardice on the part of high officials, nullified the efforts of the brave seamen who unavailingly gave their lives ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... with their phylacteries; Scribes, with their sceptical notions; Samaritans, with their vaunted traditions: but He always went right beyond the outward show. The Samaritan was good and kind, though he got no credit for piety; the Pharisee was corrupt and self-seeking, though he got no credit for piety; the Publican was a child of God, though no one would speak to him. Christ reversed the judgment of men on those people whom they thought they knew so well, but did not know at all. So it shall be at the last; we shall be judged ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... of an impartial umpire, with an expert's appreciation of their logical fencing and some humorous glances at the heated combatants. Mill was an austere Puritan, who would fell the Tory like an ox and would trample upon the cunning self-seeking Whig. The Edinburgh Reviewers were a set of brilliant young men who represented intellectual Liberalism; but 'they were men who meant to become judges, members of Parliament, or even bishops, and nothing ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... additional scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies touching the common fortunes of the group at large, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Brother Benedict read the first part of the letter he laughed hastily, and said, "The abbot hath no such lily." But when he had finished it, he said, "GOD rid my soul of self-seeking! The common children shall have ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... throughout his entire life, he also accepted human nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from mere self-seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more sane and healthy mind—a man less under the influence of that fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in reality profoundly immoral) which ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... necessary that the present generation, how quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... whom my husband honours—wife to the man whom you would honour—to take a part in changing the ancient custom which has been held in honour for all the thousand years, which is the glory of Blue Mountain womanhood. What an example such would be in an age when self-seeking women of other nations seek to forget their womanhood in the struggle to vie in equality with men! Men of the Blue Mountains, I speak for our women when I say that we hold of greatest price the glory of our men. To be their companions is our happiness; ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... more capable of living out of that atmosphere of assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically self-seeking—incoherent... a stampede.... Human ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... outgrown the stage of political tutelage, should be accorded some measure of emancipation therefrom. And thereby we—White, Black, Mulatto, and all other inhabitants and tax-payers—shall be able to protect ourselves against the self-seeking and bold indifference to our interests which seem to be the most cherished expression of our rulers' official existence. It may be possible (for he has attempted it), that our new instructor in Colonial ethics and politics, under the impulsion of skin-superiority, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the place in form. It would have been cheaper, no doubt, to pay the demands of the garrison in full, and allow them to depart. But Maurice considered his honour at stake. His letters of summons, in which he spoke of the rebellious commandant and his garrison as self-seeking foreigners and mercenaries, were taken in very ill part. Wingfield resented the statement in very insolent language, and offered to prove its falsehood with his sword against any man and in any place whatever. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... these prizes, and who work at least as hard as those who win them, but deliberately adopt a line which makes the winning of them impossible, must be judged to have an aim in life other than personal advancement; whatever admixture of self-seeking may enter into the detail of their lives, their fundamental motive must be outside Self. The pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism have, for the most part, experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately incurred because they would not abandon their propaganda; and by this conduct ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... would hardly be found for centuries together. The most fine and sensitive tact of piety would be essential. With it must go absolute sincerity and singleness of purpose. Any dash of mere conventionalism or self-seeking would spoil the whole. There must be that clear illuminated insight that is only given to those who are in a more than ordinary sense 'pure in heart.' And on the other hand, along with these unique spiritual qualities must go a sound and exact scientific training, a just perception ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... in the medley of man's composition, deeper far than his superficial working delusion that he is a separated self-seeking individual, an instinct for cooperation and obedience. Every natural sane man wants, though he may want it unwittingly, kingly guidance, a definite direction for his own partial life. At the bottom of his heart he feels, even if he does ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... following eyes on board those ships—Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans and a German or two—who had all hoisted their flags at eight o'clock as if in honour of our arrival. It would have been a fine performance if it had come off, but it did not. Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became untrue to his temperament. It was not with him art for art's sake: it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the penalty he paid for that greatest of sins. It ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... right in the very point where it was most liable to be drawn astray. Gervinus regards this idea as being the soul of the piece. He thinks the Poet's leading purpose here was to teach that plain-thoughted, guileless honesty is a natural overmatch for studied cunning; and to show how self-seeking craft and intricacy are apt to be caught in the snares they have laid for others, while unselfish truth and simplicity are protected against them by those instinctive moral warnings of nature which crafty men despise. And he rightly observes that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Leopold's interest in the Congo was unselfish may or may not be granted, but, knowing him, as we now know him, as one of the shrewdest and, of speculators, the most unscrupulous, at the time of the Berlin Conference, his self-seeking may safely be accepted. Quietly, unostentatiously, he presented himself to its individual members as a candidate for the post of ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis |
