"Self-indulgence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of political ability in the same family was the ideal for which the devotees of mediaeval despotism had to hope. Nothing could be further from the aspirations of our author than a race of mere palace kings seeking enjoyment only in self-indulgence. The king was to be the ruler and leader of his people. The relation and interdependence of the several classes is emphatically proclaimed, and the claims of duty are ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... ear of wholesome admonition from the parable of the Sower. "The deceitfulness of riches!" he murmured. "How true!" And he subjected himself to the most vigilant scrutiny, lest he should be beguiled by the unlimited possibilities of self-indulgence which his wealth supplied. He turned frequently to the emphatic declaration of Paul to Timothy. "They that will be rich," it runs, "fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... may, without any exaggeration, be called the turning-point and the last great earthly opportunity of Barrett's character. He had not originally been an evil man, only a man who, being stoical in practical things, permitted himself, to his great detriment, a self-indulgence in moral things. He had grown to regard his pious and dying daughter as part of the furniture of the house and of the universe. And as long as the great mass of authorities were on his side, his illusion was quite pardonable. His crisis came when the authorities changed ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... its logical conclusions, to the Romans was a practical maxim to be realized in life. The Romans did not understand the love of abstract truth, or the charm of abstract reasoning employed for its own sake without any ulterior end. To profess the doctrines of stoicism, and live a life of self-indulgence, was to be false to one's convictions; to embrace Epicurus's system without making it subservient to enjoyment, was equally foreign to a consistent character. In Athens the daily life of an Epicurean and a Stoic ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... authority of the Bible at Alexandria. A superficial knowledge of the materialistic or rationalistic theories, which were propagated respectively by the Epicurean and Stoic schools, was made the excuse for indifference to the law. Then as now the advanced Jew would mask his self-indulgence under the guise of a banal philosophy, and jeer easily at archaic myths and tribal laws. The dominating motive of Philo's work is to show that the Bible contains for those who will seek it the richest treasures ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... said I, "we all overlook one great leading principle of our nature, and that is, that we are made to find a higher pleasure in self-sacrifice than in any form of self-indulgence. There is something grand and pathetic in the idea of an entire self-surrender, to which every human soul leaps up, as we do to the sound of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "The lines are obscured by cushions of flesh; no heart line at all, mentality small, self-indulgence and irritability ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... this scholarship fund is the result of endless self-denial. I have known several alumnae, to say the least, who have sacrificed greater privileges than visits to the Opera for the sake of contributing an extra mite. Would it be just for one who benefits from the economy of others to spend in self-indulgence?" ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... amiable, generous, and munificent. But his temper was spoiled by self-indulgence and incessant flattery. The moroseness he exhibited in his latter days was partly the effect of physical disease, brought about, indeed, by intemperance and gluttony. He was faithful to his wives, so long as he lived with them; and, while he doted on them, listened to their advice. But few ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... discriminating, practical intelligence, was formed and disciplined amid that company of distinguished scholars and writers who, at Oxford, in the second decade of the century were revolted by the scandalous inertness and self-indulgence of the place, with its magnificent resources squandered and wasted, its stupid orthodoxy of routine, its insensibility to the questions and the dangers rising all round; men such as Keble, Arnold, Davison, Copleston, Whately. These men, different as they were from one another, all represented ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... prayed—"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." Now, his cry would be—"Come to me, let not my sins cause Thee to stay, but come quickly." There are many of us who feel we need to cry to Peter's Saviour and Lord, for we have allowed doubts to hide His face, or self-indulgence to fence Him about. Let every preacher who reads these words unite with us in pleading for a Pentecost that shall renew our commission, and make all men to know that a risen Saviour is our King, and a ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... the mantel-piece. She arranged without enthusiasm her straggling hair, and put straight a lace cap which was chronically crooked. She looked at her reflection pessimistically, as well she might. It was the puffy red face of a middle-aged woman given to petty self-indulgence. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... indifferent, more intelligent than those around him, scarcely a Buddhist in belief, and very kind-hearted: indeed Judson believed that it was his interposition alone that prevented the lives of the captives from being taken at once; but he was demoralized by self-indulgence, and allowed himself to be governed by his queen, the daughter of a superintendent of gaols; and through her, by her brother, who was cruel, rapacious and violent, and the chief author of all the sufferings inflicted on the prisoners. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Campbell, "but since it has been lost to me, I have often thought that I might have done more good with it. But the fact is, my dear children, there is nothing so dangerous to our eternal welfare as great wealth; it tends to harden the heart by affording the means of constant self-indulgence:—under such circumstances, man is apt to become selfish, easily satisfied with his own works, and too proud to see his errors. Did you observe in the Litany, which I read at this morning's service, how very appropriately is inserted the prayer for deliverance ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... on this part of my subject, because I think it very probable that, with your warm affections, and before your selfishness has been hardened by habits of self-indulgence, you might some time or other fall into the error I have been describing. In the ardour of your anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own health, and unfit you for more ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... swam from London to Chelsea, a distance of four miles. Several of his companions he taught to swim in two lessons. His celebrity was such that he was urged to open a swimming school.[9] The life of self-indulgence he was now living in London, was not such as even his loose religious principles could approve. He had abandoned the faith of his fathers, and had adopted, for his rule of conduct, the principle, that it was right to yield to any indulgences to which his passions incited him. He became ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... continued at Mr. Marchinton's, attending school, and busied, as is usual with boys of that age, until the year 1805. I fear I was naturally disposed to idleness and self-indulgence, for I became restive and impatient under the restraints of the schoolmaster, and of the gentleman in whose family I had been left. I do not know that I had any just grounds of complaint against Mr. Marchinton; but his rigorous discipline disgusted ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... keep the contempt she felt for her husband's weak rejoinder, "don't confuse the head, dethrone the reason, brutalize, debase and ruin men in soul and body as do wine and brandy. The difference lies there, and all men see and feel it, make what excuses they will for self-indulgence and deference to custom. The curse of drink is too widely felt. There is scarcely a family in the land on which its blight does not lie. The best, the noblest, the purest, the bravest, have fallen. It is breaking hopes and hearts and fortunes every day. The warning cross that marks ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... redeeming presence in this dismal household. Mrs Fred sat dawdling opposite her husband over some wretched fancy-work. Eyes less prejudiced than those of Edward Rider might have imagined this a scene of coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. To him it was a disgusting picture of self-indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, almost vice. The very tobacco which polluted the atmosphere of her room was bought with Nettie's money. Pah! the doctor came in with a silent pale concentration of fury and disgust, scarcely able to compel himself to utter ordinary words of civility. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience is confined to the accidents that befal others: all their good-humour is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about any thing but their own ease and self-indulgence. Their charity begins and ends at home. Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is owing to their indifference to the common feelings of humanity; and if you touch the sore place, they betray ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... to sing Him the Song of the Soul from some quiet hill among the olive trees by the Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible, joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that I should choose: I wanted it so that it became spiritual greed—spiritual self-indulgence. ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... that hearts break, that tears fall, that there are prayers that stagger upward through life's storm, but the froth and foam of life is in their eyes; they look out on the rim of a life where they see only self-indulgence, and when now and then they are hushed long enough to listen to the world cry, they turn away quickly for fear they will actually touch lives with ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... heart sunk within her as she stood, silent, beside the coffin of Jane's husband, remembering how lately she had seen the young man, full of life and vigour, thoughtlessly devoting the best energies of body and soul to culpable self-indulgence. It is melancholy indeed, to record such a close to such a life; and yet it is an event repeated in the gay world with every year that passes. It is to be feared there were companions of Tallman Taylor's, pursuing the same course ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... desire of knowledge as a luxury to brighten life and kindle thought. I am very much afraid that, in the ordinary temper of our people, and the ordinary mode of looking at life, the last of these motives savours a little of self-indulgence, and sentimentality, and other objectionable qualities. There is a great stir in the region of physical science at this moment, and it is likely, as any one may see, to take a chief and foremost place in the field of intellectual activity. After the severity with which science was for so many ages ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... highest aim of all—the enlargement of reverence, obedience, and faith; for he had never turned his face full in the direction of infinite growth—the primal end of a man's being, who is that he may return to the Father, gathering his truth as he goes. Yet by the simple instincts of a soul undebased by self-indulgence or low pursuits, he was drawn ever toward things lofty and good; and life went calmly on, bearing Godfrey Wardour toward middle age, unruffled either ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... average of mankind—that rapacious multitude, whom nothing animates but a chance of gain, with whom nothing weighs but a commercial argument. A new tenderness stirred within him, and resolutely he stamped under foot the impulses of self-esteem, of self-indulgence, which made his life hard ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... God, no principles can be so fixed, as not to leave a ready escape from all obligation. Such minds, either by indolence (and consequent ignorance) or by sophistry, will convince themselves, that a life of engrossing self-indulgence, with perhaps the gift of a few dollars, and a few hours of time, may suffice, to fulfil the requisitions of the ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... that we reached the parsonage gate before another word was spoken. In spite of the firmest of resolutions, the smallest self-indulgence brought me to the very verge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of service, to employ herself in house affairs, she neither ate nor drank more than seemed good for her; but as soon as she had but to live and be served, she began to counterbalance ennui with self-indulgence, and continued to do so until the death of her boy, ever after which she had sought refuge from grief in narcotics. Possibly she would not have behaved as she did in church, but that her nervous being was a very sponge for morphia. Born to be a strong woman, she was a slave to her impulses, and, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... in India had not ended in his making no further debts. He was not a man to put the brake on in the matter of self-indulgence. He got into debt so long as a shred of credit remained to him, and afterwards he tried to add to his resources by cards and betting at races. He made and lost by turn, and was in a desperate state when he got his leave. He applied ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... children be taught to understand their natures, and knowing them, they will learn self-government. "As man rises in education and moral feeling he proportionately rises in the power of self-restraint; and consequently as he becomes deprived of this wholesome law of discipline he sinks into self-indulgence and the brutality ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... carmine which was all that he possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this could be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth of self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and wealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, that at Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, surrounded by flowers and jewels, carried the monarch's proudest possession, a cake of carmine. I knew of no object ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... English political system, and to some extent in the English character, is a weakness which necessarily produces a curious crop of superstitions, of lying legends, of evident delusions clung to through low spiritual self-indulgence. There are so many of these public-school superstitions that I have here only space for one of them, which may be called the superstition of soap. It appears to have been shared by the ablutionary Pharisees, who resembled the English public-school aristocrats in so many ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... of breathing, it was treated as affectation—as a phase of imaginary indisposition, which could be dissipated by a good scolding. She had been brought up rather in a school of Spartan endurance than in one of maudlin self-indulgence, and could bear many a pain and relinquish ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpable self-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragement only, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire and sustain us. For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is only our past that can come to ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... living near his work. With a roar, the flood of her bewilderment, diverted for a time, broke over her again. She braced herself against it. Through her companion's dimly-heard exhortations that, from her high heaven of self-indulgence, she stoop to lend a hand to her less favored sisters, she repeated to herself, clinging to the phrase as though it were a magic formula: "If I can only wish hard enough to make things better, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... presented right there in front of him where he can rest his elbows on it, your average fattish man nevertheless refuses to acknowledge the visible situation. Vanity blinds his one eye, love of self-indulgence blinds the other. Observe now how I speak in the high moral tone of a reformed offender, which is the way of reformed offenders and other reformers the world over. We are always most virtuous in retrospect, as the fact of the crime recedes. Moreover, he ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... her appeal, and Charlie knew she was right, but he always found it hard to give up anything he had set his heart on, no matter how trivial, for the maternal indulgence which had harmed the boy had fostered the habit of self-indulgence, which was ruining the man. So when Rose looked up at him, with a very honest desire to save him as well as herself from being swept into the giddy vortex which keeps so many young people revolving aimlessly, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend the kind of cooperation to the less fortunate members that will inspire hope, confidence and progress. A rich nation can for a time, without noticeable damage to itself, pursue a course of self-indulgence, making its single goal the material ease and comfort of its own citizens-thus repudiating its own spiritual and material stake in a peaceful and prosperous society of nations. But the enmities it will incur, the isolation into which it will descend, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... been hungry. Some time before Mrs. Rastall-Retford's doctor had recommended to that lady a Spartan diet, and in this Eve, as companion, had unwillingly to share. It was not pleasant for either of them, but at least Mrs. Rastall-Retford had the knowledge that she had earned it by years of honest self-indulgence. Eve ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... at Ortygia, despaired of his position, and resolved to surrender the fortress, stipulating for a safe conveyance and shelter at Corinth. This tyrant, broken by his drunken habits, did not care to fight, as his father did, for a sceptre so difficult to be maintained, and only sought his ease and self-indulgence. So he passed into the camp of Timoleon with what money he could raise, and the fortress was surrendered. A re-enforcement from Corinth enabled ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... continents between them, and treat him as if he were of secondary importance in her life—the being who had to provide the wherewithal on which the human idol might be suitably reared. His own personal need of her was viewed as masculine self-indulgence ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... communicate to him she was waiting for a more free moment to do so, and that she would let him know in time when he could come to see her. She declared she would send back his letters unopened, as they were "simple self-indulgence." I read that letter myself—he ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... due performance of the various processes concerned in the formation and destruction of the bodily tissues, eventually sap the foundations of life among Europeans; but how far this result has been caused by bad habits as regards food, exercise, and self-indulgence, I cannot say. Rapid changes of temperature in this country are often very injurious to the young and old, causing diarrhoea and derangements of the liver when great heat occurs, and inflammatory diseases of the lungs, colds, etc., when the air becomes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... that men are the descendants of barbarians and beasts. Do Socialist agitators really believe that they can convert the descendants of barbarians and beasts into ideal beings by constantly preaching to them the gospel of hatred, envy, selfishness, self-indulgence, and plunder, and by even encouraging them to continue poisoning themselves and their descendants by over-indulgence in alcoholic drink?[1216] Surely "the defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... in return for his attention. Joan, like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads, one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... weakness would have killed him in the end.—You, who are a great artist, who have labored through poverty, through injustice, through calumny, through the jealousy of friends and the libel of enemies, and have conquered them all, you know well in your heart that great ignorance, great vanity, great self-indulgence, belong not to the characters of the truly great.—Oh I, I, Irina, the outcast, know that well! Did I tempt you?—Those traits were Joseph's. I, who have loved him, say it. For love of me and of himself, he degraded his art. For himself, he has played and played and played, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... brief record of hope and passion left in the notes which Lily treasured somewhere among the archives of a young girl's triumphs. He had a morbid curiosity to see these letters again, but he dared not ask for them; and indeed it would have been an idle self-indulgence: he remembered them perfectly well. Seeing Lily so indifferent, it was characteristic of him, in that safety from consequences which he chiefly loved, that he should tacitly constitute himself, in ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... had once been hers. Some of the neighbours, who were regarding them as they met, would have said that once Miss Betsey had been much handsomer than ever Miss Elizabeth would be. For Miss Betsey had been young at a time when there was little danger that indolence or self-indulgence could injure the full development of healthful beauty, and as yet Miss Elizabeth had fallen on easy days, and was languid at times, and delicate, and if the truth must be told, a little discontented with what life had as yet brought her, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the nose. Their faces beam with good nature and they evidently regard the frequent enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes as among the real pleasures of life. But the older men all show traces of this life of ease and self-indulgence. It is seldom that one sees a man beyond fifty with a strong face. The Egyptian over forty loses his fine figure, he lays on abundant flesh, his jowl is heavy and his whole face suggests satiety and the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... most honorable and desirable task which can be set any woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and self-sacrifice. Of course there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... variety of the articles of merchandise here enumerated, is calculated to impress the reader with the idea of the wealth, luxury, splendor, and self-indulgence of the metropolis of the idolatrous Roman empire, the "mother and mistress of all churches."—The prophetic declaration, however,—"with feigned words shall they make merchandise of you," (2 Pet. ii. 3,) is not confined to the Romish communion. This traffic, in souls, pervades all ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... what threatens you—oh, my own darling! my little Geraldine!—is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence to stand between you and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... then, if no fruit appears, since the seed is smothered as I said. Perhaps you would find some excuse in saying, "Still, I have to condescend to my friends and relatives by doing this, so that they will not be annoyed and irritated with me." So fear and perverted self-indulgence sap our life, and often kill us; rob us of the perfection to which God chose and calls us. This excuse is not acceptable to God; for we ought not to condescend to people in a matter which wrongs God and our own soul; nor to love or serve them, except in those matters which come from God and ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... extraordinary levies and ravages of war often reduced the whole of the peasantry to the most abject poverty, bordering on starvation, the boyards lived in comparative ease, and led a life of immorality and self-indulgence. Concubinage widely prevailed, and many boyards had, besides their legitimate wife, ten or a dozen mistresses. They appear to have been gradually growing in influence, and the greater boyards filled all the chief ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... bear the wear-and-tear of actual life. Cloistered virtues do not count for much. The life that rejoices in solitude may be only rejoicing in selfishness. Seclusion may indicate contempt for others; though more usually it means indolence, cowardice, or self-indulgence. To every human being belongs his fair share of manful toil and human duty; and it cannot be shirked without loss to the individual himself, as well as to the community to which he belongs. It is ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the Weekly Dispatch (17 June, 1917) alone gave some account of this last scene of the drama. The rest atoned for their self-denial in narrative by proportionate self-indulgence in comment. One of them described the coup as "a distinct gain both to our interests in the East and to our moral position in the world." British agents on the spot must have been strangely blind to this aspect of the business; for ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS... What are the inadequacies of instinct and impulse that necessitate morality? What factors are to be considered in estimating the worth of personal moral ideals? Epicureanism vs. Puritanism. What are the evils in undue self-indulgence? What are the evils ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... and saw that his boots were in a puddle. He walked on. For a moment, the mists of sloth and self-indulgence that had for years obscured his vision had shifted and cleared, but even as he moved they settled down and resolved themselves once more. The muscles of Paul's soul were stiff with disuse. Training is a lengthy affair and a tiresome business ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that despotism to which he was devoted. Sensuality ever robs a man of the advantages and gifts which reason gives, even though they may be bestowed to an extraordinary degree. There is no more impotent slavery than that to which the most gifted intellects have been occasionally doomed. Self-indulgence is sure to sap every element of moral strength, and to take away from genius itself all power, except to sharpen the stings of self-reproach. "Louis XV. was not insensible to the dangers which menaced his throne, and would have despoiled the Parliament of the right of remonstrance; would have imposed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE, they have betrayed their own secret; it has been for the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. They have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was OUTLIVED, they have always said "We must remove hence to where YOU are least at home" In the face of a world of "modern ideas," which would like to confine ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cruel to undeceive him; and nothing particular ever occurred to bring about an eclaircissement. Rupert's want of principle was a negative, rather than an active quality, and was only rendered of account by his vanity and selfishness. Self-indulgence was all he aimed at, and he was much too self-indulgent and shrewd to become an active rogue. He would have spent Lucy's and my joint fortunes, had they been put at his control; but, as they never were, he was fain to limit his expenditures to such sums ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... apparently, on their conception of what a greedy boy, without pocket-money, feels when he stares at the tarts lying in a pastry-cook's window. To them it seems that the desire for great wealth means simply the desire for purely sensual self-indulgence—especially for the eating and drinking of expensive food and wine. Consequently, whenever they wish to caricature a capitalist they invariably represent him as a man with a huge, protuberant stomach. The folly of this conception is sufficiently ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... continent? It is the 'Kaiser' in each one of us that makes wars possible. It is because we have in every nation, and in every class, multitudes of men and women who neglect the service of their fellow-creatures in a desire for self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement, that this catastrophe has fallen upon us all. It is a case of devil-possession, and our only hope is to exorcise ourselves of the evil spirit. Our avowed intention is to cast out 'Kaiserism' in Germany by brute ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... arrival in London he got with bad companions. He has naturally extravagant tastes—they introduced him to some of those gambling saloons. Given a weak nature, the love of money for the pleasure it can give, a will weakened with self-indulgence, and the result is easy to forecast. George has been going from bad to worse for months past. He has sometimes won considerable sums of money, and these successes have excited him to try again—with this devil's luck, as the saying is. Of late, however, that luck has turned against him, and ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... move, and by which he was, as a man and a thinker, if not altogether as a poet, to live; reticent where it approaches the complexities of the concrete which the poet was not yet sufficiently mature to handle, restrained where increased power was to breed a too generous self-indulgence, a too manifest aptitude for glorying and drinking deep. It is flushed with the peculiar mellow beauty which comes if at all to the early manhood of genius,—a beauty like that of Amiens or Lincoln in Gothic art, where ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... This was not how life ought to be; a poor creature like Clarence Copperhead, without birth, or breeding, or brains, or anything but money, was able to gratify every wish, while he—his senior, his superior! Instead of blaming himself, therefore, for his self-indulgence, Mr. May sympathized with himself, which is a much less safe thing to do; and accordingly, it soon began to appear to him that his self-denial all this time in not giving himself what he wanted had been extreme, and that what he had now done, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... proportion of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and we passed out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought of these infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving families at home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given up, and from three to five years' indulgence will utterly wreck the firmest constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... collection of essays by several authors on the various aspects of social hygiene, and on the proper means of forming an enlightened public opinion concerning the measures which society can now, at last, wisely undertake against the vices and evils which in the human race accompany bodily self-indulgence ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits—the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains of vanity and self-indulgence." ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... in the matter of reform in right good earnest, but he found it hard work; old habits and inclinations were very strong. Still he had some strength of mind, and he brought this into as vigorous exercise as it was possible for him to do, mainly with success, but sometimes with gentle lapses into self-indulgence. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to eschew self-glorification or self-indulgence. It is the virtues of the holders of office, not their office itself, which alone in the end entitles them to consideration. Adventitious circumstances give no man claim to respect. A man is alone worthy of regard by reason of his personal character. Honour comes from his own acts, neither from ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... monoglots," MacHenery sighed. "It figures, though. There's no profit in having today's youth read the clinical record of another civilization that died of self-indulgence, that went roistering to its doom in ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence, to which men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of those who, born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part in the work of their generation—who "scorn ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... and elegance of Greek and Syrian slaves often proved a staircase by which new religions found a way into the chambers of the great and wealthy. In spite of some signs of moral vigour, society was cankered with pride of class and with self-indulgence. It possessed no regenerating force capable of checking the repulsive vice which was encouraged by the obscenity of actors and the frivolity ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... matter, yearning to go, but restrained by the fear that, as an old woman, she would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria's day old people were only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... entire personal freedom. His patron did as the world is so naturally ready to do with those who choose the stoic's way; he declared that Rousseau was gone mad.[208] Talk like this had no effect on a man whom self-indulgence led into a path that others would only have been forced into by self-denial. Let it be said, however, that this is a form of self-indulgence of which society is never likely to see an excess, and meanwhile we may continue to pay it some respect ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... more ways of viewing the question than could be compressed into so short a play. Myself, I confess to a sneaking sympathy with the standpoint of Crawshaw. Money for him did not mean mere self-indulgence; it meant outward show—a house in a better neighbourhood, a more expensive car, a higher status in the opinion of his world—all the things that somehow help in what is called a career. By accepting the fifty thousand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... point of not allowing oneself to become the slave of miserable contingencies which appear as temptations to self-indulgence, and conceal from their pettiness the beauty of the consistent action—this is only given to the chosen few and can only be understood by those who cultivate ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... That waggery of fate which started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... are in the element to which they were born, and where they can live naturally, and spend their lives helping in the great work of feeding, clothing, and housing their fellow men. I've no desire to leave my job or take them from theirs, to start a lazy, shiftless life of self-indulgence. I don't meddle much with the Bible, but I have a profound BELIEF in it, and a large RESPECT for it, as the greatest book in the world, and it says: 'By the sweat of his brow shall man earn his bread,' or words to ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... They bore me but I'd rather they did that than disgrace me. Mary never had even one child, although her husband must have wanted an heir. I have lived a life of duty—duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the war. But noblesse oblige. What else could she do? And now, she'll be at it again. She'll have the pick of our young men—I don't know whether it's all tragic ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... disappointment, vacuity, all but despair must come. The immortal spirit, finding no healthy satisfaction for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-given and natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake itself, from the mere craving for action, to self-invented ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... they "seeking first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness?" Are they "working out their salvation with fear and trembling?" Are they "clothed with humility?" Are they not, on the contrary, supremely given up to self-indulgence? Are they not at least "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God?" Are the offices of Religion their solace or their task? Do they not come to these sacred services with reluctance, continue in them by constraint, and quit them with gladness? And of how many of these persons may ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... remove from the world all outward evil—get rid of sickness, pain, poverty, death. Would not the worst part of evil still remain? Would not discontent, selfishness, envy, wilfulness, cruelty, self-indulgence continue? All these exist—perhaps exist most frequently—where there is the least of outward evil; and the outward evil is the bitter medicine which comes by and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... quiet and orderly. He wants to be left undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue by the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence, hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all high purposes, spiritual coma and deadness, these do not disturb him. They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... faced the sea and the storm. Think of the deed, and its hardships, and its heroism; of the brave hearts who 'darkling faced the billows,' and the anxious women left behind, ye who live to kill time in graceless self-indulgence, and ere it be too late, learn ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... was a pause. Our new acquaintance had become involved in a vexatious difficulty with his pipe which had suddenly betrayed his trust and disappointed his anticipation of self-indulgence. To keep the ball rolling I asked Marlow if this Powell was remarkable ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... epoch. The supply of good-tempered, cheap labour—upon which the fabric of our contemporary ease and comfort is erected—is giving out. The spread of information and the means of presentation in every class and the increase of luxury and self-indulgence in the prosperous classes are the chief cause of that. In the place of that old convenient labour comes a new sort of labour, reluctant, resentful, critical, and suspicious. The replacement has already gone so far that I am certain that attempts to baffle and coerce the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... stainless truthfulness. On the same principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions resembled those of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor Morum, an inquisitor who might examine into the habits of private families, rebuke extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and self-indulgence, nay, who could remove from the Senate, the great council of elders, persons whose moral conduct was a reproach to a body on whose reputation no shadow could be allowed ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... most splendid mansions in Seville he selected for his residence, and in less than two years he found that one-half of his princely fortune had melted away. They were two years of adulation, of self-indulgence, of mental intoxication. It was a delirious dream from which he suddenly awoke. Reflection taught him that he must immediately curtail his expenses, and very seriously, or engage in some new enterprise to replenish his ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... gallant party; of one who believed himself to hold a divine commission to regenerate a fallen country; of one who knew that he alone in all the world held up aloft at the head of an army the proud banner of Conservatism; of one who, for this mission, had given up ease and luxury and self-indulgence; had entered upon a life of danger, hardship, and ceaseless toil, and every day lived in the very presence of Death; in short, they saw before them the idol of the Spanish Legitimists—the high-souled, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Edgeworth's dear little clean bright-looking boys, who would have carried all he got to his mother; but in Nick it was detestable. No human feeling seemed to warm his young heart, not even the love of self-indulgence, for he was not only ragged and dirty, but looked considerably more than half starved, and I doubt not his dinners and suppers half fed ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Philip passionately; "by making use of the brains with which I have been blessed, and not going through life willing to risk the lives of my fellow-men for the sake of a little self-indulgence." ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... for he was a very handy man, and much more of Mr. Chaloner's opinion in everything about church business than the older parishioners. Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the Oyster Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more than hinting at a life of Sultanic self-indulgence which he had passed in the West Indies, shaking his head now and then and smiling rather bitterly, as men are wont to do when they intimate that they have become a little too wise to be instructed about a world which has long been ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... mentor, had seemed to mortify them in the interests of tiresome virtues and work which began to look useless and hopeless in Lucien's eyes. Work! What is it but death to an eager pleasure-loving nature? And how easy it is for the man of letters to slide into a far niente existence of self-indulgence, into the luxurious ways of actresses and women of easy virtues! Lucien felt an overmastering desire to continue the reckless life of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... she should begin vith dischargin' her dooties at home, and makin' them as is about her cheerful and happy, and that vile she goes to church, or chapel, or wot not, at all proper times, she should be wery careful not to con-wert this sort o' thing into a excuse for idleness or self-indulgence. I have done this," she says, "and I've vasted time and substance on them as has done it more than me; but I hope ven I'm gone, Veller, that you'll think on me as I wos afore I know'd them people, and as I raly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... periods, so with people; self-indulgence, i. e., indulgence of the passing desires, follows the idealism of adolescence. Youth sows its wild oats. Then the steadying purposes appear partly because the pleasure of indulgence passes. Marriage, responsibility, straining effort mark the passing of ten or a dozen years; then in middle ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... dinner in Eaton Place, dull and heavy though it might probably be, to the chance of Lord Chiltern's companions at Moroni's. Whatever might be the faults of our hero, he was not given to what is generally called dissipation by the world at large,—by which the world means self-indulgence. He cared not a brass farthing for Moroni's Chateau Yquem, nor for the wondrously studied repast which he would doubtless find prepared for him at that celebrated establishment in St. James's Street;—not a farthing as compared with the chance of meeting so great a man as ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... desirable condition, and in the highest sense, where it borders on blessedness, may be fairly termed "the end and aim of being." But on the lower stretches of the senses, where it becomes mere enjoyment or pleasure, largely concerned with amusement and self-indulgence of various sorts, it becomes parasitic, robbing life of its strength and flavor and preventing its development and full growth. It is insidious in its deterioration and omnivorous in its appetite. It tends to habits that undermine and to the appropriation ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... thorough love of things good and noble. Such men,—or women,—may hardly, perhaps, debase themselves with the more vulgar vices. They will not be rogues, or thieves, or drunkards,—or, perhaps, liars; but ambition, luxury, self-indulgence, pride, and covetousness will get a hold of them, and in various moods will be to them virtues in lieu of vices. Such a man was Frank Greystock, who could walk along the banks of the quiet, trout-giving Bob, at Bobsborough, whipping ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... felt the necessity of employment more strongly each day, not only for the sake of the money it might bring, but also as an antidote to a growing tendency to brood over her deep disappointment. She soon began to recognize that such self-indulgence would unfit her for a struggle that might be extended and severe, and was not long in coming to the conclusion that she must make the best of her life as it was and would be. Days and weeks had slipped by ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... observed between those who inherit greatness and those who acquire it for themselves. We see the same analogy reigning at the present day, when the sons of the wealthy, who are born to fortune, substitute pride, and arrogance, and vicious self-indulgence and waste for the modesty, and prudence, and virtue of their sires, by means of which the fortune was acquired. Philotas was proud, boastful, extravagant, and addicted, like Alexander his master, to every species of indulgence and dissipation. He was universally hated. His father, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... an extremely capable doctor his main business in life seemed to be self-indulgence. He apparently did not know the meaning of the word "restraint." The serious questions in life to him were food, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... impressionable, more nervous, and more irritable than is natural to her; and while her family should make a certain allowance for her condition, she, on her part, should not allow herself to give way to her morbid feelings. The prospective mother should not lead a life of self-indulgence, on the one hand, or, on the other, should not be weighed down with cares; she should interest herself in her usual duties, and be relieved of all ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... seem wild, wicked talk to Mr. Eltinge; it would seem weak and irrational to any man. But I'm only Ida Mayhew, and such is my nature. I've been made all the more incapable of patient self-sacrifice by self-indulgence from my childhood up. Oh, will it be very, very wrong to win him if I can?" and the passionate tears and sobs that followed these words would seem to indicate that she understood her ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... she went on, "after your years of self-indulgence, of getting what you wanted, no matter about the cost, you see me again. You find I have mended my heart, have coaxed a few flowers of happiness to bloom. You find there was something you did not destroy, something you think it will make ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... in the tavern he had to seek in the Church. Denied the wild wit-combats of the Mermaid, he disported himself in a pamphlet-war on bishops and divorce. But he found health and exercise for his faculties there; and the moral (for all things have a moral) is this: that when, in a mood of self-indulgence, we can write habitually with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and the careless wealthy insolence of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus, we need not then repine or be ill-content ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... that he had no principles and no feelings at all, except as they began, continued, and ended in that system of centralization which not more paralyzes healthful action in a State than it does in the individual man. Self-indulgence with him was absolute. He was not without power of keen calculation, not without much cunning. He could conceive a project for some gain far off in the future, and concoct, for its realization, schemes subtly woven, astutely guarded. But he could not secure their success by any long-sustained ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open air, and a far from negligible administration of the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or wiser than ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... blame-worthiness; we cannot get rid of the sense of sin, yet retain the sense of righteousness. The determinist sponge passes over the whole moral vocabulary, not only over the inconvenient parts; it obliterates the terms self-indulgence, dishonesty, cowardice, but the same fate overtakes self-conquest, integrity, bravery. To vary the phrase slightly, we must not, on the determinist hypothesis, insult God by taking credit to ourselves for what ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... companions, on account, as it should seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts of D'Argens were good, and his manners those of a finished French gentleman; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and self-indulgence. He was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without being religious. Hating Christianity with a rancour which made him incapable of rational inquiry, unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conceal them entirely; nothing short of knowing some of the facts would prevent his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future. Moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than Mrs. Dornell feel that they must let out a few truths, if only in self-indulgence. So she told so much of recent surprises as that Betty's heart had been attracted by another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting her now might drive the girl to desperation. 'Betty has, in fact, rushed off to her father to avoid you,' she said. ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... broadly speaking, higher than that of training camps at home, especially of those where little or no supervision is exercised as to strong drink. How plainly this shows that hardness, even of an extreme character, braces up the body; softness and self-indulgence enfeeble it. ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... whether I have any strength, but if I have I dare say it will find some way of exerting itself. I will live as I like living, not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my aunt and you I can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I mean to have it. You know I like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes, "I have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all it must be ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... been fretful, combative. egotism, its hand against every man. Instead of the light of pure vision, there have been restless senses nave been re and imaginings. Instead of spiritual joy, the undivided joy of pure being, there has been self-indulgence of body and mind. These are all real forces, but distorted from their true nature and goal. They must be extricated, like gems from the matrix, like the pith from the reed, steadily, without destructive ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... them, not in the name of Ormuzd, nor of any other deity, but in the name of mere brute force and lust of conquest. The old Persian spirit was gone out of them. They were the symbols now of nothing save despotism and self-will, wealth and self-indulgence. They, once the children of Ormuzd or light, had become the children of Ahriman or darkness; and therefore it was, as I believe, that Xerxes' 1000 ships, and the two million (or, as some have it, five million) human beings availed naught against the little fleets and little ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... he had acquired it by the exercise of translation from classical languages; that he watched against the temptation of using unreal and fine words; that he employed care in his choice of verbs rather than in his use of adjectives; and that he fought against self-indulgence in writing just as he did in daily life. His sermons have the same quality of self-restraint. His private letters are fresh and simple, and contain many unaffected epigrams; in writing of religious ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... inconvenience, therefore, may be risked to obtain this; in fact, it often occurs that by waiting too long the freshness of life is worn off, and that the generous glow of early feelings becomes tamed down to lukewarmness by a too prudent delaying; while a slight sacrifice of ambition or self-indulgence on the part of the gentleman, and a little descent from pride of station on the lady's side, might have ensured years of satisfied love ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... or your occupation, or your companionship will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you yourself will be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weathercock that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort to get away from it now, and you yield ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... I wanted, in place of the life of self-indulgence, to which I was yielding myself, a happy, conscious sense that I was pleasing God, living right, and spending all my powers to get others into such a life. I saw that all this ought to be, and I decided that it should be. It is wonderful that I should have reached ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... is. There is no sinner that will be visited with a heavier vengeance than that cool and calculating man, who, because he dislikes the unyielding purity of the moral law, and the awful sanctions by which it is accompanied, deliberately alters it to suit his wishes and his self-indulgence. If a person is tempted and falls into sin, and yet does not change his religious creed in order to escape the reproaches of conscience and the fear of retribution, there is hope that the orthodoxy of his head may result, by God's blessing upon his own truth, in sorrow for the sin and a forsaking ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed them by continued gratification. He will not think, it is true, to any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon himself and his ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... II. was not characterized by any special development in the political condition of the country. Lacking in energy and decision, given to self-indulgence, controlled by courtiers and favorite women, although by the partition of Poland he increased the national domains, and by educational measures helped to promote German literature instead of the French preferred by his father, he was yet too inferior to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of King Ethelred the Unready, when the teaching of good King Alfred was fast fading away from the minds of his descendants, and self-indulgence was ruining the bold and hardy habits of the English, the fleet was allowed to fall into decay, and Danish ships again ventured to ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would be done away with. I felt even then the shame and disgrace of so doing, and knew also the trouble and grief I was causing to you, whom (although you may find it difficult to believe) I really loved, and who had ever been such a kind friend to me. I now see that it was a love of self-indulgence which led me to commit so foul a sin. Conscience remonstrated, and the words of the Bible, so early instilled into my mind by my mother, constantly reproached me; but I turned from and stifled the voice of conscience, and deliberately chose the evil way. All these years I have experienced ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... a poor man for a year, would learn how infinitely more noble was the abstinence of this young Roman, who though born in the midst of splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe the petty vice of gluttony, and to despise the unmanliness of self-indulgence. Very early in life he joined the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not only a duty but ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... left-hand defections," provided they promise to interest himself and to amuse his readers. Judging from Coleridge's similar practice, we are forced to conclude that it is in De Quincey too—a weakness fostered, if not produced, by long habits of self-indulgence. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... And if his conduct under the circumstances was not exactly what a father or brother of Paolina might have desired it to be, the fault arose from the indecision of character, which belonged to a weak man accustomed to self-indulgence. There was difficulty and annoyance before him; and instead of meeting it, as a strong man would have done, he turned from it, and was content to put off the evil day, contenting himself with the enjoyment of that which was passing. He marvelled ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... which a man takes delight, so that his bent is towards it, his time spent in it, and his whole life ordered with a view to it, is said to be the life of that man. Hence some are said to lead a life of self-indulgence, others a life of virtue. In this way the contemplative life is distinguished from the active, and thus to know God is said to be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... and though it may be doubted whether they openly ventured to deny the claims of all the other books of the Old Testament, it is certain that they discarded the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, [10:2] and that they were disposed to self-indulgence and to scepticism. There was another still smaller Jewish sect, that of the Essenes, of which there is no direct mention in the New Testament. The members of this community resided chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, and as our Lord seldom visited that quarter of the country, it would ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... in the world and see what way it is that has brought your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true success lies in a contented heart and ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... stranger mental and spiritual dress fade, and we have here a mere woman, affected, as every true sister of hers to-day would be, by the helpless wailing. God has put that instinct there. Alas that it ever should be choked by frivolity or pride, and frozen by indifference and self-indulgence! Gentle souls spring up in unfavourable soil. Rameses was a strange father for such a daughter. How came this dove in the vulture's cage? Her sweet pity beside his cold craft and cruelty is like the lamb couching by the lion. Note, too, that gentlest pity makes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... answer is much easier. According to him, instead of working better, organising better, and putting more of our output into plant and equipment and less into self-indulgence and vulgarity all that we have to do to work the necessary reform is to provide more money and credit. Since, he ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... is a grave importance as well as a pleasant charm in the beginning of life. There is awe as well as excitement in it when rightly viewed. The possibilities that lie in it of noble or ignoble work—of happy self-sacrifice or ruinous self-indulgence—the capacities in the right use of which it may rise to heights of beautiful virtue, in the abuse of which it may sink to the depths of debasing vice—make the crisis one of fear as well as of hope, of sadness as well ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... this there is nothing which for one moment implies approval of licentiousness, profligacy, unbridled self-indulgence. On the contrary, it is a well-considered and intellectually-defensible scheme of human evolution, regarding all natural instincts as matters for regulation, not for destruction, and seeking to develop the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and wide. In the course of them no doubt he studied other things than botany. It may be that he sowed some of the wild oats with which youth is endowed; but not in the gardens of others; nor with that cold self-indulgence which transforms passionate impulse into sensual habit. He had a permanent and regulative devotion to botanical research; and that is a study which seems to promote modesty, tranquillity, and steadiness of mind in its devotees, of whom ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... end, and these means can be procured only by sinning. Obstacles often stand in the way and new sins furnish steps to vault over, or implements to batter them down. Intricate and difficult conditions frequently arise as the result of self-indulgence, out of which there is no exit but by fresh sins. Hence the long train of crimes led by one capital sin towards the goal of its satisfaction, and hence the havoc wrought by its untrammeled ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... his error in regard to Adrian; he found he had mistaken vivacity for genius, and frankness of manner for generosity of heart, when in fact his favourite proved unformed and untaught, indifferent to the opinion of all whom he ought to have valued, and given up to idleness and self-indulgence. Such a companion was quitted without any effort of resolution, but the sister's power over him did not yield so easily. Amaranthe's vanity had been too much flattered by such a conquest, for her to endeavour to conceal the satisfaction it afforded her, and the enamoured Lionel was ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... vain-glory, and luxury are ever prompt to rise,—visions that belong only to the love of self and of the world,—visions that do not beckon us onward to the performance of duty, but only entice us with the allurements of sensuality and self-indulgence; or still worse, if discontent, envy, and malice darken the temple of Imagination with their scowls, the kingdom of heaven is far from us as the antipodes. This imaginary heaven that selfishness and worldliness have built up within us is in truth ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... only survived his last victory over the Danes, at Kent, a few years, when he died greatly lamented. He was a brave soldier, a successful all-around monarch, and a progressive citizen in an age of beastly ignorance, crime, superstition, self-indulgence, ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... laws. Still as an after thought Saadia added a chapter to the "Emunot ve-Deot" in which he attempts to give a psychological basis for human conduct. Noting the various tendencies of individuals and sects in his environment to extremes in human behavior, some to asceticism, some to self-indulgence, be it the lust of love or of power, he lays emphasis on the inadequacy of any one pursuit for the demands of man's complex nature, and recommends a harmonious blending of all ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... of some other one. For example, we must think of other people's convenience in the exercise of our own liberty and in the indulgence of our own tastes and desires. It may be pleasant for us to lie late in bed in the morning, and we may be inclined to regard the habit as only a little amiable self-indulgence. But there is a more serious side to the practice. It breaks the harmonious flow of the household life. It causes confusion in the family plans for the day. It makes extra work for faithful housekeepers or servants. It sorely tries ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... approve of the virtue which costs no trouble; to contemplate in ourselves or others, with a spurious moral satisfaction, the development of this or that virtuous quality in souls which are deteriorating in undoubted criminal self-indulgence. We have all of us, at the bottom of our hearts, a fellow feeling for all human affection; and the sinfulness of sinners like Tristram and Yseult lies largely in the fact that they pervert this legitimate and holy sympathy into a dangerous leniency for ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... after having posted his secret letter, he had regained a certain measure of composure by writing in his secret diary. He was aware of the danger of that strange self-indulgence. He alludes to it himself, but he could not refrain. It calmed him—it reconciled him to his existence. He sat there scribbling by the light of a solitary candle, till it occurred to him that having heard the explanation of Haldin's arrest, as ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... he was from active life in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone was far too acute an observer to have any leanings to the delusive self-indulgence of temporary retirements. To his intimate friend, Sir Walter James, who seems to have nursed some such intention, he wrote at this very ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the wide discrepancies between what he had proposed and what he had accomplished. How insignificant circumstances had effected momentous results! He saw how, whenever failure and dishonor had filtered in, it was where weakness, self-indulgence, or untruthfulness, had left an opening. He saw how one wrong had been a sure and easy path to another, until in the end he had groveled ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... herself suffering from various diseases, shut herself up in her house, and refused to see any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted everybody. Infatuation with every new acquaintance was quickly ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... been prompted to leave her under an illusion by a distinct calculation of his own possible need, but since that critical moment it seemed to him that the web had gone on spinning itself in spite of him, like a growth over which he had no power. The elements of kindness and self-indulgence are hard to distinguish in a soft nature like Tito's; and the annoyance he had felt under Tessa's pursuit of him on the day of his betrothal, the thorough intention of revealing the truth to her with which he set out to fulfil his promise of seeing her again, were a ...
— Romola • George Eliot |
