"Self-interest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Self-interest, the real basis of law. Quality of water. Regulations governing foods. Basis of pure food laws. Protection of milk. Laws governing ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... my first point is not so necessary as it was in 1908. The assumption that men are automatically guided by 'enlightened self-interest' has been discredited by the facts of the war and the peace, the success of an anti-parliamentary and anti-intellectualist revolution in Russia, the British election of 1918, the French election of 1919, the confusion ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... to his sponsor) was going completely to the bad, and the printer's apprentice was acting the part of a Don Juan among little work girls. His morality, learned in Paris drinking-saloons, laid down the law of self-interest as the sole rule of guidance; he knew, moreover, that next year he would be "drawn for a soldier," to use the popular expression, saw that he had no prospects, and ran into debt, thinking that soon he should be in the army, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... to relate what followed. It may all be read in those three depositions, so artless, so manifestly unfeigned, in which, without being sworn, she made it her duty to avow what self-interest bade her conceal, owning even to things which were afterwards turned to the cruellest account ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... on himself," she answered, smiling. "He must be sincerely religious, truly pious, without the least self-interest, not concerned about the riches of our house, able to rise above all petty social considerations on the two wings which God has ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... unanimity of sentiment or principle existed among our own people in the war of the Revolution, than in this. Democracy, asserting its rights, brought on the conflict then, though aristocracy, goaded by the instinct of self-preservation and self-interest, joined hands and aided it to its consummation. Patriotism grew in the hearts of each, and held us together as a nation for about eighty years; but the subordinate antagonism, tortured by its unnatural alliance during all those years, now in turn strikes also for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... relations between the Sakais and the people surrounding them I was put on my guard against certain exaggerated and prejudiced reports and felt strongly tempted to try and dissipate the vague mystery—that I somehow guessed was based upon self-interest—in which they wished to envelop the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... prayer is in the sense of dependance, and in the instinct of self-preservation or self-interest. The first objects of prayer to the infant man will be those on which by his localities he believes himself to be most dependant for whatever blessing his mode of life inclines him the most to covet, or from which may come whatever peril his instinct will teach him the most to deprecate and fear. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... head of another Fashionable Foreigner [shews the head], a very simple machine; for he goes upon one spring, self-interest. This head may be compared to a disoblezeance; for there is but one seat in it, and that is not the seat {41}of understanding: yet it is wonderful how much more rapidly this will move in the high road of preferment than one of your thinking, feeling, complex, English ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... simple a theory of political human nature—a theory which orthodox socialism adopted from the classical political economy, and has tended to retain in spite of growing evidence of its falsity. Economic self-interest, and even economic class-interest, is by no means the only important political motive. Officials, whose salary is generally quite unaffected by their decisions on particular questions, are likely, if they are of average honesty, to decide according to their view ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... in these very days? And Mammon is weak, too. This world is not a shop, men are not merely money-makers and wages-earners. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in that sort of philosophy. Self-interest and covetousness cannot keep society orderly and peaceful, let sham philosophers say what they will. And then comes tyranny, lawlessness, rich and poor staining their hands in each other's blood, as we saw ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... state of affairs appeared, in the eyes of those who were not blinded by self-interest, on both sides of the Atlantic, is shown by the following extracts from Burke ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... than with one, and that they are able to supply the place of any good which may be in it by a project of their own,—namely, by a sort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the physical wants of men, progressively carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as they have got an entirely new nomenclature of technical terms) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... besides putting into execution all his histrionic talents, he had the adroitness to address himself to those feelings of self-interest which he knew were perhaps more powerful than those of admiration and respect for his own saintly proceedings in his new diocese. Cretineau Joly, in his 'Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus', vol. iii., p. 333 (Paris, 1845), tells us that Cardenas ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... reminds one of the actions of their masters when possessed with the blind rage of a mob. Yet in the shepherd-dog we find this ancestral motive, once a large part of the life of the creature, so overcome by education and selection that they will not only care for a flock with all the devotion which self-interest can lead the master to give to the task, but they will cheerfully undergo almost any measure of privation in order to protect their charges from harm. The annals of shepherd districts, especially those where winter snows ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... new light; depth of light. Had the veil lifted at last? The welter of sullen anger subsided within him. The wrapped mystery of the mountain twilight hushed speech. What folly it all was—that far off clamor of greed in the Outer World, that wolfish war of self-interest down in the Valley, that clack of the wordsters darkening wisdom without knowledge! As if one man, as if one generation of men, could stay the workings of the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than one man's ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Ethel's: "I never saw such a change. Mat Fleet was one of the most warm, open-hearted fellows in the world, up to anything. I can hardly believe he is the same—turned into a mere machine, with a moving spring of self-interest! I don't believe he cares a rush for any living thing! Except for your sake, Margaret, I wish I had never seen him again, and only remembered him as he was at Edinburgh, as I remembered dear old Spencer. It is a grievous thing! Ruined entirely! No doubt that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Chinese, is one composed of a large number of nationalities which have very little in common, and amongst whom a good deal of rivalry prevails. It may have been that when the question of revising the treaties was being keenly agitated, self-interest, or what was deemed to be self-interest, occasioned a sort of fictitious unity among foreigners, but at the present time, so far as my observation has gone, there is very little real unity among the foreigners ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... injurious sentiments—self-destroying; but I always maintain that sentiment is stronger than fact, and even than self-interest. I see clearly how foolish these feelings are, and how they operate to the disadvantage of those whom they influence. Yet I confess that were I in the same position I should be just as foolish. If I lived in a cottage of three rooms, and earned my bread by dint ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... and women have hardly got a firm hold of life at all, or have parted with weak illusions. Yet years before she had said sternly to a friend who was meditating a flight from hard conditions of life: "The right course is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest." Many people could have said that, but I know no figure who more relentlessly and loyally carried out the principle than Charlotte Bronte, or who waged a more vigorous and tenacious battle with ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... answered for them all. To sacrifice decency to self-interest wasn't in them, nor never would be. Some there might be, like 'Enery Steptoe, who would sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, but Mary Ann Courage was not of that company, nor any other woman upon whom she could use her influence. If a hussy had ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... you, then," he said with heat, "I imagine the mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not better and could not be better; my horses carry me well enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to me. An arbitrator of disputes is no use ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... times no! The man who avoids his kind and lives in solitude fancies he is doing some great thing and raising himself above the level of the existence he despises. But look a little closer: it is self-interest and egoism which drive him into the cave and the cloister. In any case he neglects his highest duty towards humanity—or let us say merely towards the society he belongs to—in order to win what he believes to be his own ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... rejoined, with a bewildered expression. As he spoke his mind revolved in the devious mesh of trap which he had set for Carroll, and realized the clean cutting of it by Carroll by the ruthless method of self-interest. Neither man had spoken besides a defiant response to Carroll's polite "Good-evening," when they had entered. They sat and watched and listened. Occasionally one raised a hand, and an enormous diamond glowed with a red light like a ruby. In the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wrote (May 20th, 1880) to the effect that "self-interest as a motive for conduct is a thing to be commended—and it certainly [is] I think...the only conceivable rational motive of conduct: and always is the tacitly recognised motive in all rational actions." Mr. Preston does not, of course, commend selfishness, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... self-government. A popular assembly was accordingly established in 1619; restrictions on conduct and religious opinion were relaxed; and land grants, both to individuals and to corporations, in small and large tracts, were made on easy terms. It was hoped that an appeal to self-respect and to self-interest would encourage immigration and foster thrift and industry. When Sandys became treasurer in 1618 the time seemed propitious; for it had already been discovered that Virginia tobacco could be sold at a profit in London; and it was the expectation of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... herself was practically removed forever. Thus faded the old life out of Arthur's view, its sin-stained personages frightened off the scene by his well-used knowledge of their crimes. Whatever doubt they held about his real character, self-interest ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... be sufficiently grateful for the oft-reiterated advice of my father to his children. "Never," he would say, "act a selfish part." In all your plans and purposes in life, do not have an exclusive regard to self-interest. If you do, you will find many competitors. But if you strive to render others happy, you will always find a large and open field of enterprise; and let me assure you that this is the best way to promote your own happiness ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... are no freemen, nor any mean between chiefs and slaves. Their community is composed of but two extremes, so far separated. It is a fact that there are many ways by which to reduce men to such a condition, and there is no escape from the injury. For, since self-interest is the advantage of those who are powerful, it unites them against the unfortunate one who dares to proclaim the offense that has been done to him, while his punishment conciliates so many other offenders ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Cowperwood very solemnly. There was a kind of mutual sympathy, understanding, and admiration between the two men, but it was still heavily veiled by self-interest. To Mr. McKenty Cowperwood was interesting because he was one of the few business men he had met who were not ponderous, pharasaical, even hypocritical when they were ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... myself. I crushed the letter up in my burning hand. I turned fiercely round upon that yellow, enigmatic, dying figure in the great chair. All the fury, locked within my heart for so long, rose to the surface, and drove self-interest away. I turned upon my grandmother with blazing eyes and trembling limbs. I opened my mouth to utter a torrent of reproachful words, when—what was it?—what slight change had stolen into the wrinkled, yellow face? I bent over her. ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... view of our common motives still inclines to reduce everything to a single impulse—the young are moved exclusively by self-interest and the search for pleasure. But surely this view is false. Hazlitt, the English essayist most interested in psychology, in his essay on "Mind and Motive," correctly observes that, "love of strong excitement both in thought and action" ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... our security and our efficiency as a force for peace and good in the world, demand a big navy, a merchant marine, and the self-discipline and safeguard of adequate military preparedness. The need of these and of a diplomacy of intelligent self-interest, continuity, and intense nationalism is the lesson brought home to us by the European war in its effects upon our Latin-American relations as well as upon our general position ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Obligation I have to some of the witty Sparks and Poets of the Town, has put me on a Vindication of this Comedy from those Censures that Malice, and ill Nature have thrown upon it, tho in vain: The Poets I heartily excuse, since there is a sort of Self-Interest in their Malice, which I shou'd rather call a witty Way they have in this Age, of Railing at every thing they find with pain successful, and never to shew good Nature and speak well of any thing; but when they are sure 'tis damn'd, then they afford ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... The self-interest of each one of the parties to the war is evident, with the exception of Turkey. Why she ever entered in on the side of Germany, or on either side, is a puzzle. She was the one to lose in any event. German success meant German domination. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... less that he was winning the crown of a moral hero. He simply saw a mass of abuse and wickedness which every decent person ought to repudiate. Most decent persons saw it, too, but convention, or self-interest, party affiliation, or unromantic, every-day cowardice, made them hold their tongues. Being assigned to committees which had some of the most important concerns of New York City in charge, Roosevelt had the advantage ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and impertinent to any purpose of his system. The reader may catch our meaning in the following illustration. It is a matter of general belief, that happiness, upon the whole, follows in a higher degree from constant integrity, than from the closest attention to self-interest. Now happiness is one of those consequences which Paley meant by final or remotest. But we could never use this idea as an exponent of integrity, or interchangeable criterion, because happiness cannot be ascertained or appreciated except upon long tracts of time, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... not fail of having devoted followers among the able, the ambitious, and the vain. It must also be confessed that Lord Vargrave neglected no baser and less justifiable means to cement his power by placing it on the sure rock of self-interest. No jobbing was too gross for him. He was shamefully corrupt in the disposition of his patronage; and no rebuffs, no taunts from his official brethren, could restrain him from urging the claims of any of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that with the fierce chief Caonaba to reckon with, military strength and capacity would be the only means of holding the country. The commander could not count on patriotism, religious principle or even self-interest to keep the colonists united. In this tangled situation one of the few persons who really enjoyed himself was Alonso de Ojeda. Instead of spending his time in drinking, quarreling or getting himself into trouble with friendly natives, the young man ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... more crafty thieves than domestic ones; and met with masters who roared out for liberty abroad, acting the arbitrary tyrants in their own houses:—he saw ignorance and passion exercise the rod of justice; oppression, the handmaid of power; self-interest outweighing friendship and honesty in the opposite scale; pride and envy spurning and trampling on what was more worthy than themselves;—he saw the pure white robes of truth sullied with the black hue of hypocrisy and dissimulation; he sometimes, too, met ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... so long as English prose is read. 'Somehow that period [the time just after the French Revolution] was not a time when NOTHING WAS GIVEN FOR NOTHING. The mind opened, and a softness might be perceived coming over the heart of individuals beneath "the scales that fence" our self-interest.' As Wordsworth wrote: ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... also, that, in a world where so little conformity takes place between the ideal speculations of men and the gross realities of life, where marriages are governed in so vast a proportion by convenience, prudence, self-interest,—any thing, in short, rather than deep sympathy between the parties,—and, consequently, where so many men must be crossed in their inclinations, we yet hear of so few tragic catastrophes on that account. The king, however, was certainly among the number of those who are susceptible of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... indifference with which he seemed to regard them, somewhat overawed his companion, and deterred him from making any attempts to enter upon conversation. His own reflections were, moreover, agitated by various surmises, and by plans of self-interest, with which these were intimately connected. The travellers journeyed, therefore, in silence, until it was interrupted by the annunciation, on the part of the guide, that his 'naig had lost a fore-foot shoe, which, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the deaconesses. Other nurses, however well prepared in the best of training-schools, do not have the same high motive that lifts the service onto the plane of religious duty, where the question of self-interest is wholly lost sight of. It was the perception of this truth that led the authorities of the German Hospital in Philadelphia to send to Germany for deaconesses as nurses, and that has brought about the erection of the magnificent Mary ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... calculations of a sordid self-interest, in nations commercially avaricious, always at last displace the sentiments and lofty impulses of Honor and Generosity by which they rose to greatness; which made Elizabeth and Cromwell alike the protectors of Protestants beyond the four seas of England, against crowned ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... only waiting to be asked about it? The Baron was now not a little concerned at the thought that Daniel, whom he had so grossly insulted, might let large sums moulder somewhere sooner than discover them to him, not so much, of course, from any motives of self-interest,—for of what use could even the largest sum of money be to him, a childless old man, whose only wish was to end his days in the castle of R—sitten?—as from a desire to take vengeance for the affront put upon him. He gave V—— a circumstantial account ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of him with conscientious and self-applausive rapacity, while he admired his prosperity, and tried to account for it by doubt of its injustice. For a moment this seemed to him worse than Durgin's conscientious toughness, which was the antithesis of Whitwell's remorseless self-interest. For the moment this claimed Cynthia of its kind, and Westover beheld her rustic and Yankee of her father's type. If she was not that now, she would grow into that through the lapse from the personal to the ancestral which we all undergo in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... other, and remonstrate with her, they remained always obstinately loyal. We may cynically attribute the fact to their consciousness that if they deserted her their doom under her rival would be sealed. Were that the true interpretation—were they really guided merely by a more or less enlightened self-interest—it is rather natural to suppose that some of them would have played a double game and secured friends in the other camp, like the Whig and Tory statesmen of the early eighteenth century; that they would have managed their own affairs so that they could change ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... gentlemen toward our object. There was not a single dissenting voice to any of the statements made, or any of the sentiments expressed. This fact shows that the prevailing feeling is in favor of freedom, and that too on the score of policy and self-interest. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to the farther End of the Widow's Coffeehouse, I shall from hence give you some account of the Behaviour of our Hackney-Coachmen since my last. These indefatigable Gentlemen, without the least Design, I dare say, of Self-Interest or Advantage to themselves, do still ply as Volunteers Day and Night for the Good of their Country. I will not trouble you with enumerating many Particulars, but I must by no means omit to inform you of an Infant about six foot high, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... various degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty. While professing to seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and neutral peoples jointly. The tide of public trust in them has reached ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... worth; (29) and so he called upon his hearers to be as sensible and useful as they could be, so that, be it father or brother or any one else whose esteem he would deserve, a man should not hug himself in careless self-interest, trusting to mere relationship, but strive to be useful to those whose ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... here with the extremes of extrospection and introspection, it is safe to say that in the vast majority of people there is a definite and unassailable interest in both of these directions. Interest in others is not altruism and interest in the self is not self-interest or egoism. But, on the whole, they who are not interested in others never become philanthropists; they who are not interested in things never become savants; and they who do not dig deep into themselves are not philosophers. There are, therefore, certain practical aspects ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... in "Les Funambules," "is high comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian language has but two tones,—Self-interest, Vanity." ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... of our lives! Because we have consented to certain pleasures, we must, so that he may enjoy a greater, sacrifice our future to him!... In fact, he goes farther and says that woman, when she indulges in those experiments, is following the dictates of a loathsome and mean self-interest. Self-interest, when this conduct entails endless dangers and bitterness! Self-interest, when it demands of us, before all, an absolute contempt of a world to which nearly all are slaves, when it exposes us to insults and suffering and increases the number of our enemies and multiplies the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... not difficult to see why this should be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom, that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by his will; it is determined by the object of ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... been right in her judgment; he was changed. Several influences had been at work to make a new man of him. Hitherto his life had been unconsciously selfish. It had been all getting, and no giving. That had seemed inevitable in his college days; but when they were over, self-interest had still remained the strongest force. To attain, to gain what he desired most for himself, had brought him to this country practice, and for a while he was in danger of quenching finally the generous impulses that were a part of his nature. But until Gilbert ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... by detached parties of troops, the captives, of barbaric and Grecian origin mostly, but here and there interspersed with men of other races—Jews, Syrians, and Huns—who, through contiguity of place or love of arms or self-interest, or a kindred hatred of the Roman rule, had been drawn into the battle—and who, having bravely stood their ground, striving for success, and with hearts well prepared for the consequences of failure, had been overtaken by the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... certainly far more true of Napoleon than of any other heroic personage; an affectionate awe has sometimes lifted him to heaven, a spiteful hate has often hurled him down to hell. Every nation, every party, faction, and cabal among his own and other peoples, has judged him from its own standpoint of self-interest and self-justification. Whatever chance there may be of reading the secrets of his life lies rather in a just consideration of the man in relation to his times, about which much is known, than in an attempt at the psychological dissection of an enigmatical ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... not arguments for the wide distribution of the ballot—they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the self-interest of the present real rulers. We say easily, for instance, "The ignorant ought not to vote." We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... there was a something really charming in the expression of his mouth and eyes, "that though I can give orders to very many people, and be obeyed as a general is obeyed by his soldiers in war times, I have no friend. Fear attracts this person to me, self-interest attracts that person, but there's no one that's ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... moreover, tend to political corruption. If there are no convictions and no principles to which to appeal, appeal must be made to self-interest or to fear. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... establishment of conditions that will enable us to utilize to the utmost the free gifts of a gracious God; to the proper distribution of wealth; to the emancipation of labor, not by the law of blind force, but enlightened self-interest—not by riotous revolution, but peaceful evolution. I want to see every American Citizen in very truth a Sovereign, to whom life is a joy instead of a curse. I want to see every rag transformed into a royal robe, every hovel ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... influenced him to screen the poor boy from full exposure, he began to ask himself whether this was a mere cowardly alternative suggested by his own fears. But for this, he would have determined at once on the more lenient and merciful course; but he had to face this question of self-interest very earnestly, nor could he come to any conclusion about it until he had determined to take a step in all respects worthy of the highest side of his character, by going, in any case, spontaneously to Dr Lane and laying before ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... other's shoulders, at arm's length they stood, a likely pair to look at, smiling frankly and joyfully into each other's eyes. When it is without self-interest, friendship between man and man is a fine and noble thing. It is known best in the stress of storms, in the hour of sorrow and adversity. Friendship, to be perfect, must be without any sense of obligation; for obligation ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... treatment, lest, through his influence, she with her husband, might lose their situation. This forced forbearance, however, was far from warming her heart towards its object. Mrs. Mudge was a hard, practical woman, and her heart was so encrusted with worldliness and self-interest that she might as well have been ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... that the floor there keep the secret of it all both from me and from others!' But even as he says this to himself he has taken a new tube from the rack and crawled—ten years older for that last ten minutes—to his chemical case. The life-long habit of truth is so strong in him that self-interest cannot submerge it. He repeats the experiment, and confirms his fears. The battle between his life and a few drops of liquid in a test-tube has been mercilessly fought, and he has lost! The elasticity of the man is gone forever, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... compromising would not have occurred to him, but her marvellous beauty presenting itself in the same scale with her necessity, blinded him to prudence and every other consideration but passion. It was a contest between the cunning of a luscious beauty striving for a secret end and the self-interest of a mercenary man. The victory was hers, though scarcely by the means she ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... 1821-1881 Self-interest Woman's ideal the Community's Fate Wagner's Music French Self-Consciousness Secret of Remaining Young Frivolous Art Results of Equality Critical Ideals View-Points of History The Best Art Introspection and Schopenhauer The True Critic Music and the Imagination Spring—Universal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... occur to the religious," he said, "but I will give you one that will appeal to your own self-interest. If you kill me, the curse which follows the parricide will follow you to your last hour—of the beyond ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... personal interest first. If Mr. Olcott's idea of having a local vice-president offer prizes, no matter how small, for nuts in the vicinity, and would also state that any one finding some remarkable nut would have that nut named after him to go down to all time, you would have two points there in self-interest. First, a five dollar prize to the best nut; next the name going rattling down through time in association with it. There are two points of personal interest. We may as well take it back to the basic principles and begin with the psychology of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Wright Davis, the bereaved widower pressed into Miss Anthony's hand canceled notes for five hundred dollars, bearing on the back the words, "In memory of my beloved wife." One other note was canceled in recognition of her perfect forgetfulness of self-interest and ready sacrifice to the needs of others. When laboring, in 1874, to fill every engagement, in order to meet her debts, her mother's sudden illness called her home. Without one selfish regret, the anxious daughter hastened to Rochester. When recovery was certain, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... meddle. Nevertheless, here and there they seemed to touch upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a dreary uncomfortable ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a principal of physical interpretation into a metaphysical view of the world of an atheistical character. Naturalism is everywhere determined to have its own: if knowledge comes from the senses, then morality must be rooted in self-interest; whoever confines natural science to the search for mechanical causes must not postulate an intelligent Power working from design, even to explain the origin of things and the beginning of motion—has no right to speak of a free will, an immortal soul, and a deity who has created ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... mental subjection the more complete, he had in his simplicity peered like a child through all her disguises and painted her soul as he saw it—as it was. The flattery was the more effectual because of its subtlety and because she knew, as he did, that in it there was no guile, no self-interest or sentimentality. And in return she could have paid him no higher compliment than when coolly, almost coldly, she told him of her life and what she had ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... causation, on the other the art of lying and deceit. The object of Strepsiades in attending the school is to learn how not to pay his debts; the achievement of his son is to learn how to dishonour his father. The cult of reason is identified by the poet with the cult of self-interest; the man who does not believe in the gods cannot, he implies, believe in the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... same thing; and it was more difficult to prevent this than to execute the game-laws. For such an order of affairs the decision of the French Academy was largely responsible, for if men only find a shadow of right on the side of self-interest, they are likely enough to take ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... of social principle, religious duty, or self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary, and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... people at home, and retain with us the means which otherwise would be shipped abroad. The extension of railroads in Europe and the East is bringing into competition with our agricultural products like products of other countries. Self-interest, if not self-preservation, therefore dictates caution against disturbing any industrial interest of the country. It teaches us also the necessity of looking to other markets for the sale of our surplus. Our neighbors south of us and China and Japan, should receive our special ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lover at my bidding; she renounces her love for me at the bidding of the world. Or was it not rather self-interest, the fear of making a bad marriage, which influenced her in her renunciation of Mr. Hammond. It was not obedience to me, it was not love for me which made her give him up. It was the selfishness engrained in her race. Well, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... should never return to Radack, and that if his son accompanied me, he must take leave of him for ever. This was too much for the father's heart; he embraced his son, and would no longer think of a separation. He was also overcome with sorrow at the idea of seeing me for the last time; and a little self-interest probably mingled in the melancholy look he cast upon a hatchet which I had given him, as he exclaimed—"I shall never get ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... these men take their political opinions from the newspaper they read, and trouble themselves very little further about a matter in which their own stake, one would think, would rouse them to exertion, from the promptings of enlightened self-interest, if not from the more ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Development. There is another international force which expresses itself in the same sense. The voice of abstract justice raised against war is fortified by the voice of concrete self-interest. The interests of the propertied classes, and therefore of the masses dependent upon them, are to-day so widely distributed throughout the world that whenever any country is plunged into a disastrous war there ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Remember that self-interest is more likely to warp your judgment than all other circumstances combined, therefore, look well to your duty ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... out the almost necessarily direct pecuniary benefit ultimately derivable from his unpalatable tax; and the instant that he has disclosed his proposal, in the same breath carries our attention to a similar topic—an assurance calculated to arouse the self-interest and excite the approbation first of the commercial classes, and then of all classes, by the means this tax will give the Minister of proposing "great commercial reforms," and "reducing the cost of living." No power of description we possess can ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and the commerce of Virginia made free, the planters were the only factor. Virginia, it was true, was made a royal province and put under deputy rule, but the big planters contrived to get the laws and customs their self-interest called for. There were only two classes—the rich planters, with their gifts of land, their bond-servants and slaves and, on the other hand, the poor whites. A ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... all day, and one of them Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyer's Crossing. He was a kind of friend o' Pete's wife. That's why I thought yer might find out ef he'd been there." Salomy Jane grew more self-reproachful at her father's self-interest in her "neighborliness." "But that ain't all," continued Mr. Clay. "Thar was tracks over the far pasture that warn't mine. I followed them, and they went round and round the house two or three times, ez ef they mout hev bin prowlin', ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... they could not contradict him. When he reviled the laws of his country, which had done so much to facilitate the escape of a criminal, they had no arguments to prove that he was wrong. They bore with him in his rage, hoping that a sense of his own self-interest might induce him to listen to reason. But it was all in vain. The property was sweet, but that sweetness was tasteless when compared to the sweetness ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... are extravagant and wasteful appropriations there must be a corresponding increase of taxes, and the people, becoming awakened, will necessarily scrutinize the character of measures which thus increase their burdens. By the watchful eye of self-interest the agents of the people in the State governments are repressed and kept within the limits of a just economy. But if the necessity of levying the taxes be taken from those who make the appropriations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... he once clearly understands that to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that to maim another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence of God furnishes a ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... the seals of professional reticence broken by this strange and awful accident. But there was no real emotion in his temper—only curiosity, self-interest, the impulse of loquacity. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... appearance would be as terrible in its effect as the head of Medusa. But the presence of the widow restrained him. Why ruin his future and dry up the golden spring which had just begun to gush before his eyes, for the sake of taking part in a melodrama? Prudence and self-interest kept him ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... herself to teach, and now, with a fine intellect thoroughly cultivated, is the pride of all who can appreciate true nobility of soul and, of course, an object of envy and detraction to her inferiors, especially to some of our fashionable parvenus, whose self-interest prompts them to make money alone the standard of worth, and who are in the habit of determining the gentility of different persons by what they have, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... made for the vis inertiae of whatever exists, which makes it exert a stubborn and not unwholesome resistance to the reformer's zeal. This conservatism (which may, however, have more laudable motives than mere self-interest) Bjoernson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club in the third act. But, I fancy, it looks to him only as a sinister power, which for its own base purposes has smitten humanity with blindness to its ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... recluses in his appearance and manner that they had not thought it necessary to behave very rigidly. It later occurred to this gentleman that the promptness with which the pretty mendicants procured him an interview with the Superior had a flavor of self-interest in; and that he who came to the Conservatorio in the place of a father might have been for a moment ignorantly viewed as a yet dearer and tenderer possibility. From whatever danger there was in this error the Superior soon appeared to rescue him, and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... light of truth dispels the clouds of superstition, as by a new revelation. The Pope and his monks are found to bear, very often, but faint resemblance to Jesus and his apostles. Moreover, the instinct of self-interest sharpens the eye of the public. Many greedy priests, of lower rank, had turned shop-keepers in the Netherlands, and were growing rich by selling their wares, exempt from taxation, at a lower rate than lay hucksters could afford. The benefit of clergy, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to Wages in the Lord's Service.—The instructive and inspiring Parable of the Laborers was called forth by Peter's question of self-interest—"What shall we have therefore?" In tender mercy the Lord refrained from directly rebuking His impulsive servant for undue concern as to the wage to be expected; but He turned the incident to excellent purpose by making ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... inhabitants into retreat. The shops were closed—trade at a stand—the streets deserted—houses tenantless—the oft busy creek had scarcely a boat moving on its surface—the mosques were filled with the dismayed Moslems, whom poverty or self-interest had kept in the town—the Christian churches held the few Armenians and Chaldeans whom fear had driven to pray with sincerity. Here might be seen a cluster of Zobeir Arabs, meditating rapine: and there a straggling Jew, ruminating ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... misgivings of its merit, but in the case of another I could not console myself with this doubt. The sentiment was at the same time one which I could not cherish for the work of an old contributor; such a one stood more upon his own feet; and the young contributor may be sure that the editor's pride, self-interest, and sense of editorial infallibility will all prompt him to stand by the author whom he has introduced to the public, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... really only head-clerk; he understood nothing of his business as a whole; self-interest, that great motor of the mind, had failed in his case to instruct him. He was often aghast when his sister ordered some article to be sold below cost, foreseeing the end of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her cleverness. He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... be said to have originated with the Jewish prophets, who were the first to rebuke kings to their faces and to set forth the spiritual aims of politics—to preach Righteousness and Mercy as against Power and Ambition and Self-interest. Their soaring imagination, less systematic than the Greek intellect, was wider in its sweep and more farseeing in its predictions. 'As the earth bringeth forth her bud and as the garden causeth the things ...
— Progress and History • Various
... plants that surrendered their lives to form and shed them. They just give and give, with no aim but to be bare footstalks when all is done. Everything is loosened and spent without a shade of calculation or self-interest. ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... principles, whose chief delight is to get drunk—to kick up party feuds in fairs and markets, and who have, in fact, a natural love for strife. But all are not so. There are many respectable men here who, though a little touched, as is only natural after all, by a little cacoethes of self-interest, yet, never suffer it to interfere with the steadiness and propriety of their conduct, or the love of peace and good will. It is these men, who, in truth, sustain the character of the Orange-Institution. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... prevalent amongst the parish-officers, that is a disgrace to the country and to the character of Englishmen. It is highly prejudicial to the nation; and, if there were no moral evil attending it, if the feelings of the poor were no object, sic the rich ought to attend to it for self-interest. If they will not, the government of the country is interested, both in honour and in ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... he may have been guided to this course by the question of self-interest is a matter of speculation. He had been cruel enough to strike this old man down and to rob him of his money. He had been wary enough to wound himself, and to have feigned a terror which had deluded many into ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... There is in competitive trade a public, a social character, which monopoly destroys. Even in a simple auction, when the bidding is really competitive, price depends far less on shrewd bargaining, on bluff, or on stubbornness, than is the case in isolated trade. Each bidder is compelled by self-interest to outbid his less eager competitors, and thus the limits within which the price must fall are narrowly fixed. The auction-sale is less a purely personal matter, takes on a more public aspect, has a more socialized character than isolated trade, depends ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... France or Russia, but a dependent on either and on both; her nomad court was reduced to Frederick William, his minister Hardenberg, and a few followers who were here to-day and there to-morrow, wherever they felt most was to be gained from the self-interest of either their former ally or their conqueror. The Queen and royal family were at Memel, the farthest outpost ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... reflected. He seemed to be struggling with self-interest; Chesnel thought that he had gained a hold on his enemy through the great motive of human action. At that supreme ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... his security for men's conduct must be found in their self-interest. He admits thus much practically, so for as his own business is concerned; the exceptions being so rare, as not to justify neglect of the general rule. Yet, neither business men nor politicians grasp the principle clearly, nor consequently ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... nation ought not to be lightly admitted. It is, indeed, true that fanaticism and self-interest had steeled the breasts of the Covenanters against the more generous impulses of loyalty and compassion; and that, by the delivery of the king to his enemies, they violated their previous pledge of personal safety, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... of the gentleman, no stored-up results of education and culture, but only an age-long rage against the age-long dominating class, together with the instincts of craftiness, parsimony, and almost savage self-interest. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... His lack of self-interest, which she divined, charmed Lady Sellingworth; on the other hand, she was tormented by his detachment from her, by his lack of all vision of the truth of the situation. And she was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... with no vouchers whatever, upon a point where they had the deepest interest at stake; whilst on the opposite side, supposing their story true, spoke for them the strongest of all natural instincts—the pleading of the maternal heart, combated by no self-interest whatever. Surely if Lady Macclesfield had not been supported by indignation against an imposture, merely for her own ease and comfort, she would have pensioned Savage, or have procured him some place under Government—not ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... doing this deed of kindness, even though it was affected by self-interest, he had already drunk of the cup tempered with camphor? The desires of his frail human flesh, desires which had had their renaissance since Millicent's appearance, were they quite banished? Had the woman in her white tent meant nothing to him? As if in contradiction ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... their craws until they finally manage to digest it. But they can't digest it and stay what they are; you've got to be democratic, to some extent, to understand the idea. What keeps us obeying laws we ourselves make? What keeps us obeying laws that make things inconvenient for us? Sheer self-interest, of course—but try to make a ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... selfish ambition always injure others? Does he in the end injure himself most of all? How? Every type of selfishness is directly opposed to a man's highest self-interest. Jesus continually had this large truth in mind when he declared, "He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Jesus himself illustrated this principle. ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... with sweet and courteous dignity, "with me the case was very different; because, with me, it was a matter of self-interest; for the service rendered to Miss Merlin was rendered ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sorely perplex any Northern man travelling in either of these States. One would say, that, if there had formerly been such pleasant relations between them, there ought now to be mutual sympathy and forbearance, instead of mutual distrust and antagonism. One would say, too, that self-interest, the common interest of capital and labor, ought to keep them in harmony; while the fact is, that this very interest appears to put them in an attitude of partial defiance toward each other. I believe the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... for which the canonical Hours are offered is for the benefit of the person who recites them. St. Alphonsus wrote, "If they said the Office as they ought, priests themselves should not be always the same, always imperfect, prone to anger, greedy, attached to self-interest and to vanities.... But if they recited the Office, not as they say it with distractions and irreverences, but with devotion and recollection, uniting the affections of the heart with so many petitions which they present to God, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray Which after thy night introduces the day; How concealed, how persuasive, self-interest's breath, Though it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death! I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all, 35 Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall, And duty forbids, though I languish to die, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the Elector would in some measure make the King of Sweden master of his country; besides that, by such a step, he must at once break with the Emperor, and expose his States to his future vengeance. The Elector's struggle with himself was long and violent, but pusillanimity and self-interest for awhile prevailed. Unmoved by the fate of Magdeburg, cold in the cause of religion and the liberties of Germany, he saw nothing but his own danger; and this anxiety was greatly stimulated by his minister Von Schwartzenburgh, who was secretly in the pay of Austria. In the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... heroism has been needed for the work; nor even, to do him justice, what unsuspected capacities may lurk in his own commonplace character. The really characteristic point is, however, that Bentham does not clearly face the problem. He is content to take for granted as an ultimate fact that the self-interest principle in the long run coincides with the greatest 'happiness' principle, and leaves the problem to his successors. There we ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... force of the International Congress went in favor of the idea of reforming the prisoners. For this the body advocated stimulating the prisoners' self-interest, thus: ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... have been turned from the insignificant question "Who was to be King of Numidia?" to the supreme task of punishing the traitors whom he denounced. But we have no right to read Jugurtha's character by the light of the single motive of a self-interest which knew no scruples. He may have had his own ideas of honour and of the protection due to a benefactor or a trusty agent. Self-interest too might in this matter come to the aid of sentiment; for it was at least possible that the popular ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... presence, proved eminently serviceable in drawing over to the interests of the Chief Consul innumerable persons, of their own ways of thinking originally, but no longer such zealous theorists as to resist the arguments of self-interest—those strong springs of hope and fear, of both of which Napoleon, while at the Tuileries, held the master-key. It was thus, also, that, in forming his ministry, he grouped together men, each of whom detested or despised the others; but each unquestionably ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... barbarism, there were nations in the East, including China, superior to them in manners, in education, and in government; possessed of a literature equal to any, and of arts and sciences totally unknown in the West. Self-preservation and self-interest make all men restless, and so Eastern peoples gradually moved to the West taking their knowledge with them; Western people who came into close contact with them learned their civilization. This fusion of East and West was the beginning of ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... remembered how doubtful and tainted is the bulk of our evidence in these matters. These are extraordinarily subtle inquiries, from which few men succeed in disentangling the threads of their personal associations—the curiously interwoven strands of self-love and self-interest that affect their inquiries. One might almost say that instinct fights against such investigations, as it does undoubtedly against many necessary medical researches. But while a long special training, a high tradition and the possibility of reward and distinction, enable the medical student ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Briefly stated, the view prevails in Ireland that in dealing with questions affecting our material well-being, the government of our country by the English was, in the past, characterised by an unenlightened self-interest. Thoughtful Englishmen admit this charge, but they say that the past referred to is beyond living memory and should now be buried. The Irish mind replies that the life of a nation is not to be measured by the life of individuals, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... was the usual one of self-interest. Mr. Leavenworth stood in the way of Eleanore's acknowledging him as a husband, and he must therefore be ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... of respect and affection, either to the Queen or to any private object of local interest, as I have seen in every one of these colonies, and, what is more important, there have been circumstances attending all these displays which have marked their sincerity and proved that neither curiosity nor self-interest were the ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... head flung back, and palms in air, to keep the thought of self-interest away, "oh—oh, Mr. Gourlay! We're thinking of noathing but the common good, I ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... wills of the family members into sharp conflict. Words are used that elsewhere would bring the severest physical answer, or bring about the most complete disruption of friendly relations. Love and anger, duty and self-interest bring about intense inner conflict in the home, and the struggle between the two generations, the rising and the receding, is here ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... kindly that I had so good an opinion of him; that he would not deceive me, that he would do anything in his power to serve me, and expect no salary; but that he could not by any means accept of a trust, that it might bring him to be suspected of self-interest, and that if I should die he might have disputes with my executors, which he should be very loth to encumber ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... how good times are, this sorting continues: only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer—but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best—those who can carry a message ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... irregularity. Evidence of bribery was more difficult to obtain. Plant's easy-going ways had made him friends, and his facile suspension of gracing regulations—for a consideration—appealed strongly to self-interest. However, as always in such cases, enough had at some time felt themselves discriminated against to entertain resentment. Thorne took advantage of this both to get evidence, and to secure information that enabled him to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... excellent intentioned men and women labouring for reforms that could only be hoped for when greed and prejudice had yielded place to reason, and who sought to bring about their ends by appeals to passion and self-interest. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... propagation of the Faith among the savages, and the greater glory of God. But as he knew well that he alone could not accomplish so great a work, he conceived the idea of forming a new company, that would not be devoted either to self-interest or commercial pursuits, like the preceding Associations, but whose chief desire would be the propagation of the Faith in America, and the conversion of the Indians. Full of these pious aspirations, he ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... her thoughts or her feelings. And divining this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... deprived. Their formal approval of the Fourteen Points had been a cause of intense satisfaction to him, but he realized definitely that they would make every effort to interpret them in terms of purely national self-interest. This he regarded as the greatest difficulty to be met at Paris. The second difficulty lay in the extreme demands that were being made by the smaller nationalities, now liberated from Teuton dominion or overlordship. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... to Sunday School, of course; it is convenient to have them out of the way while Sunday's dinner is being cooked and the afternoon snooze being taken. Besides, though the Sunday School teaching is a fearful hotch-potch of heaven, hell and self-interest, the tea-fights concerts and picnics connected with it are well worth going to. But the household religion remains a pure sparrowism, and an excellent creed it is for those of sufficient ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... superior organization of his body. Starting from this point, he argues that all minds are originally equal, and owe their variation to circumstances;(554) that all their faculties and emotions are derivable from sensation; that pleasure is the only good, and self-interest the true ground of morals and the framework of individual ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... more than this. Man is not only an intellectual, but he is also a religious being, and his religious feelings and habits require cultivation. Let the religious element in man's nature be neglected, let him be influenced by no higher motives than low self-interest, and subjected to no stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority, and he becomes the creature of selfish passion or ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing whether he merits your respect; you grow in years and in knowledge; you perceive that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance, self-interest and artifice; you despise what you revered, and the prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the fables with which your childhood was cradled; you have been told that the Titans made war on the gods, and Venus was amorous of ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... they were talking about the Mallingers. Apropos; I am getting so important that I have rival invitations. Gascoigne wants me to go down with him to his father's rectory in August and see the country round there. But I think self-interest well understood will take me to Topping Abbey, for Sir Hugo has invited me, and proposes—God bless him for his rashness! —that I should make a picture of his three daughters sitting on a bank—as he says, in the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... The deputy Guerrazzi, he continued, had read him a lesson in history; it should have been given entire. And he then drew a picture, splendid in its scathing irony, of the unscrupulous alliance of men without principle, of all shades of opinion, only united in self-interest, demagogues, courtiers, reactionists, papists, puritans, without traditions, without ideas, at one in impudent egotism, and in nothing else, who formed the cabal which ruined Clarendon. Every one understood that he was painting his own enemies ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... application to themselves. I myself believe to-day that that war was much one of geography and of lack of transportation. Not all the common folk of the North or of the South then knew that it was never so much a war of principle, as they were taught to think, but rather a war of self-interest between two clashing commercial parties. We did not know that the unscrupulous kings of the cotton world, here and abroad, were making deliberate propaganda of secession all over the South; that secession was not a thing voluntary and spontaneous, but an idea nourished to wrong growth ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... the kindly voice, and his own self-interest becoming prominent once more, old Dougal told his tale—not an uncommon one —of sheep lost on the hill-side, and one misfortune following another, until a large family, children and orphan grandchildren, were driven at last to ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... honestly and wisely spent; to do it with just consideration of local feeling, yet on firm lines of American democracy—this would take study and sagacity. But could study and sagacity be better applied than to make this idea practical? The project seems prompted by wise self-interest and by justice. The South is carrying more than its share of national expense, and without complaint. Our tariff system presses far heavier on the agricultural South than on the manufacturing North. Of our payment of pensions,—running up ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... who had warm fortunes were always sure of getting good husbands: 'But heaven help,' continued she, 'the girls that have none. What signifies beauty, Mr Thornhill? or what signifies all the virtue, and all the qualifications in the world, in this age of self-interest? It is not, what is she? but what has she? ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... seeing that any such document would be as much a certificate of the Normal School's own ability in rearing efficient teachers, as of the pedagogical skill of the teachers which it reared. The vitiating element of self-interest would scarce fail to induce, ultimately at least, a ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Other differences might be composed, but that resting on the instinct of self-preservation could know no end. Statesmen had to shape their policy—sometimes blindly enough—but always under the pressure of this vigorous instinct of self-interest prevalent amongst the trading classes ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... earth is so small, that, if it should fall into the arms of the sun, the sun would just open his mouth and swallow it whole, and nobody ever suspect it, (vide Tyndall on Heat,) one must see that this self-love, self-care, and self-interest play a most important part in the Divine Economy. If one did not keep himself afloat, he would surely go under. As it is, no matter how disagreeable a person is, he likes himself,—no matter how uninteresting, he is interested in himself. Everybody, you, my critic, as well, likes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... as they must be from the spirit of manners prevalent in his era, are reciprocally but so many reasons for not seeking in him the kind of poetry which has been ascribed to him by ignorance, or by defective sensibility, or by the mere self-interest of pedantry. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... blindness of self-interest; but the utterances of the press and the legislative debates of the period are similar in tone. In relation to another railroad, the "Boston Transcript" of Sept. 1, 1830, remarks: "It is not astonishing that so much reluctance exists against plunging ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... misunderstand me," he said. "I am humane as most others, but it is difficult to decide whether or not mere humanity, setting aside self-interest, would not rather condemn you to the speedy death of the wreck than drag you to the worse fate that awaits you here. And please remember that we did succor you, thus risking observation and a visit by the troops when the sea permits a landing. But that is not the true issue. An hour ago there ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... married woman was just dying to change off her husband for the beau that was devoting all his energies to me. I felt that the crisis had come that self-interest and a high moral standard demanded that I should keep this man from the lure of a married woman. I owed it to myself, to Dempster, and, above all, to the cause of morality, to hold that man ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... interdependent; the old civic, fraternal, social and anti-social societies had no present purpose any more. And the once-familiar rallying-points—whether they represented idealistic humanitarianism or crass self-interest—had vanished in the crowd. Patriotism, racialism, unionism, had all been lost in a ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... you have any taint of the blood which you discover inclines you toward guile, insincerity, and untruthfulness fortify yourself by the reflection that insincerity is a losing game. Put it on the low ground of self-interest, and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... taunt so readily rebuttable will anti-Utilitarians be excited to speedier apprehension of the nature of the lien which corporate self-interest is presumed to have upon individual self-devotion. Not the less tenaciously may they cling to their belief in the right of every one to do as he will with whatever has come by fair means into his exclusive ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... relations are needed, and that we are not unreasonable in asking that answer be made to us without awaiting them—especially since they are so dangerous in this country, where the zeal for God's service and that of his Majesty and the public welfare is so lukewarm, and self-interest so strong. A further consideration is, that serious harm to the conversion of those people may result from delay; for those people are very indifferent, and the accursed sect of Mahoma is gaining a foothold ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... of the Archbishop was ascribed to the amiable sentiment of gratitude for the recommendation of that dignitary, by which Vermond himself first obtained his situation at Court; but there were others, who have been deemed deeper in the secret, who impute it to the less honourable source of self-interest, to the mere spirit of ostentation, to the hope of its enabling him to bring about the destruction of the De Polignacs. Be this as it may, the Abbe well knew that a Minister indebted for his elevation solely to the Queen would be supported by her to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Can you commit, uncheck'd by shame, What in a beast so much you blame? 70 What is a law, if those who make it Become the forwardest to break it? The case is plain: you would reserve All to yourselves, while others starve. Such laws from base self-interest spring, Not from the reason of the thing—" He was proceeding, when a swain Burst out,—"And dares a wolf arraign His betters, and condemn their measures, And contradict their wills and pleasures? 80 We have establish'd laws, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... prestige, demanded that we should prosecute operations till we got them, no matter what the cost might be. The rifles were worth little. The men and officers we lost were worth a great deal. It was unsound economics, but Imperialism and economics clash as often as honesty and self-interest. We were therefore committed to the policy of throwing good money after bad in order to keep up our credit; as a man who cannot pay his tradesmen, sends them fresh orders in lieu of settlement. Under these unsatisfactory conditions, the negotiations opened. They did not, however, interfere with ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... nature—all its disputes, all its ill-will and bad blood, rise up before you. You know from your experience of juries (I mean no disparagement to you or them) how much depends upon effect; and you are apt to attribute to others, a desire to use, for purposes of deception and self-interest, the very instruments which you, in pure honesty and honour of purpose, and with a laudable desire to do your utmost for your client, know the temper and worth of so well, from constantly employing them yourselves. I really believe that to this ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald |
