"Disinterested" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good form, these young men who had come out to a dirty devilish war. It was enormously good to hear them talking to each other in just the same civil, disinterested, casual way which belongs to the conversational range of St. James's Street clubs. Not once—like French soldiers—did they plunge into heated discussions on the ethics of war, or the philosophy ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... me that the tie to which I refer will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of calling forth so vigorous a piece of argumentative writing. Nor is this disinterested joy at an attack upon myself diminished by the circumstance, that, in all humility, but in all sincerity, I think it ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... my conduct; having been more solicitous, during the exercise of my ministry, to advance my family than to build up the Lord's house, I will preach hereafter with fervor and zeal. I will be vigilant, sober, rigorous, and disinterested. Let the miser say: I have riches ill acquired. I will purge my house of illicit wealth. I will overturn the altar of Mammon and erect another to the supreme Jehovah. Let the prodigal say: I will extinguish ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... Gerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer that ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds or 'mist, the common gloss of theologians,' but applies the same standard of truth and disinterested spirit of inquiry, that influence his daily practice, to other subjects. He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He reads men and books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a connoisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, because ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Town-clerk, "he is such a friendly and disinterested boy, that I could not get him to accept a place in my office, for fear he should be thought to be pushing himself forward at ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... a highly disinterested quality was this devoted friendship, and so superior was it to the little weaknesses of flattery or ill-nature, that the kind-hearted Miss Knag candidly informed Kate Nickleby, next day, that she saw she would never do for the business, but that she need not give herself the slightest ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... spirit of a philosopher or a philanthropist, but in that of a Belgravian mother, it cannot be cultivated as a fine art. It can only be rescued from the unmerited odium into which it has fallen by being taken under the patronage of those who are in a position to practice it on purely artistic and disinterested grounds. In their hands, the now perilous process of "paying attention" would be studied and criticized in a new spirit. It might still, indeed, be treated arithmetically, as perhaps the most promising way of reducing it to the precision ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... was that of Jonathan, himself a victorious warrior, for Jesse's noble son! How great Jonathan was, who knew that the throne of Israel would pass from his house to David! I was always affected by David's exclamation at Jonathan's death. I thought of it just now. And Scipio had a disinterested friendship for Laelius, although he was aware that envious men desired to rob him of the glory of having conquered Carthage, and ascribed every thing to the skilful plans of Laelius. Just as if, when I narrate the heroic deeds of our ancestors, some one should say, 'The best passages were ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... history which lies open to the very same objections,—the extraordinary and romantic tale we have been just considering. If they have discredited the testimony of witnesses, who are said at least to have been disinterested, and to have braved persecutions and death in support of their assertions,—can these philosophers consistently listen to and believe the testimony of those who avowedly get money by the tales they publish, and who do not even pretend that ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... my wife and daughters: positively, it would be better for them to get a new one, of a tempting pattern which he showed them, than to try to do anything with that. With a stitch or so here and there it might do for a basement dining-room; but, for a parlor, he gave it as his disinterested opinion,—he must say, if the case were his own, he should get, etc., etc. In short, we had a new sofa and new chairs, and the plants and the birds were banished, and some dark-green blinds were put up to exclude the sun from the parlor, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the perils of competition and satisfy his monopolistic instincts: can you do it? It is necessary, further, to interest the consumer in the repression of fraud, which, so long as the producer is not utterly disinterested, is at once impossible and contradictory. Impossible: place on the one hand a depraved consumer, China; on the other a desperate merchant, England; between them a venomous drug causing excitement and intoxication; and, in spite of all the police in the world, you will ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, self-immolation, self- control &c. (resolution) 604; stoicism, devotion, martyrdom, suttee. labor of love. V. be disinterested &c. adj.; make a sacrifice, lay one's head on the block; put oneself in the place of others, do as one would be done by, do unto others as we would men should do unto us. Adj. disinterested; unselfish; self-denying, self-sacrificing, self- devoted; generous. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... answered, with an air of half-angry sincerity altogether convincing, "I really don't know that I am particularly proud of the episode. I know I was careless, that I laid myself open to the invidious comment, which is usually the reward of all disinterested action. One learns to accept it as a matter of course. And you see ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... candid: "The eyes of the country are especially upon you," he said. "The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food," in a disinterested spirit. He asked railroad men of all ranks not to permit the nation's arteries to suffer any obstruction, inefficiency, or slackened power in carrying war supplies. To the merchant he suggested the motto: "small profits and quick service" ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... could launch and man a fleet of a hundred galleys; and the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Normans, were encountered by her naval arms. The Franks of Syria were assisted by the Venetians in the reduction of the sea coast; but their zeal was neither blind nor disinterested; and in the conquest of Tyre, they shared the sovereignty of a city, the first seat of the commerce of the world. The policy of Venice was marked by the avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a maritime, power; yet her ambition ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... communicated to them by the English commissioners. They carried their raids up to the walls of Sarlat, even at the time of vintage, although this season was much respected in the Middle Ages by violent men, from a motive that was perhaps not disinterested. They seized the bullocks that were harnessed to the waggons, and bore them off to their strongholds. It is but fair to add, however, that the Sarladais did not formally submit to English authority until 1361—five ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... himself these compliments. Mademoiselle de Luc d'Estrelles, as he was soon to discover, had been in that perfectly frank, generous, and disinterested state of mind ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the stream of time, we find that Wallace, that noble and disinterested patriot, sought a hiding-place in time of danger amid its dense woods. During a visit to Perth in 1296, a plot was laid by the English to capture him, but, having received timely warning, he made his escape ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... I belong to a society whose object is moral reform. Ask her if ever she heard from my mouth one word of gallantry, or if my services were not disinterested." ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of the Police force. The venerable monarch was received with deafening cheers by this admirable and disinterested body of men. Those cheers were echoed in all French hearts. Long, long may our beloved Prince be among ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... however, that for those who had a personal knowledge of Rossetti some of the letters in this volume will have an interest, owing to the evidence they afford of that authorial generosity which was one of his most beautiful characteristics. His disinterested appreciation of the work of his contemporaries sets him apart from all the other poets of his time and perhaps of any other time. To wax eloquent in praise of this and that illustrious name, and thus to claim a kind of kinship with it, is ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... say, at the present moment d'Artagnan was ruled by a feeling much more noble and disinterested. The mercer had said that he was rich; the young man might easily guess that with so weak a man as M. Bonacieux; and interest was almost foreign to this commencement of love, which had been the consequence of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his generosity disarmed enemies, while his affability made friends. Munificent without assumption, successful without pride, he obliged with grace and shone with safety. People enjoyed his hospitality, for they knew that it was disinterested; and admired his acquirements, for they felt that they were unobtrusive. Sometimes (as in his dialogue with the Cynic) the whim of the moment, or the sting of a sarcasm, drew from him a hint at his station, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... when the Bushmen found, in Johan van der Walt, a man who treated them well, they expressed their thankfulness by a most touching attachment to that man.(12) Burchell and Moffat both represent them as goodhearted, disinterested, true to their promises, and grateful,(13) all qualities which could develop only by being practised within the tribe. As to their love to children, it is sufficient to say that when a European wished to secure a Bushman woman as a slave, he stole her child: the mother was sure to ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... sphere. Nor will I omit to say, that whether united to another by the sacred bond of marriage or not, if she be a true woman, she is instinct with those inward charms, and Christian dispositions, which qualify her for that responsible connection. Intelligence, wisdom, disinterested affection, a mind to advise, a heart rich with sympathies, and a hand to aid,—these should find ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... compensation of a good income. They found it difficult to conceive that her husband's death could be felt by her otherwise than as a deliverance. The person who was most thoroughly convinced that Janet's grief was deep and real, was Mr. Pilgrim, who in general was not at all weakly given to a belief in disinterested feeling. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... are the things which actuate men in their service of God and man, can it be legitimately said that the Christian motive is pure and disinterested? It is {166} somewhat remarkable that two opposite charges have been brought against Christian Ethics.[15] In one quarter the reproach has been made that Christianity suppresses every natural desire for happiness, and inculcates a life of severe renunciation. And with equally strong insistence ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... the beginning of mysticism. Every benefit rendered with a pure intention proclaims that the man who exercises it acts in direct conflict with the world of appearance; for he recognises himself as identical with another individual, who exists in complete separation from him. Accordingly, all disinterested kindness is inexplicable; it is a mystery; and hence in order to explain it a man has to resort to all sorts of fictions. When Kant had demolished all other arguments for theism, he admitted one only, that it gave the best interpretation and solution of such mysterious ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... these sudden attachments were not quite disinterested; a view of procuring a better barter for their goods might have had some effect in producing the zeal with which they were struck up; but they certainly had every appearance of sincerity and cordiality, and in less than an hour these friendly allies were seen walking in couples, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... certainty overwhelmed her. It is true this man Fortunat had declared that his visit was entirely disinterested. He had pretended that his regard for the Chalusse family, and the compassion aroused in his heart by the unfortunate plight of Mademoiselle Marguerite, were the only motives that has influenced him in taking this step. However, Madame d'Argeles's experience in life had left her but ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Copas, still winding in his line meditatively. "There is no such casuist as poverty. And only this morning I was promising myself much disinterested sport in the quarrelling of you Christian brethren. . . . But isn't that Warboise coming along the path? . . . Yes, the very man! Well, we must try ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... honest, I confess I'm not entirely disinterested. That young Carruthers the Grits are bringing out will be sure to rake up this story if I run next fall; and those MacDonalds are double-dyed Grits already. I don't want to give them a handle against ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... better. The only civilized person was a large black baker's dog, who, like Gil Blas's first travelling acquaintance, seemed free of the house, and did the honours of the supper to us with an assiduity as disinterested, "Ah, messieurs," said his civil master, when we stept across the street in the morning, to return the dog's visit in form, "je suis charme que vous trouvez l'Abri si beau; je suis au desespoir qu'il ne soit pas chez ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... that roguish cynicism which we should expect in a man whose own life was so far from being straightforward. He was too much dependent upon the public acceptance of honest professions to be eager in depreciating the value of the article, but when he found other people protesting disinterested motives, he could not always resist reminding them that they were no more disinterested than the Jack-pudding who avowed that he cured diseases from mere love of his kind. Having yielded to circumstances himself, and finding life enjoyable in dubious paths, he had a certain ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... party and false to Republican principles. In all humility we beg leave to suggest that the persons who are candidates for office in the interest of a corrupt Ring, and the few newspapers which live and move and have their being by and in that Ring, are hardly the disinterested and unselfish counsellors that they claim to be. It is safer to go outside of the charmed circle, and ascertain what is advised by Republicans whose honesty is as great as their integrity, who were Republicans when Democracy was in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valor and ambition were equal; but the youth, the beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the disinterested love of the soldiers and people. So scanty was his allowance for himself and forty followers, that he descended from conquest to robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft; and so loose were the notions of property, that, by his own historian, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... three years, and what will become of the poor people? [Bravo.] Let us prohibit foreign wood. I am not speaking for myself, for you could not make a tooth-pick out of all the wood I own. I am, therefore, perfectly disinterested. [Good, good.] But here is Pierre, who has a park, and he will keep our fellow-citizens from freezing. They will no longer be in a state of dependence on the charcoal dealers of the Yonne. Have ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... received with demonstrations of infinite constraint and reluctance, and, in the midst of his rapacious extortion, acted so cunningly as to impose himself upon both for a miracle of disinterested integrity. Yet, not contented with what he thus could earn, and despairing of being able to steer the bark of his fortune for any length of time between two such dangerous quicksands, he resolved to profit by the occasion while it lasted, and strike some considerable stroke at once. A plan was ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... no sense had he appealed to her susceptibility. And what, after all, could she mean by "great danger"? "Save yourself!" He sat for a long time considering the situation. At last he struck the window sill a resounding thwack with his fist and announced his decision to the silent, disinterested wall opposite. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... least what I was talking about. A man like that about the place would be a great comfort to me. I should have some one to talk to. I wish I could get you all to understand that I'm acting in this whole business from purely disinterested and altruistic motives. I don't want to get rid of Simpkins. You and ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Consult England, France, Germany; Christians everywhere will tell you that the Gospel abolished slavery, although it does not say a single word which would proclaim this abolition. Why, if the doubt were possible, would not diversity of opinions be also possible among disinterested judges? To speak only of France, see the synods of our free churches, which continually stigmatize both Swedish intolerance and American slavery; see an address signed three years ago by the pastors and the elders of five hundred and seventy-one French ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... and especially to that great genius, Camillo Cavour, and in spite of the disastrous reverses at Novara. Once more in 1859 Piedmont went to war with Austria, this time with success, and with the not disinterested help of France. One province after another joined her, and Italy, freed from all the little petty princes, and last, not least, from the Bourbons, has become that one great kingdom which was the dream of some of her greatest men in ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... good news is not altogether unselfish and disinterested, my dear Miss Ida," said Lord Bannerdale. "That Heron Hall should be shut up and deserted, while there is so charming a mistress to represent the old family, was little short of a general misfortune. You cannot tell how anxious ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... do less?" he answered. "That claim will doubtless be worth half a million, maybe more—if all I hear is reliable—and I get it from disinterested parties. The boy has done a good big thing. I've got to help him out. It seems too bad to offer him only half of what he needs, but I'm not a very wealthy man. I can't be utterly Quixotic. We've all got to help him all ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... course. I hope George has not been foolish enough to let every thing slip through his fingers. Who could have believed that Horace Eastman would turn out such a swindler! Papa trusted him altogether too far. It does not answer to be too noble and disinterested in this world." ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... yet; his favour to Suffolk and affection for Mary were proof against the intrigues in his Court. The contrast was marked between the event and the terrors which Wolsey had painted; and it is hard to believe that the Cardinal played an entirely disinterested part in the matter.[201] It was obviously his cue to exaggerate the King's anger, and to represent to the Duke that its mitigation was due to the Cardinal's influence; and it is more than possible that Wolsey found in Suffolk's indiscretion the means of removing ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... labour, a portion of them in the archives of those countries whose history forms the object of my study, will not have been entirely in vain; and that the lovers of human progress, the believers in the capacity of nations for self-government and self-improvement, and the admirers of disinterested human genius and virtue, may find encouragement for their views in the detailed history of an heroic people in its most eventful period, and in the life and death of the great man whose name and fame are identical with those of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the station-holder, boy, horse, cariole, or any body, animal, or thing that maltreats him, cheats him, or in any way misuses him on the journey; but he must take care to have the inn-keeper or some such disinterested person as a witness in his behalf, so that when the matter comes before the Amtmand, or grand tribunal of justice, it may be fairly considered and disposed of according to law. When the inn-keeper, station-holder, posting-master, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... hundred pounds; he is a rigid economist, and though I have the pleasure of his approbation, I have not the good fortune to obtain more, nor from a prudent man could I perhaps expect so much. But from the family at Beccles I have every mark of their attention, and every proof of their disinterested regard. They have from time to time supplied me with such sums as they could possibly spare, and that they have not done more arose from my concealing the severity of my situation, for I would not involve in my errors or misfortunes a very generous and very happy family by which ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... feel sure that this counsel was disinterested, for there could be no danger of his taxing the mental powers of the little one too severely, but her protest ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... well mated. "I can recall only one fact of the debates," says Mrs. William Crotty, of Seneca, Illinois, "that I felt so sorry for Lincoln when Douglas was speaking, and then to my surprise I felt so sorry for Douglas when Lincoln replied." The disinterested to whom it was an intellectual game, felt the power and charm of both men. Partisans had each reason enough to cheer. It was afterwards, as the debates were talked over by auditors as they lingered at the country store or were grouped on the fence ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... how disinterested it was of me to offer you marriage: nay, more, I never loved you; if I told you so, it ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... or Callicles, or of any intelligent Athenian, with the splendid foreigners who from time to time visited Athens, or appeared at the Olympic games. The man of genius, the great original thinker, the disinterested seeker after truth, the master of repartee whom no one ever defeated in an argument, was separated, even in the mind of the vulgar Athenian, by an 'interval which no geometry can express,' from the balancer of sentences, the interpreter and reciter of the poets, the divider ...
— Sophist • Plato
... not the self-sacrificing person needed to elevate such a community. Though ministering at the altar of God, he had no true religious feeling, no disinterested love for men. He was simply a man of the world, a bon vivant, a horse jockey and sportsman, who consoled himself in the summer and autumn for his exile in that barbarous region, by filling his house with provincial friends, who helped ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... counsel in a disinterested spirit. I have not made speculative purchases of land, I am not booming a generous jerry-builder. And yet I cannot help reflecting apprehensively on the consequences of my recommendation. Already I see my sweet retreat the prey of the howling mob; I hear the German band playing on the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Memoires-Journeaux of Pierre de l'Estoile are a great magazine of the gains of the writer's disinterested curiosity. The Lettres of D'Ossat and the Negotiations of the President Jeannin are of importance ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... interest, revived emotions that had lain dormant in Manyuema. Appetite returned, and instead of the spare, tasteless, two meals a day, I ate four times daily, and in a week began to feel strong. I am not of a demonstrative turn; as cold, indeed, as we islanders are usually reputed to be, but this disinterested kindness of Mr. Bennett, so nobly carried into effect by Mr. Stanley, was simply overwhelming. I really do feel extremely grateful, and at the same time I am a little ashamed at not being more worthy of the generosity. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... paid dynamiter of the inner circle of radicals, Logan Black in his diary jeered at and mocked the cause he served. And more than that, the man seemed to take a perverted pleasure in attaching to himself young enthusiasts of the radical type, eager to follow him as the disinterested leader of a group of Reds, and then betraying them into the most sordid sort of crime. Cleggett found—and could imagine the grimace of malevolent satisfaction with which it ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... discipline; intimate with the Indian character, customs, and principles; habituated to the hunting life; guarded, by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous, that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves; with all these qualifications, as if selected and implanted ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... glances, and Sahwah wriggled in her chair. "Wouldn't you like a committee to arrange that?" she asked, trying to make her voice sound natural and disinterested. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... the emigrants succeed, they will rule the roast for a long time; it will be impossible to refuse them anything; to owe the crown to them would be contracting too great an obligation." It always appeared to me that she wished her own family to counterbalance the claims of the emigrants by disinterested services. She was fearful of M. de Calonne, and with good reason. She had proof that this minister was her bitterest enemy, and that he made use of the most criminal means in order to blacken her reputation. I can testify ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was how to find change. There were not ten francs in the house. But they did not even address themselves to Mme Maloir who, never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon her, was listening in quite a disinterested manner. At length Zoe went out of the room, remarking that she would go and look in her box, and she brought back a hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces. They were counted out on a corner of the table, and Mme Lerat took her departure ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the honor to transmit herewith a Brevet Commission, conferred by the President in recognition of your faithful and disinterested services ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... discouraged, overworked or pursued by his creditors, Balzac sought refuge in her home, and with a pure and disinterested maternal affection, she calmed him and inspired him with courage to continue the battle of life. It was indeed the maternal element that he needed and longed for, and Madame Carraud seems to have been a rare mother who really understood her child. He confided in her not only his financial ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... structure of the hair itself. The secret is just there, Popinot, and you shall know it; all we have to do is to work it out cleverly. Before you go to Livingston's, just stop at Pieri Berard's. My lad, the disinterested kindness of Monsieur Vauquelin is one of the sorrows of my life. I cannot make him accept any return. Happily, I found out from Chiffreville that he wished for the Dresden Madonna, engraved by a man named Muller. After two years correspondence with Germany, Berard ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the house of his friend, he was received with the same disinterested ardour he ever had been in the day of his most unbounded prosperity.—After being seated, Vincent told him that the occasion of his sending for him was to propose the adoption of certain measures which he doubted not might be considered highly beneficial as it ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... of sense, intervenes with sword drawn and gives him a stern lecture. In the end, when Tremilia, giving her hand to Freeman, turns out to be an heiress who had assumed the Quaker garb to make sure of getting a disinterested husband, the error of Railton's ways becomes apparent. At the same time his cast mistress, whom he had succeeded in marrying off to a ridiculous old Justice, is impressed by Tremilia's "great Example." "How conspicuous a thing is Virtue!" says she, in an aside; and ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... to hear his second visitor's errand. He knew that it must be something important, yet he felt bored and disinterested. ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... forts at the mouth of the Menam fired upon the gunboats, whereupon the French instituted a blockade of the Siamese capital and at the same time enormously increased their demands. England, which had long professed to be a disinterested friend of the Siamese, shrugged her shoulders whereupon they yielded to the threat of a French invasion and ceded to France the eastern marches of the kingdom. Meanwhile the frontier between Siam and the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Sam shown such gratitude; and never before had Thornton Lyne been less disinterested in his attentions. There was a hot bath—which Sam Stay could have dispensed with, but which, out of sheer politeness, he was compelled to accept, a warm and luxurious breakfast; a new suit of clothes, with not two, but four, five-pound ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... professionally engaged in the works. His admirable knack of modelling the contour of the natural surface of the ground, and applying it to the proposed new roads or new buildings, was striking and characteristic. His efforts in this direction were so thoroughly disinterested that those in office were all the more anxious to carry out his views. He sought for no reward; but his excellent advice was not unrecognised. In testimony of the regard which the Magistrates of Edinburgh had for ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... hopes and fears with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set foot in Italy. Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence that it never will again. Italy rising from the grave was the living romance of myriads of young hearts that were lifted from the common level of trivial interests and selfish ends, from the routine of work or pleasure, both deadening without some ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... who dwells next door, has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories, encyclopedias, and all the modern poetry, etc. etc. etc. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier, by hard labour, and by pennies and pennies. He is one instance among many in this country of the salutary effect ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... yielded, a somewhat reluctant assent, to the attendance of the troupe. They performed before a highly pleased and encouraging audience, and had no occasion to blush at the report of the entertainment in the papers. At any rate many a disinterested resident in the cause of temperance was induced to unbutton his pockets to ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Rizal spoke out boldly, while realizing what would probably be his fate, history holds him a hero and calls his death a martyrdom. He was not one of those popularity-seeking, self-styled patriots who are ever mouthing "My country, right or wrong;" his devotion was deeper and more disinterested. When he found his country wrong he willingly sacrificed himself to set her right. Such unselfish spirits are rare; in life they are often misunderstood, but when time does them justice, they come into a ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... incursion into a monologue to which he had not been invited, but the girl seemed so wholly occupied that the painter took heart. His ruffled self-esteem preened itself anew, and he moved circuitously toward the object of his concern in as disinterested a manner as he could assume. At the sight of their host, the other members of Miss Maitland's group took occasion inconspicuously to drift away, being moved either by hunger or by good nature or by fear lest the monologue recommence. All but one obtuse youth who neither ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Italy, who had acquired a small estate by his economies as a collector of taxes in the neighbourhood. Horace must have shown some unusual promise as a boy; yet, according to his own account, it was less from this motive than from a disinterested belief in the value of education that his father resolved to give him, at whatever personal sacrifice, every advantage that was enjoyed by the children of the highest social class. The boy was taken to Rome about the age of twelve—Virgil, a youth of seventeen, came there from ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... reproached himself with having done Mrs. Gibson injustice. She was evidently a weak, but probably a disinterested, woman; and it was only a little bit of ill-temper on her part which had caused her to speak to Roger as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... more States than one; and though they may have displeased those whose sinister expectations they may have disappointed, they must have commanded the esteem and applause of all the virtuous and disinterested. Considerate men, of every description, ought to prize whatever will tend to beget or fortify that temper in the courts: as no man can be sure that he may not be to-morrow the victim of a spirit of injustice, by which he may be a gainer to-day. And every man must now feel, that the inevitable tendency ...
— The Federalist Papers
... in conclusion, "if there is one thing nobler than another, it is an upright, downright, disinterested, honest man. Such I am proud and happy to declare my friend, your friend, the friend of all honest men, to be; and I call for three ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... of the town of Kirkcaldy. The inhabitants, whatever may have been their failings at the period when Wilson in vain solicited shelter in the hamlet, are certainly no longer entitled to bear the reproach of lacking in hospitality. We rejoice in the opportunity thus afforded of testifying as to the disinterested hospitality and kindness which we have experienced in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... like, with the Bishop of Saskabasquia, whom I count as perhaps the finest specimen of healthy Christian manhood I have ever met, and although I can still laugh at the fun of "The Private Secretary" I can say that even among her clergy England can boast of heroes in these latter days as noble and disinterested as in ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... come to the ordinary type, i.e. where a figure appears. The following tale illustrates a point we have already alluded to, namely, that the apparition is sometimes seen by a disinterested person, and not by those whom one would naturally expect should see it. A lady writes as follows: "At Island Magee is the Knowehead Lonan, a long, hilly, narrow road, bordered on either side by high thorn-hedges ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... spoke, with laughing eyes, and laughter dwelling on his lips.' In Cos, Theocritus found friendship, and met Myrto, 'the girl he loved as dearly as goats love the spring.' Here he could express, without any afterthought, an enthusiastic adoration for the disinterested joys, the enchanted moments of human existence. Before he entered the thronged streets of Alexandria, and tuned his shepherd's pipe to catch the ear of princes, and to sing the epithalamium of a royal and incestuous love, he rested with his friends in the happy island. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... whom Colonel Ogilvie's large estates and immense fortune would have been wholly appropriate. She had always been civil to her brother-in-law, although the estates and the money were entailed upon his brother, and she weighed in the balance the disinterested affection which she showed him against her feeling of satisfaction in the fact that he was a daring and indefatigable traveller; one, moreover, who was seldom quite happy unless he was in danger, and who never thoroughly enjoyed a journey if any other white man had trodden the ground ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, through the wonder-working power of God, can make the proud humble, the selfish disinterested, the worldly heavenly, the sensual pure."—Christian Experience, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... says Dr. Sanday, "have often done scant justice to the intensity of this [monotheistic] faith, which was utterly disinterested and capable of magnificent self-sacrifice."—Art. "God," Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... I may here mention that we named the newly discovered continent to the southward "Boothia," as also the isthmus, the peninsula to the north, and the eastern sea, after my worthy friend, Felix Booth, Esq., the truly patriotic citizen of London, who, in the most disinterested manner, enabled me to equip this expedition in ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... which arise from them. He knows the argument of each of the orations of Demosthenes and Tully, but not one case in the reports of our own courts. No one ever took him for a fool, but none, except his intimate friends, know he has a great deal of wit. This turn makes him at once both disinterested and agreeable: As few of his thoughts are drawn from business, they are most of them fit for conversation. His taste of books is a little too just for the age he lives in; he has read all, but approves of very few. His familiarity with the customs, manners, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... property of the sacred Roman empire, and that whatever Christian goes to war for their recovery, must go as our subject, and hold any conquest which he may make, as our vassal. Vice and virtue, sense and folly, ambition and disinterested devotion, will alike recommend to the survivors of these singular-minded men, to become the feudatories of the empire, not its foe, and the shield, not the enemy, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... justification of the trust the people have reposed in us constrain me to remind those with whom I am to cooperate that we can succeed in doing the work which has been especially set before us only by the most sincere, harmonious, and disinterested effort. Even if insuperable obstacles and opposition prevent the consummation of our task, we shall hardly be excused; and if failure can be traced to our fault or neglect we may be sure the people will hold us to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... constitution, though only the foundation, was yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy. And if the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, instead of experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers like Cylon or Pisistratus—the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during the ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole subsequent history of Greece would probably ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... with a bewitching smile, "tell me how I have earned yours? Moreover, who tells you that I am disinterested in my sentiments? The day may come when you will understand how entirely I rely upon ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... notoriety to have become a commonplace jest that extraneous motives are commonly present among the incentives to this class of work—motives of a self-regarding kind, and especially the motive of an invidious distinction. To such an extent is this true, that many ostensible works of disinterested public spirit are no doubt initiated and carried on with a view primarily to the enhance repute or even to the pecuniary gain, of their promoters. In the case of some considerable groups of organizations or establishments of this kind ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... must be received with due caution. Where, moreover, as in the present case, we have evidence of a directly contradictory kind furnished by independent witnesses, whose declarations in this respect are presumably disinterested, such ex parte statements are on the face of them unreliable. The balance of evidence in this case appears to rest on the side of the older historians, Dolce and Vasari, whose statements, as I hold, are in the circumstances more reliable than the picturesque exaggeration ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... Washington—seared into his own consciousness by the bitter futilities of the French alliance in 1778 and the following years, and by the extravagant demands based upon it by the Directory during his Presidential term—that it is absurd to expect governments to act upon disinterested motives. It is not as an utterance of passing concern, benevolent or selfish, but because it voiced an enduring principle of necessary self-interest, that the Monroe doctrine has retained its vitality, and has been made so easily to do duty ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... stranger as merely a poor relation of the great people, and not as the daughter of the gentleman of the oldest family in the county. She was, therefore, anxious to be perfectly fashionable, and not to wear the same things too often, and in her disinterested desire to maintain the dignity of the family the allowance which she received at Christmas melted away ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he sank back into the rocker and began propelling himself to and fro. "I never felt better," but a disinterested observer would have seen in ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... impassable stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,—told her, (devil!) that, with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without embarrassment on this score,—appealed to her disinterested love, to her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,—to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... that the happening wasn't a shock to me, but I'm not a weakling—I've health and strength. I'll not permit the thought of the operation to depress my spirits. Indeed, I know I'll be very proud of what I did this afternoon, for it was a chance to do a real, disinterested service. And I can guess what father will say when he learns of it—'Louise, you did just right. Exactly what you should do under ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... fish to fatten them for some Roman patrician's banquet, we admire the beauty of colour, the clear static style, the solidity of the architecture, but we are unmoved. If there is such a thing as disinterested art it is the claustral art of Moreau—which can be both ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the Tombs, had at length secured bail, through the not wholly disinterested efforts of his uncle, Stolz, the sworn enemy of Ames. And, because of his loyal efforts in behalf of Ketchim, Stolz had insisted that Cass be retained as counsel for the latter when his trial should ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... qualities were greatly softened by the cultivation of literature. His application to study gradually tranquillized his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at the same time in perfect possession of those good qualities which he had inherited from nature—a warm and disinterested attachment to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy to embody in his dramas the actions and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... than I the frank, manly and disinterested course you pursued in the contest for the organization of the house, and the election of Senator, and no one can know better than I how false the imputation ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... no fear of any sensitiveness on Miss Gladden's part," said Houston quickly, "in the first place, their voices are altogether different, there is no comparison between them; and in addition, Miss Gladden's regard for Lyle is so disinterested and unselfish, there would be no room for any feeling of that kind. We must all acknowledge that Lyle certainly has a wonderful voice; as I said before, I have heard ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... punishment, there was even no inquiry; the three Consuls winked. Only one man was found honest and bold enough to open his mouth, and that was my old enemy, Mr. Cedercrantz. Walking in Mulinuu, in his character of disinterested spectator, gracefully desipient, he came across the throng of these rabblers and their victims. He had forgotten that he was an official, he remembered that he was a man. It was his last public appearance in Samoa to interfere; it was certainly his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to come on the day, consider themselves privileged to present their claims. It should not be an object of disappointment to find that the Indians do not, in their ordinary intercourse, evince those striking traits of exalted and disinterested character which we are naturally accustomed to expect from reading books. Books are, after all, but men's holiday opinions. It requires observation on real life to be able to set a true estimate upon things. The instances in which an ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... book, and fails to make her early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a passionate soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep: "The time will come when you will be convinced that my passion is pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole weight of my sorrows." But when the devil ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... reproach he could level at fate; and when we murmur at fate ourselves our complaints have much the same value. For the rest, it is legitimate enough to suppose that there needed but one single act of energy, absolute loyalty, disinterested, clear-sighted wisdom, to change the whole course of events. If the flight to Varennes—in itself an act of duplicity and culpable weakness—had only been arranged a little less childishly, foolishly (as any man would have arranged it who was accustomed ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... friend; "a gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all, in the cause of his country. His views are noble and disinterested. He declared, when he accepted the mighty trust, that he would lay before us an exact account of his expenses, and not accept a shilling ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand." Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humor of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... committed his remarks so thoroughly that many believed them to have been extemporaneous. His speech was pronounced by good judges as the greatest specimen of "the art which conceals art" that has ever been delivered in this country. With apparent candor, good nature, and disinterested statesmanship, he adroitly stated his side of the case, reviewing what had been done at previous Presidential elections, and showing that he had given the subject careful study. As dinner-time approached, Senator Edmunds stated ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... except that it is the physical basis of that higher moral existence, which resides in the soul, the heart, the mind, the conscience; in good principles, good feelings, good actions (and the more disinterested, the more entitled to be called good) which flow from them. Now, sir, I say that generous and patriotic sentiments, sentiments which prepare us to serve our country, to live for our country, to die for our country,—feelings ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hope I have an interest in the precious Redeemer, and behold an infinite loveliness and beauty in Him, apart from anything I expect or hope. But even then how deceitful is the human heart! how insensibly might a mere selfish love take the place of that disinterested complacency which regards Him for what He is in Himself, apart from what He is to us! Say, my dear friend, does not this thought sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... attract. There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have so much and such of you, my Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable, none disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... beautiful and seductive, and I am young and passionate; and if these lovely women have no respect for my dignity as a married man, how then should I have it, who married for duty, not for love? But there is one whom I respect for disinterestedness and fidelity! Do you not know who alone is disinterested and faithful?—who has never seen in me the prince, the future king—only the beloved one, the man—one who has never wavered, never counted the cost?—that you are, Wilhelmine Enke, therefore we are inseparable, and you have not ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... authority rightly pertaining to him as a grievous wrong to the ruler and to themselves. It is not necessary to inquire into the motives of such men. For one reason or another, often doubtless of a selfish, rarely of a pure and disinterested nature, they desire the young and rightful master of the State to be the dispenser of power and patronage. That there was a cluster of such men about Akbar, of men who disliked Bairam, who had been injured by him, who expected from the prince favours which they could not hope to {87} obtain ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... you most gratefully," returned Mr. Minford, "and fully appreciate the noble motives of your conduct. Your appearance convinces me that you are entirely disinterested. But I should feel ashamed to take money from you, without giving some security for its repayment. I shall therefore insist upon making over to you a certain interest in the invention, the most valuable of modern times, which lies almost finished behind ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... naturally finds admirers among persons of bold and sanguine dispositions. Robespierre was a vain, envious, and suspicious man, with a hard heart, weak nerves, and a gloomy temper. But we cannot with truth deny that he was, in the vulgar sense of the word, disinterested, that his private life was correct, or that he was sincerely zealous for his own system of politics and morals. He, therefore, naturally finds admirers among honest but moody and bitter democrats. If no class has taken the reputation of Barere under its patronage, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... inquiries of Messieurs les Francois, as to the class of vessel to which they belonged, and which we were in turn preparing to pursue. As might be expected, we got from them nothing but contradictory reports; but they all agreed in giving us the most conscientious and disinterested advice, not to think of irritating her, as we should most certainly be blown out of the water. We read this backwards. If she were strong enough to take us, it was their interest that we should engage her, and thus their liberation ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... prided myself not a little on the rare nobility of soul which I manifested by such unusual procedure, it was not so disinterested as might at first appear. For, I reasoned in my heart, when all comes to be known Maria Dovizio will give me credit for great self-sacrifice and delicacy of feeling, while Raphael cannot fail to be touched by my magnanimity. Back of all this self-laudation ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... calumny burnt into the soul of Ammalat. By the instructions of the Khan, his nurse Fatma related, with every appearance of disinterested affection, the story which had been arranged beforehand, on the same evening that he came with Verkhoffsky to Bouinaki, where they were met by the Shamkhal in obedience to the Colonel's request. The envenomed shaft struck deep; now doubt would have been welcomed by Ammalat, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... malcontent of Clerkenwell Green was his logical faculty and the surprising extent of the information with which he had furnished himself. Long before there existed a 'Financial Reform Almanack,' Eagles practically represented that work in his own person. Disinterested, ardent, with thoughts for but one subject in the scope of human inquiry, he lived contentedly on his two pounds a week, and was for ever engaged in the theoretic manipulation of millions. Utopian budgets multiplied themselves ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... old man took the broth from his handmaid,—"Poor Boxer, you are a disinterested creature," said he, feebly; "I think you will ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... am disinterested myself,' he went on. 'I might find a wife who had wealth and social standing. But I choose ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... my Poems I can most appropriately write my acknowledgments to you for your too disinterested conduct in the purchase of them. Indeed, if ever they should acquire a name and character, it might be truly said the world owed them to you. Had it not been for you, none perhaps of them would have been published, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... eyes shining. His feelings had undergone a sharp reaction. He now felt that Tuppence was all that was noble and disinterested. Had she not refused Julius without hesitation? True, the note betokened signs of weakening, but he could excuse that. It read almost like a bribe to Julius to spur him on in his efforts to find Tommy, but he supposed she ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... was so beautiful and so noble-minded that at the age of thirteen she was known far and near for her Christian character and exceptional ability. While she was still but thirteen and Mr. Edwards twenty, he wrote in a purely disinterested way of the remarkable girl: "She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... be more awake, unless there is someone else passing him in the other direction, simply because he has seen us and sized us up and dismissed us as of no interest; or, more likely, stowed us away in his capacious memory, and, having no further use for us, he forgets to appear disinterested." ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great light that has dawned for him, occupying his entire conscience with the sense of his responsibilities to it, is the sacrifice of days and nights spent in eager study, of plenary, disinterested utterance of the thoughts that arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of martyrdom. The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of prayer, oblation, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... intervals. Surely it was proof of her son's inborn fineness that from the pink perfection of girlhood he should have chosen the capable Gabriella! At first she had regretted his choice, hoping, as the worldly and the unworldly alike hope for their sons, that the object of George's disinterested affection would prove to be wealthy. Then at the sight of Gabriella she had surrendered completely. The girl was fine all through, this she could see as soon as she looked at her. She liked her noble though not beautiful face, with ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... came. Already he felt in great jeopardy. On account of his illicit vocation he could ill abide the scrutiny of the law. With scant proof, he argued, a moonshiner might be suspected of highway robbery and murder. As he had journeyed hither with the constable and his fellows, who conserved the air of disinterested spectators, but who he knew had been summoned to aid the officer in case he should evade or delay, when he would have been forthwith arrested, he had been sorely tempted to deny having ever seen the stranger, in whose company he had spent an hour or so of the previous day. He had been ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Maurevel's arquebuse had laid him, and as exclaiming: "If my arm is wounded, my head is not. If I have to lose my arm, I shall get the head of those who are the cause of it. They intended to kill me; I shall anticipate them." Such was the disinterested patriot whom, in the infatuation of their lying fabrications, the murderers of Paris, their hands still reeking with the blood of thousands of women and children incontestably innocent of any crime laid to the charge of their husbands or fathers, pictured as plotting the wholesale ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... us understand that he and his companions required food, and were not entirely disinterested in pressing us to have a feast on the provisions they had brought. On seeing the deer and the ducks we had shot, their eyes brightened. Aboh and Shimbo were both very good cooks, and immediately set to work to dress both the venison and the vegetables. Their only regret ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... so many kind offers of assistance when assistance is no longer necessary, or when one is in a position which would probably enable him to repay a favor, that it is delightful to record an act of pure and disinterested benevolence. Here was a poor Scottish woman bereft of her husband, with her eldest son just getting a start and a second in his early teens, whose misfortunes appealed to this man, and who in the most delicate manner sought to mitigate them. Although my mother was able ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Stonors and devoted to their interests, and who was now my lady's son-in-law. The attempt to make the young wife of sixteen sole executrix, so that she might be completely in her family's hands and without the counsel of two experienced and disinterested merchants, has a somewhat sinister air. The intrigues went on, and three days later the agent writes again. It is pleasant to observe that bad-tempered old Mistress Croke, Dame Elizabeth's mother, was not unmindful of Betson's forbearance during those ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the merits of Sherman's "Memoirs,"( 1) it should be remembered that he does not, and does not claim to, occupy the position of a disinterested, impartial historian. He writes, not for the purpose of doing equal and exact justice to all actors in a great historical drama, but for the purpose of elucidating his own acts and motives, and vindicating himself against the harsh criticism and censure which have ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... to know that state-secrets are often safer in the custody of a disinterested stranger than in the hands of a friend, especially if the stranger be truly a stranger to ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Francis had only at intervals been disposed to make advances; the demeanour of the Lutheran princes had been cold at the best. In Scotland, the young King, who only attained his majority in 1533, displayed that lack of confidence in the disinterested generosity of England which seems to be always a cause of pained surprise to the English politicians and historians. In fact it was his firm and extremely natural conviction that his uncle was responsible for keeping the whole border country in a perpetual state ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... last, "I know something about ships and sailors, and I know that if this fellow was to appeal against you after you touch port, a judge would weigh a single word of yours against a whole sentence of Harrigan's. It would be a different matter if a disinterested person pressed a charge of cruelty against you. I am such a person; I would press such a charge; I have the money, the time, and the inclination to ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... rocks, delusive bogs and all those fiercest terrors of famine which lurk in a virgin wilderness. Bitter cold, unmerciful snow-falls, drift-clogged streams, pelting storms, were constant features of Arnold's intrepid march. When we realize the purely unselfish and disinterested motive of this march, which has justly been compared to that of Xenophon with his 10,000, and to the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow as well, we stand aghast at the possibility of its having been planned and executed by one who afterward ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the tone of this letter which Mrs. Wharton did not like, and she had a foreboding that this journey would not be for the happiness of her friend, and tried to dissuade her from undertaking it. And in this she was entirely disinterested; for great as would be the loss of this gifted young lady to her, Mrs. Wharton was not the one to put a straw in her way, if she felt assured the journey ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Howard had 'phoned to ask me if I could induce Harley to run down, but my friend had expressed himself as disinterested in a common case of elopement. Now, as Wessex spoke, I glanced aside at Harley, wondering if the fact that so celebrated a member of the C.I.D. as Detective-Inspector Wessex had been put in charge would induce him to change ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... flesh-and-blood display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because they are themselves unreal, abortive, half- ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... your private opinion that our good doctor got up a streak of disinterested enthusiasm over my unworthy self this evening?" This question Dr. Douglass asked of Sadie as they lingered on the piazza in ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... is quite disinterested, Miss de la Molle; or at any rate very few are. What would you give to such ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... likewise never be complete, crystallized, perfected. It must grow and change as fast as social conditions make such changes necessary. To point out such further growth-needs is not criticism. The intention is to present the disinterested, detached view of the outsider who, although he knows indefinitely less than those within the system about the details of the work, can often get the perspective rather better just because his mind is ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... the question from totally different points; both perfectly disinterested; both in their different ways, I believe, shrewd and even wise; and both honourable, urging me against it, and in a way that undefinably alarmed my imagination, as well as moved my reason. I looked from one to the other—there was a silence. By this time the candles ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the Bishop of Cuzco, with hearts so seared by fanaticism as to be closed against sympathy with the unfortunate natives.8 They were, many of them, men of singular humility, who followed in the track of the conqueror to scatter the seeds of spiritual truth, and, with disinterested zeal, devoted themselves to the propagation of the Gospel. Thus did their pious labors prove them the true soldiers of the Cross, and showed that the object so ostentatiously avowed of carrying its banner among the heathen nations ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... "Disinterested man! The inference is, however, that, since you have not asked for anything, you have been promised something. Confess ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... supplies. I may further state, that I believe a gentleman intends to a certain extent to act its agent for some of the vessels this year, to pay the men's advances in cash, and to allow their allotment notes to be paid by a banker or some disinterested party. If that system were introduced, it would knock the whole irregularity on the head. Such is my ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Toleration, and on that subject the eighteenth century scarcely rose above an intermittent, embarrassed, and unscientific view. For religious liberty is composed of the properties both of religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... she unbosomed herself, though with hesitation, to a warm and disinterested friend; blushing all over with tearful eyes she confessed her grief to Mr. Meadows. "Don't tell father, sir; I hide my trouble from him as well as I can, but what does it mean George not writing to me these four months and three days? ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... black cat, calmly breakfasting off a pat of delicious fresh butter. Beside the table, with its fore-legs thereon and its hind-legs on the floor, stood a large nanny-goat, which was either looking in vain for something suited to its own particular taste, or admiring with disinterested complacency the energy with which two hens and a bantam cock pecked out the crumb of a wheaten loaf. If the latter were the goat's occupation, it must have been charmed beyond expression; for the half of the loaf had been devoured by the audacious trio, and, just at ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... doubt a Platonic sort of religion, a worship of the ideal apart from its power to realise itself, which has entered largely into the life of Christians; and the more mystical and disinterested they were, the more it has tended to take the place of Hebraism. But the Platonists, too, when left to their instincts, follow their master in attributing power and existence, by a sort of cumulative worship and imaginative hyperbole, to what in the first ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... hearts and interests of the members are bound up in beautiful harmony. The necessities of one are supplied by all. It is this which makes the members faithful to each other, and prompts them to deeds of disinterested love. ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... of protest, written by Stevens against Wattles's mission of inspection, it can be inferred that there was a movement on foot to induce the Indians to emigrate southward. Stevens, not wholly disinterested, thought it a poor time to attempt ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... minor; and that we had no intention to trouble him at present, for any favour whatsoever — 'I came hither with my nephew (added he) to pay our respects to your grace; and I may venture to say, that his views and mine are at least as disinterested as those of any individual in this assembly.' 'My dear Mr Brambleberry! you do me infinite honour — I shall always rejoice to see you and your hopeful nephew, Mr Milfordhaven — My credit, such as it is, you may command — I wish we had more ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the same time not lessened, the confidence of his master; and, indeed, shortly afterwards, Bonaparte created him first prefect of his palace, and procured him for a wife the only daughter of a rich Spanish banker. Rumour, however, says that Bonaparte was not quite disinterested when he commanded and concluded this match, and that the fortune of Madame Duroc has paid for the expensive supper of her husband with Count ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... for a moment. All her anger had subsided. She looked at Rnine with the surprise which one experiences when confronted with certain persons who are unlike their fellows, more capable of performing unusual actions, more generous and disinterested. She realised perfectly that he was acting without any ulterior motive or calculation, that he was, as he had said, merely fulfilling his duty as a gentleman to a woman who ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... understood, has another advantage; it accustoms us to those patient and disinterested investigations, to those lengthy labors, the positive result of which at first escapes us for a time, only to burst on our eyes, with so much more brilliancy, when rigorous research has succeeded in discovering it. It frees us from the deadly ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... For an hour, accordingly, I saw my poor protege attempt, all in pain, to meet a new decorum. He set himself the task of appearing very American, in order that his appreciation of everything Mr. Searle represented might seem purely disinterested. What his kinsman had expected him to be I know not; but I made Mr. Searle out as annoyed, in spite of his exaggerated urbanity, at finding him so harmless. Our host was not the man to show his hand, but I think his best card had been a certain ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... that is only one element in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, in happier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to show that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrifice and every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely an enlarged field for our commerce and enterprise. They mean an enlargement of the field of self-government and the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... their solitude as with the presence of angels. They hear heavenly voices asking, Why stay ye on the earth, unless to grow? Vanity, frivolity, and fickleness die within them; and they grow to be humble and courageous, disinterested and laborious, strong and persevering. The cultivation of their higher nature becomes the law of their life; and the sense of duty, "stern daughter of the voice of God," which of all motives that sway the heart, best stands ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting; so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we had presented but a moment back, was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into the image of a noisy fox-chase. The two postillions and my own saucy rogue were, of course, disinterested actors in the comedy; they rode for the mere sport, keeping in a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and crying (as the fancy struck them) Tally-ho!' 'Stop, thief!' 'A highwayman! ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... itself, I have believed in it as the most effective instrument for teaching the Cross." Mr Steele pulled a wry mouth. "At this moment I seem to be the bigger fool. They may be right: the Church may be worth a disinterested idolatry: but as a means to teach mankind the lesson of Christ it has rather patently failed to do its business. Men are not fools: or rather they are fools, but not fools enough in the long-run to pay for being taught to be foolish. They pay ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... real maturity. Such is the abnormal state of men of action. They live entirely in the present, and their genius concentrates on one point. The hours of their existence are not connected by a chain of grave and disinterested meditations. They succeed themselves in a series of acts. They lack interior life. This defect is particularly visible in Napoleon, who never lived within himself. From this is derived the frivolity of temperament which made him support easily the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... gospel, he quietly utilized it for his personal guidance. He had a keen eye for all utility; he carved out his own fortune; he early identified his own happiness with that of the people around him, and served the community with disinterested faithfulness through a long life. That unselfish beneficence, of which Goethe thought a single instance was enough to save his hero from the fiend to whom he had fairly forfeited his selfish soul, was the habit of Franklin's lifetime. He found the ample sanctions and rewards of virtue in ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam |
