"Egoist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toward the Russians, a foreign and therefore perhaps neutral diplomat replied: "The Bulgar will not do anything for people in distress. He is an egoist. He'll let his own father starve rather than sacrifice anything of his own. He has cause to be eternally grateful to the Russians, and now he has a chance to pay back something of what he owes, but not he. He treats the Russian as a beggar and an inferior, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... start with the Cracow post for Vienna as early as this day week, but finally I have given up that idea—you will understand why. You may be quite sure that I am no egoist, but, as I love you, am also willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of others. For the sake of others, I say, but not for the sake of outward appearance. For public opinion, which is in high esteem among us, but ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... never forgive myself if I forgot The Egoist. It is art, if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all the novels I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern David; here is a book to send the blood into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture of human faults, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Our egoist was quick enough to grasp their meaning, but quicker still to see and to seize the chance of a crazy lifetime. Always acute where his own vanity was touched, his promptitude was for once on ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... imperfectly developed one. While the units of which it is composed have distinct and independent lives within certain limits, they are, outside of those limits, interdependent and inter-related. Man is governed by two great forces. On the one hand, he is essentially an egoist, ever striving to attain individual freedom; on the other hand, he is a social animal, ever seeking association and avoiding isolation. This duality expresses itself in the life of society. There is a struggle ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... but never seen. A man of Minoret's build, and Minoret's wealth, at the head of such an establishment might well be called, without contradiction, the master of Nemours. Though he never thought of God or devil, being a practical materialist, just as he was a practical agriculturist, a practical egoist, and a practical miser, Minoret had enjoyed up to this time a life of unmixed happiness,—if we can call pure materialism happiness. A physiologist, observing the rolls of flesh which covered the last vertebrae and pressed upon the giant's cerebellum, and, above all, hearing the shrill, sharp voice ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... towards which her stumbling feet were set, where life should be lived with alert readiness and response, oblivious of its personal achievements, its personal claims and spoils, Neville the spoilt, vain, ambitious, disappointed egoist, strained her eyes into the distance and half smiled. It might be a dream, that liberty, but it was a dream worth ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... least, that is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded and ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and publishers concerned have kindly given me permission to reprint some of the poems in this book which appeared originally in "Poetry" (Chicago), "The Egoist" (London), "The Little Review" (Chicago), "Greenwich Village" (New York), the first Imagist anthology (New York: A. and C. Boni. London: Poetry Bookshop), the second Imagist anthology ("Some Imagist Poets," London: Constable and Co. Boston: ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... the conclusions to be drawn? The American-born girl is an egoist. Her whole effort (and she makes and sustains one in the life of mill drudgery) is for herself. She works for luxury until the day when a proper husband presents himself. Then, she stops working and lets him toil for both, with the hope that the budget shall ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... wormed it out of Brenton, in the end, in spite of his growling. It's too bad of me to tell you; and yet it seems only fair that you should get at the truth of the situation. Besides—You know you are a fearful egoist, Reed; we all are, for that matter. Besides, it may make you a little bit more tolerant of Brenton, may lead you to smooth him down where I have been rubbing him the wrong way. In fact, you owe it to him, to atone for the volcanic effect you ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... hardly one of us who is proof against this sort of intellectual snobbery. A detective story may have been a very good friend to us, but we don't want to drag it into the conversation; we prefer a casual reference to The Egoist, with which we have perhaps only a bowing acquaintance; a reference which leaves the impression that we are inseparable companions, or at any rate inseparable until such day when we gather from our betters that there are heights even beyond The Egoist. Dead or alive, we would sooner be ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... was not to be denied. He had told the story a score of times during the last three days, and had assured himself by every evidence that he could tell it effectively. He was something of an egoist, too, and the climax he had in mind was that of his own emotions in recrossing the fatal couloir ropeless, with shaking knees, haunted by the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is a very peculiar thing. In highly organized intellectual and artistic types it is so often apt to begin with keen appreciation of certain qualities, modified by many, many mental reservations. The egoist, the intellectual, gives but little of himself and asks much. Nevertheless, the lover of life, male or female, finding himself or herself in sympathetic accord with such a nature, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... where an incognito will be respected. If I stay here it will be—what you call—fuss and feathers and revolutionary agents. I have come to make my adieu to your guardian. Incognito or out of it, he is my very good friend—no matter if he is an egoist. ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... novels, of which "David Copperfield" may be taken as an example, has chosen to tell the entire life-story of his hero from birth up to maturity. But other novelists, like George Meredith in "The Egoist," have chosen to represent events that pass, for the most part, in one place, and in an exceedingly short stretch of time. It is by no means certain that Meredith does not know as much about the boyhood and youth of Sir Willoughby Patterne as Dickens knew about the early ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... 'of a neglected duty. Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to revive the women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you robbing of her blankets.' And with that, not heeding his appeals, my father turned his back upon the egoist. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... he was richly endowed with all the baser qualities that pander to self, and markedly deficient in the higher attributes of humanity. The traits of the gourmand, the cynic, the egoist, were there; but the physiognomist would look in vain for any sign of genius or true nobility. Recognition of his undoubted rank had, of course, given him the grand manner. That was unavoidable, and it was his chief asset. He liked to be addressed as "Monseigneur"; he ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... some suburban religion; Frederick was a poet; Charlemagne was fond of children. But Julius Caesar attracted Shaw not less by his positive than by his negative enormousness. Nobody can say with certainty that Caesar cared for anything. It is unjust to call Caesar an egoist; for there is no proof that he cared even for Caesar. He may not have been either an atheist or a pessimist. But he may have been; that is exactly the rub. He may have been an ordinary decently good man slightly deficient in spiritual expansiveness. On the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sombre eyes—the ideal Don Juan Tenorio to win the foolish heart of an Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another, with its savage eye—it is a profile—and big beaver head-covering, recalls Walt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." A giant egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as Spain ever begot, Goya is only hinted at in Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning: "Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues." Fleurs du Mal would be a happy title for the work of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers of Evil" were added ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... lovely, loving lover—O sublime egoist!" exclaimed my companion. "How many other lovers through the ages have thought and said and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... are made of the same metal and coined in the same mint; and they both of them have the image and superscription of William Shakespeare. No words or thoughts could be more unsuited to that bold, bloody egoist, "the broad Achilles," than the reply he makes to Ulysses; but here Shakespeare was merely using the Greek champion as a lay figure to utter his own thoughts, which are perfectly in character with the son of Autolycus. Ulysses thus flows over upon ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... there's no greater happiness than self-sacrifice. And besides, you'll be giving me great satisfaction and that's the chief thing. Don't think I've been talking nonsense. I understand what I'm saying. I'm an egoist, you be an egoist, too. Of course I'm not forcing you. It's entirely for you to decide. As you say, so it shall be. Well, what's the good of sitting ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Chateaubriand as "wearing his heart in a sling"; he did so during his whole life; and through Rene we divine the inventor of Rene carrying his wounded heart, as in the heroine we can discern some features of his sister Lucile. In all his writings his feelings centre in himself: he is a pure egoist through his sensibility; but around his own figure his imagination, marvellous in its expansive power, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... another point of resemblance to Meredith besides that which I have mentioned. She loves to portray men puffed up with self-approval. She, too, is a satirist of the male egoist. Her books are the most finished social satires in English fiction. They are so perfect in the delicacy of their raillery as to be charming. One is conscious in them, indeed, of the presence of a sparkling spirit. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... during this harangue. His was the steadfast attitude of the egoist, who sees all life in terms of ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... choose the finest mate for her nest-building. She'll marry again, though the dear woman doesn't know it, and would be horrified at the thought. But she will, and it won't be either of us—we are too much her kind. It will be some other brilliant egoist who will thrill her, grind her heart, and give her wonderful children. She is an instrument. As I think I once heard poor Byrd say, she is not merely an expression ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... to have taken positive pleasure in Admetus, much as Meredith did in his famous Egoist; but Euripides all through is kinder to his victim than Meredith is. True, Admetus is put to obvious shame, publicly and helplessly. The Chorus make discreet comments upon him. The Handmaid is outspoken about him. ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... it," he insisted, a little doggedly. "I have spent too many of my years on the treadmill. A man was born to be either an egoist and parcel out the earth according to his tastes, or to develop like Dartrey into a dreamer.—Curse you!" he added, suddenly shaking his fist at the tall towers of the Houses of Parliament. "You're like an infernal boarding-school, with your detentions and impositions ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lights the dark shadow of her hair—hair black, abundant, and elaborately dressed in the fashion of that time. Passionate yet calculating, imperious yet susceptible of control, generous yet given to suspicion, an egoist yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm—she represented a type of feminine character often ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... 'Philosophical History' in these times, cannot even be not seen: it is misseen; affirmed to have existed,—and to have been a godless Impossibility. Your Norman Conquerors, true royal souls, crowned kings as such, were vulturous irrational tyrants: your Becket was a noisy egoist and hypocrite; getting his brains spilt on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral, to secure the main chance,—somewhat uncertain how! 'Policy, Fanaticism,' or say 'Enthusiasm,' even ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... displeasure and lack of confidence of his stern father. His nature always revolted against such humiliation, and he tried by bitter mockery to give expression to his injured self-esteem. His heart, which warmed toward everything noble, prevented him from becoming a hardened egoist; but he did not grow any the milder or more conciliatory, and long after he had become a great man and wise ruler, there remained in him from this time of servitude some trace of petty cunning. The lion sometimes, in a spirit of undignified vengeance, did not ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... well knowing that the minute pyrocistis, having come to the surface during the calm that followed the storms, were showing in that glorious fire the panic caused among them by the cataclysm of our passing. But the individual is ever an egoist. It seems to man that the universe is a circle about him and his affairs. It may as well seem ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... half of July scattered the little circle in all directions. Maurice spent a couple of days at the different railway-stations, seeing his friends off. One after another they passed into that anticipatory mood, which makes an egoist of the prospective traveller: his thoughts start, as it were, in advance; he has none left for the people who are remaining behind, and receives their care and attention ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... I, is the egoist. My love for thee loves itself more than thee; Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist, And makes me live that it may feed on me. In the country of bridges the bridge is More real than the shores it doth unsever; So in our world, all of Relation, this Is true—that truer ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... suddenly decided on a line of action which would turn this astute egoist from his half-indicated purpose. Whatever the means of Fellowes' death, by whomsoever caused, or by no one, further inquiry could only result in revelations hurtful to some one. As Mr. Mappin had surmised, there was more than one woman,—there may have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sick with anxiety, could scarcely sit still. She began sewing again, though her fingers trembled so she could hardly make a stitch. But Carterette, the little egoist, did not notice her agitation; her own flurry ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he went on, "that dear woman has lived on her love for me. It has coloured her whole life. I know what I know. It has been her support in all the endless years she nursed that cruel old egoist her father, who would not let her marry me, when we could have married, seventeen years ago. But it is not me that she wants now, though she did want me for many years; it is the thought of me—if you can't understand without my saying it, I can't make you—it's ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of machinery ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the life of self-expenditure. They are interdependent, and rule the ancient order of gnosis and praxis. Whether we go to nature or religion or science for replenishment, we must be filled. And the ironic power which presides over our feasts compels the most inveterate egoist amongst us to share his treasures. Mind is for ever craving to give to mind. If we want nothing better than to boast of our superiority, the boasting imparts a lesson to others and is therefore a gift. But the reforming spirit spares few who think. It is generally ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... absurd. I see straight. Lady Holme is an egoist—a magnificent, an adorable egoist, fine enough in her brilliant selfishness ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens |
