"Disinterestedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deny that people desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue; ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... dinner-party where I was present, Mr. Peter Dunne Dooley handed to the host several dollars, in satisfaction of a lost bet. I seemed to see an opportunity to better my condition, and I invited Dooley, apparently disinterestedly, to come to my house Friday and play billiards. He accepted, and I judge that there is going to be a deficit in the Dooley treasury as a result. In great qualities of the heart and brain, Dooley is gifted beyond all propriety. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... only to gain nothing by it, but is not to be more trustworthy in your eyes than those who have taken money? You are not only trying these men to-day, but you are laying down a law for all future time—a law which will declare whether your ambassadors are to serve the enemy for a price, or to act disinterestedly for your true good and to take no bribe? {233} On all the other points you require no evidence; but to prove that Phrynon sent his son, (to the clerk) call me the ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... from their expression that Bab knew she had lied. At the same time a thrill of consternation swept over her. What had been Mrs. Wilson's object in lending her the money? Bab was now sure that the loan had not been made disinterestedly. But what had Peter Dillon to do with it? It looked very much as though Mrs. Wilson and the attache were playing a game, and were seeking to draw her into it. She resolved at that moment that she would write to her ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... likely, you should through inadvertence change hats with a master of a Dutch smack, Offley will be upon the watch, will conclude you took your pattern from M. de Bareil, and in a week's time we shall all be equipped like Dutch skippers. You see I speak very disinterestedly; for, as I never wear a hat myself, it is indifferent to me what sort of hat I don't wear. Adieu! I hope nothing in this letter, if it is opened, will affect the conferences, nor hasten our rupture with Holland. Lest it should, I send it to Lord Holdernesse's office; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... early coadjutors, and for many years he bore all the financial burdens and toiled on single-handed and alone. What was still more discouraging was that he unfortunately had to encounter for a very long time an almost incredible amount of mental supineness on the part of those whom he was so disinterestedly seeking to benefit. It was not as though any desire for knowledge existed among the mass of the Guernsey people, and he only had to assume the pleasant duty of satisfying that desire. Such a desire did not exist. Many of the people not only never had read any books but they flatly declined ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... poor woman and her family brought to a happy conclusion, began to apply himself to his own concerns; but here, lest many of my readers should censure his folly for thus troubling himself with the affairs of others, and lest some few should think he acted more disinterestedly than indeed he did, we think proper to assure our reader, that he was so far from being unconcerned in this matter, that he had indeed a very considerable interest in bringing ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... retard, instead of encouraging, the establishment of this commerce. I would undertake to write, at the same time, to these or any other merchants whom you should prefer, in order to dispose them favorably, and as disinterestedly as possible, for the encouragement of this essay. I must observe to you, that our vessels are fearful of coming into the Mediterranean on account of the Algerines: and that if you should freight vessels, those of the French ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the collective possibility. Under Socialist institutions which will give education and a sense of personal security to every one, this necessity of criticism is likely to be most freely, frankly and disinterestedly provided. But it is well to keep in mind the entire dependence of Socialism upon a high level of intelligence, education and freedom. Socialist institutions, as I understand them, are only possible in a civilized State, in a State in which the whole population can read, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... powerful episode the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a character which essentially distinguished it from such movements as these. These were, in the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual movements; movements in which the human spirit looked for its satisfaction in itself and in the increased play of its own activity. The French Revolution took a political, practical ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... reader: it would be difficult to decide, which enjoyed, on this occasion, the greatest portion of substantial felicity; the grateful monarch thus happily restored to his rightful throne, or the generous friends who had so disinterestedly and successfully accomplished the arduous ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... medium-sized type. Beside it was a picture of a kangaroo. The gentleman with the thick spectacles resignedly fished into his pockets and found a lottery ticket. He tore it into scraps and threw them away. Then he began to gaze disinterestedly at the scenery and the other ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... that grieves the Greek soul, which has always been used to appreciate virtue disinterestedly, it is the fratricidal woe of two nations who ought to be, hand in hand, forerunners and co-workers in the great enterprises of ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... too weak to have your own way, is due from either to the other. This shallow and mischievous notion rests either on a misinterpretation of the experience of civilised societies, or else on nothing more creditable than an arbitrary and unreflecting temper. Those who have thought most carefully and disinterestedly about the matter, are agreed that in advanced societies the expedient course is that no portion of the community should insist on imposing its own will upon any other portion, except in matters which are vitally connected with the maintenance of the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... me now; but he was obliged to set off on a long journey." I assented to what she said. "He is very handsome," said she, "and loves me with all his heart. He promised me an allowance; but I love him disinterestedly; and, if he would let me, I would follow him to Poland." She afterwards talked to me about her parents, and about M. Lebel, whom she knew by the name of Durand. "My mother," said she, "kept a large grocer's shop, and my father was a man of some consequence; he ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... with certain fine qualities of their own, Aunt Victoria knew that there was wickedness in the outside world, but never suspected that her own immediate circle, the nice people with whom she talked pleasantly every day, could be tainted; and the awakening to find that her friends cared less disinterestedly for her than she did for them was a cruel disillusion. Her first inclination was to fly far from them all, and spend the rest of her days amongst strangers who could not disappoint her because she would have ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... this fete devolved chiefly on Mademoiselle St. Pierre: Madame herself being supposed to stand aloof, disinterestedly unconscious of what might be going forward in her honour. Especially, she never knew, never in the least suspected, that a subscription was annually levied on the whole school for the purchase of a handsome ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... steel, cord, and iron. I think he had forgotten that the Kearney girl had ever existed. One day, after three months of camp life, the man in the next cot had thrown him a volume of Kipling. Buzz fingered it, disinterestedly. Until that moment Kipling had not existed for Buzz Werner. After that moment he dominated his leisure hours. The Y.M.C.A. hut had many battered volumes of this ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... not been collected to check social theories. Social problems have been defined in terms of common sense, and facts have been collected, for the most part, to support this or that doctrine, not to test it. In very few instances have investigations been made, disinterestedly, to determine ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... themselves under the roof where their fortune was being piled up. Also, she thought it disappointing of Peter junior not to "bother" about the business which had been his father's life work. But then Peter was altogether disappointing, as Miss Rolls (with an "e") had disinterestedly warned her. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... criticism. I had no more to do with the founding it than the babe unborn; and, as Wilkes was no Wilkeite, I am quite other than a Browningite. But I cannot wish harm to a society of, with a few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are busied about my books so disinterestedly. The exaggerations probably come of the fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility against my books; such reactions are possible, though I never looked for the beginning of one so soon. That there is a grotesque side to the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... in his service, would meet with your reward. Besides,' added the old gentleman with stronger emphasis, 'besides having the pleasure of being again brought into communication with those to whom you seem to be very strongly and disinterestedly attached. You must think of all this, Christopher, and not be rash or hasty in ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... can assure our readers that the policy of our present ministers has been applauded by every party in Greece, except the Philorthodox; and they, as they could find no fault, remained silent. We believe that no two governments ever acted more disinterestedly to a third than Great Britain end France have lately done to Greece, and that no ministers ever acted more fairly, in any international question, than Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot have done on the subject of the Greek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... which, with its "rewards and punishments," immediately fostered selfishness; and the poem opens with a double action, on one side to try the question whether it is possible for man to love God disinterestedly—the issue of which trial is not foreseen or even foretold, and we watch the progress of it with an anxious and fearful interest—on the other side, to bring out in contrast to the truth which we already ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... old admirers. I say, "Devil take the hindmost"—and the foremost. But there is no mistaking the origin of the breach; and if the curse of "stinking" and "rotting" is to fall on the first and greatest violators of principle in the matter, I disinterestedly suggest that the gentleman from Georgia and his present co-workers are bound to take it upon themselves. But the gentleman from Georgia further says we have deserted all our principles, and taken shelter under General Taylor's military coat-tail, and he seems to think ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Cecil Rhodes. The Rhodesians, who with intention had contrived to compromise him, never left him a moment to his own thoughts. Without the flatterers who surrounded him Rhodes would undoubtedly have risen to the height of the situation and frankly and disinterestedly put himself at the disposal of the High Commissioner. But they managed so to irritate him against the representative of the Queen, so to anger him against the Dutch party to which he had belonged formerly, and so to persuade him that everybody was jealous ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... were the raiders, and they had come through it after all. They were rather distracted. The man next me wiped his forehead, and took a cigarette. He looked disinterestedly up at the shell-bursts, but he talked very little. He looked on the raid as a bit ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... great deal the richer for it. It is also insinuated that, because I opined that one man—not an actor—should stand at the head of affairs, I had clearly indicated who should be that man. I—of course! Such accusations of self-nepotism are a sign of the times. No one can speak disinterestedly about a subject now; we all must have a motive. We are all mercenary, we are automatic advertising machines of our own selves, we are always insincere. Charming! But for my own part, I wish to state ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, working in gray steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy chopped wood. He had a torn jacket, muffler of a blue like skimmed milk. His hands were covered with red mittens through which protruded his chapped raw knuckles. He halted to blow on them, to cry disinterestedly. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... said, disinterestedly, "Ah yes, this is one of your fabulous customs, isn't it? On an election day, everyone is quite entitled to go anywhere. Anywhere at all. And, ah"—he made a sound somewhat like a ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... an odd man. Subtly smiling, he came forward through the twilight, with soft, long strides, and he made no outcry at recognition of his sister. "Take the woman away, Victor," he said, disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward he sat down beside the table and remained silent for a while, intently regarding Sire Edward and the tiny woman who clung to Sire Edward's arm; and in the flickering gloom of the hut Philippe smiled as ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... be wise enough to give wholesome advice to every case of mental distress, and be gifted to guide the first steps of those who are disposed to be good, in the way of Christian godliness. After much anxiety and many attempts, I at length succeeded in meeting with a person most disinterestedly pious; one who was willing to accede to any proposal to benefit his fellow-creatures. He appears to attach little importance to himself, but to have much confidence in God, in reference to his exertions. He is really desirous ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... be little doubt that the United States was justified in assuming its existing responsibilities in respect to Cuba and its much more abundant responsibilities in respect to Porto Rico. Neither can it be fairly claimed that hitherto the United States has not dealt disinterestedly and in good faith with the people of these islands. On the other hand, our acquisition of the Philippines raises a series of much more doubtful questions. These islands have been so far merely an ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... a work of the kind you meditate. That I speak sincerely you are sure; as accident, not design, made you acquainted with my admiration of your tract on medals. If I wish to delay your history, it must be from wishing that it may appear with more advantages; and I must speak disinterestedly, as my age will not allow me to hope to see it, if not finished soon. I should not forgive myself if I turned you from prosecution of your work; but, as I am certain that my writings can have given you no opinion of my having sound and deep judgment, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... simple goodness—may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCED attraction, when they afterwards approach the maiden for their own succour and salvation; as they do, a FREE attraction, when, in the person of Swanhilda, they disinterestedly attach themselves to reforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... nothing. She was finding it mildly amusing to note how people came and went at Matocton, and to appraise these people disinterestedly, because she would never see ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... air a frenzied array of Verey lights in hope of discovering the extent of the raid. Had the Ten Hundred been less war-worn they would have chuckled delightedly over this successful bluff, but they hardly commented upon it, stared wearily and disinterestedly at the flashes of bursting grenades, turned away and banged arms and hands noisily on thighs to enforce some little circulation into those ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... complements comparing excited notes, gossiping and making merry with as much disregard of their whereabouts as if they were gathered in a familiar tavern. As for the waggons, these were frequently unattended, their custodians trudging disinterestedly in rear, absorbed in good-natured argument and leaving their bullocks to place their own interpretation upon the rule of the road. Such confidence was seldom misplaced: still, for the driver of an approaching car to share it, demanded, I suppose, an experience of oxen which ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... against an infinite God. It is doubtless sometimes a great Aggravation of it, that it is committed against God; but it is not so much his Greatness, as our abusing his Goodness, that aggravates the Crime: As may appear from this short Observation, That any Favour, disinterestedly done, by a Person of the meanest Rank in Life, lays the Receiver under the same Obligation, as though it were granted by the greatest Man upon Earth: It is the Motive and the Action, put together, that gives it its proper Value to ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... inconsistent, supplementary. Just as the wisest man of his day took bribes as Lord Chancellor, so the finest face may be invalidated by some disharmony, and a fatal weakness may disintegrate a splendid character. Moreover, no one really studies faces disinterestedly, impartially, without prejudice. We like or dislike too readily, we are blinded by the race, sex and age of the one studied, and, most fatal of all, we judge by standards of beauty that are totally misleading. The sweetest face may hide the most arrant egoist, for facial beauty has ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... is ingenuously, liberally, and disinterestedly 254 submitted to the consideration of British capitalists and merchants of respectability. The advantages to be derived from such an establishment as is here contemplated, if not evident to Great Britain, is clearly visible to Holland, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... in answer. It is but a lying cant that would represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more important than his services. And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... diffusion; we feel ourselves strong among so many associates, and all hearts and minds flow together in one great and irresistible stream. On this very account the privilege of influencing an assembled crowd is exposed to most dangerous abuses. As one may disinterestedly animate them, for the noblest and best of purposes, so another may entangle them in the deceitful meshes of sophistry, and dazzle them by the glare of a false magnanimity, whose vainglorious crimes may be painted as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Bazzi," she said when we were alone, "that hussy, Margherita, must leave our friend's house at once. I can see that you love Maria Dovizio so disinterestedly that you prefer her happiness to your own. Now it is certain that Raphael and Maria love each other; and we must not allow any foolishness to part them. Let us work in concert to bring ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... "whipping" it? Should he betake himself to fly-fishing, let his motto be "Strike and spare not!" and if he would be wise above his fellows in the gentle art of catching fish, let him consult The Incomplete Angler, says, disinterestedly, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... man bearing the mean character is pretty well such as I have described him, but he has no name appropriated to him: of those who try to give pleasure, the man who simply and disinterestedly tries to be agreeable is called Over-Complaisant, he who does it with a view to secure some profit in the way of wealth, or those things which wealth may procure, is a Flatterer: I have said before, that the man who is "always non-content" is Cross and Contentious. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... insufficient grounds, it is true, but yet a man who certainly had no expectation of making his fortune by becoming a Jansenist. An eye-witness of the facts he relates, and of which he had an opportunity of judging dispassionately and disinterestedly, his testimony is indorsed by that of a thousand others. All relate what they have seen; and their depositions have every possible mark of authenticity; the originals being recorded and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... buzzing. Baby Fuzzy looked up disinterestedly, and then went back to trying to untie a figure-eight knot he had tied. Jack shoved himself to his feet and put the screen on. It was Max Fane, and for the first time that he could remember, the Colonial Marshal ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... feeling he remembered that interview with Reuben, and his boast that Phil could not affront the conventionalities of the world. It confirmed the truth to him in a moment. Reuben then had known the whole, and had been disinterestedly generous. Should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Mrs. Wicklow promised to put them into the track of the omnibuses running toward Dahlia's abode in the Southwest, and Mary Ann Wicklow, who had a burning desire in her bosom to behold even the outside shell of her friend's new grandeur, undertook very disinterestedly to accompany them. Anthony's strict injunction held them due at a lamp-post outside Boyne's Bank, at half-past three ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not allowed my father to go to the Senate House with only Caius to attend him! Lucius respects my father too much for that—and too disinterestedly. It is an even more serious omission than his failure to attend the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... immediate vicinity, and an ancient female makes a determined dash at my coverlet, with the object of taking forcible possession; but she is seized and unceremoniously hustled away by the men who assigned me my quarters. It appears that, with an eye singly and disinterestedly to my own comfort, and regardless of anybody else's, they have, without taking the trouble to obtain her consent, appropriated to my use the old lady's bed, leaving her to shift for herself any way she can, a high-handed proceeding that naturally enough arouses her ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... He had misunderstood Uncle Andy's apparently simple statement of fact. And he felt convicted of foolishness. Anxious to reinstate himself in his uncle's approval by an unexpected display of knowledge he waived "metaphorical" aside, let "diagram" remain a mystery, and remarked disinterestedly: ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... assertion of the simple fact that you cannot achieve two wholly different ends at one and the same time, that success is dependent upon singleness of aim and enthusiasm. It is true that there is no subject whatsoever that may not lend itself to treatment. But it must be treated for its own sake, disinterestedly. Literature will not move us greatly unless it is concerned with great emotions. It will not move us finely except in the presence of an ideal. For in the great passions of literature, as in the great passions of life, there is always an ideal at stake, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of laughter or of tragic pity and fear and admiration. As we observed in our chapter on "The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics," laughter is an essentially aesthetic attitude, for it implies the ability disinterestedly to face a situation, although one which opposes our standards and expectations, and to take pleasure in it. All sorts of personal feelings may be mixed with laughter, bitterness and scorn and anger; but the fact that we laugh shows that they are not dominant; in laughter we assert our freedom ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... United States had been the point of the foreign wedge that opened Japan to western civilization and inaugurated that amazing period of national reorganization and assimilation which has given the Japanese Empire her place in they world today. American missionaries had labored long and disinterestedly for the moral regeneration of both China and Japan with results which are now universally recognized as beneficial, though in 1900 there was still among the Chinese much of that friction which is the inevitable reaction from an attempt to change the fundamentals ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... always amusing. It is possible that somewhere in such heart as he possessed there lurked a rankling bitterness against the hard things of life, or a scrap of gratitude towards the one or two friends who had helped him disinterestedly, but his most intimate associates could not have guessed at the existence of such feelings. Tony Luton was just a merry-eyed dancing faun, whom Fate had surrounded with streets instead of woods, and it would have been in the highest degree inartistic to have sounded him ...
— When William Came • Saki
... my mother, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and diving into one of his pockets he brought out a sovereign—perhaps it was a five-dollar gold piece—and insisted upon giving it to me; but the proposal produced at once a most severe parental resistance, while I disinterestedly looked on—a resistance apparently quite unlooked for by "my illustrious friend," who had much trouble in explaining that this species of beneficence was a thing of course in England. But American pride was silenced at last, though not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... you again when I go home," I said comfortingly. "Dogs aren't very particular that way. What they want is bones. Cats now, they love disinterestedly. William Adolphus has never swerved in his allegiance to me, although you do give him cream in the pantry on ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the conversation disinterestedly, professionally relaxed before battle. "What's these things I can't do? ...
— Mutineer • Robert J. Shea
... entirely in new clothes), and would have torn him to pieces had he been allowed; in consequence of which he was condemned, and at the place of execution he confessed the fact. Surely so useful, so disinterestedly faithful an animal, should not be so barbarously treated as I have often seen them, particularly ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... shirt-sleeves and old carpet slippers, writing, when Jimmy entered. He looked up disinterestedly, then rose to ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... which was exactly what she ought to have done; and he noticed that among the arriving guests those who were not intimate (which he could not tell from Mrs. Temperly's manner, but could from their own) recognised her as a daughter much more quickly than they recognised Dora, who hung back disinterestedly, as if not to challenge their discernment, while the current passed her, keeping her little sister in position on its brink meanwhile by ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... the sources of all our great Western streams, by which millions of acres are to be irrigated and millions of homes built up in the West. He was from the first no "tenderfoot" adventurer, no visionary enthusiast, but a practical, hard-headed man far more earnestly and disinterestedly concerned in the Westerners' future than they themselves ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the world lately looked upon with horror. What credit soever the missionaries may take to themselves, or try to make their supporters in England believe, every man who has visited this place, and will speak his mind freely and disinterestedly, must acknowledge they have had no share in bringing about this change of character; but, on the contrary, they have done all that in them lay to injure the reputation of the whaler in the estimation of the natives. Hitherto they have not succeeded: their ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... said you were a miserable sinner, not worthy, et cetera, and it comes to the same thing," Diavolo rejoined; "and I don't wonder you are disheartened when you see how impossible it is for you to be as disinterestedly good as Uncle Dawne and Dr. Galbraith. I ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ill served. And then the orator pronounced a warm panegyric on his friend Somers. "Would that all men in power would follow the example of my Lord Keeper! If all patronage were bestowed as judiciously and disinterestedly as his, we should not see the public offices filled with men who draw salaries and perform no duties." It was moved and carried unanimously, that the Commons would support their Majesties, and would forthwith proceed to investigate the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have come, rightly or wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion. I hate modern ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... of smiles, pausing on the stoop to draw on the chamois gloves. As he did so his eye flickered disinterestedly over the personality of a man standing on the opposite walk and staring at the apartment house. He was a short man, of stoutish habit, sloppily dressed, with a derby pulled down over one eye, a cigar-butt protruding arrogantly from beneath a heavy black mustache, beefy cheeks, and thick-soled ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... mistake, Esther! It is fatal. Try to believe that in spite of—of everything, I am speaking disinterestedly. You are young and the young hate suffering. You would marry him, out of pity. But I tell you that no man's happiness comes to him that way. You will have sacrificed yourself to no purpose. The risk is too awful. Wait. Time is kind. You will know it, some day. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay |
