"Self-indulgence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or self-indulgence is of course inevitable; as it can even enter into grief and pain; but now and then it is reduced to a minimum: as, I hold, in the latest activities for her fellow-creatures in which my friend Mrs. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... hill among the olive trees by the Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible, joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that I should choose: I wanted it so that it became spiritual greed—spiritual self-indulgence. ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... with me, that my best chance is to get a small lot of wild land, and begin at the beginning, as you did. I want the discipline of all the enforced hard work, Bob. My unfortunate bringing up in every species of self-indulgence was no good education for a settler; but, with God's help, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... once been hers. Some of the neighbours, who were regarding them as they met, would have said that once Miss Betsey had been much handsomer than ever Miss Elizabeth would be. For Miss Betsey had been young at a time when there was little danger that indolence or self-indulgence could injure the full development of healthful beauty, and as yet Miss Elizabeth had fallen on easy days, and was languid at times, and delicate, and if the truth must be told, a little discontented with what life had as yet brought her, and a little afraid of ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... on this part of my subject, because I think it very probable that, with your warm affections, and before your selfishness has been hardened by habits of self-indulgence, you might some time or other fall into the error I have been describing. In the ardour of your anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own health, and unfit you for more useful, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... getting older, and he looked it. He was one of those gentle natures which put on fat, not from self-indulgence, but from want of resisting force, and the clerical waistcoat that buttoned black to his throat swayed decidedly beyond a straight line at his waist. His red-gold hair was getting thin, and though he ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... quality. At times, the rudeness of the subjects, and perhaps the ungracious reception and thankless requital of their disinterested labors, aggravating the general feeling of the miserableness (so to express it) of seeing so much misery, have lent seduction to the temptations to ease and self-indulgence. Why should they, just they of all men, condemn themselves to dwell so much in the most dreary climate of the moral world, when they could perhaps have taken their almost constant abode in a little elysium of elegant knowledge, taste, and refined society? Then was the time to revert to ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... fast-looking, and decidedly blase. His history was written in general but not-to-be-misunderstood terms all over his face. It was not the face of a drunkard, but there was the redness of many glasses of wine in his complexion, and a nose that expressed nothing so much as pampered self-indulgence. He had the reputation of being a good, sharp business man, with his "eye-teeth ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... explain the necessity of order in the distribution of time, and shewed her little daughter, that it was as necessary in the government of a house as in the government of a nation. 'But that is not the only bad effect,' she added, 'of your self-indulgence.' ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... observance of the Lord's Day. It appears to be held that an attendance at Mass or Matins is a sufficient recognition of the interests of religion and that the rest of the day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as man's—as a day of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion of consecration is abandoned. The only possible outcome of such theories of life is what we already experience, spiritual lawlessness and moral degradation. I suppose that it will only be through social disaster that society will come (as usual, too late) ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... and the sinfulness of every self-indulgence, she also taught to her Sunday-school scholars with more or less success, as one example out of several of a similar ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... weakness of Vandover's character, his self-indulgence, had brought him to such a point that he thought he had to be amused. If his painting amused him, very good; if not, he found something ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... enthusiasm her straggling hair, and put straight a lace cap which was chronically crooked. She looked at her reflection pessimistically, as well she might. It was the puffy red face of a middle-aged woman given to petty self-indulgence. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is equally honored in the breach ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... have such a bother with himself as me?" he asked vaguely but vehemently. "It's self-indulgence does it—sitting down's the beginning ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... household. Mrs Fred sat dawdling opposite her husband over some wretched fancy-work. Eyes less prejudiced than those of Edward Rider might have imagined this a scene of coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. To him it was a disgusting picture of self-indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, almost vice. The very tobacco which polluted the atmosphere of her room was bought with Nettie's money. Pah! the doctor came in with a silent pale concentration of fury and disgust, scarcely ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... life was reflected in his verse, just as the mad license and the furious self-indulgence of Byron are mirrored in Don Juan, Manfred and Cain. Even to extreme old age Tennyson preserved that high poetic faculty which he manifested in early youth. One of his latest poems, Crossing the Bar, is ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... knowledge, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work his ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... distant about two miles from each other, the lifeboats of Walmer and Kingsdown, and faced the sea and the storm. Think of the deed, and its hardships, and its heroism; of the brave hearts who 'darkling faced the billows,' and the anxious women left behind, ye who live to kill time in graceless self-indulgence, and ere it be too late, learn ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... duty to reproduce every detail (of course, with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations), as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest; she must not varnish, soften, or conceal. This well-meant resolution brought on her misconstruction, and some abuse, which she bore, as it was her custom to bear whatever was unpleasant with mild steady patience. She was a very sincere and practical Christian, but the tinge ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... advantages and gifts which reason gives, even though they may be bestowed to an extraordinary degree. There is no more impotent slavery than that to which the most gifted intellects have been occasionally doomed. Self-indulgence is sure to sap every element of moral strength, and to take away from genius itself all power, except to sharpen the stings of self-reproach. "Louis XV. was not insensible to the dangers which menaced his throne, and would have despoiled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... assistance at the Emperor's "conversations with himself," to keep a register of the movements of his own private thoughts and humours; not continuously indeed, yet sometimes for lengthy intervals, during which it was no idle self-indulgence, but a necessity of his intellectual life, to "confess himself," with an intimacy, seemingly rare among the ancients; ancient writers, at all events, having been jealous, for the most part, of affording us so much as a glimpse of that interior self, which in many ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... of those revelations that made Theodora uneasy; one of those indications that Arthur allowed his wife to pinch herself, while he pursued a course of self-indulgence. She never went out in the evening, it appeared, and he was hardly ever at home; her dress, though graceful and suitable, had lost that air of research and choiceness that it had when everything was his gift, or worn to please his eye; and as day after day passed on without bringing him, Theodora ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... circumstances; not in defiance of an ascertainable, insufferable incompetency. They toil on, accepting adversity with such equanimity as God gives them, so long as they are permitted to believe that their misfortunes are not chargeable upon their incapacity or self-indulgence. But when it is made apparent that they are not in their proper sphere, they think it no shame to say so, to withdraw, and to apply their energies to something suited to their tastes and capabilities. And it should be with the ministry; but as things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thirty-six. The necessity for working for a living and a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the more expensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare had up to that time kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he had twinges; more often he ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of God, and every capacity for perverting His gifts, are retained; and if the sinner shall suffer only from that which he himself chooses for ever, and for ever determines to possess? I do not say that it must be so; but if it is so, then might a hell of unbridled self-indulgence be preferred then, as it is by many now, to a heaven whose blessedness consisted in perfect holiness, and the possession of the love of God in Christ, for ever and ever. Let, then, the fairest star be selected, like a beauteous island ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... and self-reliance were held up, and a judicious respect for, and imitation of, successful men. Covetousness was specially reprobated, and luxury and self-indulgence were looked on as a course which ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... he may have many good qualities, can never, strictly speaking, be termed honest. It is absurd to say of him that he is nobody's enemy but his own—with family, friends, and tradespeople paying the penalty for his self-indulgence. He must be satisfied to be called honourable—to be charged with no transgression of the law of honour; which Paley defines as "a system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and calculated to facilitate ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... theory was wholly rational—far more rational than yours; rationally it was perfect. It was a wholly logical recoil from the idleness, the lack of purpose, the slipshod self-indulgence under many names that I saw, and see, everywhere about me. I have work to do—serious work of large importance—and it seemed to me my duty to carry it through at all hazards. I need not add that it still seems so. Yet it was a life's ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... symbolical! One comes to the great masterpieces of the past, expecting some miraculous illumination, and one finds, on opening them, only darkness and dust and a faint smell of decay. After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Still—the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... is a book that stirs one by its fine sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its depth and ardour of intense feeling. 'Imprisonment,' says Mr. Blunt in his preface, 'is a reality of discipline most useful to the modern soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and self-indulgence. Like a sickness or a spiritual retreat it purifies and ennobles; and the soul emerges from it stronger and more self-contained.' To him, certainly, it has been a mode of purification. The opening sonnets, composed in the bleak cell of Galway Gaol, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and knew also the trouble and grief I was causing to you, whom (although you may find it difficult to believe) I really loved, and who had ever been such a kind friend to me. I now see that it was a love of self-indulgence which led me to commit so foul a sin. Conscience remonstrated, and the words of the Bible, so early instilled into my mind by my mother, constantly reproached me; but I turned from and stifled the voice of conscience, and deliberately chose the evil way. All these years I have experienced at ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... a pleasant charm in the beginning of life. There is awe as well as excitement in it when rightly viewed. The possibilities that lie in it of noble or ignoble work—of happy self-sacrifice or ruinous self-indulgence—the capacities in the right use of which it may rise to heights of beautiful virtue, in the abuse of which it may sink to the depths of debasing vice—make the crisis one of fear as well as of hope, of sadness as ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... school, I would purchase a house somewhere in Kojimachi-ku and get a position in a government office. She decided everything in her own way, and talked of it aloud, and I was made an unwilling and bashful listener. I do not know how her nephew weighed her tales of self-indulgence on me. Kiyo was a woman of the old type, and seemed, as if it was still the days of Feudal Lords, to regard her nephew equally under obligation to me ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... person so omniscient as Mavick for his friend. No combination could be more desirable for a young man who proposed to himself a career of getting money by adroit management and spending it in pure and simple self-indulgence. There are plenty of men who have taken advantage of like conditions to climb from one position to another, and have then kicked down the ladders behind them as fast as they attained a new footing. It was Jack's fault that he was not one of these. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... state of flushed repletion, he would have old brandy, black coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the name of temperance omit the brandy and have rather more coffee, in the smoking-room. I would sit and watch that stiff dignity of self-indulgence, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... kind of aristocratic Bohemia, but, behold! they were fighting and dying with the bravest. We had thought too many of their young women (as thoughtless and capricious creatures of fashion) had sacrificed the finest bloom of modest and courageous womanhood in luxury and self-indulgence; but, lo! they were hurrying to the battlefields as nurses, and there facing without flinching the scenes of blood and horror, of foul sights and stenches, which make the ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... great change was not allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, what only might have been is as tho it could not be; and to know this may well ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Merrick's," she answered in that peculiarly hushed voice with which the English poor always utter the names of the titled classes. And so in fact it was; for the famous gout doctor had lately been knighted for his eminent services in saving a royal duke from the worst effects of his own self-indulgence. Dolly put one fat finger to her lip, and elevated her eyebrows, and looked grave at once. Sir Anthony Merrick! What a very grand gentleman he must be indeed, and how nice it must seem to be able to drive in so distinguished a vehicle with ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... may be dangerous to oneself mortifies other people. If so, the vexing them is a certain wrong, whereas the mischief of taking the pleasure is only a possible contingency. But then one must take it out of oneself some other way, or it becomes an excuse for self-indulgence.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Frederick; she long since had learned to leave Frederick to God—being led herself, being influenced and thrown off her feet, by just an advertisement, by just an incoherent stranger. It was indeed disturbing. She failed to understand her sudden longing for what was, after all, self-indulgence, when for years no such desire had ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... might have been good for something, if her mind and her affections had not lain fallow ever since she escaped from a series of governesses who taught her self-indulgence by example. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... irresistible. My soul would succumb as well as my body. This would seem wild, wicked talk to Mr. Eltinge; it would seem weak and irrational to any man. But I'm only Ida Mayhew, and such is my nature. I've been made all the more incapable of patient self-sacrifice by self-indulgence from my childhood up. Oh, will it be very, very wrong to win him if I can?" and the passionate tears and sobs that followed these words would seem to indicate that she understood ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... temptation and resolved to forego earthly pleasure, and teach mankind what he conceived to be the way of life, through self-control. He had tried pleasure; next he had tried extreme asceticism; he now struck out what he called "The Middle Path," as between self-indulgence on the one hand, and extreme bodily mortification as a thing of merit on the other. This middle ground still demanded abstinence as favorable to the highest mental and moral conditions, but it was not carried to such extremes as to weaken the body or the mind, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... plausibly urged that, as young ladies (Maedchen) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (Buebchen) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (Gecken) are they; and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... brute; and of one of the most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed them by continued gratification. He will not think it is true to any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon himself and his own nature, or upon God. But you ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... discover his error in regard to Adrian; he found he had mistaken vivacity for genius, and frankness of manner for generosity of heart, when in fact his favourite proved unformed and untaught, indifferent to the opinion of all whom he ought to have valued, and given up to idleness and self-indulgence. Such a companion was quitted without any effort of resolution, but the sister's power over him did not yield so easily. Amaranthe's vanity had been too much flattered by such a conquest, for her to endeavour to conceal the satisfaction it afforded her, and the enamoured Lionel ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... creator of "Nourhulma" such love any more,—had he not drained the cup of Passion to the dregs in the far Past, and tasted its mixed sweetness and bitterness to no purpose save self-indulgence? All that was over;—and yet, as he walked away from the bridge, back to his hotel in the quiet moonlight, he thought what a transcendent thing Love might be, even on earth, between two whose spirits were SPIRITUALLY AKIN,—whose ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... men among the churchmen, men as pious and virtuous as the Puritans whom they displaced. But the royalists came back as the party of reaction, reaction of the spirit of the world against asceticism, of self-indulgence against duty, of materialism against idealism. For a time virtue was a public laughing-stock, and the word "saint," the highest expression in the language for moral perfection, connoted everything that was ridiculous. I do not speak of the gallantries of Whitehall, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... do it, when we seek to drive away uncomfortable fears and the visitations of conscience by self-indulgence; when, instead of saying I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help?—and seeking the steep and arduous consolations of duty, we look into our nearest friends' faces and whine for a sympathy that is often insincere, or lie down in some place of comfort that ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... however "good," however elevated.* Such, we can solemnly assure the reader, would bring its reward in many ways—perhaps in another life, perhaps in this world, but it would tend to shorten the existence it is desired to preserve, as surely as self-indulgence and profligacy. That is why very few of the truly great men of the world (of course, the unprincipled adventurers who have applied great powers to bad uses are out of the question)—the martyrs, the heroes, the founders of religions, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... passive I might be, there were times when the involuntary discomfort was not in my keeping. My touching myself or not did not save me from it. Because it sometimes gave me pleasure, I thought it might be a form of self-indulgence, and did not do it until it could scarcely be helped. Soon the orgasm began to occur fairly frequently in my sleep, perhaps once or twice a week. I had no erotic dreams, then or at any other time, but I had ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... new guns, powder, bullets, small shot, knives, and axes "against another going out or hunting." When the new munitions had been paid for, the buccaneers knew exactly how much money they could spend in self-indulgence. Those who have seen a cowboy on a holiday, or a sailor newly home from the seas, will understand the nature of the "great liberality" these hunters practised on such occasions. One who saw a good deal of their way of life[7] has written that their ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... principles can be so fixed, as not to leave a ready escape from all obligation. Such minds, either by indolence (and consequent ignorance) or by sophistry, will convince themselves, that a life of engrossing self-indulgence, with perhaps the gift of a few dollars, and a few hours of time, may suffice, to fulfil the requisitions ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... But he never seemed to care for money. In that respect he was like one who dwelt by the side of a pond, ready to dip up and to give its waters to any man who might thirst. He never wasted money, or spent it for any self-indulgence. But he was ready to share it with any deserving object. Starr King said of him that "he lived all ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... incapacity for organization." In truth, it is not inborn incapacity to which we owe our unquestioned inferiority, but to the atrophy of will-power which is one of the consequences of years of egotism, overweening confidence, self-indulgence and the loss of an ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... own, and make gentlemen and ladies of them, whatever they did or wherever they went, he only knew, and his faithful wife, and the Lord who helps brave poverty. Of such things he never spoke, unless his temper was aroused by luxury and self-indulgence ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... The unseen population in filth, rags and unrighteousness, and the rest of us in lazy self-indulgence, which, perhaps, in God's sight, is about as bad. I often think if each professing Christian took hold of one poor beggar and tried to elevate him, we should solve the problem a great deal sooner ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... of Pyroch'les, son of Aerates, husband of Acras'ia the enchantress. He sets out against Sir Guyon, but being ferried over Idle Lake, abandons himself to self-indulgence, and is slain by King Arthur (canto 8).—Spencer, Faery Queen, ii. 5, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... in taverns, and having talked themselves dry at the bars of Westminster Hall, drank themselves speechless at the bars of Strand taverns—ere they reeled again into their chambers. The same habits of uproarious self-indulgence were in vogue with the benchers of the inns, and the Doctors of Doctors' Commons. Hale's austerity was the exceptional demeanor of a pious man protesting against the wickedness of an impious age. Had it not been for the shortness of time that had elapsed since Algernon Sidney's trial and sentence, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Puritan military government but largely also against the excessive moral severity of the whole Puritan regime. Accordingly a large part of the nation, but particularly the Court, now plunged into an orgy of self-indulgence in which moral restraints almost ceased to be regarded. The new king and his nobles had not only been led by years of proscription and exile to hate on principle everything that bore the name of Puritan, but had spent their exile at the French Court, where utterly cynical ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... inclinations, no matter how devious the paths into which they strayed, nor how mercilessly obstacles must be tramped down, in order to facilitate the accomplishment of his purposes. Naturally neither cruel nor vindictive, he had gradually grown pitiless in all that conduced to self-aggrandizement or self-indulgence; incapable of a generosity that involved even slight sacrifice, a polished handsome epicurean, an experienced man of the world, putting aside all scruples in the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... have been utterly buried and lost beneath a mountain of sloth and laziness, had not God determined otherwise. He had in his early years chalked out for himself a plan of life in which he had his own ease and self-indulgence solely in view; he had no particular bad passions to gratify, he only wished to live a happy quiet life, just as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease or quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent quiet drones ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... about the year 1755, the once celebrated Dr. Brown, after other little attempts in literature and paradox, took up the conceit that England was ruined at her heart's core by excess of luxury and sensual self-indulgence. He had persuaded himself that the ancient activities and energies of the country were sapped by long habits of indolence, and by a morbid plethora of enjoyment in every class. Courage, and the old fiery spirit of the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... poets had too much taste to reveal their amorous desires quite so bluntly as an appetite, yet they, too, never went beyond the confines of self-indulgence. When Propertius says a girl's cheeks are like roses floating on milk; when Tibullus declares another girl's eyes are bright enough to light a torch by; when Achilles Tatius makes his lover exclaim: "Surely you must carry about a bee on your lips, they are full of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... withdrawn as he was from active life in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone was far too acute an observer to have any leanings to the delusive self-indulgence of temporary retirements. To his intimate friend, Sir Walter James, who seems to have nursed some such intention, he wrote at this very time ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Papeete roads. He kept himself reasonably well in hand till he had taken the sun and yawned and blotted through his calculations; but from the moment he rolled up the chart, his hours were passed in slavish self-indulgence or in hoggish slumber. Every other branch of his duty was neglected, except maintaining a stern discipline about the dinner-table. Again and again Herrick would hear the cook called aft, and see him running with fresh tins, or carrying away again a meal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... begin vith dischargin' her dooties at home, and makin' them as is about her cheerful and happy, and that vile she goes to church, or chapel, or wot not, at all proper times, she should be wery careful not to con-wert this sort o' thing into a excuse for idleness or self-indulgence. I have done this," she says, "and I've vasted time and substance on them as has done it more than me; but I hope ven I'm gone, Veller, that you'll think on me as I wos afore I know'd them people, and as I ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... not pollute my body or that of another by any form of self-indulgence or perverse yielding to passion. Such indulgence is a desecration of the fountains of life and an insult to the dignity of ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... self-indulgence had answered as well as it should have done, he would have been a fine-looking young man; as it was, the habits of his life were fast destroying his appearance. His hair would have been golden if it had been kept clean. His figure ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the result of endless self-denial. I have known several alumnae, to say the least, who have sacrificed greater privileges than visits to the Opera for the sake of contributing an extra mite. Would it be just for one who benefits from the economy of others to spend in self-indulgence?" ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... myself while doing so. I do not think I mentioned that second part, which is the only one I have managed to carry out; but my father must have suspected the suppression, for he branded the whole affair as self-indulgence. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... good humor—and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be kept in good humor—he had touches of that boyish charm that had made him the enfant gate of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and Constantinople. An enfant no more, in the robustly rotund forties, his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that smiling acquiescence that kept life ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... that a warrior must be proof against the alluring ways of pretty maidens; that he must place his honor far above the temptations of self-indulgence and indolence. Cold, hunger, and personal hardship did not count with Antelope when there was required of him any special exertion for the common good. It was cause to him of secret satisfaction that the council-men had selected him for a dangerous service in preference ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... she spent in Southern California, moving from one large hotel crowded with Eastern visitors to another. This uncommon self-indulgence and her devotion to Helene were the only weak spots Ruyler was able to discover in that cast-iron character. She seldom attended the brilliant entertainments of her daughter and refused the endowed car offered by her son-in-law. Helene married to the best parti ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... him. It is the same with us. Satan offers us this world instead of the world to come. He offers us our own way, so dear to all of us. He offers us the pleasures of the body, "let us eat and drink." He offers us self-indulgence in all the lusts of the flesh. He offers us all the flash and glitter of the world, but he does not let us see the foulness and rottenness which they cover. To the man of science he comes, as to Faustus in the legend, and tries ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... get more time together by living near his work. With a roar, the flood of her bewilderment, diverted for a time, broke over her again. She braced herself against it. Through her companion's dimly-heard exhortations that, from her high heaven of self-indulgence, she stoop to lend a hand to her less favored sisters, she repeated to herself, clinging to the phrase as though it were a magic formula: "If I can only wish hard enough to make things better, nothing ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... gone. Xenophon's ideal young husband, Ischomachus, says he married his wife at the age of fifteen.[*] She had been "trained to see and to hear as little as possible"; but her mother had taught her to have a sound control of her appetite and of all kinds of self-indulgence, to take wool and to make a dress of it, and to manage the slave maids in their spinning tasks. She was at first desperately afraid of her husband, and it was some time before he had "tamed" her sufficiently to discuss their household problems freely. Then Ischomachus made her ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... while Gyp gazed at the pinkish nails and their absurdly wee half-moons, at the sleeping tranquillity stirred by breathing no more than a rose-leaf on a windless day, her lips grew fuller, trembled, reached toward the dark lashes, till she had to rein her neck back with a jerk to stop such self-indulgence. Soothed, hypnotized, almost in a dream, she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... things, will as certainly render me despicable, perhaps degraded. I hear the busy devil whispering even now. It is my demon. Now, I say, see what a farce life is! I shall die like a dog, as I have lived like a fool; and then my epitaph will be in everybody's mouth. Here are the consequences of self-indulgence: here is a fellow, forsooth, who thought only of the gratification of his vile appetites; and by the living Heaven, am I not standing here among my hereditary rocks, and sighing to the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... one of rigid asceticism any more than it is one of voluptuous self-indulgence; it is an equilibrium of forces, a vital harmony, a constant symphony, in the performance of which all capabilities in all phases of expression are called into vital but never into hysterical activity. The true peace is so heroic that it only ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... assist her father seemed very doubtful, but she felt the necessity of employment more strongly each day, not only for the sake of the money it might bring, but also as an antidote to a growing tendency to brood over her deep disappointment. She soon began to recognize that such self-indulgence would unfit her for a struggle that might be extended and severe, and was not long in coming to the conclusion that she must make the best of her life as it was and would be. Days and weeks had ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... ignored, they could certainly be forgotten, and many Englishmen, in spite of them, still remain immensely incurious about us. The American who wishes to be taken nationally by them must often inspire them with a curiosity about us, before he can gratify it, and that is a species of self-indulgence which leaves a pang. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... to-day. We are all prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the statement, we have gone on accepting it, year after year, as ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... transgressors: 'Let thine heart be toward the highway, even the way that thou wentest; turn again.' Now, what is it in which you are at this moment going off the right road? What is that life of disobedience or self-indulgence that you are just entering on? Keep your ears open and you will hear hundreds of men and women falling and being dashed to pieces before you and all around you. Are you falling of late too much under the power ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... End clubs, a nightly rubber at whist, and certain regular drains upon his pocket which never found their way into any book of accounts, made up a formidable total of expenditure by the year's end. He was too clever a man of the world to let his reputation—or even his conscience—suffer by his self-indulgence, and, if he lived hard in the pursuit of pleasure, he also worked hard in his profession. In short, he was a well-reputed lawyer, against whom no one had a word to say; and he was supposed to have a very good chance of the prizes which ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Self-indulgence of all kinds, over-eating, over-sleeping, under-exercising and the evasion of responsibilities are the weakest points of this type. Despite his many strong points his life is often wrecked on these rocks. He so constantly tends to taking the easy way out. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... your heart to strangers, take care that your little spaniel Conscience keeps wide awake, lest some evening a chest may be brought in containing a thief who may rob you before you find out his character. The thief may be an evil thought, a bad feeling, shut up in a chest formed of self-indulgence, sloth, vanity, pride. At the first alarm, wake up, break open the chest, call in your faithful neighbour, and hand over the ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... the people. We enjoy facts. Facts are the modern man's hunting, his adventure and sport. The men who are ahead are getting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music, like rhythm. It becomes almost a passion, almost a self-indulgence in their lives. Being honest with things, having a distaste for being cheated by things, having a distaste for being cheated by one's self and for cheating other people, runs in the blood in modern men. The nations can be seen ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and learnt rightly, the self-indulgence, the danger, the cruelty, of indiscriminate alms. It looked well enough in theory, on paper. 'But—but—but,' thought Lancelot, 'in practice, one can't help feeling a little of that un-economic feeling called ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... in a state of happy intoxication—and has borrowed from his great original, not indeed the force or brilliancy of his fancy, but something of its playfulness, and a large share of his apparent joyousness and self-indulgence in its exercise. It is evidently a great pleasure to him to be fully possessed with the beauties of his author, and to follow the impulse of his unrestrained eagerness to impress them upon ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... knowledge of the materialistic or rationalistic theories, which were propagated respectively by the Epicurean and Stoic schools, was made the excuse for indifference to the law. Then as now the advanced Jew would mask his self-indulgence under the guise of a banal philosophy, and jeer easily at archaic myths and tribal laws. The dominating motive of Philo's work is to show that the Bible contains for those who will seek it the richest treasures of wisdom, that its ethical teaching is more ideal ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... honestly take his view. As if the fact that he was born with all possible advantages did not make him and his plight inexcusable. It passes my comprehension why people of his sort, when suffering from the calamities they have deliberately brought upon themselves by laziness and self-indulgence and extravagance, should get a sympathy that is withheld from those of the honest human rank and file falling into far more real misfortunes not of their ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... meet over the nose. Their faces beam with good nature and they evidently regard the frequent enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes as among the real pleasures of life. But the older men all show traces of this life of ease and self-indulgence. It is seldom that one sees a man beyond fifty with a strong face. The Egyptian over forty loses his fine figure, he lays on abundant flesh, his jowl is heavy and his whole face suggests satiety and the loss of that pleasure in mere existence ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... response. His short heavy body was faultlessly clothed; his heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open air, and a far from negligible administration of the resources ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and considered quite proper, although it looks strange to us. Doubtless, too, if you have traveled abroad you have discovered how few candy shops there are. Foreigners regard the wholesale fashion in which we devour sweets with wonder and often with disgust. They consider it a form of self-indulgence, and indeed I myself think we are at times ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... sympathy with life to remain untouched by his surroundings. He was more tolerant of opinions other than his own, but more unrelenting in his fidelity to conscience and more impatient of half-heartedness and self-indulgence. He was full of reverence for the great scholars and the great leaders of men ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... that the life of our class—the wealthy and cultured—not only became repulsive to me, but lost all significance. All our actions, our judgments, science, and art itself, appeared to me in a new light. I realized that it was all self-indulgence, and that it was useless to look for any meaning in it. I hated myself and acknowledged the truth. Now it had all ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... indulgent arms of his weak and doating mother, and placed under like healthy training, where his really fine qualities of heart and mind might have been cultured, and he might early have been taught to curb that hot and hasty temper, and to restrain those habits of self-indulgence, which finally ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Weakness and self-indulgence there were, and those writ large and deep, on the face of Warren Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper significance, the wavering lines of instability produced a curiously ambiguous effect of a fine head modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Mr. Ponsonby was a large man, with the jovial manner of one never accustomed to self-restraint; good birth and breeding making him still a gentleman, in spite of his loud voice and the traces of self-indulgence. He was ruddy and bronzed, and his eyebrows and hair looked as if touched by hoar frost; altogether as dissimilar a partner as could be devised for the slender girlish ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she reflected; and her imagination was fired by the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the depths of the most complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually taking his first journey alone ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of course, more ways of viewing the question than could be compressed into so short a play. Myself, I confess to a sneaking sympathy with the standpoint of Crawshaw. Money for him did not mean mere self-indulgence; it meant outward show—a house in a better neighbourhood, a more expensive car, a higher status in the opinion of his world—all the things that somehow help in what is called a career. By accepting the fifty thousand pounds he would gain something in the public eye; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... incompatible with the military spirit is made only among decaying people. While the nation is still vigorous, while its population is expanding, while the blood in its veins is strong, then on this hope no scruples are felt. But when its energies begin to wither, when self-indulgence takes the place of self-sacrifice, when its sons and daughters become degenerate, then it is that a spurious and bastard humanitarianism masquerading as religion declares war to be an anachronism ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... lined with polished woods; their windows covered with soft silk curtains. Of such a refinement of luxury I had never dreamed. Having seen at least a thousand beggars on the way, I was saddened by these rich, lavish details of a prince's self-indulgence. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... she were to be taken away. She had been worse than a drag upon him all these years. Foolish, idle, lazy, extravagant, she had exaggerated her physical delicacy and given herself up to indolence and self-indulgence, running the household into debt until it was a disgrace to the minister and to the church. Mr. Middleton, dear saint, hadn't known order nor comfort nor companionship for years until his niece had come. And when all was said, she could do better ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... unfortunate creatures round about her—that she should talk to them as if they were human beings like herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence, making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of her simple ways and her charitable work, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... was Napoleon to be rewarded! That was the great difficult question. Was wealth to be conferred upon him! For wealth he cared nothing Millions had been at his disposal, and he had emptied them all into the treasury of France. Ease, luxury, self-indulgence had no charms for him. Were monuments to be reared to his honor, titles to be lavished upon his name? Napoleon regarded these but means for the accomplishment of ends. In themselves they were nothing. The one only thing which he desired was power , power to work out vast results ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Clair achieved better results. She was a gentle girl, with an affectionate, yielding disposition, tending towards indolence and self-indulgence. Her aunt's chief concern about her was that she should be frocked and mannered as became her position. Her education was committed to a very select young ladies' school, where only the daughters of the first families ever entered. What or how they were taught, her aunt never inquired. ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... diseases, shut herself up in her house, and refused to see any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... having posted his secret letter, he had regained a certain measure of composure by writing in his secret diary. He was aware of the danger of that strange self-indulgence. He alludes to it himself, but he could not refrain. It calmed him—it reconciled him to his existence. He sat there scribbling by the light of a solitary candle, till it occurred to him that having heard the explanation of Haldin's arrest, as put forward by Sophia Antonovna, it behoved him to tell ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... not estimated its influence and value. Once denied it, and I dared not acknowledge to myself how precious it had become, how silently and fatally it had wrought upon my heart. The impropriety and folly of self-indulgence were at once apparent—yes, the vanity and wickedness—and, startled by what looked like guilt, I determined manfully to rise superior to temptation. I took refuge in my books; they lacked their usual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... which is very often, in all ages of the world, to be observed between those who inherit greatness and those who acquire it for themselves. We see the same analogy reigning at the present day, when the sons of the wealthy, who are born to fortune, substitute pride, and arrogance, and vicious self-indulgence and waste for the modesty, and prudence, and virtue of their sires, by means of which the fortune was acquired. Philotas was proud, boastful, extravagant, and addicted, like Alexander his master, to every species of indulgence and dissipation. He was universally hated. His father, out of patience ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of his children, so the most important, the most honorable and desirable task which can be set any woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and self-sacrifice. Of course there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great careers of outside usefulness in addition to—not as substitutes for—their home work; ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... stained with questionable deeds. It was a life of adventure and excitement, and abundantly gratifying to pride and ambition. While it could be idealized into a noble calling, it too often ended in a lawless, capricious career of self-indulgence. The cross on the mantle symbolized the heavy blows and sorrows inflicted on those who had the misfortune to differ in opinion, faith, or race with the knight, the steel of whose armor seemingly got into his heart, rather than any personal ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... mother's part and save herself and myself from boundless regret. My boy, my boy, do you feel the lack of your own mother's vigour? Might you have lived under my care and owned a better restraint and learned to work and live a respectable life in circumstances less provocative of self-indulgence? Such questions, when they rise, are maddening. When I see them form themselves in Philemon's eyes I drive them out with all the force of my influence, which is still strong over him. But when they make way in my own breast, I can find no relief, not even in prayer. Frederick, were I to tell you ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... a kitchen to herself, in the morning. She either ousted her landlady, or used her as second cook. For Madame was a gourmet, if not gourmand. If she inclined towards self-indulgence in any direction, it was in the direction of food. She loved a good table. And hence the Tawaras saved less money than they might. She was an exacting, tormenting, bullying cook. Alvina, who knew well enough how to prepare a simple dinner, was offended by Madame's exactions. Madame ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... fear that, as an old woman, she would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria's day old people were only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives more than their own grandmothers ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... unknown—and there began a life of toil and renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Mac-Ivor, I dare not hope it. A thousand circumstances of fatal self-indulgence have made me the creature rather of imagination than reason. Durst I but hope—could I but think that you would deign to be to me that affectionate, that condescending friend, who would strengthen me to redeem my ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the love of power; the spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty or a strong desire of self-indulgence. The amassers of fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes—lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the wo others, in the fulness of their persons and the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... club, or, at any rate, that a certain number of them may find their highest happiness in knowledge and wisdom rather than in amateur theatricals and fancy-dress balls. The human mind, after all, cannot find rest in triviality, and after so long a period of the most sordid and vulgar self-indulgence it is reasonable to hope that our aristocracy may ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... smiling vale, the orchards just beginning to lose their blossoms; the broad, rich meadows, with the grass waving in the south wind, resembling velvet; the fields of corn of all sorts; and the cattle, as they stood ruminating, or enjoying their existence in motionless self-indulgence beneath the shade of trees, seemed to speak of abundance and considerate treatment. Everything denoted peace, plenty and happiness. Yet this place, with all its blessings and security, had I wilfully deserted to encounter pirates ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... human nature, can ever contemplate without pain. His history from the day of his landing in England in August 1806 till the day when he entered Mr. Gillman's house in 1816 is one long and miserable story of self-indulgence and self- reproach, of lost opportunities, of neglected duties, of unfinished undertakings. His movements and his occupation for the first year after his return are not now traceable with exactitude, but his time was apparently ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... been enervated by a constant course of self-indulgence, had nothing to support the terror of the shock, and, at the time her husband breathed his last, was passing from one fainting fit to another; and he to whom she had been joined in the mysterious tie ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fields unexplored by science, to do original work and to produce results of great value to other students. But he was not the man to make a display of his power; in fact he apologizes, when writing to his father from Dresden, for making a secret of his pursuit, regarding it rather as a matter of self-indulgence which needed excuse. Bishop Selwyn could have told him that he need have no such fears, and that in developing his linguistic gifts he was going exactly the right way to fit himself ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... his longing to get back to Queen Berenice[205] fired him to return. True, the young man's fancy was attracted by Berenice, but he did not allow this to interfere with business. Still his youth was a time of gay self-indulgence, and he showed more restraint in his own reign than in his father's. Accordingly he sailed along the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor, and, skirting the seas which lay upon his left, reached the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, whence he made a bolder crossing to Syria.[206] On his way he conceived ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... indifference. Her position in Giovanni's house was a very singular one. His wife was a weak and indolent woman, and with little religious character about her; she was the first of the family, however, over whom Dominica's influence was felt. In a short time her habits of vanity and self-indulgence were laid aside; and she began to pray night and morning, and to attend Mass, which till then she had neglected. Then one of the sons, who was to all outward seeming given up to the thoughtless dissipation ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... treat him as if he were of secondary importance in her life—the being who had to provide the wherewithal on which the human idol might be suitably reared. His own personal need of her was viewed as masculine self-indulgence and lack of spirituality. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... part, was no less interested in him, but she found little else than that she had already seen: humorous, quizzical grey eyes, a face a good deal lined, and a mouth and chin suggesting a nature fond of enjoyment and self-indulgence, which it had never seen any cause to deny itself. She saw that he was very grey about the temples, and a trifle inclined to stoutness, but tall enough and broad ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... child's love to the living present, and recoiled from a contemplation of the great change which awaits us. Like him, he was content with the goodly green earth and human countenances, and would fain set up his tabernacle here. He had less of what might be termed self-indulgence in this feeling than Lamb. He had higher views; he loved this world not only for its own sake, but for the opportunities it afforded of doing good. Like the Persian seer, he beheld the legions of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of Light ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you be aroused, in sleepless hours of unbearable misery (future-waking nightmares), from your false, uneasy dream of death; to participate in an inheritance of woe still worse than yours—worse with all the accumulated interest of long years and centuries of iniquitous self-indulgence, and poisoned by the sting of a self-reproach that shall never cease till the last of your tainted progeny dies out, and finds his true nirvana, and yours, in the dim, forgetful depths ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... civilization is, curiously enough, the story of masculine brutality, self-indulgence, and vice. The history of the world also proves that woman's sphere has been to submit patiently and silently to injustice and imposition. Practical eugenics is the first worthy effort in the history of all time to hold men and women responsible for their mode of living. It is a ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... to a military regimen so energetic as his. Personally the most modest of men, officially he was the most exacting of commanders, and his purpose to enforce a thorough performance of duty, and his stern disapprobation of remissness and self-indulgence were veiled by no affectations of politeness. Those who came to serve near his person, if they were not wholly like-minded with himself, usually underwent, at first, a sort of breaking in, accompanied ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 64 (a.u. 817)] To such lengths did Nero's self-indulgence go that he actually drove chariots in public. Again, one time after the slaughter of beasts he straightway brought water into the theatre by means of pipes and produced a sea-fight: then he let the water out again and arranged a gladiatorial ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... creed. All that was not required for the business and the necessaries of life went into the little coffer with steel bands and florid key. They denied themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one another's looks, smiled; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set up their fourth son as a master-tailor, and their eldest daughter as a robemaker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade would enable them to throw work ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... troubled surface—no horizon in sight, no passing fleets, no comrades but those who struggle in the flood like themselves. If they be frivolous, lightheaded, men without purpose or achievement, we may conjecture, if we do not know, that they were born so, or spoiled by fortune, or befuddled by self-indulgence. It is no great matter what we ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... looking at which is seen either too obviously or with too much difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any very perceptible excess; for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of self-indulgence than of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced through the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... he appears the idol of the hearth—genial, graceful, gifted, beautiful, and warm-hearted. But he betrays ambition, sudden and great haste to be married, and some selfishness. He walks to his lodging in a neighbouring village, where trifling circumstances point to a refined sensuousness, self-indulgence, and sophistry in his character, leading to the neglect of serious duty. The shadow of impending tragedy is hinted at from the first ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... leaves no room for this emotion, any more than for that of remorse or blame-worthiness; we cannot get rid of the sense of sin, yet retain the sense of righteousness. The determinist sponge passes over the whole moral vocabulary, not only over the inconvenient parts; it obliterates the terms self-indulgence, dishonesty, cowardice, but the same fate overtakes self-conquest, integrity, bravery. To vary the phrase slightly, we must not, on the determinist hypothesis, insult God by taking credit to ourselves for what He has done. Are we prepared ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... exaggeration, be called the turning-point and the last great earthly opportunity of Barrett's character. He had not originally been an evil man, only a man who, being stoical in practical things, permitted himself, to his great detriment, a self-indulgence in moral things. He had grown to regard his pious and dying daughter as part of the furniture of the house and of the universe. And as long as the great mass of authorities were on his side, his illusion ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... the information which it may be my painful lot to take to him. I think of it with dread. It has been my pleasure to stand your friend—you must prove mine. I shall expect you to act with fortitude and calmness, and not, by weakness and self-indulgence, to increase the pain that will afflict the parent's heart—for it will be sufficient for Fairman to know only what has happened to give up every hope and consolation. You must be firm on his account and chiefly for the sake of the dear girl, who should not see your face without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... name of Ormuzd, nor of any other deity, but in the name of mere brute force and lust of conquest. The old Persian spirit was gone out of them. They were the symbols now of nothing save despotism and self-will, wealth and self-indulgence. They, once the children of Ormuzd or light, had become the children of Ahriman or darkness; and therefore it was, as I believe, that Xerxes' 1000 ships, and the two million (or, as some have it, five million) human beings availed naught against the little fleets and little battalions ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... answers what easier than the demolition of a sexless world gone entirely mad? How simple the engineries of destruction. Civil war in America; universal hara-kiri in Europe; the dry rot of wealth wasting itself in self-indulgence. Then a thousand years of total eclipse. Finally Macaulay's Australian surveying the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral from a broken parapet of London Bridge; and a Moslem conqueror of America looking from the hill of the Capitol ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson |
