Egotism

“ An easy egotism, a contented sensualism, may have carried the first comfortably and serenely through their bank-note-lined paradise of commonplace existence. How shall you know what heart-sickness in their youth, what aching desires for joys never found, what sorrowful power of sympathy, what fatal keenness of vision, have blanched the faded cheek, and lined the weary mouth, of the other twain? ”

“ How often it happens while the moral principles are still struggling that love prevails in their favor, and hastens by its irresistible power the resolutions that duty alone would have vainly demanded from weak human nature! Who, then, would distrust an affection that protects so powerfully what is most excellent in human nature, and which fights so victoriously against the moral foe of all morality, egotism? ”

“ Yet all hearts crave eyes whereby to measure themselves. And what better foil for one's egotism than this reflection of himself in the mirror of another's appreciation? The frank sun withholds his beams from none for any false delicacy. Nor till one rejoices in being helped to discern excellence in another, desiring to comprehend and compliment his own therein, is he freed from the egotism that excludes him from the best benefits one can bestow. Happy if we have dissolved our individualism in the fluent affections, and so made intercourse possible and delightful between us. ”

“ Do you know, my dear sir, what I like best in your letter? The egotism for which you thought necessary to apologise. I am a rogue at egotism myself; and to be plain, I have rarely or never liked any man who was not. The first step to discovering the beauties of God's universe is usually a (perhaps partial) apprehension of such of them as adorn our own characters. When I see a man who does not think pretty well of himself, I always suspect him of being in the right. ”

“ But you would crush it, and although you desire man to retain all his instincts you begin by depriving him of his egotism. Perhaps you rely on conscience, on the idea of honour and duty?'
'I don't need to rely on that,' Luc answered in the same quiet way. 'Truth to tell, egotism, such as we have hitherto understood it, has given us such a frightful social system, instinct with so much hatred and suffering, that it would really be allowable to try some other factor. ”

“ This is not the boasting of the ignorant egotist who vaunts himself above his fellow man, but the calm, conscious serenity of a great soul, who has learned the patient philosophy of life.
50There is an egotism that is cheap and vulgar and born of ignorance alone. There is an egotism that comes from the knowledge that after all what we are depends not upon the estimate of the world, but upon the integrity and character of ourselves. This consciousness of individual worth brings that peace of soul, “which the world can neither give nor take away.” ”

“ While the affected decency of our manners does not even grant to nature a pardonable influence in the initial stage, our materialistic system of morals allows her the casting vote in the last and essential stage. Egotism has founded its system in the very bosom of a refined society, and without developing even a sociable character, we feel all the contagions and miseries of society. We subject our free judgment to its despotic opinions, our feelings to its bizarre customs, and our will to its seductions. We only maintain our caprice against her holy rights. ”

“ His life, in which so much that was good was mixed, with so much that was bad, lighted up the whole domain of egotism with its glare, and made one feel how near the best and the worst were to each other, and how they sometimes touched without absolute division in texture and color. ”

“ In the warmth of our discussion we were losing sight altogether of one of the two concave mirrors which distort other people’s moral distortions for us even more wildly than they are distorted to begin with—I mean, our own egotism. ”

“ Oh! most insidious of all poisons is that of egotism, which lulls the conscience by the soft flattery we whisper to ourselves, making us to believe that we are such as the world affects to think us. How ready are we to take credit for gifts that have been merely lent us by a kind of courtesy, and of which we must make restitution, when called upon, with what appetite we may. ”

“ With man’s usual egotism he had felt that it was only necessary for him to come to a decision, to behold all else fall out according to his mind. He had forgotten for the nonce the power of a youthful lover, eager to serve, ready to wait, careful to press his way at every advantage. ”

“ Yet mankind has stereotyped a very different social rule, “Each for All, yet Each for Himself”; and what right have we to believe that this egotism, so long inherited, and continuously active, can change its nature gradually, till at last it will be as philharmonic as the cellular commonwealths forming a strong human body? ”

“ If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race. ”

“ Perhaps you would rather call them--as indeed they are--the seven common forms of egotism. They represent the natural reactions to life of the self-centred human consciousness, enslaved by the "world of multiplicity"; and constitute absolute barriers to its attainment of Reality. So long as these dispositions govern character we can never see or feel things as they are ”

“ I had no alternative, therefore, but to write as the recollections flashed into my mind, or not at all. I must bear cheerfully, therefore, whatever rebuke my egotism—seeming or real—brings upon me, as ordained by my task. ”

“ And the passion that finds its expression in this rhetoric, the devotees of ethical science call egotism. But this egotism is the only true remedy for egoism, spiritual avarice, the vice of preserving and reserving oneself and of not striving to perennialize oneself by giving oneself. ”

“ The other sort of egotism, not sharply distinguished from this in all cases, belongs to people who have stability of mind and conduct, but still without breadth and richness of sympathy, so that their aims and sentiments are inadequate to the life around them—narrow, hard, mean, self-satisfied, or sensual. This I would call the rigid type of egotism because the essence of it is an arrest of sympathetic development and an ossification as it were of what should be a plastic and growing part of thought. ”

“ The first enjoyment the Egotism demands is to surpass and dominate all other Egotisms which it seems to see pursuing the same pleasures as itself. Hence the command: “Kill out ambition.” Having once gained this domination the self cries out for enjoyments both sensual and sensuous, for all the pleasures of life. ”

“ Something of an egotism that was at times almost aggressive must indeed be allowed to him—an egotism which I believe left him with a genuine belief that nearly all other ideals than those he followed were misguided, and that lesser achievements than his own scarcely merited prolonged consideration. ”

“ Whether it suits me to be silent or denounce myself—hide my person or save my soul—be a contemptible and respected Magistrate, or an infamous and venerable convict—it is always self, nought but self. Good heavens! all this is egotism; under different shapes, 't is true, but still egotism. Suppose I were to think a little about others! It is the first duty of a Christian to think of his neighbor. Well, let me examine: when I am effaced and forgotten, what will become of all this? If I denounce myself, that Champmathieu will be set at liberty. I shall be sent back to the galleys, and what then? ”

“ That was what the array of brilliant counsel employed by the Atlantic and Pacific really represented. "Gentlemen, you can't block us with silly rules. We must play this game of life as it was ordered by God it should be played when the first protoplasm was evolved.... And really, if it were not for us, would there be any game for you little fellows to play?"
Egotism, the curse of egotism! This was stark male egotism,—the instinct for domination. ”

“ Or rather to admire One's Self as he was, without consciousness of the mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt with which One regards One's Self as he is, shrivelled up into a sort of shrimp of a man—or blown out into a flounder. ”

“ But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul’s history and fate. ”

“ Our neglect of them is more often, I like to believe, in the order of a gentle disavowal of old egotisms, as life ripens and takes on in our regard an aspect larger and less personal; even as to a nation or a religion which progresses, egotism and special privilege become increasingly distasteful, and the idea of a chosen people more and more intolerable to the pure in heart, as the world matures. ”

“ They taught me the high value of evil, and that the cynical disavowal of all sentiment, generosity and chivalry gives pleasure to the world at large and is invariably successful. Egotism is the exact opposite of what I had been accustomed to regard as noble and good. ”

“ I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. ”

“ Stupid nurses frighten children with a beggar, a gypsy, or an egotist, but mature people know that egotism is a universal right; and, moreover, good business. Be an egotist. Take no trouble about what does not concern your own self and strive to develop your own individuality. Keep this in view, play joyously with Puffie, and go to sleep early, for long watching spoils the complexion of young ladies. ”

“ From the body springs egotism of all kinds, for this is born with the limited personality, and must die with it. Conscience, as a restrainer of this personality, and law and all that belongs to the Fall,—which was a fall from the eternal into the temporal state,—die with the phase of life with which they deal. ”

“ What we need to prevent is the degeneration of personal interest into an egotism which parches, instead of fertilizing, and which compromises the future by the exclusive search after present advantage; for egotism is short-sighted. ”

“ In my folly and my selfishness I fancied myself the especial mark of adversity, and henceforth I vowed a reckless front to fortune.
He who lives for himself alone, has not only to pay the penalty of unguided counsels, but the far heavier one of following impulses of which egotism is the mainspring. ”

“ Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the social state?
A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it is no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in return they should injure us. ”

“ If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living. ”

“ The motives deducible from both creeds are identical, and philosophy connotes them as egotism. Whether the meed I long for or the pain I would shun be transitory or everlasting, the moment my individual well-being becomes the motive of my conduct it is not easy to perceive where morality comes in. And so universally is egotism to be found at the root of what appear to us to be the most generous actions, that the Adversary was right enough in refusing, without conclusive proof, to enrol Job's name in the short list of exceptions. ”

“ The egotism of these people is unmarked by the least trace of modesty in obtruding themselves and their assumed good qualities upon the public at every opportunity. They boast of their genius, their righteousness, their goodness of heart, their high sense of honour, their learning and other qualities and acquirements, and this, when they are perfectly aware that they are commonplace, irreligious, cruel, and vindictive, utterly devoid of every chivalrous feeling, and saturated with ignorance. ”

“ And, as for egotism, a person, who has been burrowing, to his utmost ability, into the depths of our common nature, for the purposes of psychological romance,—and who pursues his researches in that dusky region, as he needs must, as well by the tact of sympathy as by the light of observation,—will smile at incurring such an imputation in virtue of a little preliminary talk about his external habits, his abode, his casual associates, and other matters entirely upon the surface. These things hide the man, instead of displaying him. ”

“ Yet ye love self and will not abandon self-love. So be it, but then, verily, ye should learn to distinguish between the false self and the true self. The ego with all its egotism is the false self. It is an unreal illusion and a perishable combination. He only who identifies his self with the truth will attain Nirvāna ”

“ The third fact:—There will be a gradual bringing back to their normal condition of those facilities which have been dwarfed, or warped, or abnormally developed through sin and selfishness. Sometimes these moral twists and quirks in our mental faculties are an inheritance through one or more generations. The man with excessive egotism often carries the evidence of it in the very shape of his head. But as he yields to the new Spirit dominant within, a spirit of humility, of modesty will gradually displace so much of the other as is abnormal. ”