Egotist

“ 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. ”

“ In the egotist we trace prejudices, the cloudiness of a caste education, appetite growing with intoxication, and prosperity that stuns, a fear of suffering which in some goes so far as an aversion from the sufferers, an implacable satisfaction, and the feeling of self so swollen that it closes the soul. In the wretched we find covetousness, envy, the hatred of seeing others successful, the great bounds of the human beast toward gorging, hearts full of mist, sorrow, want, fatality, and foul and common ignorance. ”

“ The egotist is popularly supposed to be a wearisome chatterbox incessantly talking about himself; and such men do abound in England. An egotist is any man who habitually and instinctively makes himself, his likings and dislikings, the sole test of truth ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ What the egotist calls his will and his ideals are, taken together, simply his passions; but the passions of the egotist are turned into a system and go unrebuked. A man who lowers his precepts to the level of his will may the more easily raise his practice to the level of his precepts. ”

“ But if an egotist, who, inheriting but a small pittance of human affection, concentres it rigidly on himself, should deliberately school his reason into calm contempt for his species, he will retain that contempt to the last. ”

“ Let us say often instead of always, and mention also that other Power which often wills the good and yet does the evil, and we have the well-known picture of the intelligent, ambitious egotist, who, without any sense of duty, achieves great and good results ”

“ The foolishest egotist who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor plans and vain reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the Past, and thereby giving us to understand that it was quite as real as our Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, and commands our attention, in spite of his folly. ”

“ Any one giving an estimate of his own capabilities, whether favourable or unfavourable, or both, without illustrating what he states by his own work, and by the opinions of competent critics, is an egotist. ”

“ An egotist is one who talks much of himself. Egotism implies vanity and self-conceit.
Egoism is a more philosophical word, signifying a passionate love of self, which doubts all existence except its own. An egoist, therefore, is one uncertain of everything except his own existence. ”

“ No, no, bear with me a few minutes longer. I know I have chosen a poor subject to talk about, but then I confess myself to be an egotist. I, like every other man, regard myself as the only person worth talking about ”

“ But egotist and dogmatist as he is, he is still a resolute thinker, whose mind, busy with all the problems of society and philosophy, is continually startling us with novel thoughts and splendid rhetoric. ”

“ “Yes—I was perhaps an egotist in youth, but I soon found it made me morbid to think too much about myself.” ”

“ But worse than the harping on one string, Nature has secured individualism, by giving the private person a high conceit of his weight in the system. The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady? ”

“ We set a value on things as they have cost us dear: the very limitation of our faculties or exclusiveness of our feelings compels us to concentrate all our enthusiasm on a favourite subject; and strange as it may sound, in order to inspire a perfect sympathy in others or to form a school, men must themselves be egotists! ”

“ But since we are bound to ourselves more nearly than to society, by that law of self-preservation which is necessary to our existence, egotists are more common than philanthropists, vicious men than virtuous. ”

“ There is infinite variety in egotism; but an important division may be based on the greater or less stability of the egotists’ characters. According to this we may divide them into those of the unstable 187type and those of the rigid type. ”

“ Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor. ”

“ So wanting to change the world, no matter how noble one may feel about it, is a self-centered, egotistic activity. Is that what you are saying?
U.G.: The man who is trying to free himself from the world, or from what he calls "evil" is actually the most egotistical of men. ”

“ Yet, deep in his bitter heart, he wondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knew that he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his own weakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; that often when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisper ingratiatingly: “No. ”

“ 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? ”

“ And when the jaded soul revolts in supreme defiance, declaring its right to its own life, its own duties, its own friendships, and its own loves, there is much expressed disgust, much misfortune predicted, and, saddest of all, much wounded vanity.
The dominant egotism forbids that anything shall be better than itself. No success is comparable to one's own, no life so wisely ordered, and there is nothing so sad as the fame attained by those who do not follow our advice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have listened for years to the prattle of men who call themselves egoists. It is a [Thirty-five] title by which they have sought to identify me. To label a mystery suffices for its dismissal and thus they seek to dismiss me. There is in egoism, however, a depth to which all but myself are blind. I have found this depth in myself and out of it rises a definition which I must consider cautiously. There is but one egoist and that is He who, intolerant of all but Himself, sets out to destroy all but Himself. Egoism is the despairing effort of man to return to his original Godhood ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ You know the many paintings of man transformed to rageing beast by the curse: and this, the fieriest trial of our egoism, worked in the Egoist to produce division of himself from himself, a concentration of his thoughts upon another object, still himself, but in another breast, which had to be looked at and into for the discovery of him. By the gaping jaw-chasm of his greed we may gather comprehension of his insatiate force of jealousy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The conception which is, perhaps, most closely associated with Egoism is that denoted by the words ‘my own interest.’ The Egoist is the man who holds that a tendency to promote his own interest is the sole possible, and sufficient, justification of all his actions. But this conception of ‘my own interest’ plainly includes, in general, very much more than my own pleasure. It is, indeed, only because and in so far as ‘my own interest’ has been thought to consist solely in my own pleasure, that Egoists have been led to hold that my own pleasure is the sole good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Expressed morally, to love one's neighbour and to live for others and for other things may be the means of protection employed to maintain the hardest kind of egoism. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my principle and conviction, take the side of the altruistic instincts; for here they are concerned in subserving selfishness and self-discipline. The whole surface of consciousness—for consciousness is a surface—must be kept free from any one of the great imperatives. Beware even of every striking word, of every striking attitude! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”