First-person singular

“ Now there is no more propriety in affirming, that "I is the first person," than in declaring that me, we, us, am, ourselves, we think, I write, or any other word or phrase of the first person, is the first person. Yet Murray has given us no other definitions or explanations of the persons than the foregoing erroneous assertions ”

“ In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. ”

“ And, meanwhile, I should say the intelligible discussion of these questions will involve a modification in grammatical usage. If we believe that our present selves are distinct persons from our past selves, it is manifestly improper to use the first person in speaking of our past selves. ”

“ Generally, the first person is more constant than the second, and the second than the third; indeed, the third is frequently no true personal pronoun at all, but a demonstrative employed to express the person or thing spoken of as the agent or object to a verb. ”

“ Yet, despite his carelessness of dress and of manner, and sometimes of the niceties of language, you gained a feeling that you were in the presence of a first-class man and a gentleman—of a first-class man, who through some crotchet of fate or some minor defect of character remained a first-class man in a tiny sphere and was more or less contented that it should be so. ”

“ First of all, the change from the third to the first person, is best explained by assuming that at the point where all individuality vanishes, the father, as teacher, identifies himself with the person of whom he is speaking. ”

“ The first personal pronoun is ever on his lips and in his thought. Only as culture arises and he is trained to see how disagreeable in others is excessive emphasis on the first person, does he learn to moderate his own excessive egoistic tendency. ”

“ In direct discourse, a noun used by the speaker or writer to designate himself [in the special relation of speaker or writer] , is said to be of the first person; used to designate the person addressed, it is said to be of the second person ”

“ How is a child of seven to decide whether he has or has not found his true individuality? How, for that matter, is any grown-up person to tell it for him? How is anybody to know whether anybody has become his true self? ”

“ The personal pronoun distinguishes three persons, see Illustration 3: The first person is the self of the speaking subject; the second person is the speaking subject addressed; the third person is the person neither originating the speech nor directly addressed. ”

“ When self is added to the personal pronouns, as himself, myself, itself, themselves, &c. they are called compound personal pronouns, and are used in the nominative or objective case, but not in the possessive. ”

“ Nay, it is only through the inward operations of the former, that the latter are made real to the heart and mind of man. Not until the third Person enlightens, are the second and first Persons beheld. ”

“ They are referred both to singular and plural antecedents.
There are two more words used only in conjunction with pronouns, own and self.
Own is added to possessives, both singular and plural, as my own hand, our own house. It is emphatical, and implies a silent contrariety, or opposition; as, I live in my own house, that is, not in a hired house. This I did with my own hand, that is, without help or not by proxy.
Self is added to possessives, as myself, yourselves; and sometimes to personal pronouns, as himself, itself, themselves. ”

“ I have already dipped a revealing brush into the subject of names. Were the practice of applying names in a wrong and illogical sequence maintained throughout it might indeed raise a dignified smile, but it would not appear contemptible; but what can be urged when upon an occasion one name appears first, upon another occasion last? A dignity is conferred in old age, and it is placed before the family designation borne by an honoured father and a direct line of seventeen revered ancestors. ”

“ In Middle English the forms meself, theself, were changed into the possessive myself, thyself, and the others were formed by analogy with these. Himself and themselves are the only ones retaining a distinct objective form.
In the forms yourself and yourselves we have the possessive your marked as singular as well as plural. ”

“ People with and without letters of introduction succeed in forming acquaintances, becoming part of one or another social set, even get into the churches, open bank accounts, go into business, and a year or two afterward are discovered to have antecedents which would make a person of ordinary respectability hold up his hands in horror. ”

“ We feel them to be our fellow men, our kinsmen, with whom we constitute that person of whose existence I am aware every time I say We: the person we must take into account whenever we wish to affirm our personality in a concrete manner, the only person, the one subject, the true subject of human knowledge and of human activity. The subject which knows and acts as a universal in the interests of all men, or rather in behalf of the one man in whom all single individuals are united and with whom they are all identified. ”

“ It abounds in our second and third-rate magazines, and, with some few honourable exceptions, has infected all the periodical and light literature of the day. The word ‘individual’ has the merit of possessing five syllables; whereas ‘man,’ or ‘person,’ has but one or two, and for this reason alone is rejected for the other word. ”

“ When you see a man whose first ‘abord’ strikes you, prepossesses you in his favor, and makes you entertain a good opinion of him, you do not know why, analyze that ‘abord’, and examine, within yourself, the several parts that composed it; and you will generally find it to be the result, the happy assemblage of modesty unembarrassed, respect without timidity, a genteel, but unaffected attitude of body and limbs, an open, cheerful, but unsmirking countenance, and a dress, by no means negligent, and yet not foppish. ”

“ The concept, 'dirty fellow,' which we have formed, becomes one under which we personally shrink from being classed; and so we 'wash up,' and set ourselves right, at moments when our social self-consciousness is awakened, in a manner toward which no strictly instinctive native prompting exists. ”

“ We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. ”

“ Mergement of Identities—A dead one walks, talks, eats, drinks, and does what it chooses while occupying another's body, while the latter's soul is quiescent, and consciousness and identity wholly lost!—a most momentous problem, of enormous importance to every Physician, Judge, Juror, Minister, husband, wife, in short, to every human being. ”

“ Up to the present point, the spot on which we stand, the doctrine of personal identity holds good; hitherto the proud and exclusive pretensions of self ‘come, but no farther.’ The rest is air, is nothing, is a name, or but the common ground of reason and humanity. If I wish to pass beyond this point and look into my own future lot, or anticipate my future weal or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by means of the same faculties by which I enter into and identify myself with the welfare, the being, and interests of others, but only by these. ”

“ But in personal names the complexity of human character, and the gradual processes of tangling and disentangling the threads of varied human interest, soon come in, and personal names are not imposed once and for all. Each man in very early societies may have many names, in different characters and at different periods of his life. ”

“ As to the inflection of the word -self, all its compounds are substantives; inasmuch as they all take plural forms as far as certain logical limitations will allow them to do so—ourselves, yourselves, themselves.
Myself, thyself, himself, itself, and herself, are naturally singular, and under no circumstances can become plural.
Themselves is naturally plural, and under no circumstances can become singular.
Ourselves and yourselves are naturally plural; yet under certain circumstances they become singular. ”

“ Because you were born to a name having those extra words attached, you consider your so-called noble selves too exquisite to associate with others who are really often far above you. You think you confer a favor in receiving, as your guest, a person of scientific or literary acquirements, if such person have only a few letters after her or his name. ”

“ Yet ordinary men, on their first appointment, become self-important. On their second, they give [432] themselves airs in their chariots. On their third, they call their own fathers by their personal names. ”

“ Personal identity, the continued sameness of the individual person, through all changes both without and within, as testified by consciousness; Personal rights, rights which belong to the person as a living, reasonable being ”

“ So long as one is numbered among the living—so long, that is to say, as one is still plunged in the world of men, a sharer of their interests, conflicts, vanities, passions, and duties, one is bound to deny one’s self this subtle state of consciousness; one must consent to be a separate individual, having one’s special name, position, age, and sphere of activity. ”

“ To write another person’s life-history in the first person, and yet give to it the verisimilitude of a genuine autobiography, would under ordinary circumstances be a difficult if not impossible undertaking. ”

“ Now and again we have met the same, we have fancied, in the person of a younger sister, or a daughter, or perhaps of no kindred except that of sentiments and disposition, which always give a similar expression to the countenance. Sometimes, too, we have met the self-same being, changed, alas! ”

“ I have succeeded beyond a doubt; none can exist in your minds of my identity-my self, for you have never breathed my name to this mortal. Again will I come to you and tell you of our lovely world which we enjoy, each according to individual development. ”

“ We all know men and women who possess this grace of salutation which lingers happily on those on whom it is bestowed.
In meeting people for the first time one should take pains to get their names exactly right. There is something very personal in one’s feeling about one’s name and one has a right to have it spoken and written as one elects. ”

“ Say at once that I throw my child at the head of the first-comer! We are among ourselves, we discuss him: he is this, he is that, not young, not handsome, not intelligent. We just talk the matter over, do we not? ”

“ You cannot deny personal identity between two successive generations without sooner or later denying it during the successive stages in the single life of what we call one individual; nor can you admit personal identity through the stages of a long and varied life (embryonic and post-natal) without admitting it to endure through an endless series of generations. ”

“ As a rule, however, though frequently coarse and abrupt in their language and conversation, they are undeniably hospitable; and when a person can converse with them in their own language, and accommodate himself to their manners and peculiarities, they are excellent fellows, as I have often experienced. To several of their customs, nevertheless, the stranger will find some difficulty in reconciling himself. ”

“ The bearing of the above will become obvious when we return, as we will now do, to the question of personal identity. The only difficulty would seem to lie in our unfamiliarity with the real meanings which we attach to words in daily use. ”

“ When we commune with ourselves we are, at the same moment, the subject and the object of our own experience. The self that sees may fittingly be called the father of our personality, and with equal propriety the self that we see may be called the begotten of our personality. ”

“ Now and then, persons without either birth, rank, or character, will creep into good company, under the protection of some considerable personage; but, in general, none are admitted of mean degree, or infamous moral character. ”

“ You would hardly recognize yourself could you see your own identity and individuality as it was ten years ago; you believe differently, you are another individual. What is that cry from the old home so far away? ”

“ And then see the effect upon the men themselves! At four-and-twenty a young fellow has achieved some wonderful success, and calls himself by some outlandish and conceited name—a double first, or something of the kind. ”

“ What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro' the whole course of our lives? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves. ”

“ Questions of identity, where instances of personal resemblance are concerned, are, in themselves, the hardest of all questions to settle—the hardest, even when they are free from the complications which beset the case we are now discussing. ”

“ In this use, self is in strictness a noun limited by the possessive and by the adjective own, but the phrases may be regarded as compound pronouns. Other adjectives are sometimes inserted between the possessive and self: as,—my very self, his worthless self.
128. The intensive pronouns are sometimes used without a substantive. Thus,—
It is myself. [Myself = I myself.] You are hardly yourself to-day. In poetry and older English, the intensives are even found as subjects: as,—“Ourself will mingle with society” (Macbeth) . ”