Personal interest

“ Of his own people he may write with a sympathetic personal interest born of close contact with them, with knowledge of their whims, their excellences, their deficiencies, and their wants. His purpose is to interest them. ”

“ then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end. ”

“ Among the numerous examples which I had seen, of men who had gained preferment, many by the sole influence of personal interest, and many more by the industry of intriguing vice, there were some who had attained that end by the exertion of extraordinary talents and virtue. ”

“ In the end we are invariably driven to concentrate our attention on the purely personal interest, how far, that is to say, he attained success, what was the nature of the obstacles and complications which, in either, through untoward chance or necessity, confronted or distracted his progress. ”

“ CHAPTER X CONCERNING PERSONS
As years increase we more and more value the personal and individual element in human life. Character becomes the transcendent interest and friends are our chief assets. ”

“ The objects of professional interest are most of them, in their original nature, repulsive; but by their connection with such natively exciting objects as one's personal fortune, one's social responsibilities, and especially by the force of inveterate habit, they grow to be the only things for which in middle life a man profoundly cares. ”

“ You will understand this abstract statement easily if I take the most frequent of concrete examples,—the interest which things borrow from their connection with our own personal welfare. The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing. ”

“ Even in our time there were far too many people who pursued their own personal interests, unconcerned about the common weal, and who were contented when they could fulfil the ignoble needs of a selfish life of pleasure by basking in the sun of some one's approval. ”

“ All their plans and projects are merged in the desire of physical enjoyment, physical well-being. They may, indeed, have personal interests, often embracing a very varied sphere; but still these latter receive their importance entirely from the relation in which they stand to the former. ”

“ Observe with the utmost attention all the operations of your own mind, the nature of your passions, and the various motives that determine your will; and you may, in a great degree, know all mankind. For instance, do you find yourself hurt and mortified when another makes you feel his superiority, and your own inferiority, in knowledge, parts, rank, or fortune? You will certainly take great care not to make a person whose good will, good word, interest, esteem, or friendship, you would gain, feel that superiority in you, in case you have it. ”

“ When we ask, therefore, whether it is our own pleasure (or good) or that of others that we ought to aim at, we are pointed to the gradual obliteration of the distinction between the interest and feelings of the individual and those of the whole. ”

“ Possessing little in the way of means, less in that of accomplishments, and nothing at all in the line of looks, they had formed a vast circle of acquaintance, chiefly by a hearty, unaffected interest in each individual personality. ”

“ And if so, what are our interests? Have we ever an interest in being something, as well as in getting something; may not even all getting be at last summed in being? is it not the uttermost of interests to be just rather than unjust? ”

“ It goes without saying that all a man thinks, feels, and does centres around his own personality, and, in that sense, is a self-interest. But we are not to infer that, therefore, interest must be pleasure. We are born with native impulses to action, impulses that reach out in benevolence and compassion for the good of others, impulses that reach out toward the truth and beauty and goodness of the world, without regard to pleasure or reward. ”

“ I sometimes amuse myself with the problem, How rich should I like to be, supposing that I were perfectly wise in that sense in which wisdom is compatible with thorough-going egoism, or with what is called enlightened self-interest? ”

“ When the plain man says ‘my own interest,’ he does not mean ‘my own pleasure’—he does not commonly even include this—he means my own advancement, my own reputation, the getting of a better income etc., etc. ”

“ I am led into this conjecture, by having remarked, that though love, friendship, esteem, and such like, have very powerful operations in the human mind; interest, however, is an ingredient seldom omitted by wise men, when they would work others to their own purposes. ”

“ One after another, he centres himself on ambition, love, duty, friendship, social convention, politics, religion, self-interest in one of its myriad forms; making of each a core round which whole sections of his life are arranged. ”

“ And so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any man to-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the picture of his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where all men may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, would perform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find out what all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for him to say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what he wanted himself. ”

“ In consequence of the impression of many such objects on the thinking being, we shall come no doubt to connect a sense of self-interest with this very being, with the motions of our blood, and with life itself, and shall by degrees transfer the emotions of interest excited by particular positive feelings to the idea of our own interest generally speaking. ”

“ The chief recipe for giving richness and peace to the soul is, less of vague passion, less of ambitious activity, anti more of dedicated sentiment in the private personal relations of the inner life.
How little matter unto us the great! ”

“ I am speaking now of a want of interest in all the rest of the world; of not having the desire to investigate subjects, naturally uninteresting to me, just because they are interesting to some other human being whom I don't particularly owe anything to except that he is a human being, and so his thoughts and feelings ought to be respected by me and sympathised with. ”

“ Give up all that is only of the appearance—or even chiefly so, in conscious delight and motive—in person, surrounding pursuit. Let your self-presentation, your home-making and adorning, your social effort and interest, your occupation and use of talent, all shape and issue for the things that are essentially and integrally good, and that the world needs to have prevail. ”

“ Desires and Interests.—These complexes of thinking, feeling, and willing make up the conscious desires and interests that mould the individual life. Through the processes of attention to the stimuli that act upon human nature, discrimination between them, association of [346] impressions and ideas that come from present and past experience, and deliberate judgments of value, the mind moves to action for the satisfaction of personal desires and interests. ”

“ The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which this topic of personal relations usurps in the conversation of society. What do we wish to know of any worthy person so much, as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment? ”

“ We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities which form what, in common life, we call personal merit: We shall consider every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt ”

“ Another token of the higher life, which indeed is implied in the former, is the habit of taking what is called an objective or Impersonal View of our personal relations. This is especially important as helpful to self-control. ”

“ But there is one thing which we must constantly bear in mind, and which all enthusiastic people must particularly recollect, namely, that our delight and interest in life must be large, tolerant, and sympathetic, and that we must not only admit but welcome an immense variety of interest. ”

“ It was as if the projection had been so completely outward that one could but find one’s self almost uneasy about the mere perspective required for the common acts of the personal life, that minimum of vagueness as to what takes place in it for which the complete “home” aspires to provide.
What had it been their idea to do, the good people—do, exactly, for their manners, their habits, their intercourse, their relations, their pleasures, their general advantage and justification? ”

“ Seek first, then, for the predominant passion of the character which you mean to engage and influence, and address yourself to it; but without defying or despising the inferior passions; get them in your interest too, for now and then they will have their turns. In many cases, you may not have it in your power to contribute to the gratification of the prevailing passion; then take the next best to your aid. There are many avenues to every man ”

“ If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception of the speeches of counsel, eloquent, and at times superb; and as for the matter, if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost professional—if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for you ”

“ And then they began one of those discussions of ways and means which, however, as we grow old in life, are tinged with all the hard and stern characters of sordid self-interest, are in our younger days blended so thoroughly with hope and trustfulness that they are amongst the most attractive of all the themes we can turn to. ”

“ We all hope for them, do we not? In various minor ways at least, and even in some public and large ways, they exist. But how about self-interest, cold, savage and yet constructive if feverish self-interest? ”

“ These are the men who have encouraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistible habits, and made their duty a necessary part of their self-interest, by the long-continued cultivation of that moral taste, which derives our most exquisite pleasures from the contemplation of possible perfection. ”

“ Either because one likes what he can do well, or because one gives zeal and effort to what he likes, or because interest and ability are both symptoms of some fundamental feature of the individual's original nature, or because of the combined action of all three of these factors, interest and ability are bound very close together. ”

“ He proclaims his interest in all that concerns mankind—not a cold, objective interest merely, he is himself a part of the mighty pageant of life, sympathetic with every phase of joy and sorrow, identifying himself with high and low, finding nothing mean or contemptible. ”

“ The maintenance of the individuality is thus demonstrably a duty. The assertion of personal claims is essential; both as a means to self-happiness, which is a unit in the general happiness, and as a means to furthering the general happiness altruistically. ”

“ What kind of an interest is our interest in persons, our distinctively social interest? Suppose we attempt to separate our interests in truth, beauty, and use from our interest in persons: What remains in the persons to be interested in? Is not a necessary part of out interest in persons, an interest in them as beings fulfilling their respective intellectual and artistic capacities; and if we cut this out of our social interest, have we not maimed and stunted our interest in persons? We wish the fullest life possible to ourselves and to others. ”

“ I never think about my own manner or anything else. I suppose if one feels the least interest in any fellow, that he will probably feel some interest in me; and so, somehow, I’m on the best terms with all I care to know. ”

“ No reference has been made, in this summary of the factors which determine our estimate of the worth of personal ideals, to the bearing of these ideals upon other people's lives. Actually, of course, the social values of even primarily personal ideals are impossible to overlook, and often bulk larger than the merely personal values. ”

“ When the natural tendency of his passions leads him to be serviceable and useful within his sphere, we approve of his character, and love his person, by a sympathy with the sentiments of those, who have a more particular connexion with him. We are quickly obliged to forget our own interest in our judgments of this kind, by reason of the perpetual contradictions, we meet with in society and conversation, from persons that are not placed in the same situation, and have not the same interest with ourselves. ”

“ Is our happiness in this life, our self-respect, our real worth, dependent upon the accident of our station, or upon the place we occupy in the affections of men,—what we possess of their sympathy and love? ”

“ He must conceive of the well-being of these others as a permanent object bound up with his own, and the interest in it as thus conceived must be a motive to him over and above any succession of passing desires to obtain pleasure from, or give pleasure to, the others ”

“ I have found, through life, these acquisitions to be of the greatest possible importance for personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary condition for enabling any one, either as theorist or as practical man, to effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities. ”