Special interest

“ But the young man turned and followed with an interest independent of fair features or becoming raiment—an interest which had its rise in a determination to solve a problem, or at any rate to silence a doubt. ”

“ That’s their interest—that they are the people; for what interest, under the sun, would they have if they weren’t? They are the people ‘arrived,’ and, what is more, disembarked: that’s all the difference. ”

“ You are therefore in this happy position, gentlemen, that instead of its being possible for you to be dead to the idea, you are on the contrary urged to the deepest sympathy for it by your own personal interests. You are in the happy position that the idea which constitutes your true personal interest, is one with the throbbing pulse of history, and with the living principle of moral development. ”

“ Do you ever fail in attention to what interests your honor or glory? What indefatigable cares! what exertions and industry, to make them prosper! To what lengths we see you go, to increase your interest or to improve your fortune! ”

“ Let us look then at life just as it is. Here we find ourselves involved with one another in the most complex relations—economic, political, social, domestic, and the rest; and about and in these relations centres the interest of our life, whether it be pleasurable or painful, empty or full, or whatever its character. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Man’s free will makes him responsible for his interests. Aristotle’s dictum comes down to us in an unbroken line of royal descent: Learn to find interest in right things. Repugnance to the sternest demands of duty may be converted into liking, and, in the process, character is made. If you have a need for mathematics, science, history, poetry, or philanthropy, cultivate it, and interest will come as a benediction upon the effort. ”

“ He may absorb his mind in other matters, he may drown reflection in the whirl of business or pleasure, he may wrap his soul in projects of wealth or ambition, and fill his aspiring eye with the anticipated glories of some dazzling hight, but his interest still cleaves to the immortality of his nature, and, sooner or later, he must discover that it is the most important interest ever presented to his consideration, or that is attached to his being or his destiny. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Interests and desires are qualitatively diverse, and to an extent that is unlimited. The simpler organisms are not interested in pleasure, but in their individual preservation; while man is interested not only in preservation, but in learning, card-playing, loving, fighting, bargaining, and all the innumerable activities that form part of the present complex of life.
Now, it is true that it is agreeable or pleasant to contemplate the fulfilment of an interest; and that such anticipatory gratification in some measure accompanies all endeavor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Experience had taught him that the majority of men and women were fakirs pure and simple, whose chief motives were prompted solely by self-interest; and any suggestion to reform the world he invariably greeted with laughter. ”

“ I will say at once what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, and confined to the individual; the interest we feel in external nature is common, and transferable from one object to all others of the same class. ”

“ It is enough that men were interested in themselves and in one another, and have left us the result of their interest. That interest arose from a belief in the importance of what was happening, and a power of tracing it to individual action. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This term interest, which commonly implies little more than our property, is sometimes put for utility in general, and this for happiness; insomuch, that, under these ambiguities, it is not surprising we are still unable to determine, whether interest is the only motive of human action, and the standard by which to distinguish our good from our ill. ”

“ You have an original viewpoint; you write with a sense of direction, and you pack in human interest—human interest's always good. And you know the values of words."
"When you're paying three dollars and eighty cents an inch for space you do think about them!" ”

“ The common duties and common things of our to-days look so plain and homely in their ungilded actualities, that we turn our thought and interest away from them, and create ideal forms of use and beauty, into which we can never enter with conscious life. ”

“ Interest and aims, concern and purpose, are necessarily connected. Such words as aim, intent, end, emphasize the results which are wanted and striven for; they take for granted the personal attitude of solicitude and attentive eagerness. Such words as interest, affection, concern, motivation, emphasize the bearing of what is foreseen upon the individual's fortunes, and his active desire to act to secure a possible result. They take for granted the objective changes. ”

“ Unhappily, however, the greatest interest of the whole is not felt to be, although in truth it is, the greatest interest of all the parts. This results from the fact, that our character is not homogeneous, and our pursuits are wholly different. ”

“ It will be remembered that on page 509 personal interest was named as a sharpener of discrimination alongside of practice. But personal interest probably acts through attention and not in any immediate or specific way. A distinction in which we have a practical stake is one which we concentrate our minds upon and which we are on the look-out for. We draw it frequently, and we get all the benefits of so doing, benefits which have just been explained. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So there are types of men to whom the outer world, whether it is in its "other people," or its things, or its facts, or its attractions and repulsions, is the chief source of interest and these are the objective types, exteriorized folks, whose values lie in the goods they can accumulate, or the people they can help, or the external power they exercise, or the knowledge they possess of the phenomena of the world, or the things they can do with their hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our difference of opinion amounts to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of advancement. ”

“ When, for instance, a great many people are gathered together and presented with some objective interest which works upon all alike and influences them in a similar way, no matter what it be—a common danger or hope, some great news, a spectacle, a play, a piece of music, or anything of that kind—you will find them roused to a mutual expression of thought, and a display of sincere interest. ”

“ Interest of a not dissimilar sort leads a man who desires position, or power, or wealth, to concentrate his attention upon the particular field of his endeavor to the exclusion of almost everything else. ”

“ In truth, there is much in his notes that is trivial, even much that might be called worthless. But there is a great deal that will be of immense interest, dealing as it does with some of the most important social events of the day. ”

“ After all, ’tis a melancholy reflection that a great part of Mankind stand in need of Arguments drawn from so low a Motive as Worldly Interest, to persuade them to that to which they have much greater inducements. It is strange that we shou’d need any other considerations 174 besides the bare performance of our Duty, and those unspeakable advantages laid up for all such as do it sincerely, hereafter. ”

“ Others have devoted themselves to intellectual enjoyments as their chief resource for happiness. Others have selected the exercise of physical and moral power, as in the case of conquerors and physical heroes, or of those who have sought to control by moral power, as rulers and statesmen.
Others have made the attainment of the esteem, admiration, and love of their fellow-creatures their chief end. Others, still, have devoted themselves to the promotion of happiness around them as their chief interest. ”

“ 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 great means of progress, for individuals, for nations, and for the race at large, is the multiplication of Objects of interest. The indulgence of the passions is the characteristic of men and societies who have but one occupation and a single interest; while the passions cause comparatively little trouble where the intellect is active, and the life diversified with objects. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There are things which are cognisable only to sense, which interest only our more immediate instincts and passions; the want of food, the loss of a limb, or a sum of money: there are others that appeal to different and nobler faculties; the wants of the mind, the hunger and thirst after truth and beauty; that is, to faculties commensurate with objects greater and of greater refinement, which to be grand must extend beyond ourselves to others, and our interests in which must be refined in proportion as they do so. ”

“ But in a matter so essential to our well-being, even self-interest is not relied on. The sense of propriety superadds the powerful authority of duty to the motive of interest. The God of nature, in all things essential to our happiness, hath observed one uniform method. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What we apprehend is, that some sinister prejudice, or some prevailing passion, may assume the form of a genuine interest. The influence of these is as powerful as the most permanent conviction of the public good ”

“ The summit or sum of these states of mind we happily express with the word interest. For in reality the feeling of self appears between the various stages of the process of apperception (inter esse) ; with one's whole soul does one contemplate the object of attention. If we regard the acquired knowledge as the objective result of apperception, interest must be regarded as the subjective side. ”

“ When there is a lively sense of the interest of social affairs, all who possess the sense will turn as naturally to the books which foster that interest as to the other things of which they feel a need. ”

“ Professor Albion Small, whose methodology will be indicated in Chapter XXVII, has modified, corrected, and refined Ratzenhofer’s theory of interests. “In the beginning were interests,” says Professor Small.XXI-8 An “interest” is defined as an unsatisfied capacity, an unrealized condition of the organism, a tendency securing satisfaction of an unsatisfied capacity.XXI-9 In its subjective phase an interest is a desire, and in its objective phase, a want. An interest is developed when the individual knows something, feels something, or wills something. ”

“ And the chief distinction conveyed by the distinct words ‘duty’ and ‘interest’ seems to be not this source of possible conflict, but the same which is conveyed by the contrast between ‘duty’ and ‘expediency.’ By ‘interested’ actions are mainly meant those which, whether a means to the best possible or not, are such as have their most obvious effects on the agent; which he generally has no temptation to omit ”