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Altruistic   /ˌɔltruˈɪstɪk/   Listen
Altruistic

adjective
1.
Showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others.  Synonym: selfless.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Altruistic" Quotes from Famous Books



... be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of her conduct is not the altruistic impulse. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... act on the Board, Riviere had made an altruistic decision. But now the same problem confronted him again in a different guise. If he remained silent, the scheme would in all probability be floated in his name to a successful issue. If he remained silent, he would be betraying ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... sources of mental and moral confusion is to mistake the egotistic shrinking from the sight of suffering with the altruistic shrinking from causing it and desire to ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... owe my first clear apprehension of the gradual evolution of the preservative and altruistic elements in nature, arising from the struggle for existence, to a sermon of Dr. Abbott's called The Manifestation of the Son of God, now, I fear, out of print. Of course Darwin recognized these factors as a necessary complement to the survival ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... suggestions which he noted as marked by some acumen, and laid stress on the value of the aid they might expect privately from Philip Wayne. The beauty and eagerness in her face fired the almost atrophied enthusiasm in his own heart, while he could not but see that this entirely altruistic interest had brought them in half an hour nearer together than they had ever been before. It was what they had never had till now—a bond in common. In spite of the persistency of his efforts and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... astounded Auberon. "Will wonders never cease? Have the two greatest marvels been achieved? Have you turned altruistic, and has Wayne turned selfish? Are you the ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... very little thought to the child whose ideals are for service to others or to the community. It is very often the same child that at one time glories in successful emulation under the encouragement of our approval, and that later fails to develop the germs of altruistic ideals because we fail to recognize, or at least to encourage, them. We cannot expect from the schools an early change of emphasis from the competitive type of ambition to the ideal of cooperation or service, although the teachers who have tried to encourage the latter have found the ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... of only two companies that make top quality life extension vitamin supplement formulas. One is Prolongevity (Life Extension Foundation), the other, Vitamin Research Products. I prefer to support what I view as the altruistic motives behind Prolongevity and buy my products from them. Unfortunately, these vitamin compounders can not put every possibly beneficial substance in a single bottle of tablets. The main reason they do not is fear of the power-grabbing Food and Drug ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... do show which is the first step toward knowledge—curiosity. Nearly all the animals show at times varying degrees of curiosity, but here again an instinctive feeling of possible danger probably lies back of it. They even seem to show at times a kind of altruistic feeling. A correspondent writes me that she possessed a canary which lived to so great an age that it finally became so feeble it could not crack the seeds she gave it, when the other birds, its own progeny, it ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... worked herself to quite as great a fury as if her motives had been purely altruistic, and not both selfish ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the natives. If the British Government, in acquiring the desert island, had for its purpose the instruction of the natives in a modern system of government, she is to be sincerely congratulated, but it is feared that her motives were less altruistic. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... money stolen from the true money earners. You have discovered the Ghetto—you and the impertinent newspaper men. And like the reporters you come down to use us for 'copy.' You live here in comfort among us and then go away, write a book about our wretchedness and pose as altruistic heroes in your own silly set. How I loathe that word—altruism! As if the sacrifice of your personality does not always lead to self-deception, to hypocrisy! It is an excuse for the busybody-rich to advertise their charities. If they were as many armed as Briareus or the octopus, their charity ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... involves, as may be seen, the disavowal of the belief in God and king; the substitution of a republic for a monarchy, and of humanity for God. Comte conceived religion as the concentration of the three great altruistic affections, namely, of reverence towards that which is above us; of love towards that which helps and sustains us, and benevolence towards that which needs our co-operation. Religion being in his judgment ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... and he overcame the temptation to lay his own on his heart in a burlesque of it. At the door he remembered something, and turned. He stood looking back precisely where Laura Filbert had stood, but the sun was gone. "You might tell me more about your friend of the altruistic army," ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... prudential maxims or rules which teach how to live rightly and to lift us above the tribulations and defeat of life. (4) Does the author think seeking pleasure is the real business of life? (5) Does he deny the value of altruistic service? (6) Does he believe in the future ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... at this juncture that she should feel some shocked surprise at the supineness of those around her. Her altruistic efforts were practically single-handed. She had hoped that when she inaugurated them, Magdalen at any rate would have followed suit, would have worked cheerfully under her direction. But Magdalen, whose serene cheerfulness ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... Rancho Palomar," Miguel Farrel suggested, presently. "I dare say your purchase of this mortgage was not the mere outgrowth of an altruistic desire to relieve the First National Bank of El Toro of ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... present civilization is most uncivilized in many respects, will be admitted by all whose range of consciousness has touched in any degree, the infinite areas of wisdom expressed in altruistic action. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... twenty-six essays and letters (many published for the first time) belonging to the last fifteen years of Tolstoy's career, the period in which he has devoted himself exclusively to humanitarian labors. Therefore each has a definite altruistic purpose. In the letters in particular we have, in the words of the translator, "Tolstoy's opinions in application to certain definite conditions. They thus help to bridge the gulf between theory ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... inspection cannot as a rule bear to face this fact. They constantly say that they wish to do good, or to communicate enjoyment and pleasure. To be honest, I do not much believe that the motive of the artist is altruistic. He writes for his own enjoyment, perhaps, but he publishes that his skill and power of presentment may be recognised and applauded. In FitzGerald's Letters there is a delightful story of a parrot who had one accomplishment—that of ruffling up his feathers and rolling his ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... adamantine, addict, adduce, adhesive, adipose, adjudicate, adolescence, adulation, adulterate, advent, adventitious, aerial, affability, affidavit, affiliate, affinity, agglomerate, agglutinate, aggrandizement, agnostic, alignment, aliment, allegorical, alleviate, altercation, altruistic, amalgamate, amatory, ambiguity, ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... companion, "we'll leave Weston out. I'm not sure about what he believes in, and it's probable that, he doesn't know himself, except that it's everything as it used to be. His wife was High Church, with altruistic notions, and it's no secret that she made things rather uncomfortable for her husband; but when she took the lad in hand she succeeded perhaps too well. You see, he wanted to apply her principles; and altruism leads to trouble when its ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... state of being self-centered, self-conceited, and unduly self-confident; selfish as opposed to altruistic. ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... from a false altruistic standpoint, insist that the insane criminal requires no different treatment from that which the ordinary insane patient does. This is very true in the case of prisoners who develop mental disorders ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... We had an important engagement up the brook; and while we kept it we could think with satisfaction of the joy of our callers when they discovered that they could discharge their whole duty with a piece of pasteboard. This was an altruistic pleasure. Or suppose that a few friends were coming to supper, and there were no flowers for the supper-table. We could easily have bought them in the village. But it was far more to our liking to take the children up the brook, and come back with great bunches of wild white honeysuckle and ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... epitomizing of the proletary's case; and he knew that his opinion was shared with complete unanimity by all who had known Griswold in Printing House Square. To a man they agreed in calling him Utopian, altruistic, visionary. What milder epithets should be applied to one who, with sufficient literary talent—not to say genius—to make himself a working name in the ordinary way, must needs run amuck among the theories and write a novel with a purpose? a novel, moreover, in which the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... must confess, as through a glass darkly. But, dear, I may come to see it through your eyes and in the light of this altruistic dog fancier. I'm such a soft one that it's a wonder ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... to her was that Steve had gone suddenly mad. He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said that he had taken away William Bannister, but ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... another side to all this: the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... good-sorts; normal, but not too normal; distinctly themselves, but not distinguished. They support civilisation. You can trust them in anything, if your demand be for nothing extremely intelligent or absurdly altruistic. One of these could be exhibited in any gallery in the universe, 'Perfect Specimen; Upper Middle Classes; Twentieth Century'—and we should not be ashamed. They are not vexed by impossible dreams, nor outrageously ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... egoistic and the other altruistic, actuated all the Roman emperors in varying degrees. The activity of Augustus in such matters comes out clearly in the record of his reign, which he has left us in his own words. This remarkable bit of autobiography, known as the "Deeds of the Deified Augustus," the Emperor had engraved ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... confession. It seems that two other office-boys in the building had worked upon his feelings by tales of injustice and oppression till they had wrought his compassion to the pitch of that frenzy. But his father's friend, of course, dismissed him summarily as likely to ruin his business. After that altruistic exploit Stevie was put to help wash the dishes in the basement kitchen, and to black the boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian mansion. There was obviously no future in such work. The gentlemen tipped him ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... his sympathies. The savage may be defined as a man who cares only for his family and his tribe; the civilized man as one whose kindly interest extends to mankind and beyond to all sentient beings. In the development of this altruistic motive the care of the dependent species has evidently been most effective. We note that the peoples who have attained the first upward step in the association with domesticated animals are in their quality, ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... We are put upon... bad food, bad pay... I want us to kick up a bloomin' row; a blamed 'owling row that would make 'em remember! Knocking people about... brain us indeed! Ain't we men?" His altruistic indignation blazed. Then he said calmly:—"I've been airing yer clothes."—"All right," said Jimmy, languidly, "bring them in."—"Giv' us the key of your chest, I'll put 'em away for yer," said Donkin with friendly eagerness.—"Bring ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... without reason: it leaves something to my imagination. Two of 'America's Leading Banjoists' charmed me next, for, after all, there is nothing like the banjo. If one does not one's self rejoice in its plunking, there are others who do, and that is enough for my altruistic spirit. Besides, it is America's leading instrument, and those who excel upon it appeal to the patriotism which is never really dormant in us. Its close association with color in our civilization seemed to render it the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... disciples are lovers of mankind! Its worship is service to humanity! Socialism has absorbed not only all the essential spiritual elements contained in the Christ teaching, but it has also, as Christianity itself has done before it, absorbed all the highest altruistic teaching of the ages. But Socialism has done something more—it has struck a new note, deep-sounding, far-reaching, and its vibrations are stirring in the hearts of the nations! Socialism has proclaimed its tenets, declaring the only ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... Ben. He wanted to be alone. Like all dominating people who don't get their own way in an altruistic issue, his feelings were deeply wounded. He took his hat from the disapproving Tomes, and went out to the sea to think. He supposed he was going to think about David's future and the terrible blow ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller

... the self interest of the skilled workers demand their amalgamation with the unskilled are still rare, however. If common laborers are admitted in the near future to unions of other workers in the same industry, they will be admitted not from self interest, but from more altruistic motives, from a growing spirit of class consciousness attended, perhaps, by a correspondingly growing realization of class responsibility"—"Amalgamation of Related Trades in Unions." American Economic Review, ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... view?" I asked. "The mere propagation of the human race, or the providing of a superfluous young woman with a means of livelihood? If it is the former, then, in my opinion, there are too many people in the world already; and if the latter, I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently altruistic." ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one. I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... definite impressions. It would be absurd to say that I suffered, either mentally or physically. I was sunk in a sort of stupor of rage, and my bonds did not hurt me so long as I kept quiet. Curiously enough, my thoughts were somewhat altruistic. Instead of speculating as to my own fate I rather wondered what would be the outcome of the whole mysterious business. I could not bring myself to believe that, cleverly as the rogues had outwitted me, they would be able to similarly ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... Second and the rights of the flesh, which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselves in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume led the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed that it was only an object of the five senses; or of six, if we add that of "hunger." The divine element was explained away, and the proper ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... association of the sexes has been necessary for reproduction and for the care and rearing of offspring, and it has been not less necessary for the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against enemies. From the association necessary for reproduction has sprung family life and all the altruistic institutions of human society, while from the association for providing food supply have sprung society's industrial institutions. Neither society nor industry, therefore, has had a premeditated, reflective origin, but both have sprung up spontaneously from the needs of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... This attitude has weakened the usefulness of many bodies organized to promote industrial hygiene. Although the term "industrial hygiene" is broad enough to include all sanitary and hygienic conditions that surround the worker while at work, it is restricted by some to the efforts made by altruistic or farsighted employers in the interest of employees; others think of prohibitions and mandates, in the name of the state, that either prevent certain evils or compel certain benefits; for too few it refers to what the wage earner ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... have passed through it. The share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was perhaps Hellenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely perfection. And Zoroastrian ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... shocks of experience. The enormous world had not missed him; and his place therein was not void—society had simply forgotten him. So long as he had moved among them, all he knew for friends had performed their petty altruistic roles,—had discharged their small human obligations,—had kept turned toward him the least selfish side of their natures,—had made with him a tolerably equitable exchange of ideas and of favors; and after his disappearance from their midst, they had duly mourned for his ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm simply bursting with it. I challenge you, sir, to show me where there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man. Mother love doesn't count—mother and child are ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... entered with full heart of sympathy into all of man's enterprises, and at his death bequeathed his body a sacrifice to men and gods. It was fitting that the Hawaiian poet should celebrate the dog and his altogether virtuous and altruistic services to mankind. The hula ilio may be considered as part of Hawaii's tribute to man's ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... gone awry. It was a paradox upon a land of prophecy that its path to future glory be stained with the blood of its aborigines. Incongruous as it is, the two nephews, with their white associates, were glad of a condition so profitable to them. Their solicitation for Blue-Star Woman was not at all altruistic. They thrived in their grafting business. They and their occupation were the by-product of an unwieldly ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde

... while in the Moral Sentiments Adam Smith was dealing with the unselfish side of man's nature, in the Wealth of Nations he was dealing with a group of facts which required the abstraction of such altruistic elements, are really beside the point. Nature for Smith is simply the spontaneous action of human character unchecked by hindrances of State. It is, as Bonar has aptly said, "a vindication of the unconscious law present in the separate actions of men when these actions are directed by a certain ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... These altruistic reflections, however, have somewhat drifted us away from the matter under consideration, so that it becomes necessary to revert again to the main subject. Now, even at the risk of being regarded as wearisome, I propose to consider somewhat fully the different steps to be followed in the preparation ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... was heard singing, as if to the singer's self, 'Il balen del suo sorris'. It is hard to tell how far such little incidents affected her in what she did that afternoon; but they had their influence. She said: "You are altruistic—or are you selfish, or both? . . . And should the woman —if it were a woman—yield, and spare the man, what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... subordinate self displayed in this letter was very characteristic of its author. He was by nature altruistic, and this propensity was intensified by his career at Dulwich and his experience of athletics, both influences tending to merge the individual in the whole and to subordinate self to the side. Death he had never feared, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... finest type, these pure bred sons of India; not the ravening beasts of prey towards women described so minutely, and with such nauseating detail, in various religious and altruistic pamphlets; little literary atrocities written mostly by men and women who have gathered their experiences of the East from an exhibition or two at the White City or Earl's Court, and their data from ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... were no more altruistic than his intentions were legal, began to look for a means of disposing of Jimmy Holden at the greatest profit to himself. Jake stalled only because he hoped that the reward might ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... man held to no altruistic creed. His doctrines, had he expounded them quite coolly, would have claimed that self-preservation was the first law of Nature, and that Nature was the best guide. But now, with no time for reason, by the flashlight of instinct, intuition, inheritance,—call it ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... knowledge and special culture as means for advancing the culture of all. It is said to be human nature when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that altruistic ideas should also be cultivated. We see that in China an aristocracy of letters—for it is through passing difficult examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are appointed—is no protection to the poor and ignorant ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... trees and all things borne upon the bosom of Mother Earth, checking the succulence of precocious overgrowths, hardening fibre, turning plant energy away from selfish exuberance in mere stalk building into the altruistic sacrament of ripening fruit and hardening grain. A wise old alchemist is Mother Earth, working in time but ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... debated a refusal. The boy should be gratified. Nor did she try to convince herself that her motive was wholly altruistic. She had suddenly wished to mingle in what she was persuaded would be a scene of mad revelry. She had definitely abandoned the untrodden ways. She thought that reading about war might have unsettled ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the nationalisation of mines so gently and genially that before he sat down I am sure that a good half of his hearers began to think that, after all, there was "something in it." Visions of a carboniferous millennium, when there would be no more strikes and hardly any accidents, and altruistic colliers would hew their hardest to get cheap and abundant coal for the community, floated before the mind's eye as Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various

... him through association to acquire the habits which generally bring praise and blame; and ultimately these qualities become attractive for their own sake. The difficulty is to see where the line is crossed which divides truly moral or altruistic conduct from mere prudence. Admitting that association may impel us to conduct which involves self-sacrifice, we may still ask whether such conduct is reasonable. Association produces belief in error as well as in truth. If I love a man because he is useful and continue to love him ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... impossible for impure, bestial and selfish thoughts to blossom into loving and altruistic habits. Thistle seeds bring forth only the thistle. Contrariwise, it is entirely impossible for continual altruistic, sympathetic, and serviceful thoughts to bring forth a low and vicious character. Either ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the individual's struggle for his own betterment,—the outreach, first, of hunger and sex; then toward finer forms of pleasure; then of moral aspiration. Democracy, socialism are an effort for common betterment; the egoistic merges with the altruistic impulse. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... individual to the more individual; from asexual to sexual. And with this change comes that great rhythm by which life and death succeed each other, and death is the cost of life, and to bring life into the world means sacrifice; and—as we rise higher still—to sustain life means prolonged and altruistic love. This is the history of sex and of procreation, a history associated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a history not so much of his physical ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... does not exclude a healthy hedonism; not the narrow Cyrenaic, but an enlightened altruistic hedonism. And in writing this book I have kept the human problem constantly before my eyes. It was not my ambition merely to impart interesting facts: my concern was the practical application of these facts, their relation ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... protectorates and financial supervision over independent states we have violated the terms of the Monroe Doctrine is one that has been frequently made. Those who have made it appear to be laboring under the illusion that the Monroe Doctrine was wholly altruistic in its aim. As a matter of fact, the Monroe Doctrine has never been regarded by the United States as in any sense a self-denying declaration. President Monroe said that we should consider any attempt ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... "I'll confess that I find the popular idea, whatever it may happen to be, irritating; I like to annoy the people who hold it by pointing out their foolishness, which is partly why I'm now farming in western Canada. George, of course, is more altruistic; though I don't think he ever analyzes his feelings. As soon as he sees anybody in trouble and getting beaten, he begins to strip. I've a suspicion that he ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... justice, then what can be the distinction between the progressive and the conservative? On the other hand, the revolutionist has no alternative but to hold that law and justice are not the same, and so he is obliged to subscribe to the benevolent character of all crimes which are altruistic and social in their purposes, whether they are ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... her arrival, could not seem to get started again. It was indeed a little difficult to continue an enthusiastic conversation, unaffected by his running fire of comment. For in these days he was drifting rapidly toward a sort of altruistic socialism, and so listened to her recital with sardonic smiles, snorts ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... leaves me cold. Take for example the book that has occasioned this complaint, The Curious Friends (ALLEN AND UNWIN), an unconventional and perhaps just a little silly tale about a secret association of children and grownups, pledged to mutual help and a variety of altruistic aims—a scheme, with all its faults, at least human and understandable. But Miss C.J. DELAGREVE has chosen to complicate it by (apparently) a dash of the supernatural, in the person of a character called Saint Ken, about whom we are told that he lived in a tunnel on the Underground ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... be so or not, we have in the person of John Gabriel Borkman a prominent example of the ninteenth century type of criminous speculator, in whom the vastness of view and the splendidly altruistic audacity present themselves as elements which render it exceedingly difficult to say how far the malefactor is morally responsible for his crime. He has imagined, and to a certain point has carried out, a monster metal "trust," ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... an oft-quoted passage describes the satisfaction that naturally fills the mind when from some safe vantage-ground one looks forth on travellers tossed about on the stormy deep. We may perhaps use the poet's not very altruistic words as symbolising many of the feelings with which, at the dawn of the twentieth century, we look back over the stormy waters of the century that has passed away. Some congratulation on this score is justifiable, especially as those wars and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... swept up the broad steps at Thornwood, she congratulated herself upon a duty about to be accomplished. She had not foregone a bridge luncheon to make this tiresome trip to the country for purely altruistic reasons. She had come to prove to herself, and to her circle, the bond of friendship that existed between her and her distinguished cousin. Experience had taught her that an occasional reference to "my favorite cousin, John Jay Queerington, the author, you know," had its ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... was well stated by Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, when he said there was "probably no city in the world where there had been more ample provision for the poor than in Boston, whether by private alms-giving, benevolent organizations, or public institutions."[4] Nor was this altruistic spirit manifested alone in Boston, for Mr. Frothingham quotes the saying of a lady to Dr. E.E. Hale: "A Unitarian church to you merely means one more name on your calendar. To the people in this town it means better books, better music, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... from S.S.W. through S. to N.W. More wonderful peaks or wedge-shaped spines of snow-capped rock. The first and least exciting stage of our journey was practically complete. A fifth pony was sacrificed to the hungry dogs—"Michael," of whom Cherry Garrard had only good words to say—but then the altruistic Cherry only spoke good words. We did over 17 miles on December 4, heading for the little tributary glacier which Shackleton named the Gap; it bore S. 9 degrees E. fifteen miles distant when we ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... all a charming romance, distinguished by a fine sentiment of loyalty to an ideal, by physical courage, indomitable resolution to carry to success an altruistic undertaking, a splendid woman's devotion, and by a vein of spontaneous, sparkling humor that offsets its more ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... present punitive methods of society as a direct cause of terrorism. "Punishment," he says, "far from being a palliative to the fanaticism and the nervous diseases of others, exalts them, on the contrary, by exciting their altruistic aberration and their thirst for martyrdom. In order to heal these anarchist wounds there is, according to some statesmen, nothing but hanging on the gallows and prison. For my part, I consider it just indeed to take energetic measures against the anarchists. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... realities. Even those who have been so earth-bound and selfish as to be lifeless, cold, and dead to the knowledge of God and love to the neighbor are commencing to arise in answer to the spirit of the approaching altruistic age. Accompanying this present resurrection, the veil is being rent that for so long has intervened between this life and the next. And although no outward cloud is sundered for a personal Messiah to descend to rule as temporal prince, the denser fogs of a gross materialism ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... cheery vicar and resolved to trust him. "Let me explain," he said. "You and I agree in thinking that Miss Wynton is an uncommonly nice girl. I am not on her visiting list at present, so my judgment is altruistic. Suppose she was your daughter or niece, would you care to see her ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... careless of whether he arouses anger, the tactful, which conciliates by avoiding prejudice, and which hates force and anger as unpleasant. Against the quick to anger there is the slow type, whose anger may be enduring. We may contrast egoistic anger with the altruistic and oppose the anger which is effective with the anger that disturbs reason and judgment; intellectual anger against brute anger. Rarely do men show anger to their superiors; extreme provocation and desperation are necessary. Men flare up easily against equals but more easily and with ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... adapted succeed. In the long run, that particular applicant for a clerkship or any other work who may be the more fitted is the one who gets it. While the severity of competition may be somewhat mitigated as the result of social organization, and while our altruistic charitable institutions enable many to prolong a more or less efficient existence, the struggle for existence cannot be entirely done away with. Heredity also is a real human process, and it follows the same course as in animals at large; as in the case of variation, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... couldn't! But she cried, with great wet tears streaming down the smooth planes of her face. Didn't he love her? Wasn't this one little favor worth doing for the sake of her happiness? No one would be hurt by it. The motives were altruistic, after all. ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar

... hospitals, orphan asylums, institutions of learning and of art and many other altruistic enterprises depends largely upon the voluntary taxation, aggregating a great many millions annually, to which those men in America who have attained financial success have always willingly submitted themselves—more so, probably than in ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn

... the most the success of the Amusement Enterprise can mean to me—to afford some day the legitimate as a plaything. It costs money to educate the public to better things. It's been profitable playing down to its taste—some day it is going to enable me to afford to be sufficiently altruistic to foot the bills for serving up the best. It ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... who now found plenty of food for thought both in what Rush said and in what he did not say. Obviously Canning was seeking a definite compact with the United States against the designs of the allies, not out of any altruistic motive but for selfish ends. Great Britain, Rush had written bluntly, had as little sympathy with popular rights as it had on the field of Lexington. It was bent on preventing France from making conquests, not on making South America free. Just so, Adams reasoned: ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... lecture took this unconscious colloquial form before audiences. An audience makes a lecture, if the lecture survives. I wish I could shake the hand of every person who has sat in my audiences. And I wish I could tell the lecture committees of America how I appreciate the vast amount of altruistic work they have done in bringing the audiences of America together. For lecture audiences are not drawn together, they ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... flourish in an agnostic climate is a highly dubious proposition. We can only say that available experience seems to be against it. The Christian morality implies the Christian religion which has created it; as for the {180} high-minded, altruistic individual agnostic, he must simply be pronounced a credit ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... to the former sexual aim, that of obtaining pleasure; on the contrary, the highest amount of pleasure is connected with this final act in the sexual process. The sexual impulse now enters into the service of the function of propagation; it becomes, so to say, altruistic. If this transformation is to succeed its process must be adjusted to the original dispositions and all the peculiarities of ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... She is to-day foremost in the great social, philanthropic, humanitarian, and ethical reforms, in which selfishness has no place. In her widening influence, growing liberty, and freedom, I see impearled a prophecy of an altruistic era—a civilization triumphant—rising against ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... really distinguished and aristocratic-looking. He was really neither, but was well-built and well-dressed, and had good grayish-brown eyes, about the colour of his grayish-brown hair. Among these amiably worldly people, who were not in the least moved by an altruistic prompting, Emily's greatest capital consisted in the fact that she did not expect to be taken the least notice of. She was not aware that it was her capital, because the fact was so wholly a part of the simple contentedness of her nature that she had not thought about it at all. The truth ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... he is exercising his curative skill. He tries not only to restore health, but also to promote good health in the community by his recommendations of pure food, pure water, fresh air, and exercise. His motives are altruistic even while he is consulting self-interest. None but the censorious will criticize the minister for accepting a larger parish even with a larger salary attached. The larger parish will afford him a wider field for usefulness, and the larger salary will enable ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... say, had once suffered vicariously with this altruistic dolt. His suffering now was not vicarious. For three days he endured on the raw of his own soul tortures even ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... arm, but she holds it in such a way that it gives promise of something better. The word reform never passed the Russians' lips. It is the insistent cry of Japan. The welfare of the Korean people never showed its head above the Russian horizon, but it fills the whole vision of Japan; not from altruistic motives mainly but because the prosperity of Korea and that of Japan rise and fall with ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... returned to him with a little more intense faith. The philosophical drift in the mores of our time is towards state regulation, militarism, imperialism, towards petting and flattering the poor and laboring classes, and in favor of whatever is altruistic and humanitarian. What man of us ever gets out of his adopted attitude, for or against these now ruling tendencies, so that he forms judgments, not by his ruling interest or conviction, but by the supposed impact of demographic data on an empty brain. We have no grounds for confidence in these ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... acquaintance—she expanded upon the impudence of a young nobody named Smith who was making up to Cecily Wayne, doubtless with a hope of capturing her prospective millions. Among others, she approached Judge Enderby, and that dry old Machiavelli congratulated her upon her altruistic endeavors to keep the social strain of the ship pure and undefiled, promising his help. He it was who suggested her appealing ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... in any form, and in any degree, at any age prior to full maturity is a perversion of the primal instinct of race perpetuation. The practice has a more intimate and a more personal association with growing boys, however, than a merely altruistic reference. Any indulgence of this character at this time is physically and mentally injurious. No boy can hope ever to acquire the full measure of his possible development as an efficient working or thinking machine if he wastes his vital forces in unnatural liberties. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... sane, ideal government of her dreams would follow—must follow, since among the people's elected representatives was a goodly number of unselfish, single-minded men of her father's class of life; men of breeding and education, impelled by a lofty altruistic patriotism; men who gradually came to form a party presently to be known as ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... the bees even more than he disliked Abel, who in his expansive mood was much less attractive than in his natural sulkiness. Abel did not know how near he came once or twice to frustrating an end that he thought very desirable. A less steadfast man than Edward, with a less altruistic object in view, would have been frightened away ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... worthy of recognition, encouragement, and admiration. As the Child grows in years this sentiment is gradually and unconsciously modified, but it is never wholly eradicated. The inward emotion aroused in his heart by parental solicitude becomes partially altruistic and outward and is ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... of reform are open to us, one beginning at the bottom and one beginning at the top. The latter is the more orderly way, the former is being tried in Russia. If our reform should begin at the top it will require a social vision and an altruistic fervour of a sincerity and intensity which is wholly ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... and Harry's lessons and the cost of food, she had always felt a soothing conviction that by thinking hard enough about them she could make them every one come out right in the morning. As a normal human being in a world which was not planned on altruistic principles, it was out of the question that she should entirely escape an occasional hour of despondency; but with the narrow outlook of women who lead intense personal lives, it would have been impossible for her to see anything really ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... Van Buren longed to protect Valentia and Romer, and to give Miss Walmer all she wanted; but most of all his idea was to save Harry from himself, so he always accepted with alacrity invitations to the Green Gate for altruistic reasons. Besides, his desire to see Daphne, although she was now becoming more and more remote to him, was still persistent, if a little ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... it is Satan who reigns exclusively upon earth, and that it is man's duty to help to free God from His powerful rival. They also preach the brotherhood of man and of nations, and it is probably this altruistic doctrine which has rendered them irresistible to many who are wearied and disheartened by the enmities and hatreds that ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... onward, through translunar gradations, to the love of the supreme Beauty itself. Shelley's "spirituality" is a living, growing, creative thing. In its intrinsic nature it is not egoistic at all, but profoundly altruistic. It uses Sex to leave Sex behind. In its higher levels it is absolutely Sexless. It may transcend humanity, but it springs from humanity. It is, in fact, humanity's dream of its own transmutation. For all its ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... explained that a commercial concern in which he held many shares had reached such a pitch of prosperity as to treble his dividends. He went away with the vague notion that commercial companies were models of altruistic generosity. The main point, however, made clear by the exceptionally intelligent manager, being that he was richer by several hundreds a year, he began to dream of a more resplendent residence for Emmy and the boy than the little flat in Chelsea. He had observed that there were ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... included a very minute inspection of my eyes. Then he put me through a series of psychological test queries. When he had finished he sighed deeply and said: "I am sorry to find that you are suffering from a disturbed balance of the altruistic and the egotistic cortical impulses; it is doubtless due to the intensive demands made upon the creative potential before you were completely recovered from the sub-normal psychosis due to the gas ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... generation of children brought up on that! And the toy-makers are not even content with this grand personage, four feet high, who says "Papa! Mamma!" She is passee already; they have begun to improve on her! An electrician described to me the other day a superb new altruistic doll, fitted to the needs of the present decade. You are to press a judiciously located button and ask her the test question, which is, if she will have some candy; whereupon with an angelic detached-movement-smile ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... may have to put; but if Bessy has sent for the child, we must of course put off going for today—at least I must," he added sighing, "and, though I know it's out of the question to exact such a sacrifice from you, I have a faint hope that our delightful friend here, with the altruistic spirit ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... a generation ago would scarcely have recognized the England pictured by the amiable Bordeaux professor, and I am not sure that in this entirely altruistic big brother of little nations the English would have recognized themselves. But, at any rate, polite flutters of applause punctuated the talk, and at the end M. Cestre asked his audience to rise as he paid his final tribute ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... which brought emancipation was not in itself a deliberately planned altruistic movement, but was precipitated upon the country, and waged primarily in the interest of the solidarity of the white race ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... crowded into it, and the maximum number of men per bed were lodged. Either because their own rents were high or because they were unable to withstand the temptation of the sudden, and, for all they knew, temporary harvest, or perhaps because of the altruistic desire to assist their race fellows, a majority of the negroes in Pittsburgh converted their homes ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... seen, frankly acknowledged that he sought his own advantage, and, when he possessed himself of Tunis, made no pretence of any altruistic motive. The Emperor, on the other hand, having come in the guise of a Christian reformer, simply stole the kingdom from Barbarossa and kept it for himself. Incidentally he released the captives, which enabled him to pose once more as the great champion ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... Commands for them to obey. A dozen of his spies were in the Earth government's most trusted, highest service—and some of them were there in Washington, close around Georg and Maida as they made their altruistic plan. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... kinder to say a non-social feeling. Your home-loving person comes in the course of time to that state of mind where little else is of importance; the home becomes the only place where his sympathies and his altruistic purposes find any real outlet. The capitalist of the stage (and of real life too) is one so devoted to his home and family that he decorates one and the other with the trophies of other homes. There is none so devoted to his home as the peasant, and there is no one so individualistic, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... of Eudoxia Pence—Eudoxia gorgeous, affluent, worldly. Never had she disclosed herself at a further remove from all that was earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic, altruistic. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... brighter-eyed. Her reflections are thus to be interpreted, it seems to me. She says, 'The vices of the world's nobler half in this day are feminine.' We have to guard against 'half-conceptions of wisdom, hysterical goodness, an impatient charity'—against the elementary state of the altruistic virtues, distinguishable as the sickness and writhings of our egoism to cast its first slough. Idea is there. The funny part of it is our finding it in books of fiction composed for payment. Manifestly this lady did not 'chameleon' her pen from the colour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... intensive cultivation, synthetic chemistry, and the progress of mankind in self-control and virtue. Human character itself will change with the amendment of human institutions. Passion can be dominated by reflection, and by the deliberate encouragement of gentle and altruistic sentiments. The business of politics is to destroy the opposition between self-interest and altruism, and to make a world in which when a man seeks his own good, he need no longer infringe the good of others. A great share in this moral elevation would come from the destruction of the inequality ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... worth while? Was the winning of Responsible Government a good thing? We are apt to take this for granted. Too many of our historians write as if all the members of the Family Compact had been selfish and corrupt, and all our present statesmen were altruistic and pure. Both propositions are equally doubtful. A man is not necessarily selfish and corrupt because he is a Tory, nor altruistic and pure because he calls himself a Liberal or a Reformer. It is very doubtful whether ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you and it boomed Jane, but I didn't get a thing out of it. My revised scheme is a thousand times better ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... may correct any such impression, by changing our point of view. When we consider the difficulties and the hindrances in the way of laying up these savings, while the moral effect of the self-sacrifice hitherto involved is enhanced, the question comes up whether this altruistic exertion can be maintained in the future. How many of the ten millions of depositors in the savings banks have considered that their rulers at Washington give away every year in military pensions a sum equal to all, and more than all, the income earned by the four billions ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... growth. Indeed it is properly not a childish trait at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with ideals of unselfishness. We must find much in the child to appeal to, even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning. "Help him because he helped you," ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... entitled to demand from Commerce that it should co-operate sincerely with the other elements in the State in pursuing the real objects of civilisation, inspired by an altruistic regard for the whole of which it is a part, that is by what is really "enlightened self-interest"; by what Plato has called Temperance[29] and Mr. H. G. Wells "a sense of the State."[30] We find instead that the trader has "day and night held on indignantly" in his disastrous ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... from the dead author of "The Greater Glory," and so complicate this already complicated web of literary theft; and if he threw sufficient dust into the eyes of Doria to enable him to publish under Adrian's name, he would be performing the task of the altruistic bees immortalised by Virgil. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... which was not familiar to her except in connexion with what she supposed was the baser part of her, the part which had troubled, had even tortured her so many times in her life. She had often longed to do things for men whom she loved, or fancied she loved. Now she was conscious of a yearning more altruistic. She wished to be purely unselfish, if that were ever possible. And she believed it to be possible. For was not Seymour unselfish? He surely often forgot himself in her. But she had ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... management of either would be unfortunate. Hampton is a magnificent illustration of Anglo-Saxon ideas in modern education. Tuskegee, on the other hand, is the best demonstration of Negro achievement along distinctly altruistic lines. In its successful work for the elevation and civilization of the children of the freedmen, it is also the most convincing evidence of the Negroes' ability to work together with mutual regard and mutual helpfulness. When ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... night. Why will they hunt in pairs, do you know? I told Beverley that he positively must take this girl to the German. He quarreled and complained a good deal at first, but finally yielded like a dear boy. Then he seemed to enter in the nicest way into the spirit of our altruistic design. He said that after he had asked the girl, it would be very nice if Robert should ask her too. He would be refused, of course, but the girl would have the pleasant feeling of getting a rush, and Robert would boost his standing as a philanthropist, all without cost ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison



Words linked to "Altruistic" :   selfless, unselfish, egoistic, altruist



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