"Disinterestedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... militia glory, a pun of, is uncertain in regard to people of Boston, had never heard of Mr. John P. Robinson, aliquid sufflaminandus, his poems attributed to a Mr. Lowell, is unskilled in Latin, his poetry maligned by some, his disinterestedness, his deep share in commonweal, his claim to the presidency, his mowing, resents being called Whig, opposed to tariff, obstinate, infected with peculiar notions, reports a speech, emulates historians of antiquity, his character sketched from a hostile point of view, a request of his complied with, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... one row, which, however, ceased on the appearance of our stalwart troop; indeed, I think one Birmingham smith, a handsome fellow six feet high, whose vehement disinterestedness would neither allow to eat, drink, or sleep in the house, would have ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... which he was surrounded, the virtues of patriotism, disinterestedness, caution, enterprise and courage exhibited themselves in the highest perfection. As military leaders, Marion was particularly distinguished for enterprise, vigilance and courage; Sumter was his equal in enterprise and courage, but had less circumspection; ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... medal, the Department desires to express (p. 454) its sense of the disinterestedness and zeal which marked your gallant conduct in ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... clergymen as were likely to come there; and partly, if not chiefly, because the activity of his nature made such serving a delight to him. The small church, like the school, had been greatly improved since it had come under his hand, and the disinterestedness of his unpaid ministrations was greatly lauded. He was a very busy, and a successful, man, much esteemed by all who knew him. The New College was expected to become a university; Robert Trenholme hoped for this and expected to remain ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... when there, put her shoulder right manfully to the wheel. This declaration finds her, as if by some mysterious transport, an object of no end of praise. Sister Scudder adjusts her spectacles, and, in mildest accents, says, "The Lord will indeed reward such disinterestedness." Brother Mansfield says motives so pure will ensure a passport to heaven, he is sure. Brother Sharp, an exceedingly lean and tall youth, with a narrow head and sharp nose (Mr. Sharp's father declared he made him a preacher because he could make ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... this State have produced incalculable benefit. The Lord has blessed him into an instrument of great power. He has labored much, and for very inadequate compensation. Lucrative offers for other quarters did not tempt him to a more profitable field. His sincerity and disinterestedness are ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... principles we may easily account for that merit, which is commonly ascribed to generosity, humanity, compassion, gratitude, friendship, fidelity, zeal, disinterestedness, liberality, and all those other qualities, which form the character of good and benevolent. A propensity to the tender passions makes a man agreeable and useful in all the parts of life; and gives a just direction ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... cruising about to sponge on the Johnny Raws. For himself, he said he was a man of honour, quite a gentleman, and insisted upon paying his share of the two bottles of port consumed, of which I certainly had not drunk more than four glasses. Secretly praising my man of honour for his disinterestedness, for I had asked him to take a glass of wine, which he had read as a couple of bottles, I ordered my bill, among the items of which stood conspicuously forth, "Two bottles of old crusted port, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 'tis a fatal mistake to do this without proper restrictions. Vices are often hid under the name of virtues, and the practice of them followed by the worst of consequences. Sincerity, friendship, piety, disinterestedness, and generosity, are all great virtues; but, without discretion, become criminal. I have seen ladies indulge their own ill humour by being very rude and impertinent, and think they deserved approbation by saying I love to speak truth. One of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... fact it would not be difficult to trace a chain of similar testimony from ancient times down to our own. Arrian says no Indian was ever accused of falsehood. Hiuen Tsang ascribes to the people of India eminent uprightness, honesty, and disinterestedness. Friar Jordanus (circa 1330) says the people of Lesser India (Sind and Western India) were true in speech and eminent in justice; and we may also refer to the high character given to the Hindus by Abul Fazl. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Another, and probably the correct one, is that Stephen endeavored to dissuade the master from adopting the young Karl in event of his brother's death. In either case Von Breuning acted entirely in Beethoven's interest without considering the possible consequences to himself; his disinterestedness was poorly rewarded however. Beethoven was bound by every obligation of friendship to him, but, with his usual want of tact, told his brother just what Stephen had said. Naturally Karl resented this interference in their family affairs, and succeeded in inflaming his brother's mind against Von ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... perfectly fascinated Tag-rag) to a "certain tenderer influence" which had fairly laid prostrate the faculties of the young and enthusiastic Titmouse; that there could be no doubt of his real motive in the conduct alluded to, namely, a desire to test the sincerity and disinterestedness of a "certain person's" attachment before he let all his fond and passionate feelings go out towards her—[At this point the perspiration burst from every pore in the devoted body of Tag-rag]—and that no one could deplore the unexpected ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... civil offices which yielded not only honor but profit; but he declined them all, with the chivalrous independence and loyalty that had marked his character through life. The veteran soon caused this set of patriotic disinterestedness to be followed by another of private munificence, that, however little it accorded with prudence, was in perfect conformity with the simple integrity of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the disinterestedness of their motives, men as well as officers, I was charmed to hear that before sailing from America they had signed a bond not to claim, under any circumstances, the L20,000 reward the British Government had ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... pleasure in hearing about her, it would have to be a highly disinterested pleasure. She answered nothing, and Rowland too, as he walked beside her, was silent; but as he looked along the shadow-woven wood-path, what he was really facing was a level three years of disinterestedness. He ushered them in by talking composed civility until he had brought Miss ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Mikado has since the close of the last session of Congress selected citizens of the United States to serve in offices of importance in several departments of Government. I have reason to think that this selection is due to an appreciation of the disinterestedness of the policy which the United States have pursued toward Japan. It is our desire to continue to maintain this disinterested and just policy with China as well as Japan. The correspondence transmitted herewith shows that there is no disposition on the part of this Government to swerve ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... an ideal position; it has financial power and moral prestige; it has disinterestedness of purpose and far-reaching sympathy. When to these qualifications for leadership independence of action is added we can render the maximum of service ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... finally, had there been a perfect co-operation between the two men and the parties which they represented, Hungary might have been saved. Nor, so far as Kossuth was concerned, was there any obstacle to such co-operation. His disinterestedness, as it led him at last to resign all into the hands of Goergey, would have led him to do so, had it been necessary, at first. But Perezel and the other generals, who were friends of Kossuth, disliked Goergey; never had full trust ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... hearts. One of these mistaken views is perpetually being put forward by people who assert that the pleasantness of a gift lies in the good-will of the giver. The notion has a specious air of amiability and disinterestedness and general good-breeding; but the only truth it really contains is that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a present gives exactly no pleasure at all. For, if the pleasantness of a present depended ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... the charges that have been at various times, with more or less virulence and disinterestedness, brought against the Church of England, that of assuming to itself the divine attribute of searching the secret heart of many has, I believe, never been superadded. It has remained for men very far advanced indeed in spiritual knowledge and perfection, to assert the bold prerogative, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... But the strength and disinterestedness of this desire guarantee the reader of the book against the aridity of the pictures of past civilizations which we all know: such as descriptions of how "the poeta (or poet) entered the domus (or house), kicked the canis ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... new surprising turn; she dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having unearthed nothing but an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained until her death, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and that he preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office. Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the mountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... whoso loveth God truly must not expect to be loved by him in return. In mere reaction against an actual surrounding of which every circumstance tended to make him a finished egotist, that bold assertion defined for him the ideal of an intellectual disinterestedness, of a domain of unimpassioned mind, with the desire to put one's subjective side out of the way, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... the Imperial and Royal Government, in the face of the provocative attitude of Serbia, was inspired by the territorial disinterestedness of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the hope that the Serbian Government would end in spite of everything by appreciating Austria-Hungary's friendship at its true value. By observing a benevolent attitude toward the political ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... annexation of Holland to France, he entered the French service with the rank of full colonel. He was always a great favourite with Napoleon, to whom his honesty and disinterestedness in money matters seem to have been valuable, in proportion as these qualities were scarce among his followers. The Count's affection for him is excessive, I should have said unaccountable, had he not shown me a letter written to him by the emperor's ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Christianity, he was eager to make converts to his views of the doctrines; but whether he was exactly the kind of apostle to achieve the conversion of Lord Byron may, perhaps, be doubted. His sincerity and the disinterestedness of his endeavours would secure to him from his Lordship an indulgent and even patient hearing. But I fear that without some more effectual calling, the arguments he appears to have employed were not likely to have made Lord Byron a proselyte. His Lordship was so constituted ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... branch of critical scholarship a man may choose, he ought to be gifted with prudence, an exceptionally powerful attention and will, and, moreover, to combine a speculative turn of mind with complete disinterestedness and little taste for action; for he must make up his mind to work for distant and uncertain results, and, in nearly every case, for the benefit of others. For textual criticism and the investigation of sources, it is, moreover, very useful to have the puzzle-solving instinct—that ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... world of the romances, where everything was made as it ought to be, where the virtuous were always rewarded and the wicked always punished, where high and noble sentiments met with the reception they deserved, and disinterestedness was duly appreciated, where passion and impulse, unmixed with the care of consequences, were held as the glory of both sexes, and everything that was fair and bright and beautiful, and free and elegant and good, shone ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... and the beach strewn with dead bodies, they will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is not wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest power, the sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness of feeble and poor races. Think how many viking ships had sailed by these islands in the past, how many vikings had landed, and raised turmoil, and broken up the barrows of the dead, and carried off the wines of the living; and blame them, if you are able, for that belief (which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his son, "then what my old emigre friends tell me is true, I suppose. The Revolution has left us habits devoid of pleasure, and has infected all the young men with vulgar principles. You, like my Jacobin brother-in-law, will harangue me, I suppose, on the Nation, Public Morals, and Disinterestedness!—Good Heavens! But for the Emperor's sisters, where should ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... of comedy found no echo in the mind of our host, who did not understand how to change quickly from one emotion to another. Clearly he was debating many things laboriously in his honest brain. But, in the end, the earnestness and scientific disinterestedness of the doctor, whose influence over him was already very great, won the day, and he presently looked up more calmly, and observed shortly that he thought perhaps the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... success of his enterprise than about the condition of his poor collaborator. Lehrs had therefore perpetually to struggle against poverty, but he preserved an even temper, and showed himself in every way a model of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice. At first he looked upon me only as a man in need of advice, and incidentally a fellow-sufferer in Paris; for he had no knowledge of music, and had no particular interest in it. We soon became so intimate that I had him dropping in nearly every evening with Anders, Lehrs being ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was obliged, of course, to admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she would add, pouting: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him," and, as a matter of fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the practice of disinterestedness, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... So it is disinterestedness, the saint's and poet's love of things for their own sakes, the vision of the charitable heart, which is the secret of union with Reality and the condition of all real knowledge. This brings with it the precious quality ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... each cousin, hath her speculation; Nay, married dames will now and then discover Such pure disinterestedness of passion, I 've known them court an heiress for their lover. 'Tantaene!' Such the virtues of high station, Even in the hopeful Isle, whose outlet 's 'Dover!' While the poor rich wretch, object of these cares, Has cause to wish her ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of greatness into obscurity, we see not a trace in Napoleon. Tho clothed with the power of a god, the thought of consecrating himself to the introduction of a new and higher era, to the exaltation of the character and condition of his race, seems never to have dawned on his mind. The spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice seems not to have waged a moment's war with self-will and ambition. His ruling passions, indeed, were singularly at variance with magnanimity. Moral greatness has too much simplicity, is too unostentatious, too ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... nowhere more strongly marked than in its compensations; and what can be more beautiful than the arrangement by which the same harmless disinterestedness of matter and style that once made an author the favorite of trunk-makers and grocers should, by thus leading to the quiet absorption of his works, make them sure of commemoration by Brunet or Lowndes and of commanding famine-prices under the hammer? Fame, like electricity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... not so unlike the ordinary process of perception as had been hitherto supposed. Both use sense impressions as crude material to be molded and defined by the aid of memory images. Here, too, he set forth the idea, which he, so far as I know, was the first to formulate, that sleep is a state of disinterestedness, a theory which has since been adopted by several psychologists. In this address, also, was brought into consideration for the first time the idea that the self may go through different degrees of tension—a theory referred to ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... live on the bare, literal fact any more than they can live on bread alone; there is something in every man to feed besides his body. He has been told many times by men of great disinterestedness and ability that he must believe only that which he clearly knows and understands, and that he must concern himself with those matters only which he can thoroughly comprehend. He must live, in other words, by the rule of common ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... generally, so clearsighted, was not surprised to find that this man, who had been disinterestedness itself, should all of a sudden deplore his losses so bitterly, and value ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Persians into action. Five of the generals counseled delay. The polemarch, Calimachus, who then had the casting vote, decided for immediate action. Themistocles and Aristides had seconded the advice of Miltiades, to whom the other generals surrendered their days of command—a rare example of patriotic disinterestedness. The Athenians marched at once to Marathon to meet their foes, and were joined by the Plataeans, one thousand warriors, from a little city—the whole armed population, which had ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... for the Prince of Orange and a Free Parliament, muttered, two months later, that they had been drawn in; that they had trusted too much to His Highness's Declaration; that they had given him credit for a disinterestedness which, it now appeared, was not in his nature. They had meant to put on King James, for his own good, some gentle force, to punish the Jesuits and renegades who had misled him, to obtain from him some guarantee for the safety of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "It's just this disinterestedness, Andrew, that makes me like you," observed Rupert, magnificently. "Depend on it, you'll fare none the worse, in the long run, for this admirable trait in your character. Lucy knows it, and appreciates it ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... booksellers followed; but everywhere the new societies of reform were circulating the book, and if it helped to send some good men to Botany Bay, copies enough were sold to earn a sum of a thousand pounds for the author, which, with his usual disinterestedness, he promptly gave to the Corresponding Society. A second part appeared in 1792; and at length Pitt adopted Burke's opinion that criminal justice was the proper argument with which to refute Tom Paine. Acting on a hint from William Blake, who, in ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... understand me. I have no wish to paraphrase your little homily of two minutes ago, but the heads of my refutation are inevitably suggested by the points of your indictment. To use your own manner of speech, my dear Adrian, I have no wish to assume injured disinterestedness, when speaking of my doings with regard to you and your belongings and especially to this old place of yours, of our family. You have only to look ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Netherlands the Jesuits were welcomed as allies of the Spanish power. The people were impressed by their zeal, piety, and disinterestedness, and in the Southern provinces they were able to bear away a victory after ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... out the cheque and pocketing the book as he rises and goes past Cusins to Mrs Baines] I also, Mrs Baines, may claim a little disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite [Mrs Baines shrinks; but he goes on remorselessly]! the oceans of blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... He had sold Tom under the spur of a driving necessity, to get out of the power of a man whom he dreaded,—and his first feeling, after the consummation of the bargain, had been that of relief. But his wife's expostulations awoke his half-slumbering regrets; and Tom's manly disinterestedness increased the unpleasantness of his feelings. It was in vain that he said to himself that he had a right to do it,—that everybody did it,—and that some did it without even the excuse of necessity;—he could not satisfy his own feelings; and that he might ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... contributed excellent things to literature. But, setting this view aside, dishonorable would it be in the South were she willing to abandon to shame the memory of brave men who with signal personal disinterestedness warred in her behalf, though from motives, as we believe, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... admiration that we have learned this morning from the columns of your paper, the great civic act by which you have touched all hearts. You have shown, in thus retiring, a most unusual disinterestedness, and ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... his disinterestedness, I remarked that he had shown me so much consideration as a lawyer, that I now felt emboldened to ask something from him as ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... keep thy senses, as thou keepest thy horses. They will then prove beneficial to thee, like wealth that is not wasted. Thou shouldst employ only such ministers as have passed the tests of honesty, (i.e., as are possessed of loyalty, disinterestedness, continence, and courage), as are hereditary officers of state, possessed of pure conduct, self-restrained, clever in the discharge of business, and endued with righteous conduct. Thou shouldst always collect ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... this shall the Devil ever fix in my mind against my Lord and my God! He who made me capable of such an absorbing, unselfish devotion for my children, so that I would sacrifice my eternal salvation for them, He certainly did not make me capable of more love, more disinterestedness than He has himself. He invented mothers' hearts, and He certainly has the pattern in his own, and my poor, weak rush-light of love is enough to show me that some things can and some things cannot be done. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For the loftiest friendships have no commercial element in them: they are founded on disinterestedness and sacrifices. They neither expect nor desire a return for gift or service. Amid the tireless breaking of the billows on the shores of experience, there is no surer anchorage than a friendship that "beareth all things, believeth ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... unattainable possessions. She was not the first woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration. He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made, once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring that the disinterestedness of women had been overrated. On the whole, he had tempered audacity with modesty; and it is but fair to him now to say explicitly that he would have been incapable of taking advantage of his present large allowance of familiarity to make love to the younger of his handsome cousins. Felix had ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... murdered for it, it was as good as in those which had earned it by industry. People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence and disinterestedness which should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of interest which supports our social system. According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... true artist, like the true priest, cares only for the beautiful quality of the thought that he pursues. The true priest is the man who loves virtue, disinterestedness, truth, and purity with a kind of passion, and only desires to feed the same love in faithful hearts. He seeks the Kingdom of God first; and if the good things of the world are strewn, as they are ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the case involves an inviting opportunity for bestowing on an officer who has rendered such illustrious services to his country a token of its sensibility to them, the inducement to which can not be diminished by the delicacy and disinterestedness of his proposal to transfer the benefit from himself, I recommend to Congress that provision be made for carrying into effect the wishes and request of the Indians as expressed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... left the House; within a few months he had died at Genoa. Such a bare summary leaves necessarily whole regions of the subject unexplored, but, let the final verdict of history on O'Connell be what it may, that he loved his country passionately, and with an absolute disinterestedness no pen has ever been found to question, nor can we doubt that whatever else may have hastened his end it was the Famine killed him, almost as surely as it did the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... and figuring, what kind of a house we wanted, we could have referred the important matter to our neighbors in the confident assurance that these amiable folk were much more intimately acquainted with our needs and our desires than we ourselves were. The utter disinterestedness of a neighbor qualifies him to judge dispassionately of your requirements. When he tells you that you ought to do so and so or ought to have such and such a thing, his counsel should be heeded, because the probabilities ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... attention of our nobility and great landed proprietors has already been attracted toward this pursuit; and among the various arts and sciences, we should not forget that though the iron arts are more useful, the golden are more precious. A taste for fine art, moreover, has a certain grace of disinterestedness, which does not attach to an agricultural duke or great landed proprietor, constantly employing himself in endeavours to increase the produce ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... one cannot say whether they are corpses or persons starving are also stretched on the soil. As an example of the administration of the ancien regime the same author assures us that "a place in the police cost 300 livres and brought in 400,000.'' Such figures surely indicate a great disinterestedness on the part of those who sold such productive employment! He also informs us "that it cost only 120 livres to get people arrested,'' and that "under Louis XV. more than 150,000 lettres de cachet ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... Caius, a French physician. She says, "I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds, and do all myself." She is the go-between of three suitors for "sweet Anne Page," and with perfect disinterestedness wishes all three to succeed, and does her best to forward the suit of all three, "but speciously of Master Fenton."—Shakespeare, Merry ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... seek for feigned afflictions, I find, in compensation, in this imaginary world, the virtue, the goodness, the disinterestedness which I have been unable to discover together in the real world in which I exist. It is there that I find the wife that I desire, without temper, without lightness, without subterfuge; I say nothing about beauty—you can depend on my imagination for that! Then, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... existing. He believed that, in order to their greatest efficiency, all the armies operating between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi should be subject to one commander, and he made this suggestion to the War Department, at the same time testifying his disinterestedness by declining in advance to take the supreme command himself. His suggestion was not immediately adopted. On the 22d of December, 1862, General Grant, whose headquarters were then at Holly Springs, reorganized his army into four corps, the 13th, 15th, 16th, and 17th, commanded respectively by Major-Generals ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... Nueva Espana. From these things, he drew up results against your Majesty in the pulpit. He said of the accountant, Juan Bautista de Cubiaga, a Vizcayan (who is so well known that no one can be ignorant of his birth, and of the great fidelity and disinterestedness with which he serves your Majesty), that he was a Gascon devil, besides other very insolent words—although the said friar is a Mallorcan or a native of Cerdena [i.e., Sardinia], which one could presume to be a more barbarous ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... cousin standing by her side, and turning over the music-leaves, Verdant privately declared, over a chessboard, to Miss Patty, that Mr. Frank Delaval was the handsomest and most delightful man he had ever met. And when Miss Patty's eyes sparkled at this proof of his truth and disinterestedness, Verdant mistook the bright signals; ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... it will be found that those who knew him best, loved him most, and that many who were constrained to differ from him, in his management of public affairs, did full justice to the purity and generosity of his motives, to the nobility, loftiness, and ultimate success of his aims, and to the disinterestedness and value of his varied and manifold labours for the country, and for ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... intimate affiliation. It sets him at one spring at the very parting of the ways where all the mysteries meet. Nature loves to reveal the most delicate side-lights and the most illuminating glimpses to those who take this attitude. Such disinterestedness ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... dispensing lavishly from the other. It should be remembered, too, that as long as money shall continue to be one of the great sources of power, so long will they who seek influence over their fellow-men attach value to it as an instrument; and the more lowly they are inclined to estimate the disinterestedness of the human heart, the more available and precious will they consider the talisman that gives such power over it. Hence, certainly, it is not among those who have thought highest of mankind that the disposition to avarice has most generally ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... interview are added others, which somewhat reflect upon the disinterestedness of Lochiel. They rest, however, upon hearsay evidence; and, since conversations repeated rarely bear exactly their original signification, some caution must be given before they are credited: yet, even if true, one can scarcely condemn a man who is forced into an enterprise from ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... self-seeking on the part of men in power, no public character of his day stands out more honourably in the strong light which posterity is already concentrating on the words and actions of the past, than does Prince Albert for undeniable truthfulness and disinterestedness. Men may still cavil at his conclusions, and maintain that he theorised and systematised and was tempted to interfere too much, but they have long ceased to question his perfect integrity and single-heartedness, his rooted aversion to all trickery and to deceit in every form. "He was ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... profitable Pelet was already in her nets, and when, too, she was aware that I possessed her secret, for I had not scrupled to tell her as much: but the fact is that as it was her nature to doubt the reality and under-value the worth of modesty, affection, disinterestedness—to regard these qualities as foibles of character—so it was equally her tendency to consider pride, hardness, selfishness, as proofs of strength. She would trample on the neck of humility, she would kneel at the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... my dear countess; for if the queen has one quality more than another, it is disinterestedness. She does not care for gold or jewels, and likes a simple flower as well ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... age. It will be remembered that the king implored her not to enter a convent in her youth, as she desired; and that he obtained her promise to refrain from being a nun till she should be thirty years old. If he had not interfered at first, and if her noble disinterestedness had not caused her to devote herself to her brother and his family when she saw adversity coming upon them, she might have fulfilled a long course of piety and charity, and even been living now. Her life was so innocent, so graced by gentleness and love, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... children and parents, or dearest connections in private life, and of all the virtues that rise from those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown in patiently bearing the sufferings of your friends; or that disinterestedness was clearly manifested at the expense of other people's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert, who did not act with confidence; that no men could act with confidence, who were not bound together by common opinions, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... feeling of hatred towards the Indians still further added to the sympathy which Bois-Rose had felt for the disinterestedness and courage shown ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... credit to the Nabob for their own payment? That credit would not be weakened by the collateral security of his territorial mortgage. The money might still be had at eight per cent. Instead of any of these honest and obvious methods, the Company has for years kept up a show of disinterestedness and moderation, by suffering a debt to accumulate to them from the country powers without any interest at all; and at the same time have seen before their eyes, on a pretext of borrowing to pay that debt, the revenues of the country charged with an usury of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... speech, blended as it was with the sweet and calm dignity of virgin pride, touched the heart of her listener, and he continued silent many moments, as if in reverence of her determination. Her sentiments awakened in his own breast those feelings of generosity and disinterestedness which had nearly been smothered in restless ambition and the pride of success. He resumed the discourse, therefore, more mildly, and with a much greater exhibition of deep feeling, and less ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society; in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below the people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are ignored, and of progress there is no thought. This populace has two mothers, both of them stepmothers—Ignorance and Misery. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... brave; in enterprise, hardy and original; in victory, mild and generous; in motives, much disposed to disinterestedness, though ambitious of renown and covetous of distinction; in pecuniary relations, liberal; in his affections, natural and sincere; and in his temper, except in those cases which assailed his reputation, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... villain—a selfish and remorseless seducer," continued Wacousta with vehemence—"what was to have prevented my triumph at that moment? But I came not to blight the flower that had long been nurtured, though unseen, with the life-blood of my own being. Whatever I may be NOW, I was THEN the soul of disinterestedness and honour; and had she reposed on the bosom of her own father, that devoted and unresisting girl could not have been pressed there with holier tenderness. But even to this there was too soon a term. The hour of parting at length arrived, announced, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... adventurers to try their chances. >From this premeditated scheme of conquest we ought, in justice, however, to except Maria herself, who, from constitutional gayety and thoughtlessness, seldom planned for the morrow; and who, perhaps, from her association with Charlotte, had acquired a degree of disinterestedness that certainly belonged to no other ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or house patriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit. It is the elementary form of his national or human enthusiasm. It is the form of disinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first; and the way for society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited, to have the habit of considering the rights of others, is for society to have the habit of considering his rights in his daily work. An intelligent, live ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... depend on impulses and passion than on reason. Still, the worthy soldier was not so wrong in his estimate of the Pathfinder's chances as might at first appear. Knowing all the sterling qualities of the man, his truth, integrity of purpose, courage, self-devotion, disinterestedness, it was far from unreasonable to suppose that qualities like these would produce a deep impression on any female heart; and the father erred principally in fancying that the daughter might know as it might ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... poor Christian who has not found that it is the joy and rejoicing of his heart. We need not put too much emphasis and stress upon that side of the truth; but we need not either suppress it or disregard it in our modern high-flown disinterestedness. There are joys worth calling so which only come from possessing this fountain of salvation. How shall I enumerate them? The best way, I think, will be to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... qualities as attracting the wonder and reverence of mankind: 1. Disinterestedness; 2. Practical Power; 3. Courage. "I need not show how much it is esteemed, for the people give it the first rank. They forgive everything to it. And any man who puts his life in peril in a cause which is esteemed becomes the darling of all men."—There are good and inspiriting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... back. She understood a hundred things now. She perceived that that sudden anger at breakfast had been personal disappointment—not at all that lofty disinterestedness on behalf of the mother that she had pretended. She understood too, now, the meaning of those long contented meditations as she went up and down the garden walks, alert for plantains, the meaning of the zeal she had shown, only a week ago, on behalf of a certain ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... devotion, credulous with sincerity, chaste with love, reserved with secrecy; long-suffering with patience, brave with timidity, moderate with desire, bold with resolution, obedient with subjection., modest with pride, zealous with disinterestedness, skilful with capability, ceremonious with politeness, astute with sagacity, merciful with piety, secretive with modesty, revengeful with valor, poor on account of thy labors with true conformity, prodigal ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... calculations. The first trip of the war would be equal to ten of their former ones; the second, perhaps, might bring in the profit of twenty. And recalling their former bad business ventures, they rejoiced for Ferragut, with the same disinterestedness as the first officer. The engineers were no longer called to the captain's cabin in order to contrive new economies in fuel. They had to take advantage of the time and opportunity; and the Mare Nostrum was now going at full steam, making fourteen knots an hour, like a passenger ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... his high protectors, the first physicians of the king, named his establishment Jardin des Plantes Medicinales. It was renovated by Fagon, who was born in the Jardin, and whose mother was the niece of Gui de la Brosse. By his disinterestedness, activity, and great scientific capacity, he regenerated the garden, and under his administration flourished the great professors, Duverney, Tournefort, Geoffroy the chemist, and others (Perrier, l. c., p. 59). Fagon was succeeded by Buffon, "the new legislator and second founder." His ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... danger of not being so! Will HE be so disinterested when he has the spending of her money? That was her idea before your father's death, and it has acquired new charms for her since. She ought to marry some one of whose disinterestedness she shall herself be sure; and there would be no such proof of that as his having a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... "You doubt my disinterestedness, Mr. Greatson. Perhaps you are right. I wish the child well, but there is also this fact to be considered. Isobel married to an English gentleman such as, say, yourself, would be no longer a serious rival to my daughter in the affections of ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... plentiful table for all who chose to come. Economical as he was, no act of his life was chargeable with any thing in the least degree savouring of avarice; on the contrary, many parts of his conduct displayed what in any station would have been deemed extraordinary disinterestedness and generosity. Finally, at his death, in 1802, he actually left behind him no less a sum than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... side of social and sexual selfishness. This treatment of men on the part of the sex is remarkable, for women themselves will admit and do admit, in unguarded moments, that there is somewhat less of disinterestedness in this matter on woman's side than on man's. But the point, we suppose, is this, that woman, when she does love with all her heart, loves with a blind devotion, an exclusiveness of admiration and of passion, and a persistency, which she demands from man, which, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... there was not in France any equal number of persons possessing in an equal degree the qualities necessary for the judicious direction of public affairs; and, just at this moment, these legislators, misled by a childish wish to display their own disinterestedness, deserted the duties which they had half learned, and which nobody else had learned at all, and left their hall to a second crowd of novices, who had still to master the first rudiments of political business. When Barere wrote his Memoirs, the absurdity of this self-denying ordinance ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... likeness to that of Paul. Previous to his conversion, he was a conscientious and virulent persecutor of Mohammedanism. [25] After his conversion, he was Mohammed's most efficient disciple, and it may be safely asserted that for disinterestedness and self-abnegation he was not inferior to the Apostle of the Gentiles. The change in his case was, moreover, quite as sudden and unexpected as it was with Paul; it was neither more nor less incomprehensible; and if Paul's conversion needs ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... pause, he generously released me from my sufferings by leaving it to my choice to accept the marquis, or to assume the veil. I fell at his feet, overcome by the noble disinterestedness of his conduct, and ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... welfare of the community. A false timidity and an erroneous conception of our responsibilities have estranged us, to a great extent, from the various activities of national life. This isolation has been most prejudicial to our Catholic laity, for it has fostered in their ranks disinterestedness and often apathy. "With regard to the necessity of Catholics to obtain positions on public bodies, Cardinal Bourne stated that very often Catholics were urged to take part in public affairs, by becoming elected to public bodies ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... to whom the proposition was made, of the extent to which State pride would induce our citizens to contribute, and to the belief in a power to coerce payment. The gentleman who bore the proposal, indignant at the offensive manner of its rejection, and conscious of the disinterestedness of his motives, abandoned the negotiation in disgust, and the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... said, "when I received the message, that I was going to be buried under a bathos of thanks, or else have my gift declined with the expectation that I would gush over the disinterestedness of the refusal. Since I couldn't well avoid seeing him, I was quite prepared to snub him, or to take back the money without a word. But he wasn't a bit that kind of creature. He isn't self-assured nor tonguey—rather the reverse. I liked him so, that I forced him to stay ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... be, compel Mariette to accept happiness! For, after all, you are lodged like beggars and starving to death. Besides, if you refuse, do you know what will happen? The girl, with her fine sentiments of disinterestedness, will, sooner or later, become the victim of some unscrupulous rascal as poor ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... of these would-be philosopher looked, at first sight, extremely imposing. Instances were not rare, in which they generously abandoned all the profits of their transmutations - even the honour of the discovery! But this apparent disinterestedness was one of the most cunning of their manoeuvres. It served to keep up the popular expectation; it showed the possibility of discovering the philosopher's stone, and provided the means of future advantages, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... is unrequited. There are men who spend all their life in doing good, and then meet no return. Men have served their country with loyalty and disinterestedness, and have received no reward—perhaps have been left to suffering, and have died in poverty, neglected and forgotten; too often have lain in prison, or been put to death, or exiled by the country which was indebted ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... fellow-citizens, allow me to invoke in behalf of your deliberations that spirit of conciliation and disinterestedness which is the gift of patriotism. Under an overruling and merciful Providence the agency of this spirit has thus far been signalized in the prosperity and glory of our beloved country. May ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... army in motion, of the stars in their courses, of well-concerted music, if you prefer that figure, or, as the modern reader might perhaps object, of a machine. The design of Plato is to bring back the Athenian people, the Greeks, to thoughts of order, to disinterestedness in their functions, to that self-concentration of soul on one's own part, that loyal concession of their proper parts to others, on which such order depends, to a love of it, a sense of its extreme aesthetic beauty and fitness, according to that indefectible definition of Justice, of what is ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... diplomatic, or was expired. Mr. Barclay's proceedings under this commission being now closed, it would be incumbent on me to declare with respect to them, as well as his consular transactions, my opinion of the judgment, zeal and disinterestedness with which he has conducted himself; were it not that Congress has been so possessed of those transactions from time to time, as to judge for themselves. I cannot but be uneasy, lest my delay of entering on the subject of the consular ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... departed, I confess I look in vain. I ask, but vainly, where we shall find one with such capacities for earning a great name, such large endowments of mind and acquisitions of study united with such modesty, disinterestedness and sincerity, and such steady and various labors for the good of our race conjoined with so little desire for the rewards which the world has to bestow on those who render it the highest services. But ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... Pisa to the revolutionary war? What ancient naval victory to that of Trafalgar? Rely upon it, subjects for genius are not wanting; genius itself, steadily and perseveringly directed, is the thing required. But genius and energy alone are not sufficient; COURAGE and disinterestedness are needed more than all. Courage to withstand the assaults of envy, to despise the ridicule of mediocrity—disinterestedness to trample under foot the seductions of ease, and disregard the attractions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... will I receive and trust." That was the electrifying, vivifying effect of the apparition of such an one as Paul—"a man who had indeed done nothing worthy of bonds or of death"—a man in whose entire disinterestedness and in whose transparent honor the image and superscription of his Master was written so that no one could mistake it. "In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness" is the noblest work of God our Creator—the most precious ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... been wise, Carter would have said no more. But failing to emphasize his disinterestedness, he added to his monosyllabic exclamation a query in ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Continental impost. I will give a proof of this, and I state nothing but what came under my own observation. The fiscal regulations were very rigidly enforced at Hamburg, and along the two lines of Cuxhaven and Travemunde. M. Eudel, the director of that department, performed his duty with zeal and disinterestedness. I feel gratified in rendering him this tribute. Enormous quantities of English merchandise and colonial produce were accumulated at Holstein, where they almost all arrived by way of Kiel and Hudsum, and were smuggled ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Paradise." These words bear the stamp of the age in which Columbus lived; but we are surprised to see this pompous eulogium of riches written by a man whose whole life was marked by the most noble disinterestedness. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... taken with violent shooting pains, and his lips were pursed for a drawn whistle of discomfort. A smooth man was never so ill at ease. Any promoter who will abandon his air of supreme confidence and adopt the Obreeon principle of disinterestedness in all worldly affairs except his agony, will pull millions from the pockets that now begrudgingly yield ten thousand dollar allotments in return for smooth talk concerning gigantic ventures, as viewed from the sub-cellar ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... were also very distrustful of the English Government, believing it to aim at nothing less than the annexation of their country. It may seem strange to Englishmen that the purity of their motives and the disinterestedness of their efforts to spread good government and raise others to their own level should be doubted. But the fact is—and this goes to the root of the matter—that the Boers have regarded the policy of Britain towards them as a policy ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Emily followed by that of a stout, comfortable German woman prevented the necessity of a reply. I explained what was wanted; Emily assisted me in making it clear to Mrs. Mueller, and then withdrew to the door, where she assumed an attitude of disinterestedness—too obviously ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... if we must admit that John was weak, he was weak where strong and noble natures may most gracefully be so,—weak through disinterestedness, faith, and the disposition to make the best of the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in this I cannot suspect you of affectation, for the profession of disinterestedness is uncalled for, and the contrary would be too far countenanced by the custom of the day to be matter of reserve or reproach. But how could you (saving the reverence due to a lady-authoress, and speaking as one reasonable being to another) ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Some liked him and his ways, some liked him not nor his ways either. He wrote of his own deeds and praised them highly, and saw little good in other mankind, though here and there he made an exception. Evident enough are faults of temper. But he had great courage and energy and at times a lofty disinterestedness. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... to render them stronger and more enduring. It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant beginning. He had been accused by the press of most countries of enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... extraordinary qualities, and was the ablest Governor India had seen for a great length of time. Alava said that the last transactions in Spain and the mediation of Lord John Hay had reflected the highest honour on our Government, and that we had acted with a discretion, a delicacy, and a disinterestedness beyond all praise. But both Alava and Hobhouse told me what is very remarkable as showing the great reliance which even his political opponents place in the wisdom and patriotism of the Duke. Hobhouse said that he had had some time ago a very long conversation with the Duke, in which he had ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... She would sleep secure on M. Pons' legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law. For ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons' collection; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in force with the ferment ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the kind reception you gave him, and your zeal for the interest of the United States, and friendship for me, which he might have spared, as every one of your letters demonstrates the sincerity and disinterestedness of your friendship, as well for my country as for myself; and as you value your being the first Plenipotentiary of the American States, I equally value myself on your friendship and correspondence in the part I have the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... the romantic and chivalrous ideas of the olden time, a devout Catholic as well as a sincere Christian, he brought to the annals of the Holy Wars a profound admiration for their heroism, a deep respect for their disinterestedness, a graphic eye for their delineation, a sincere sympathy with their devotion. With the fervour of a warrior, he has narrated the long and eventful story of their victories and defeats; with the devotion of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... their support was too often purchased by unworthy compliances; but, however exalted in rank or power, they were not the leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely different description, men who redeemed great infirmities and errors by sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage, men who, with many of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines, united some of the highest qualities of apostles, were the real directors. They might be violent in innovation and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to evince the disinterestedness which culture, as I have said, teaches us. We have seen the narrowness generated in Puritanism by its hole-and-corner organisation, and we propose to cure it by bringing Puritanism more into contact with the main current of national life. Here we are fully at one with the Dean of ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... Through the Pilot it was announced to the public that certain benevolent "Eastern capitalists" were ready to rescue them from their thraldom if the city would grant them a franchise. Mr. Lawler, the disinterestedness of whose newspaper could not be doubted, fanned the flame day by day, sent his reporters about the city gathering instances of the haughty neglect of the Ashuela, proclaiming its instruments antiquated compared with those used ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... most beautiful and perfect hours of his life—those in which the artist, already master of his instrument, having still the abundance and vivacity of youthful sensations, writes the first words that he knows to be good, and writes them with entire disinterestedness, not even thinking that others will see them; working for himself alone and for the sole joy of putting in visible form and spreading abroad his ideas, his thoughts-all his heart. Those moments of pure enthusiasm and perfect happiness he never could ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in Canadian history than Papineau, who possessed an eloquence of tongue and a grace of demeanour which were not the attributes of the little peppery, undignified Scotchman who, for a few years, played so important a part in the English-speaking province. With his disinterestedness and unselfishness, with his hatred of political injustice and oppression, Canadians who remember the history of the constitutional struggles of England will always sympathise. Revolt against absolutism and ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... Carraud. In this she shows the utmost tenderness and gentle playfulness; but while modestly deprecating her power to perform the task he demands from her, which she says should be entrusted to Madame Carraud, she has the noble disinterestedness to point out to him where she considers he has erred. She tells him that, after reading the book through twice, and endeavouring to see it as a whole, she thinks he has undertaken an impossible task, and that, trying to represent absolute truth ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... lands and houses, with which, however, they willingly parted to supply the necessities of their poorer fellow-Christians. This was a generosity which could not fail of exciting the admiration of the whole society, and of acquiring for them considerable influence. While the apostles approved their disinterestedness, the widows, the orphans, and the indigent of every class, would pour their best benedictions upon their heads, and look up lo them as the ministering angels of Providence. Too often, indeed, the supplies of benevolence are received with a coldness which is truly repulsive, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of charitable broadmindedness an approving shout went up on all sides. Thus encouraged I proceeded to kow-tow with even more unceasing assiduousness, and presently words of definite encouragement mingled with the shout. "Do not flag in your amiable disinterestedness, Kong Ho," I whispered in my ear, "and out of your well-sustained endurance may perchance arise a cordial understanding, and ultimately a remunerative alliance between two distinguished nations." Filled with this patriotic hope I did not suffer my neck to stiffen, and doubtless I would ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... unselfish love, whom he would willingly please if he could, and would forbear to grieve though he could gain nothing by doing so or abstaining from doing so. I do not honestly think that there is any living being who would not discover this minimum of disinterestedness in his spirit, and upon this slender foundation he must try to build, for upon no other basis than genuine and native truth can any life be built ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ask the aid of Louis XI. on behalf of the Florentines against Pope Sixtus IV. His body was taken back to Florence, and buried in the church of the Carthusians at the public expense, and his daughters were portioned by his fellow-citizens, the fortune he left being, owing to his probity and disinterestedness, very small. He wrote a Latin translation of some of Plutarch's Lives (Florence, 1478); Commentaries on Aristotle's Ethics and Politics; and the lives of Hannibal, Scipio and Charlemagne. In the work on Aristotle he had the co-operation of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... their authority. Mas approves Comyn's views, and proceeds to defend the friars against the various charges which have been brought against them. In support of his own opinions, he also cites Fray Manuel del Rio; and he himself praises the public spirit, disinterestedness, and devotion to the interests of the Indians, displayed by the curas, many of whom are friars. He argues that they even show too much patience and lenity toward the natives, who are lazy and indolent in the extreme; and it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... delight in mere success, in spite of his recklessness in the choice of men and methods, in spite of all the harshness and brutality which his nature must acquire, the true statesman displays a disinterestedness which cannot fail to impress.—H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... faithful portrait of its inhabitants. All the features in the foregoing sketch were taken from the life, and they are characteristic of that mixture of quickness, simplicity, cunning, carelessness, dissipation, disinterestedness, shrewdness, and blunder, which, in different forms and with various success, has been brought upon the ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... of the sorcerers, and the transient commotion raised by the red cross, the Jesuits had gained the confidence and good-will of the Huron population. Their patience, their kindness, their intrepidity, their manifest disinterestedness, the blamelessness of their lives, and the tact which, in the utmost fervors of their zeal, never failed them, had won the hearts of these wayward savages; and chiefs of distant villages came to urge that they would make their abode with them. [ Brbeuf preserves a speech made to him by ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... consequences of this philosophy of the senses should be drawn by a disciple of Feuerbach, Max Stirner,[1] in whose work, The Individual and His Property, the virtues of egoism are extolled, and contempt is poured upon all disinterestedness and altruism. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander |
