Quotes & Sayings About Egotism
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Top Egotism Quotes
Professed authors who overestimate their vocation are too full of themselves to be agreeable companions. The demands of their egotism are inveterate. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman
The self-effacing person is soothing and gracious, while the self-promoting person is fragile and jarring. Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space - self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused with lovely emotions like admiration, companionship, and gratitude. — David Brooks
You are quite wrong about him," Felix had said. "He has not been atan English school, or English university, and therefore is not like other young men that you know; but he is, I think, well educated and clever. As for conceit, what man will do any good who is notconceited? Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion
of himself."
"All the same, my dear fellow, I do not like Lucius Mason. — Anthony Trollope
To embrace an attitude of humility is to free myself from myself. And that is likely the great liberation of all. — Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have much more confidence in the charity which begins in the home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the world-wide philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into egotism. — Anna Brownell Jameson
Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily. — Jean Toomer
[M]an places the aim of his action in God, but God has no other aim of action than the moral and eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself. — Ludwig Feuerbach
Egotism is such a terrible disease, in the love of duality, they do their deeds. — Guru Gobind Singh
The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the countless enjoyments nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred leaves his heart as all light enters his mind. And is he unhappy? No. The poverty of a young man is never miserable. — Victor Hugo
Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart. — F Scott Fitzgerald
A voice is a product of the writer's own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers' sangfroid. The tenor of the writer's voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer's pitch from other wordsmiths' tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences. — Kilroy J. Oldster
Honesty, I went through terrible, terrible times where I just took myself over the coals. I thought I must be the most impure person in the world ... but because that is reverse egotism, I thought I must be the second most impure person in the world. — Frederick Lenz
The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of parading private inclinations, of a kind that repel normal people, as if those inclinations were, all by themselves, marks of authenticity and virtue, of suffering and oppression. — John Derbyshire
Our life-style contains more Thanatos than Eros, for egotism, exploitation, deception, obsession and addiction have more place in us than eroticism, joy, generosity and spontaneity. — Germaine Greer
Fortunate indeed are those in which there is combined a little good and a little bad, a little knowledge of many things outside their own callings, a capacity for love and a capacity for hate, for such as these can look with tolerance upon all, unbiased by the egotism of him whose head is so heavy on one side that all his brains run to that point. — Edgar Rice Burroughs
What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it! — Edwin Balmer
The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme
thinking too much. — Virginia Woolf
Religion is not the place where the problem of man's egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there that the ultimate battle between human pride and God's grace takes place. Human pride may win the battle, and then religion can and does become one more instrument of human sin. But if there the self does meet God and His grace, and so surrenders to something beyond its self-interest, then Christian faith can prove to be the needed and rare release from human self-concern. — Langdon Brown Gilkey
To live and breathe with an exclusive focus on one's small self, disconnected from the whole, is the definition of egotism. — Sharon Gannon
It takes great wisdom, maturity, and force of will to overcome ingrained human egotism and say
"Hey, I can fool myself! I might even be wrong, from time to time." — David Brin
Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. — Paula Hawkins
I am in constant bliss, day and night, egotism has been dispelled from within me. — Guru Nanak
They say shyness is a form of egotism, and you are only shy because you care too much about what people think of you. And maybe its true, maybe I am just an egotist. — Mika.
Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. — Henry James
Consider intentions carefully. Karma gives a damn about ego, awards allegiance to none, and its justice is truly blind. — T.F. Hodge
It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. — John Steinbeck
Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust. — Kingsley Amis
Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary strength and concentration to men, and seems to be much used in Nature for fabrics in which local and spasmodic energy is required. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men: kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest: sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest are the traits of success. — John Steinbeck
Well, suppose there's a slight doubt that the boy should be in the army and we send him and he gets killed."
"I see. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?"
"I don't want blame."
"Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism. — John Steinbeck
It's alright. It's okay if it's about your ego. Sometimes it's got to be about your ego. Just know that it is. — Crystal Zevon
The arrogance of wealth and the dejection of wretchedness, capital cities of unwonted extent, a lax morality, a vulgar egotism, and a great confusion of interests, are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of States. — Alexis De Tocqueville
Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute. — William Hazlitt
The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'. Only egotism exists. — H.P. Lovecraft
The world of tricky-tacky boxes, defined social behaviour, untrammeled egotism, sexism and material acquisitiveness, all powered by insecurity that passes for security, is rarely cajoled, least of all questioned. Much of the magic of of life space contrast has passed out of North American life. — Geoff Mains
People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis. — Mary MacLane
But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life. — Oscar Wilde
No act is so private it does not seek applause. — John Updike
In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. — Henry David Thoreau
Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name. — Brian W. Aldiss
The enemy stays in the hearts of friends. Watch what your friends know about you and watch what you tell your friends, remember, egoism breeds jealousy and ends a relationship in discord. — Michael Bassey Johnson
Those who like tranquility and dislike clamor tend to avoid people to seek quietude. They do not know that when one wishes there were no one around, that is egotism; and when the mind is attached to quietude, that is the root of disturbance. How can they reach the state where others and oneself are seen as one, where disturbance and quietude are both forgotten. — Zicheng Hong
When the head of a goat is severed from its body, the trunk struggles for some time, still showing signs of life. Similarly, though ahamkara (egotism) is slain in the perfect man, yet enough of its vitality is left to make him carry on the functions of physical life; but it is not sufficient to bind him again into the world. — Ramakrishna
I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies ... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows. — Orson Welles
I do things my way and I pay a high price. — John Mellencamp
A tangible object passes complete into my brain with the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place that it does in space; for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the universe. — Helen Keller
If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now. — Douglas Adams
Ego: The only thing that can keep growing without nourishment. — Evan Esar
If you see me coming, better step aside. A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died. — Tennessee Ernie Ford
The mind in its foolishness thinks that it is working in this body. Why should I be bound by one system of nerves, and put the Ego only in one body, if the mind is omnipresent? There is no reason why I should.[Source]
The root of that degeneration is egotism - to think that one is just as great as any other, indeed! — Swami Vivekananda
There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents. — Edwin Percy Whipple
We hide in relationships. We hide in material possessions. We hide in ambitions, secret desires, hates, frustrations, jealousy, self-ptiy, in our insecurity - and more than anything our vanity and our egotism. — Frederick Lenz
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society ... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. — Gore Vidal
Bhakti is the one essential thing.
To be sure, God exists in all beings.
Who, then is a devotee? He whose mind dwells on God.
But this is not possible as long as one has egotism and vanity.
The water of God's grace cannot collect
on the high mound of egotism. It runs down. — Ramakrishna
The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible. — Lewis Hyde
From a social psychological standpoint, the selfie phenomenon seems to stem from two basic human motives. The first is to attract attention from other people. Because people's positive social outcomes in life require that others know them, people are motivated to get and maintain social attention. By posting selfies, people can keep themselves in other people's minds. In addition, like all photographs that are posted on line, selfies are used to convey a particular impression of oneself. Through the clothes one wears, one's expression, staging of the physical setting, and the style of the photo, people can convey a particular public image of themselves, presumably one that they think will garner social rewards. — Mark R. Leary
Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism. — Mother Teresa
Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Pure love is the best medicine for the modern world. This is what is lacking in all societies. The root cause of all problems, from personal problems to global problems is the absence of love. Love is the binding factor, the unifying factor. Love creates the feeling of oneness among people. It unifies a nation and its people. Love creates a sense of unity while hatred causes division. Egotism and hatred cuts people's minds into pieces. Love should rule. There is no problem which love cannot solve. — Mata Amritanandamayi
We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable.
[ The Berlin Crisis: Radio and Television Address to the American People (The White House, July 25, 1961)] — John F. Kennedy
Men are egotists, and not all tolerant of one man's selfhood; they do not always deem the amities elective. — Edmund Clarence Stedman
In literature mere egotism is delightful. — Oscar Wilde
I know perfectly well my own egotism,
And know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. — Walt Whitman
Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow. — Carl Von Clausewitz
Narcissists do not choose us because we are like them; they choose us because we are the light to their darkness; regardless of any of our vulnerabilities, we exhibit the gorgeous traits of empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence and authentic confidence that their fragile egotism and false mask could never achieve. — Shahida Arabi
Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others; and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate. — Lord Chesterfield
I am a sacrifice to the Guru, who has totally cured me of the fatal disease of egotism. Glorious and great are the virtues of the Guru, who has eradicated evil, and instructed me in virtue. — Guru Gobind Singh
The contradictions in Renan , his feminine sensibility, coquetry, unavowed egotism, and sudden emotional outbursts, all indicate a soul deliberately using distraction as a means of evasion. The perpetual equivocation bears witness to God in the same way as the twisting and turning of a hunted animal indicates the presence of an unseen hunter. — Georges Bernanos
It will be a great pity if any feeling of jealousy or egotism gain ground amongst you. — Swami Vivekananda
Wright is an interesting study of a superstar architect having both right and wrong influence. "All Architecture, worthy the name," he decreed in 1910, "will, henceforward, more and more be organic."12 So inspired by Viollet-le-Duc and Louis Sullivan, he inspired countless others (including young me) toward an organic approach to architecture. At the same time, the very pomposity of his decrees helped inflame a fatal egotism in generations of architects, and his most famous buildings belie his organic ideal. They were so totally designed - down to the screwheads all being aligned horizontally to match his prairie line - that they cannot be changed. To live in one of his houses is to be the curator of a Frank Lloyd Wright museum; — Stewart Brand
Ask about these numbers and you hear other numbers. As usual, the fate of the poor hangs upon the decision of those concerned only with what those above them think. An endless cycle of egotism, self-sympathy. You see it everywhere here, those too weak and ashamed to defend themselves are blamed for their own misfortune. Separated and debased, they're swept deeper under society's carpet, thus the richest society in the history of the world lacks the will and conscience to end poverty while the poor become the victims of their own spiritual and physical misery . . ." In other words, according to Swigge, our job is to hide from the public's view the suffering and helplessness of the constituents of our largest minority, and thereby further diminish them in their eyes and in ours. — Philip Schultz
Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves! — Jerome K. Jerome
However low he may fall, a man can never deny himself the delight of feeling cleverer, more powerful or even better fed than his companions. — Maxim Gorky
IF YOU WOULD BE FREE OF GREED, FIRST YOU HAVE TO LEAVE EGOTISM BEHIND.
THE BEST MENTAL EXERCISE FOR RELINQUISHING EGOTISM IS CONTEMPLATING IMPERMANENCE. — Dogen
Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves. — Christian Nestell Bovee
But in this case," he continues, tracing the line of the plasterwork with one finger, "I feel that there is one cliche that sums up my position so admirably that it would be pure egotism to attempt a more interesting periphrasis. Plain speaking, therefore, there is to be.
"There is undoubtedly a strong possibility, notwithstanding the vagaries of contingency and misfortune, that my son might
have fallen - or might, we could say, have voluntarily jumped, in accordance with the ethical codes with which he has been brought up - for a play you have made with some success, although, as I am persuaded you would concede, very little originality."
Plain speaking if you're Henry James, perhaps. — Deborah Meyler
But when you get down to it, it's all a lie. You sit here writing and writing, but no one can see it - that's arrogant, I told you so before. And you aren't even honest enough to let yourself be what you are - everything's divided off and split up. So what's the use of patronising me and saying: You're in a bad phase. If you're not in a bad phase, then it's because you can't be in a phase, you take care to divide yourself into compartments. If things are a chaos, then that's what they are. I don't think there's a pattern anywhere - you are just making patterns, out of cowardice. I think people aren't good at all, they are cannibals, and when you get down to it no one cares about anyone else. All the best people can be good to one other person or their families. But that's egotism, it isn't being good. We aren't any better than the animals, we just pretend to be. — Doris Lessing
Implicit egotism can also influence what you chose to do with your life. By analyzing professional membership directories, Pelham and his colleagues found that people named Denise or Dennis are disproportionately likely to become dentists, while people named Laura or Lawrence are more likely to become lawyers, and people with names like George or Georgina to become geologists. — David Eagleman
There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may. — Charlotte Bronte
Politicians look for interests not people — Bangambiki Habyarimana
In self-giving you must be so careful of egotism. You must be so careful when you are aiding others in their liberation not to have a sense of self. — Frederick Lenz
One altar forever is preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,
ourselves, our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make sacrifice to him; we boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is matter that has forever enslaved us. — Okakura Kakuzo
Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. — Karen Armstrong