Egoistic Quotes

You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egoistical selves.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.

Every discussion which is made from an egoistic standpoint is corrupted from the start and cannot yield an absolutely sure conclusion. The ego puts its own interest first and twists every argument, word, even fact to suit that interest.

Romantic Egoist What's better, an idiot who never tries... or an idiot who at least takes a shot?

An average man is egoistic, proud and has strong self esteem. They always require partners who massage their ego not those who will drag their ego to the mud.

The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.

Romantic Egoist Besides, love is just one among many mysteries that logic alone cannot explain.

It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.

The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.

Question: You seem to advise me to be self-centered to the point of egoism. Must I not yield even to my interest in other people? Maharaj: Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self- oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich, or enoble your own image of yourself. And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one's own body. By body I mean all that is related to your name and shape--- your family, tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one's name and shape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither body nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for. Or, you may say, he is equally 'selfish' on behalf of everybody he meets; everybody's welfare is his own. The feeling 'I am the world, the world is myself' becomes quite natural; once it is es- tablished, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfish means to covet, to acquire, accumulate on behalf of the part against the whole. I Am That Nisargadatta Maharaj

Intellect, you see, is not the same as spirituality. While spirituality makes you humble, intellect without sensitivity just makes you snobbish and egoistic.

If i cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with *your* essence are valuable to me.

Romantic Egoist: The thing is... it seems like you'd like to say something, but just can't.

Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out.

The egotist is all surface; underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important; in anything that touches his core he is remorseless.

Am I what they call an egoist? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit? I really don't know myself, but since I seem in either case to be a mass of vices, I drop steadily, inevitably, into unhappiness, and I have no specific plan to stave off my descent.

Love Egoist: Let me tell you this. I've done things to be appreciated but nothing to be insulted for. After all, I'm trying my hardest not to disappoint my students.

Shine with a genuine golden heart not with a business egoistic sparkle.

Mr. Sagunuma: We can never escape who we are. Instead of wasting time worrying about it, why don't you cut to he chase and love yourself?

Romantic Egoist Nozomi: You've got an idea in your head... how you should act, but you can't act like, so you stifle yourself and don't even try.

If somebody loves you, you accept it because you love yourself. You are happy with yourself; somebody else is happy—good! It does not get in your head, it does not make you madly egoistic. You simply enjoy yourself; somebody else also finds you enjoyable—good! While it lasts, live the fiction as beautifully as possible—it will not last forever. That,

Study so that you are able to meet arguments of your opponents. Equip your ideology with supporting arguments. If you oppose a prevailing belief, if you criticize a great person who is considered to be an incarnation, you will find that your criticism will be answered by calling you vain and egoist. The reason for this is mental ignorance. Logic and free thinking are the twin qualities that a revolutionary must inevitably possess. To say that Mahatmas, who are great, should not be criticized because they are above criticism and for this reason, whatever they say about politics, religion, economics and ethics is correct and that whatever they say will have to be accepted, whether you believe it or not, reveals a mentality which cannot lead us to progress and is clearly regressive.

Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.

I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist… he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love… poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.

In utopia, rule by masterminds is both necessary and necessarily primitive, for it excludes so much that is known to man and about man. The mastermind is driven by his own boundless conceit and delusional aspirations, which he self-identifies as a noble calling. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry out this mission. He is, in his own mind, a savior of mankind, if only man will bend to his own will. Such can be the addiction of power. It can be an irrationally egoistic and absurdly frivolous passion that engulfs even sensible people. In this, mastermind suffers from a psychosis of sorts and endeavors to substitute his own ambitions for the individual ambitions of millions of people.

What is needed now is for leaders to become more open, more flexible, less egoistic and less hypocritical. We must loosen our death grip on whatever we believe to be the truth simply because it is how we want the truth to look. We must be honest with ourselves and invite honesty from others.

Our ego occupies so much space, there is little room for anything else.

Of course I'm an egoist. Where do you get if you aren't?

An egoist is always intelligent, never wise.

Don't show a friend your gift, or your bag of money if you still want to maintain your relationship, but if nay, go on, and all you'll see is hate and jealousy, and you'll fight with him in the street like a dog and all you'll feel is regret.

-A fost odată ca niciodată un om care n-a putut. Nu a putut să urască, nu a putut să mintă, nu a putut să înşele, nu a putut să trădeze, nu a putut să jignească, nu a putut să ascundă, nu a putut să se îndoiască, nu a putut să fie egoist, nu a putut să-şi piardă credinţa, nu a putut să abandoneze. Nu a putut! -Dar cine era omul acesta? -Un om care nu a putut să se nască! Nu trebuie să te chinui mereu să fii perfect. Mai bine încearcă să fii tu însuţi, aşa cum eşti. Oamenii adevăraţi te vor aprecia pentru ceea ce eşti, nu pentru ceea ce vrei să fii. Nu există om care să le poată face pe toate. Doar Dumnezeu este perfect şi atotputernic. Tu, fii om şi atât!

Love Egoist What I find really sad is... his smiles, his kindness... are inspired by a love potion and they don't really mean anything!

Love Egoist Sumire: At first, I was simply fighting the image others forced on me. It's true that it's kind of fun to curse people behind their backs, but... I know it's not nice and it makes me feel depressed afterward.

A woman cannot bear to feel empty and purposeless. But a man may take real pleasure in that feeling. A man can take real pride and satisfaction in pure negation: 'I am quite empty of feeling. I don't care the slightest bit in the world for anybody or anything except myself. But I do care for myself, and I'm going to survive in spite of them all, and I'm going to have my own success without caring the least in the world how I get it. Because I'm cleverer than they are, I'm cunninger than they are, even if I'm weak. I must build myself up proper protections, and entrench myself, and then I'm safe. I can sit inside my glass tower and feel nothing and be touched by nothing, and yet exert my power, my will, through the glass walls of my ego'. That, roughly, is the condition of a man who accepts the condition of true egoism, and emptiness, in himself. He has a certain pride in the condition, since in pure emptiness of real feeling he can still carry out his ambition, his will to egoistic success. Now I doubt if a woman can feel like this. The most egoistic woman is always in a tangle of hate, if not of love. But the true male egoist neither hates nor loves. He is quite empty, at the middle of him. Only on the surface he has feelings: and these he is always trying to get away from. Inwardly, he feels nothing. And when he feels nothing, he exults in his ego and knows he is safe. Safe, within his fortifications, inside his glass tower. But I doubt if women can even understand this condition in a man. They mistake emptiness for depth. They think the false calm of the egoist who really feels nothing is strength. And they imagine that all the defenses which the confirmed egoist throws up, the glass tower of imperviousness, are screens to a real man, a positive being. And they throw themselves madly on the defences, to tear them down and come at the real man, little knowing that there is no real man, the defences are only there to protect a hollow emptiness, an egoism, not a human man.

I hope that your plane crashes over the ocean and piranhas eat your balls. It was lovely meeting you, you self-righteous egoistical son of a bitch. I can see where Joey gets his psychotic behavior.

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

There are no egoistic or unegoistic actions: both concepts are psychological absurdities.

Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause.

But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.

God cares only for what is his, busies himself with only himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes...He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is--A purely egoistic cause.

We have killed “duty” so that our ardent desire for free brotherhood acquires heroic valor in life. We have killed “pity” because we are barbarians capable of great love. We have killed “altruism” because we are generous egoists. We have killed “philanthropic solidarity” so that the social man unearths his most secret “I” and finds the strength of the “Unique”.

Only a rich cunt can save me now,' he says with an air of utmost weariness. 'One gets tired of chasing after new cunts all the time. It gets mechanical. The trouble is, you see, I can't fall in love. I'm too much of an egoist. Women only help me to dream, that's all. It's a vice, like drink or opium. I've got to have a new one every day; if I don't I get morbid. I think too much. Sometimes I'm amazed at myself, how quick I pull it off — and how little it really means. I do it automatically like. Sometimes I'm not thinking about a woman at all, but suddenly I notice a woman looking at me and then, bango! it starts all over again. Before I know what I'm doing I've got her up to the room. I don't even remember what I say to them. I bring them up to the room, give them a pat on the ass, and before I know what it's all about it's over. It's like a dream.... Do you know what I mean?

He was born to be alone, a damned cold intellectual, an egoist.

Romantic Egoist What I find really sad is... his smiles, his kindness... are inspired by a love potion and they don't really mean anything!

Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves?

To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility.

She is one of God's women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist- and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so skeptical and selfish.

Creative people have to be fundamentally egoistic. This may sound pompous, but it happens to be the truth. People who live their lives watching what goes on around them, trying not to make waves, and looking for the easy compromise are not going to be able to do creative work, whatever their field. To build something where there was nothing requires deep individual concentration, and in most cases that kind of concentration occurs in a place unrelated to cooperation with others, a place we might even call dämonisch.

If you move on any path – any methodology – and it brings joy to you, more sensitivity, more watchfulness, and gives a feeling of immense well-being, this is the only criterion that you are going on the right path. If you become more miserable, more angry, more of an egoist, more greedy, more lustful, those are the indications you are moving on a wrong path.

What's important is to be myself! To dream doesn't mean putting yourself in a box. It means realizing the essence... of what you really want to do.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist.

The difference between egoistic hedonism and altruistic hedonism is but an adjective.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own "effort," with their "courage to take risks." If others do not have more, it is beause they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude toward the "generous gestures" of the dominant class. Precisely because they are "ungrateful" and "envious," the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched.

I simply don’t understand. I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor’s woes can be. Practical troubles, griefs that can be assuaged if only there is enough to eat— these may be the most intense of all burning hells, horrible enough to blast to smithereens my ten misfortunes, but that is precisely what I don’t understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves?

You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique.

Feeding the ego is starving the wisdom, the choice is yours.

The growth of a passion is a very peculiar thing. In highly organized intellectual and artistic types it is so often apt to begin with keen appreciation of certain qualities, modified by many, many mental reservations. The egoist, the intellectual, gives but little of himself and asks much. Nevertheless, the lover of life, male or female, finding himself or herself in sympathetic accord with such a nature, is apt to gain much.

Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much. Even great sorrows can be survived; troubles which seem as if they must put an end to happiness for life, fade with the lapse of time until it becomes almost impossible to remember their poignancy. But over and above these self-centered considerations is the fact that one's ego is no very large part of the world. The man who can center his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist.

All Hellenistic schools seem to define [wisdom] in approximately the same terms: first and foremost, as a state of perfect peace of mind. From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest; and for the Skeptics, by false opinions. Whether or not they laid claim to the Socratic heritage, all Hellenistic philosophers agreed with Socrates that human beings are plunged in misery, anguish, and evil because they exist in ignorance. Evil is to be found not within things, but in the value judgments with people bring to bear upon things. People can therefore be cured of their ills only if they are persuaded to change their value judgments, and in this sense all these philosophies wanted to be therapeutic.

Frankly, I've worked my whole life to not be adorable with only limited success, and two adorable people dating is waaaay too cute for me.

Exercise only with the intention to carry out a physical gain or to triumph over competitors,” Hébert believed, “is brutally egoistic.

Cuceririle amoroase sunt cele mai egoiste dintre cruciade.

My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is waning and waning, and that's why we're drifting apart

I believed the universe was completely random, and that's what eluded us. Because we all want to believe we are fundamental in some way. We are our own myths, our own legends. We give things reason. We are reasonable creatures and so everything must have its place, its purpose — but we are also egoistical creatures, and so we give ourselves reasons that don't exist.

You aren’t happy with me, you aren’t happy without me, so why the fuck should I leave you alone? You have nothing to give me? Fine. I have many things I want to give you. I came for you, and you will be mine again, whether you like it or not.

If things went according to death notices, man would be absolutely perfect. There you find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish and self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, businessmen in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi would seem an infinite egoist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers - in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.

Narcissistic pleasure seekers routinely avoid developing the humility required to manufacture a life of full measure. Shallow persons such as me hide their insecurities behind a false persona of bravado, boasting of their inconsequential deeds, pyrrhic victories, and adamant refusals to tackle any task that they fear.

And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can’t do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can’t stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere— an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers— and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people— from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force.

his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that is should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers threadlike in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity.

When faced with difficulties, a humble, understanding, appreciative and selfless person finds it easy to win a friend. On the other hand, a temperamental, egoistic, condensing, self-absorbed, self-conceited and narrow-minded person who lacks the basic sense of humility easily loses friends when in distress.

We may think of egoists as people who have grown sick from too much love, but in fact the opposite is the case: an egoist is someone who has not yet had their fill. Self-centredness has to have a clear run in the early years if it isn’t to haunt and ruin the later ones. The so-called narcissist is simply a benighted soul who has not had a chance to be inordinately and unreasonably admired and cared for at the start.

In winter you wake up in this city, especially on Sundays, to the chiming of its innumerable bells, as though behind your gauze curtains a gigantic china teaset were vibrating on a silver tray in the pearl-gray sky. You fling the window open and the room is instantly flooded with this outer, peal-laden haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers. No matter what sort of pills, and how many, you've got to swallow this morning, you feel it's not over for you yet. No matter, by the same token, how autonomous you are, how much you've been betrayed, how thorough and dispiriting in your self-knowledge, you assume there is still hope for you, or at least a future. (Hope, said Francis Bacon, is a good breakfast but bad supper.) This optimism derives from the haze, from the prayer part of it, especially if it's time for breakfast. On days like this, the city indeed acquires a porcelain aspect, what with all its zinc-covered cupolas resembling teapots or upturned cups, and the tilted profile of campaniles clinking like abandoned spoons and melting in the sky. Not to mention the seagulls and pigeons, now sharpening into focus, now melting into air. I should say that, good though this place is for honeymoons, I've often thought it should be tried for divorces also - both in progress and already accomplished. There is no better backdrop for rapture to fade into; whether right or wrong, no egoist can star for long in this porcelain setting by crystal water, for it steals the show. I am aware, of course, of the disastrous consequence the above suggestion may have for hotel rates here, even in winter. Still, people love their melodrama more than architecture, and I don't feel threatened. It is surprising that beauty is valued less than psychology, but so long as such is the case, I'll be able to afford this city - which means till the end of my days, and which ushers in the generous notion of the future.

It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction

In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn't it rumble in the distant thunder, and don't you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?

Narcissists only play for their own business, whereas Distortionists play with other’s business only to gain personal advantage. If you are both, then you aren’t an entrepreneur.

Sabahleyin bitkilerle dolu, kimsenin kimseye hürmet etmediği, kimsenin kimseyi hürmete layık bulmadığı, istismar edenin, çalanın zengin ve bahtiyar olduğu, esnafının azgın, zenginin deli, haris, egoist, gaddar, fakirinin kayıtsız, sersem olduğu bir şehirde; işin kötüsü sensiz, oldukça kirli bir yatakta uyanıyorum. Ama sevgilim, olacak, büyük hayaller kuruyorum.

Being romantic and egoistic at the same time is a deadly combination. One characteristic won’t allow you to be alone and the other won’t allow you to take the first step. Most of the time these kinds of people weep silently with tears trying to take deep plunge from the barricade of eyelids, while heart strongly controlling the emotions not to be visible to others.

We let rip with idealism and grand words, but it's nothing but rationalizations of our own egoistic behavior. Not only do we lie to others; we also lie to ourselves. Each one of us lives inside a house of mirrors -- our own instinctive self-righteousness distorts the way we view reality so that we can justify our actions to ourselves. And there's no way we can escape.

You asked for a brief sketch of my stuff that is connected with my imaginary world. It is difficult to say anything without saying too much: the attempt to say a few words opens a floodgate of excitement, the egoist and the artist at once desires to say how the stuff has grown, what it is like, and what he thinks he means, or is trying to represent by it all." -JRR Tolkien, 1951

He looked down at the glass again. ‘I care that these things happen, that we poison ourselves and our progeny, that we knowingly destroy our future, but I do not believe that there is anything - and I repeat, anything - that can be done to prevent it. We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as “the common good”. The best of us can rise to feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.’ ‘I refuse to believe that.’ Brunetti said. ‘Your refusal to believe it,’ the Count said with a smile that was almost tender, ‘makes it no less true, Guido.

To seek pleasure, to avoid pain, is the general line of action (some would say law) of the organic world. Without this quest of the agreeable, life itself would be impossible. Organisms would disintegrate, life cease. Thus whatever a man's actions and line of conduct may be, he does what he does in obedience to a craving of his nature. The most repulsive actions, no less than actions which are indifferent or most attractive, are all equally dictated by a need of the individual who performs them. Let him act as he may, the individual acts as he does because he finds a pleasure in it, or avoids, or thinks he avoids, a pain. Here we have a well-established fact. Here we have the essence of what has been called the egoistic theory.

For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted. Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?

Shedding an independent, individualistic sense of self, is an apt place to start when remaking oneself. The task of divesting my egoistic coat-of-arms requires that I first understand how I came into being, ascertain how a person forges a baseline personality, and discover how I can modify my template for self-construal. I need to surrender an arrogant sense of self-importance, acknowledge towering ignorance, and learn how to live humbly. I hope to parlay personal humiliation and self-hatred into a transformative act by invoking a spiritual death of my egotistical being that results in a resurrection of a more astute and kinder human being.

Guess what, Satsuki! I realized something wonderful! I don't have to be a teacher to light the way for others. I can make my dream come true in other ways!! And for that, I need you. It has to be you. I love you. Without you... I can't even smile.

thus it is that egoists have always the last word; having posited at the start that their resolution is unshakeable, the more susceptible the feeling to which one appeals in them to make them abandon their resolution, the more reprehensible they find, not themselves who resist that appeal, but those who put them under the necessity of resisting it, so that their own harshness may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty without having any effect in their eyes but to aggravate the culpability of the person who is so indelicate as to be hurt, to be in the right, and to cause them thus treacherously the pain of acting against their natural instinct of pity.

The sun is sitting on whom I was in order that I can become the type of person that I wish to be. The beauty of twilight is that it enhances everything. Personal change requires the courage to let go of personal security and venture into a new worlds. I look forward exploring personal thoughts and behaviors, and probing community customs and rituals. I hope to meet new people, expand knowledge of the world, eclipse my egoistical way of living, and devolve a lifestyle that in is synch with the natural rhythmic flow of that governs all lifeforms that inhabit this crusty rock and the watery world of rivers, seas, and oceans. I resolve to accept witnessing the splendor of nature as sufficient to satisfy all my wants and desires while also seeking to increase self-control, and attempt to sprinkle kindness upon the doorsteps leading to other people’s hearts.

The typical Anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms,—opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation,—endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal.” To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living, and courage beyond compare.[2]

We have still not recovered, in the West, from that act of primary alienation from the source of our earthly lives. No matter how sophisticated our technologies or how “secular” our lifestyles, we in the West, because our culture is so historically saturated with biblical imagery and worldview, still tend to be ruled by archetypal models of a male pastoral god whose power comes not from giving birth, or enhancing life, but from dominating and breeding cattle herds as a sign of egoistic individual wealth. And dominating women as unclean but profitable cows, as well. The

Though human consciousness plays such a central part, and is the basis of all his creative and constructive activities, man is nevertheless no god: for his spiritual illumination and self-discovery only carry through and enlarge nature's creativity. Man's reason now informs him that even in his most inspired moments he is but a participating agent in a larger cosmic process he did not originate and can only in the most limited fashion control. Except through the expansion of his consciousness, his littleness and his loneliness remain real. Slowly, man has found out that, wonderful though his mind is, he must curb the egoistic elations and delusions it promotes; for his highest capacities are dependent upon the cooperation of a multitude of other forces and organisms, whose life-courses and life-needs must be respected.

I think modern education over-emphasizes the intellect. I suppose that comes from the scientific trend of the times. You cannot obtain a useful citizen if you only develop his intellect. We take children from their parents because these cannot give them an intellectual training. So far, good. But we fail to give them that training in character which parents alone can give. Home influence, as Grace Aguilar conceived it " where has it gone? It strikes me that this is a grave danger for the future. We are rearing up a brood of crafty egoists, a generation whose earliest recollections are those of getting something for nothing from the State. I am inclined to trace our present social unrest to this over-valuation of the intellect. It hardens the heart and blights all generous impulses. What is going to replace the home, Mr. Keith?

Oligarchies, throughout past history, have always thought more of their own advantage than of that of the rest of the community. It would be foolish to be morally indignant with them on this account; human nature, in the main and in the mass, is egoistic, and in most circumstances a fair dose of egoism is necessary for survival. It was revolt against the selfishness of past political oligarchies that produced the Liberal movement in favour of democracy, and it was revolt against economic oligarchies that produced Socialism. But although everybody who was in any degree progressive recognised the evils of oligarchy throughout the past history of mankind, many progressives were taken in by an argument for a new kind of oligarchy. ‘We, the progressives’ — so runs the argument — ‘are the wise and good; we know what reforms the world needs; if we have power, we shall create a paradise.’ And so, narcissistically hypnotised by contemplation of their own wisdom and goodness, they proceeded to create a new tyranny, more drastic than any previously known.

Error regarding life necessary to life. - Every belief in the value and dignity of life rests on false thinking; it is possible only through the fact that empathy with the universal life and suffering of mankind is very feebly developed in the individual. Even those rarer men who think beyond themselves at all have an eye, not for this universal life, but for fenced-off portions of it. If one knows how to keep the exceptions principally in view, I mean the greatly gifted and pure of soul, takes their production for the goal of world-evolution and rejoices in the effects they in turn produce, one may believe in the value of life, because the one is overlooking all other men: thinking falsely, that is to say. And likewise if, though one does keep in view all mankind, one accords validity only to one species of drives, the less egoistical, and justifies them in face of all the others, then again one can hope for something of mankind as a whole and to this extent believe in the value of life: thus, in this case too, through falsity of thinking. Whichever of these attitudes one adopts, however, one is by adopting in an exception among men. The great majority endure life without complaining overmuch; they believe in the value of existence, but they do so precisely because each of them exists for himself alone, refusing to step out of himself as those exceptions do: everything outside themselves they notice not at all or at most as a dim shadow. Thus for the ordinary, everyday man the value of life rests solely on the fact that regards himself more highly than he does the world. The great lack of imagination from which he suffers means he is unable to feel his way into other beings and thus he participates as little as possible in their fortunes and sufferings. He, on the other hand, who really could participate in them would have to despair of the value of life; if he succeeded in encompassing and feeling within himself the total consciousness of mankind he would collapse with a curse on existence - for mankind has as a whole no goal, and the individual man when he regards its total course cannot derive from it any support or comfort, but must be reduced to despair. If in all he does he has before him the ultimate goallessness of man, his actions acquire in his own eyes the character of useless squandering. But to feel thus squandered, not merely as an individual fruits but as humanity as a whole, in the way we behold the individual fruits of nature squandered, is a feeling beyond all other feelings. - But who is capable of such a feeling? Certainly only a poet: and poets always know how to console themselves.

How we interact in our world that we inhabit determines how much happiness human beings enjoy. The ego guides human beings in performing their practical activities, and egotistical utility in turn motivates human behavior. An inflated ego can cause human beings to live in a corrupt and unethical manner that is hostile to other humans and the environment. A person’s passions can imprison them.

Russian bolshevism, replacing eastern Christendom by the grim religiosity of Marx, produced a caricature of the evangelical counsels with many a diabolical aspect. There is a good deal of “communism” in monasteries and convents, yet this is based upon a voluntary renunciation of perfect human rights. On account of our free will we can make supreme sacrifices which ennobles our very existence. Bolshevism on the other hand forces us brutally into a parody of monastic life amidst fellow monks and fellow nuns who hate their habit and sigh under the ferocious tyranny of their pseudo-abbot. This evil distortion of an otherwise Christian ideal is more satanic than wanton, a thoroughly pagan and diabolic opposition to Christian existence. This explains also the reason why the Vatican has found stronger words against “altruistic” bolshevism than against egoistic capitalism

The qualities of a rebel are multidimensional. The first thing: The rebel does not believe in anything except his own experience. His truth is his only truth; no prophet, no messiah, no savior, no holy scripture, no ancient tradition can give him his truth. They can talk about truth, they can make much ado about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth. The word about means around—to know about truth means to go around and around it. But by going around and around you never reach to the center. The rebel has no belief system—theist or atheist, Hindu or Christian, he is an inquirer, a seeker. But a very subtle thing has to be understood: That is, the rebel is not an egoist. The egoist also does not want to belong to any church, to any ideology, to any belief system, but his reason for not belonging is totally different from that of the rebel. He does not want to belong because he thinks too much of himself. He is too much of an egoist; he can only stand alone. The rebel is not an egoist; he is utterly innocent. His nonbelieving is not an arrogant attitude but a humble approach. He is simply saying, “Unless I find my own truth, all borrowed truths are only burdening me; they are not going to unburden me. I can become knowledgeable, but I will not be knowing anything with my own being; I will not be an eyewitness to any experience.” The

The anima in her negative aspect—that is, when she remains unconscious and hidden—exerts a possessive influence on the subject. The chief symptoms of this possession are blind moods and compulsive entanglements on one side, and on the other cold, unrelated absorption in principles and abstract ideas. The negative aspect of the anima indicates therefore a special form of psychological maladjustment. This is either compensated from the conscious side or else it compensates a consciousness already marked by a contrary (and equally incorrect) attitude. For the negative aspect of the conscious dominant is far from being a “God-given” idea; it is the most egoistic intention of all, which seeks to play an important role and, by wearing some kind of mask, to appear as something favourable (identification with the persona!). The anima corresponding to this attitude is an intriguer who continually aids and abets the ego in its role, while digging in the background the very pits into which the infatuated ego is destined to fall.

At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I propose that egoism belongs to the nature of a noble soul, I mean that unshakable faith that to a being such as 'we are' other beings must be subordinate by nature and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question mark, without a feeling that it might contain hardness, constraint, or caprice, but rather as something that may be founded in the primordial law of things: if it sought a name for this fact it would say ‘it is justice itself.’ Perhaps it admits under certain circumstances, which, at first, make it hesitate, that there are some who have rights equal to its own; as soon as this matter of rank is settled, it moves among these equals, with their equal privileges, showing the same sureness of modesty and delicate reverence that characterize its relations with itself – in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism, understood by all stars. It is merely another aspect of its egoism, this refinement and self-limitation in its relations with its equals – every star is such an egoist – it honors itself in them, and in the rights it cedes to them; it does not doubt that the exchange of honors and rights is of the nature of all social relations, and thus also belongs to the natural condition of things. The noble soul gives as it takes from that passionate and irritable instinct of repayment that lies in its depth. The concept of grace has no meaning or good odor inter pares; there may be a sublime way to let presents from above happen to one, as it were, and to drink them up thirstily, like drops, but for this art and gesture the noble soul has no aptitude. Its egoism hinders it: quite generally it does not like to look 'up,' but either ahead , horizontally and slowly, or down: it knows itself to be at a height.

I hate Toscanini. I’ve never heard him in a concert hall, but I’ve heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanini ‘honoured’ me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those records, too, and they’re worthless. I’ve read about Toscanini’s conducting style and his manner of conducting a rehearsal. The people who describe this disgraceful behaviour are for some reason delighted by it. I simply can’t understand what they find delightful. I think it’s outrageous, not delightful. He screams and curses the musicians and makes scenes in the most shameless manner. The poor musicians have to put up with all this nonsense or be sacked. And they even begin to see ‘something in it’. (…) Toscanini sent me his recording of m Seventh Symphony and hearing it made me very angry. Everything is wrong. The spirit and the character and the tempi. It’s a sloppy, hack job. I wrote him a letter expressing my views. I don’t know if he ever got it; maybe he did and pretended not to – that would be completely in keeping with his vain and egoistic style. Why do I think that Toscanini didn’t let it be known that I wrote to him? Because much later I received a letter from America: I was elected to the Toscanini Society! They must have thought that I was a great fan of the maestro’s. I began receiving records on a regular basis: all new recordings by Toscanini. My only comfort is that at least I always have a birthday present handy. Naturally, I wouldn’t give something like that to a friend. But to an acquaintance-why not? It pleases them and it’s less trouble for me. That’s one of life’s most difficult problems- what to give for a birthday or anniversary to a person you don’t particularly like, don’t know very well, and don’t respect. Conductors are too often rude and conceited tyrants. And in my youth I often had to fight fierce battles with them, battles for my music and my dignity.