Self-love

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 697.

Self-Love

• Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.
  • Isaac D'Israeli, Literary Character of Men of Genius, Chapter XV.

• He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
  • George Eliot, Adam Bede, Chapter XXXIII.

• Wer sich nicht zu viel dünkt ist viel mehr als er glaubt.
  • He who does not think too much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sprüche in Prosa, III.

• A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
  • William Hazlitt, Table Talk, On the Look of a Gentleman.

• Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, No. 3.

• Voyez le beau rendez-vous qu'il me donne; cet homme là n'a jamais aimé que lui-même.
  • Behold, the fine appointment he makes with me; that man never did love any one but himself.
  • Mme. de Maintenon, when Louis XIV. in dying said, "Nous nous renverrons bientôt." (We shall meet again).

• Ofttimes nothing profits more
  Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
  Well manag'd.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 571.

• Le moi est haïssable.
  • Egoism is hateful.
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées Diverses.

• To observations which ourselves we make,
  We grow more partial for th' observer's sake.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle I, line 11.

• But respect yourself most of all.
  • Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans.

• * Sans doute
  Je peux apprendre à coqueriquer: je glougloute.
• Without doubt
  I can teach crowing: for I gobble.
  • Edmond Rostand, Chanticleer, Act I, scene 2.

• Et sonnant d'avance sa victoire,
  Mon chant jaillit si net, si fier, si peremptoire,
  Que l'horizon, saisi d'un rose tremblement,
  M'obéit.
  • And sounding in advance its victory,
    My song jets forth so clear, so proud, so peremptory.
    That the horizon, seized with a rosy trembling,
    Obeys me.
  • Edmond Rostand, Chanticleer, Act II, scene 3.

• * Je recule

Ébloui de me voir moi même tout vermeil
Et d'avoir, moi, le coq, fait élever le soleil.

• • I fall back dazzled at beholding myself all rosy red,
    At having, I myself, caused the sun to rise.
  • Edmond Rostand, Chanticleer, Act II, scene 3.

• Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
  As self-neglecting.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act II, scene 4, line 74.

• O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years; and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act I, scene 3, line 312.

• I to myself am dearer than a friend.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act II, scene 6, line 23.

• I am the most concerned in my own interests.
  • Terence, Andria, IV. 1.

• L'amour-propre offensé ne pardonne jamais.
  • Offended self-love never forgives.
  • Vizée, Les Aveux Difficiles, VII.

• This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind:—it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
  • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif ("A Philosophical Dictionary") (1764), Self-Love.