Selfishness
['selfɪʃnɪs] or ['sɛlfɪʃnɪs]
Definition
(noun.) stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others.
Checked by Ernest--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) The quality or state of being selfish; exclusive regard to one's own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others.
Editor: Spence
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Undue love of self, self-interest, private interest, illiberality, meanness.
Checker: Seymour
Examples
- No, it is not selfishness or conceit, said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. Arthur Conan Doyle. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
- Now pray, returned Richard, don't think me a heap of selfishness. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- Their running was a selfishness. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom The Bell Tolls.
- All the miseries and discontents of life he traces to insatiable selfishness. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- What is there but self, for selfishness to see behind it? Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- How many suspicions of selfishness and indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome. William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity Fair.
- The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints. Jane Austen. Emma.
- There was comfort also in Tom, who gradually regained his health, without regaining the thoughtlessness and selfishness of his previous habits. Jane Austen. Mansfield Park.
- Human natur', taking it i' th' lump, is nought but selfishness. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
- The whole of his behaviour, replied Elinor, from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility.
- It was this: Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is the incarnation of selfishness. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- Among the former, we may justly esteem our selfishness to be the most considerable. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature.
- The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness, made it a poor one indeed. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- The whole and sole conduct of the editors may be defined in one word, selfishness. Harriette Wilson. The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson.
- Muck their egotism and their selfishness and their selfishness and their egotism and their conceit and their treachery. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom The Bell Tolls.
- Amy was in a fair way to be spoiled, for everyone petted her, and her small vanities and selfishnesses were growing nicely. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
Typist: Shelley