Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism those petty good feelings pity and remorse?

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire it is hardly a passion but a blight bred in the cloudy damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism pride hardness and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?