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I have bitterly resented at times the imputation and charge that Woodrow Wilson is so egotistical, self-willed, and so wedded to his own ideas that he not only does not invite suggestion from the outside but that he resents it and refuses to be guided by it. I feel that my daily intimacy with him for eleven years gives me the right to speak frankly in the matter.
There was no dignity of character; women were degraded; only passing vanities made any impression on egotistical classes; games and festivals were multiplied; gladiatorial sports outraged humanity; the descendants of the proudest families prided themselves chiefly on their puerile frivolities; the worst rites of paganism were practiced; slaves performed the most important functions; the circus and the theatre were engrossing pleasures; the baths were the resort of the idle and the luxurious, who almost lived in them, and were scenes of disgraceful orgies; great extravagance in dress and ornaments was universal; the pleasures of the table degenerated to riotous excesses; cooks, buffoons, and dancers received more consideration than scholars and philosophers; everybody worshiped the shrine of mammon; all science was directed to utilities that demoralized; sensualism reigned triumphant, and the people lived as if there were no God.
Believe me, then, your highness, by accepting all Chemerant's propositions, by seconding the plans of these two kings, you could scarcely hope to secure my pardon." "James! what he says is full of wisdom," said Angela. "I would not counsel you to be cowardly or egotistical, but he is right, you cannot deny it." The duke bent his head without answering.
In the midst of the miseries which had so long been raining upon the Netherlands, the stately and egotistical city seemed to have taken stronger root and to flourish more freshly than ever. It was not wonderful that its palaces and its magazines, glittering with splendor and bursting with treasure, should arouse the avidity of a reckless and famishing soldiery.
And as he plunged again into talk about his father, the egotistical man of fashion disappeared; she seemed at last to have reached something sincere and soft, and true. And then what had begun the jarring? Was it first her account of her Greek lessons with Sorell? Before she knew what had happened, the brow beside her had clouded, the voice had changed. Why did she see so much of Sorell?
"Tell me anything you wish. I always have better thoughts and impulses after being with you." "Please don't regard me as egotistical, or offend me by thinking I am trying to be better than others. Why shouldn't I help that poor girl? We often dance all night for fun; why can't we watch occasionally for pity?
Assuredly it is not through any arrogant avarice nor through any egotistical pride, that I shall destroy this record of a humble life it is only because I fear lest those things which are dear and sacred to me might appear before others, because of my inartistic manner of expression, either commonplace or absurd. I do not say this in view of what is going to follow.
Dickens chose the lower classes in London; Thackeray, the clubs and fashionable world; George Eliot, the country life near her birthplace in Warwickshire; Hardy, the people of his Wessex; Meredith, the cosmopolitan life of egotistical man; Kipling, the life of India both in jungle and camp, as well as the life of the great outer world.
With every word of nonsense he uttered, Roy was implicitly confessing how acutely he felt the blow; and to parade his own bitter disappointment seemed an egotistical superfluity. So he merely remarked with due gravity: "I admit you've made out an overwhelming case for 'said pegs'!" And he shouted his orders accordingly. They filled their tumblers in silence, avoiding each other's eyes.
He is a man vexed, at one and the same time, by delusions of grandeur and an inferiority complex; he is both egotistical and subservient, assertive and politic, blatant and shy. Most of the errors about him are made by seeing one side of him and being blind to the other. Such a thing as a secure position is practically unknown among us.
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