
1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)
Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 8 “Unrequited Hate” (p. 251)
1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)
“Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.”
Source: The Forge of God (1987), Chapter 52 (p. 352)
“Self-control and resistance to distractions. Optimism in adversity—especially illness.”
Hays translation
I, 15
Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book I
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1952 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)
Context: I see self-destruction now on a grand scale. That is, the unwillingness to pay for the things society needs. That's the most basic kind of self-destruction. That we're not prepared to pay for schools, we're not prepared to pay for highways. That is self-destruction. What are we doing to ourselves? It is nuts.