They have their own nature; they can of themselves minister to our
self-esteem by the demand their qualities make upon our skill and their shortcomings upon our hardiness and endurance.
I suppose that the entity of the poet may be represented by the number ten; it is certain that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it, as Rabelais says, would find it composed of one part interest to nine parts of
self-esteem.
And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his
self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing else.
"I have offended the predominant sense in your nature--your sense of
self-esteem. You don't like to be told, even indirectly, that you know nothing of Art.
Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say --This man had no
self-esteem, and no veneration.
It affords you then an inordinate amount of
self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger.
In short, we are madly erring, through
self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast "clod of the valley" which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.
Concino Concini, and his wife Galligai, who subsequently shone at the French court, sought to Italianize the fashion, and introduced some Florentine tailors; but Percerin, touched to the quick in his patriotism and his
self-esteem, entirely defeated these foreigners, and that so well that Concino was the first to give up his compatriots, and held the French tailor in such esteem that he would never employ any other, and thus wore a doublet of his on the very day that Vitry blew out his brains with a pistol at the Pont du Louvre.
The deference to his mother implied in Mercy's questions gently flattered his
self-esteem. He resumed his place on the sofa.
"The Lord never made either year face or head for X What good can your bumps of ideality, comparison,
self-esteem, conscientiousness, do you here?
The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary's
self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.
The boy was distinguished both by his brilliant ability and by his immense
self-esteem. He was first both in his studies--especially in mathematics, of which he was particularly fond--and also in drill and in riding.