Amour-propre

Amour-propre is the fount of all our self-deceptions, the engine that motors our overestimating our charm, large-heartedness, candor and other ostensibly splendid virtues.

Puncturing Our Pretensions Joseph Epstein 2011

Amour-propre keeps us from knowing our limits, disguises the often crass interests behind what we think our benevolent actions, and camouflages the full extent of our pathetic vanity.

Puncturing Our Pretensions Joseph Epstein 2011

Amour-propre, which translates to self-love, was the term used by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau to describe a man's need to value himself on the basis of other people's opinions of him.

Ashley Rindsberg: Mr. President, You Are Sick With Self Love 2010

Yet again, he defines the subject of his mordant volume in terms which seem to exclude all bountiful theories concerning the disinterested instincts of the human soul, for he says "_Amour-propre_ is the love of one's self and of all things for one's self; it turns men into their own idolators, and, if fortune gives them the opportunity, makes them the tyrants of others ....

Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France Edmund Gosse 1888