The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-love \Self`-love`\, n. The love of one's self; desire for personal happiness; tendency to seek one's own benefit or advantage. --Shak. Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul. --Pope. Syn: Selfishness. Usage: Self-love, Selfishness. The term self-love is used in a twofold sense:
It denotes that longing for good or for well-being which actuates the breasts of all, entering into and characterizing every special desire. In this sense it has no moral quality, being, from the nature of the case, neither good nor evil.
It is applied to a voluntary regard for the gratification of special desires. In this sense it is morally good or bad according as these desires are conformed to duty or opposed to it. Selfishness is always voluntary and always wrong, being that regard to our own interests, gratification, etc., which is sought or indulged at the expense, and to the injury, of others. ``So long as self-love does not degenerate into selfishness, it is quite compatible with true benevolence.''
--Fleming. ``Not only is the phrase self-love used as synonymous with the desire of happiness, but it is often confounded with the word selfishness, which certainly, in strict propriety, denotes a very different disposition of mind.''
--Slewart.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 Regard for oneself, love of oneself. 2 Excessive pride or vanity, over valuing the self. 3 masturbation
WordNet
n. feelings of excessive pride [syn: amour propre, conceit, vanity]
an exceptional interest in and admiration for yourself [syn: narcism, narcissism]
Wikipedia
Self love has often been seen as a moral flaw, akin to vanity and selfishness.
In 1956, however, psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm proposed that loving oneself is different from being arrogant, conceited, or egocentric, meaning instead caring about oneself and taking responsibility for oneself.
Usage examples of "self-love".
Thinking myself scoffed at, my self-love rebelled, and indignation for the moment silenced love.
My self-love was deeply hurt, I hated her, and, with such a disposition of mind, the more I admired the perfection of her charms, the more I found her deficient in wit and intelligence.
I esteem the man whose self-love, by whatever means, is so directed as to give him a concern for others, and render him serviceable to society: as I hate or despise him, who has no regard to any thing beyond his own gratifications and enjoyments.
AS the mutual shocks, in SOCIETY, and the oppositions of interest and self-love have constrained mankind to establish the laws of JUSTICE, in order to preserve the advantages of mutual assistance and protection: in like manner, the eternal contrarieties, in COMPANY, of men's pride and self-conceit, have introduced the rules of Good Manners or Politeness, in order to facilitate the intercourse of minds, and an undisturbed commerce and conversation.
I help thinking that her visit to me was prompted only by her self-love being too deeply wounded to let me enjoy a victory so humiliating to herself?
The worthy cardinal was doubtless guilty of a very great indiscretion, but self-love is the cause of so many injudicious steps!
The French express this sentiment by the term, AMOUR PROPRE, but as they also express self-love as well as vanity by the same term, there arises thence a great confusion in Rochefoucault, and many of their moral writers.
And yet there are distinctions of considerable im portance between apes and man, enough difference so that, quite fairly and without too much self-love on our own part, man may be put into a third catarrhine family all by himself, Hominidae (hoh-min'ih-dee.
Tenderness to their offspring, in all sensible beings, is commonly able alone to counter-balance the strongest motives of self-love, and has no manner of dependance on that affection.
Self-love may be the center, round which the human affections move, for whatever motive conduces to self-gratification may be resolved into Self-love.
And if heavenly grace and true charity shall enter into thee, there shall be no envy, nor straitening of the heart, nor shall any self-love take possession of thee.
That having given up all things besides, he give up himself and go forth from himself utterly, and retain nothing of self-love.
Self-love, taken in its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in return they should injure us.
Mandarin oil restores confidence self-love and self-esteem, offering protection against the barbs of unfair criticism, spite and gossip.
He whose presence was sufficient to set at work the self-love of all this youthful company, appeared himself to care very little about it.