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It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

Approximate author period: c. 1879 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Bram Stoker
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1879 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1847 to 1912; Wikidata Q36184, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36184 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 263969; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.