"Come, be more definite," he said.

"Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched." Rowland frowned; if Roderick would not take generosity, he should have full justice.

"It 's a perpetual sacrifice," he said, "to live with a perfect egotist." "I am an egotist ?" cried Roderick.
"Did it never occur to you ?" "An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices ?" He repeated the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it may seem) a sudden violent curiosity for news about himself.
"You are selfish," said Rowland; "you think only of yourself and believe only in yourself.

You regard other people only as they play into your own hands.

You have always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so mixed up with the temper of your genius and the very structure of your mind, that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse.