Selfishness Quotes - Page 27

• By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mean, Landscape, Soil

  Henry David Thoreau, Michael McCurdy, Terry Tempest Williams (2010). “Walden”, p.88, Shambhala Publications

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• I like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am.

  Richard Hammond

  Thinking, Greed, Arrogance

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Would that our harsh judgments could be restrained, our impatience checked, our selfishness broken down, our passions controlled, our waste of time and life in worthless or unworthy objects corrected, by the thought that there is One in whose hands we are, who cares for us with a parent's love, who will judge us hereafter without the slightest tinge of human' infirmity, the All-Merciful and the All-Just.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Passion, Hands, Broken

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 357, 1895.

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• ... so large a portion of those who hold much capital, instead of using their various advantages for the greatest good of those around them, employ the chief of them for mere selfish indulgences; thus inflicting as much mischief on themselves, as results to others from their culpable neglect. A great portion of the rich seem to be acting on the principle, that the more God bestows on them, the less are they under obligation to practise any self-denial, in fulfilling his benevolent plan of raising our race to intelligence and holiness.

  Catharine Beecher

  Selfish, Responsibility, Race

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• The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.

  George Berkeley

  Mean, Surly, Squires

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.363

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• Be not in the desire of thine own ease.

  Saadi

  Desire, Ease

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• It will require more than a few hours of fasting and prayer to cast out such demons as selfishness, worldliness, and unbelief. Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and of conduct.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Prayer, Heart, Fasting

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 507), 1895.

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• O my God, how true it is that we may have of Thy gifts and yet may be full of ourselves!

  Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

  May

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• We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Law, Common

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Orations and Lectures”

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• Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love, Self, Kind

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• Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love Is, Men, Self

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• In a word, most bad attitudes are the result of selfishness.

  John C. Maxwell

  Attitude, Bad Attitude, Results

  John C. Maxwell (2008). “Team Maxwell 2in1 (Winning With People/17 Indisputable Laws)”, p.115, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

  Susan Sontag

  Want, Messages, Consumerism

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• Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.

  Wendell Phillips

  Fighting, Government, Ideas

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.14

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• Show me an 'easy person,' and I will show you a selfish one. Good-natured he may be; why not? since the disastrous consequences of his 'easiness' are generally shouldered by other people.

  Fanny Fern

  Selfish, People, Why Not

  Fanny Fern (2015). “Ginger-Snaps”, p.114, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• To feel oppressed by obligation is only to prove that we are incapable of a proper sentiment of gratitude. To receive favors from the unworthy is simply to admit that our selfishness is superior to our pride. Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful for them. The proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Gratitude, Grateful, Pride

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• Christianity excludes malignity, subdues selfishness, regulates the passions, subordinates the appetites, quickens the intellect, exalts the affections. It promotes industry, honesty, truth, purity, kindness. It humbles the proud, exalts the lowly, upholds law, favors liberty, is essential to it, and would unite men in one great brotherhood. It is the breath of life to social and civil well-being here, and spreads the azure of that heaven into whose unfathomed depths the eye if faith loves to look.

  Mark Hopkins

  Honesty, Kindness, Eye

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• The fun, joy, and humor dry up in a relationship when one of the partners is swimming in gin. To my way of thinking, it is selfishness personified to see life through the bottom of a liquor bottle.

  Ginger Rogers

  Fun, Drinking, Swimming

  Ginger Rogers (1991). “Gineger My Story”

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• How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

  James F. Cooper

  Character, Men, Principles

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• People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.

  Bob Dylan

  Ambition, People, Greed

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• Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

  Alan Garner

  Family, Long, Parent

  Alan Garner (2013). “The Owl Service”, p.6, HarperCollins UK

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• Selfishness even binds many people, but blindly without having any liking for one another.

  Anuj

  People

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• Charity does not like arithmetic; selfishness worships it.

  Mason Cooley

  Doe, Charity, Worship

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• My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Self Absorption, Absorption

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• It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Passion, Doctrine, Mysterious

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