Selfishness Quotes - Page 30

• I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it?

  Elizabeth Prentiss

  Thinking, Rocks, Feet

  Elizabeth Prentiss (2015). “Thoughts Concerning the King”, p.47

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• Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined - even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness - to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  America, Spirit, Determined

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.229, University of Chicago Press

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• So, let us, you and I, for the sake of our brother man, individually strive by example and influence to lift the standard of thought and conduct from the low level of selfishness and self-indulgence up to the lofty realms of aspirational thought and self-denial.

  Ossian Everett Mills

  Inspirational, Brother, Selfish

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• Selfishness of the stable or rigid sort is as a rule more bitterly resented than the more fickle variety, chiefly, no doubt, because, having more continuity and purpose, it is more formidable.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Doubt, Purpose, Fickle

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

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• If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education. It has intrinsic and indestructible merits. It holds the welfare of mankind in its embrace, as the protecting arms of a mother hold her infant to her bosom. The very ignorance and selfishness which obstructs its path are the strongest arguments for its promotion, for it furnishes the only adequate means for their removal.

  Horace Mann

  Education, Mother, Ignorance

  Horace Mann (1867). “Thoughts”, p.7

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• Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Hypocrisy, Enemy, Weakness

  "New Lamps for Old". Nine articles by Sri Aurobindo in the "Indu Prakash" (a Bombay daily newspaper), August 21, 1893.

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• Some men think that the globe is a sponge that God puts into their hands to squeeze for their own garden or flower-pot.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Flower, Men, Garden

  Henry Ward Beecher (1873). “The Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”, p.117

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• Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Self, Doe

  "Journals of Ayn Rand". Book by Ayn Rand, 1997.

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• The howl of self-interest is loud ... but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Heart, Self, Black

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1926). “The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Notes on Shelley's correspondents. Letters, 1803 to 1812”

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• Let not a man's self be to him all in all.

  Benjamin Whichcote

  Men, Self

  Benjamin Whichcote, Anthony Tuckney (1753). “Moral and religious aphorisms [collected by J. Jeffery from the papers of B. Whichcote]. Now re-publ., with additions, by S. Salter. To which are added, Eight letters: which passed between dr. Whichcote, and dr. Tuckney”, p.84

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• All of us, single or married, are eternally part of some family-someway, somewhere, somehow-and much of our joy in life comes as we correctly recognize and properly develop those family relationships. We come to this earth charged with a mission: to learn to love and serve one another. To best help us accomplish this, God has placed us in families, for he knows that is where we can best learn to overcome selfishness and pride and to sacrifice for others and to make happiness and helpfulness and humility and love the very essence of our character.

  John H. Groberg

  Character, Humility, Pride

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• This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a Fashionable Habit, acquir'd by Precept and Example, of flattering the Pride and Selfishness of others, and concealing our own with Judgment and Dexterity.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Pride, Names, Quality

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.37, Jazzybee Verlag

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• There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.

  William Blake

  Evil, Persecution, Good Will

  William Blake (1980). “Œuvres de William Blake”

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• Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.... People with no imagination feed it with sex -- the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that -- softly, without props.

  Toni Morrison

  Love, Sex, Couple

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• Alas! how many souls there are full of self, and yet desirous of doing good and serving God, but in such a way as to suit themselves; who desire to impose rules upon God as to His manner of drawing them to Himself. They want to serve and possess Him, but they are not willing to be possessed by Him.

  Francois Fenelon

  Self, Drawing, Soul

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• A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Christian, Religious, Exercise

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.8

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• When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Selfish, Exercise, Luxury

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.39

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• At this season of the year we draw close to Good Friday. All the eyes of the world will turn back to "a green hill far away, without a city wall," where the founder of Christianity was crucified by those forces of selfishness, greed, and lust for gain that are still at work in the world. It seems to me that unless we do something in Canada about the question of the export of war materials there will be another crucifixion - the crucifixion of a generation of young men, crucified upon a cross of nickel.

  Tommy Douglas

  Friday, Wall, War

  Tommy Douglas' remarks during a debate at the House of Commons in Ottawa, Ontario, April 3, 1939.

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• Beauty in this Iron Age must turn, From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn, And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn, On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn, Who hopes to wake the Future to arise, In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays, To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes, Of selfishness and lust have stained our days...

  Philip Jose Farmer

  Fashion, Men, Phoenix

  "Beauty in This Iron Age". Poem by Philip Jose Farmer, originally published in Orma McCormick and Nan Gerding "Starlanes: International Quarterly of Science Fiction Poetry", Issue 11 (Fall 1953); republished in Philip Jose Farmer "Pearls From Peoria" edited by Paul Spiteri, 2006.

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• Next to the ministry I know of no more noble profession than the law. The object aimed at is justice, equal and exact, and if it does not reach that end at once it is because the stream is diverted by selfishness or checked by ignorance. Its principles ennoble and its practice elevates.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Ignorance, Law, Practice

  William Jennings Bryan, Mary Baird Bryan (1900). “The Life and Speeches of Hon. Wm. Jennings Bryan”

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• If we desire to do what will please God, and what will help men, we presently find ourselves taken out of our narrow habits of thought and action; we find new elements of our nature called into activity; we are no longer running along a narrow track of selfish habit.

  James Freeman Clarke

  Running, Selfish, Taken

  James Freeman Clarke (1880). “Self-culture, lectures”

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• Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.

  Meister Eckhart

  Spring, Men, Abiding

  "Meister Eckhart's Sermons". Book by Meister Eckhart, 1909.

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• Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.

  Madame de Stael

  Atheism, Baseness, Coldness

  "Corinne, or Italy". Book by Madame de Stael, 1807.

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• O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Sports, Children, Self

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 536, 1895.

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• Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses.

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Selfish, Opportunity, Government

  Charles Evans Hughes (1910). “Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government”

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