Selfishness Quotes - Page 32

• There is no such thing as low-cost Christianity. Following Jesus means swimming against the tide, renouncing evil and selfishness

  Pope Francis

  God, Faith, Christian

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• Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Pain, Love Is, Giving

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• These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Taken, Important, Climate

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• Blessed loves! how happy they have made us on the earth; what will they be when they have deepened through ages, with no alloy of envy or suspicion or selfishness or sorrow?

  Randolph Sinks Foster

  Blessed, Envy, Sorrow

  Randolph Sinks Foster (1870). “Beyond the Grave: Being Three Lectures Before Chautauqua Assembly in 1878, with Papers on Recognition in the Future State, and Other Addenda”, p.228

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• Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.

  Leigh Hunt

  Sympathy, Selfish, Hunting

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• As you can see marriage is about putting away selfishness and taking on the concept of teamwork.

  Jim George

  Teamwork, Concepts

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• Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.

  Corrie Ten Boom

  Forgiveness, Keys, Doors

  Corrie Ten Boom (1985). “Jesus is Victor”, Fleming H Revell Company

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• All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

  Oscar Wilde

  Selfish, People, Secret

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Complete Short Stories of Oscar Wilde”, p.40, Courier Corporation

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• Only God can give us a selfless love for others, as the Holy Spirit changes us from within. This is one reason we must receive Christ, for apart from His Spirit we can never be freed from the chains of selfishness, jealousy, and indifference. Will others see Christ's love in your life today?

  Billy Graham

  Giving, Selfless, Today

  Billy Graham (2006). “Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith”, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Selfish, Passion

  "Letters of Two Brides". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1841-1842.

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• The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, People, Pests

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.14

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• Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.

  Duke Ellington

  Survival, Essentials, Virtue

  Duke Ellington (1973). “Music is my mistress”, Doubleday Books

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• If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Self, Giving, Feelings

  Charles Horton Cooley, Hans-Joachim Schubert (1998). “On Self and Social Organization”, p.167, University of Chicago Press

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• Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?

  Herman Melville

  Pain, Men, People

  Herman Melville (2016). “Redburn.His First Voyage”, p.208, Herman Melville

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• I lived with the only continuity, day to day, of the me-me-me.

  Albert Camus

  Continuity, Day To Day

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• There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive, the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Want, Sensitive, Consideration

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• Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Honor, Feeding, Gluttony

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• ... the hey-day of a woman's life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Sympathy, Children, Humanity

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2016). “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: As Revealed in Her Letters & Diary (Abridged)”, p.233, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• What i’m saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all!

  Elif Safak

  Beautiful, Letting Go, Jobs

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• Marriage is a state that is attended with so much care and trouble, that it is a kind of faulty indulgence and selfishness to livesingle, in order to avoid the difficulties it is attended with.

  Samuel Richardson

  Marriage, Order, Care

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• When I was in grade school and we had to write papers about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wanted to be a social worker or a missionary or a teacher... Then I got involved with tennis, and everything was just me, me, me. I was totally selfish and thought about myself and nobody else, because if you let up for one minute, someone was going to come along and beat you. I really wouldn't let anyone or any slice of happiness enter... I didn't like the characteristics that it took to become a champion.

  Chris Evert

  Happiness, Teacher, Selfish

  "'I've Lived A Charmed Life'". Interview with Sally Jenkins, www.si.com. May 25, 1992.

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• Sure
  love is cruel
  and selfish
  and totally obtuse--
  at least, blinded by the light,
  young love is.

  William Carlos Williams

  Selfish, Love Is, Light

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.289, New Directions Publishing

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• To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions-between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, cooperativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation.

  Norman Cousins

  Men, Essence, Optimism

  Norman Cousins (1953). “Who Speaks for Man?”, New York : Macmillan

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• Ironically, often the thing that keeps me from experiencing joy is my preoccupation with self. The very selfishness that keeps me from pouring myself out for the joy of others also keeps me from noticing and delighting in the myriad small gifts God offers each day. This is why Walker Percy describes boredom as "the self stuffed with the self."

  John Ortberg

  Self, Boredom, Joy

  John Ortberg (1997). “The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People”, p.64, Harper Collins

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  Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.

  William Wilberforce

  Quality, Fruit, Human Nature

  William Wilberforce (1797). “A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians: In the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity”, p.424

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