Selfishness Quotes - Page 7

• Go to the cross of Christ, all you that want to be delivered from the power of selfishness.

  J. C. Ryle

  Want, Christ, Crosses

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• Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.

  Lawana Blackwell

  Relationship, Forgiveness, Selfish

  Lawana Blackwell (2008). “The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark (The Gresham Chronicles Book #3)”, p.433, Baker Books

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• It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.

  Robert Greene

  Selfish, Creating, Goal

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.303, Profile Books

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• Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Selfish, Future

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.502, Library of America

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• People of art should never get married and have children, because it's a selfish experience.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Art, Children, Selfish

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• I think that in today's world, by nature, we are all self-centered. And that often leads to selfishness.

  Gary Chapman

  Thinking, Self, World

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• Childlessness doesn't make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Selfish, People, Childlessness

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• Men's moral principles are weak enough without their being made subordinate to selfishness; and their selfishness is quite active enough, without any such effort as Christianity makes to constitute it the mainspring of all their conduct.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Effort, Principles

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

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• In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Marriage, Husband, Selfish

  'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1'

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• Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Long, Forgiving, Desire

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• I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure--if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Believe, Giving, Desire

  W. Somerset Maugham (2006). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• And when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Beautiful, Letting Go, Dark

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.113, A&C Black

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• There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

  Charles Dickens

  Passion, Pride, Names

  Charles Dickens (1995). “Christmas Books”, p.46, Wordsworth Editions

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• many people must be ruled to thrive. In their selfishness and greed, they see free people as their oppressors. They wish to have a leader who will cut the taller plants so the sun will reach them. They think no plant should be allowed to grow taller than the shortest, and in that way give light to all. They would rather be provided a guiding light, regardless of the fuel, than light a candle themselves.

  Terry Goodkind

  Cutting, Thinking, Light

  Terry Goodkind (2015). “Wizard's First Rule”, p.134, Head of Zeus

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• Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Ignorance, Ill Will, Evil

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• But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded on their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

  Margaret Atwood

  Children, Past, Grace

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.419, Anchor

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• Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.

  Dean Koontz

  Selfish, Struggle, Heart

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Taking: A Novel”, p.216, Bantam

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• We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.

  David Hume

  Men, Degrees, Constitution

  David Hume (2003). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.415, Courier Corporation

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• I didn't want to believe that killing was deep inside of me. I didn't want to think about the part of me that took a dark joy in gathering all the power it could and using it as I saw fit, everything else be damned. There was power to be had in hatred, too, in anger and in lust, in selfishness and in pride. And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos.

  Jim Butcher

  Fun, Believe, Pride

  Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 1-6”, p.438, Penguin

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• What's wrong with selfishness and egotism? We live to die smiling, don't we?

  Kazuya Minekura

  Egotism, Dies

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• Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

  Ayn Rand

  Selfish, Names, History

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”

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• A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.

  Albert Camus

  Selfish, Passion, Comfort

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

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• The act of love . . . is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Selfish, Vanity

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.65, Vintage

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• We are all making a crown for Jesus out of these daily lives of ours, either a crown of golden, divine love, studded with gems of sacrifice and adoration, or a thorny crown, filled with the cruel briars of unbelief, or selfishness, and sin.

  Aimee Semple McPherson

  Jesus, Selfish, Sacrifice

  Aimee Semple McPherson (2009). “This is That: Personal Experiences Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPherson”, p.573, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?

  Ayn Rand

  Selfish, Giving, Desire

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.31, Penguin

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