quotations about selfishness
There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish. I did not think I could manage the first two, but I thought I could learn how to be just unselfish enough to love someone at least part of the time.
LYDIA DAVIS
The End of the Story
In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
DAVID MITCHELL
Cloud Atlas
Selfishness will always exist under one form or another; were not the sacred interests of entire humanity placed above the minor interests of persons and of nations, progress, arrested in every direction, could not be even imagined for want of some ultimate object.
FELICITE ROBERT DE LAMENNAIS
The People's Own Book,
That which is a common concern is very generally neglected. The energies of man are excited by that which depends on himself alone, and of which he only is to reap the whole profit or glory.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
If you seek in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt.
JONATHAN EDWARDS
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
When a man is rescued from selfish desire his mind is unencumbered, and he is free to work for humanity.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
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
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Selfish isn't necessarily a bad thing. It only means you take care of yourself and you have to do that to be able to take care of others.
TERA LYNN CHILDS
Sweet Shadows
Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect.
GEORGE SAND
Indiana
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
The Story of My Life and Work
The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living
Tonight I'm gonna be a little selfish, be a little selfish
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
BRITNEY SPEARS
"Selfish"
As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books? "Self."
EDEN PHILLPOTTS
A Shadow Passes
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd and unsung.
WALTER SCOTT
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.
WILLIAM NICHOLSON
Shadowlands
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled by its deformity to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right
Its unattractive lineaments that scare
All save the brood of ignorance; at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Queen Mab
We are too much haunted by ourselves; we project the central shadow of ourselves on every thing around us. And then comes in the gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this -- to forget self in God.
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
The selfish man cuts away the sand from under his own feet, he digs his own grave; and every time, from the beginning of the world until now, God Almighty pushes him into the grave and covers him up.
CHARLES HENRY FOWLER
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Time melts their false idols into pools of worthless lead
Encircled. Sodom's children on every side
Feeding their selfishness
With no regard for the pain that their actions bring
EARTH CRISIS
"Fortress"