Selfishness

“Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope for a cure.”

“Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house on fire, though it were but to roast their eggs.”

“For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community. For too long as a nation, we have been lulled by the anthem of self-interest.”

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

“The deva asked,the best physician is the Buddha.”

“We must annihilate the feelings of "I - ness" and "my - ness" from our minds. You must march forward like a soldier, dutifully and bravely. The thing which brings man down is "attachment" to his own kith and kin. When all belong to this whole universe, where is the place for "I" and "mine"?”

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

“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.”

“Since the world does not really believe in God, in the long run the God-fearing person must really love himself. The God-fearing person does not love what the world loves, but then what is left—God and himself. The world takes God away, and therefore the God-fearing person loves himself. The world regards the fear of God as self-love.”

“Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doth.”

“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.”

“Despite those titles, power, and pelf,Unwept, unhonour'd and unsung.”

“The behavioral foundations of capitalism do, of course, continue to engage attention, and the pursuit of self-interest still occupies a central position in theories about the workings and successes of capitalism. But in these recent theories, interests are given a rather different—and much more "positive"—role in promoting efficient allocation of resources through informational economy as well as the smooth working of incentives, rather than the negative role of blocking harmful passions.”

“What need we any spur but our own cause,To prick us to redress?”

“Thus suicidal selfishness, that blightsWith passion's unsubduable array.”

“Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.”

“I hold, in truth, with him who singsOf their dead selves to higher things.”

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

“Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.”

“Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.”

“As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books?—"Self."”

“Less, less of self each day,And more, my God, of Thee!”

“Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man, myself.”

“The very heart and root of sin is in an independent spirit. We erect the idol self; and not only wish others to worship, but worship ourselves.”

“Did any man at his death ever regret his conflicts with himself, his victories over appetite, his scorn of impure pleasure, or his sufferings for righteousness' sake?”

“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.”

“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.”

“Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and I will show you one who will never be admitted there.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Think about yourselves; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay to you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. May God keep our hearts pure from that selfishness which is the root of all sin.”

“We can neither change nor overpower God's eternal suffrage against selfishness and meanness.”

“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?”

“There is a sickly habit that men get of looking into themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We are always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one who is thinking how he appears to others becomes dizzy with affectation. He is too conscious of what he is doing, and self-consciousness is affectation. Let us aim at being natural. And we can only become natural by thinking of God and duty, instead of the way in which we are serving God and duty.”

“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.”

“It is self-love and its offspring self-deception, which shut the gates of heaven, and lead men, as if in a delicious dream, to hell.”

“Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.”

“If we look only to self even in spiritual things, it is still selfishness though possibly on a somewhat higher plane than before.”