Selfish quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character."
"Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should."
"Here I am going to say something which may come as a bit of a shock. God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to be lovable. Worthy of love. Able to be loved by Him. We don't start off being all that lovable, if we're honest. What makes people hard to love? Isn't it what is commonly called selfishness? Selfish people are hard to love because so little love comes out of them."
"It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself."
"We can use wealth, intelligence, education or health in harmony with our compassionate spiritual nature, or we can use them according to the selfish concerns of our particular egos. We have choices as human beings. We can be saints or we can be terrorists. We can be peaceful or we can be miserable. When we see everything in the world as God's sacred property, then we're seeing the spiritual potential, the spiritual substance, everywhere."
"I am selfish. I am brave."
"Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry."
"The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain."
"Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it."
"Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions."
"Some good leaders are rough around the edges and some leaders are difficult. Some have difficult personalities and some are really nice to be around, but those are not the qualifications. The qualifications are their desire to see us achieve more, their desire to push us to be the best we can be. Not for their selfish gain, but because they believe that we have something to offer."
"It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies."
"Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world."
"I step naked into the shower of truth - whole-hearted, bloody-minded, utterly selfish, no longer even pretending to enjoy or understand anything."
"With all humility, I think, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing."
"When I was young, I was very selfish, now not any more."
"I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?"
"Huamns, uregulated, are cruel and capricious; violet and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good."
"People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself."
"I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical."
