quotes, quotations and passages on selfishness

generosity - giving

A person is called selfish, not for
pursuing his or her own good, but
for neglecting his or her neighbor's.

Richard Whatly

It is the ignorant person who seeks his or her own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant person, therefore, who is the selfish person. The truly wise person is never selfish. Ralph Waldo Trine

Selfish people are, by definition, those whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness. Yet. . . these selfish people are far less likely to be happy than those whose efforts are devoted to making others happy. Bernard Rimland

When a person's soul is clouded with selfishness in any or every form, he or she loses the power of spiritual discrimination, and confuses the temporal with the eternal, the perishable with the permanent, mortality with immortality, and error with Truth. James Allen It is from selfishness that everything evil proceeds. Study all the vices, and you will see that selfishness is at the bottom of them all. Combat them as you will, you will never succeed in extirpating them until, attacking the evil in its root, you have destroyed the selfishness which is their cause. Let all your efforts tend to this end; for selfishness is the veritable social gangrene. Allan Kardec

Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere. Blaise Pascal

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live;
it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Oscar Wilde

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Personality, separateness, selfishness are one and the same,
and are the antithesis of wisdom and divinity. By the unqualified
surrender of personality, separateness and selfishness cease,
and we enter into the possession of our divine heritage.

James Allen

Virtue and wisdom are sublime things, but if they create pride
and a consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity
in the minds of people, then they are only the snakes of
selfishness reappearing in a finer form. . . A person who becomes
selfish isolates him- or herself, grows less interesting
and less agreeable to others.

Mabel Collins

I perceived the entirely self-centered life as not worth living.
If what you are doing will not benefit others
besides yourself, it is not worth doing.

Peace Pilgrim

Selfishness is the great enemy of peace. Selfishness walks
by itself and no one walks with it.

Blackfeather

Selfishness keeps people blind through life.
Life is a misery for the people who are absorbed in themselves.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Look in the mirror every day, for if scars of selfishness or pride are
in the heart, they will grow into lines on the face. Watch closely.

Etu Inagaki Sugimoto

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

Oscar Wilde

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of
your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

Richard Bach
Illusions

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion.
When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems
and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our
world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind
and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for
connection--or compassionate action.

Daniel Goleman
Social Intelligence

Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish
motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.

Stephen Kendrick
The Love Dare

Selfishness can never bring happiness, because it is constantly
developing, enlarging the greedy, grasping nature, is constantly
encouraging the very thing which leads us away from happiness.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living (1913)

Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, sacrifice, just in the measure
of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self-forgetfulness.
Hence where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. Each
forgets self and lives for others. But where there is selfishness it mars
joy. One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of life in any home. It
is like an ugly bush in the midst of a garden of flowers. It was selfishness
that destroyed the first home and blighted all the loveliness of Paradise;
and it has been blighting lovely things in earth's home ever since.
We need to guard against this spirit.

James Russell Miller

But 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

No person is more cheated than the selfish person.

Henry Ward Beecher

Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or
world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on
inside millions and millions of individuals.

Fulton J. Sheen
Life Is Worth Living

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Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.
Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity,
we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt
us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time
in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in
a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.

Alcoholics Anonymous

More often than not, people who are obsessed with their desires and
feelings are generally unhappier in life versus people that refocus their
attention on service to others or a righteous cause. Have you ever
heard someone say their life sucked because they fed the homeless?
Made their children laugh? Or bought a toy
for a needy child at Christmas time?

Shannon L. Alder

Selfishness is blind.

Mohandas Gandhi

generosity - giving

A person who is humble would never be abusive or selfish;
so don't abuse yourself or withhold self-love or self-care.

Bryant McGill
Simple Reminders

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
Real Christianity

The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of
pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that
makes all our acts more or less lies against God.

Thomas Merton
No Man Is an Island

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