Selfishness Quotes - Page 6

• Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

  Honore de Balzac

  Courtesy, Veneer

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.58, The Floating Press

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• Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice.

  Elihu Root

  Ambition, Perfection, Prejudice

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• It is selfishness which is the cause of most of our misery.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Selfish, Causes, Misery

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• It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Selfish, Mistake, Emotion

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• If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that.

  Mother Teresa

  Heart, Pride, Simple

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• All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Love, Inspiring, Selfish

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Thoughts of Power”, p.9, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

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• There must be love, and understanding, to betray. Most men haven't the wit or the honor for betrayal: not to know it when they see it; not the stomach to apprehend it as they do it. Most men, blind and dumb in their self-centeredness, don't betray: they merely disappoint.

  Janet Morris

  Love, Loyalty, Betrayal

  Janet Morris (2011). “Tempus with His Right-Side Companion Niko”, p.291, Paradise Publishing

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• As you help those in need, selfishness will fall away. And, without even noticing you will find your own fulfillment.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Fall, Needs, Noticing You

  Twitter post from Oct 20, 2011

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• Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates. Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.

  Nelson Mandela

  Kings, Selfish, War

  FaceBook post by Nelson Mandela from Aug 28, 2013

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• Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Selfish, War, Forgiving

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.78

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• It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.

  Alexander Pope

  Thinking, Young Friends, Young Love

  Alexander Pope (1735). “Letters of Alexander Pope and Several Eminent Persons from the Year 1705 to 1735”, p.74

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• Happiness begins where selfishness ends.

  John Wooden

  Motivational, Basketball, Ucla

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• 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

  Hate, Lying, Important

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• Selfishness, not love, is the actuating motive of the gallant.

  Madame Roland

  Selfish, Love Is, Gallant

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• Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.

  Douglas Horton

  Im Sorry, Selfish, I Am Sorry

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

  John Owen

  Men, Self, Beginnings And Ends

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• Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

  Walter Scott

  World, Causes, Contracts

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• Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Essence, Generosity, Alive

  Charles Caleb Colton (1866). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.38

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

  James Anthony Froude

  Selfish, Sage, Fool

  James Anthony Froude (2004). “Short Studies on Great Subjects”, p.443, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sympathy, Virtue, Consistent

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1853). “Notes: Theological, Political and Miscellaneous”, p.341

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• Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Beautiful, Country, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt (2010). “The Green Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt in Appreciation of Wilderness, Wildlife, and Wild Places”, p.358, Cambria Press

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• Selfishness keeps man blind through life.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Men, Blind

  Hazrat Inayat Khan “The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: The Art of Personality”, Library of Alexandria

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• Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.

  Jose Rizal

  Noli Me Tangere, Shame, Cowardice

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• Love is the doorway through which the human soul passes from selfishness to service.

  Jack Hyles

  Love Is, Soul, Doorways

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• Every time we give in to selfishness and say “No” to God, we spoil his loving plan for us.

  Pope Francis

  Giving, Plans, Spoil

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