Selfish Quotes - Page 18

• The soul of me is very selfish. I have gone my way after a fashion that made me the center of the plan. And you who are so individual, who are so independent a spirit, whose soul is also a kingdom, have been so loyal, so forgiving, so self-sacrificing in your willingness to live my life. Nothing but love cold have accomplished so wonderful a thing.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Fashion, Independent, Sacrifice

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• Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

  Herman Melville

  Military, Men, Special

  Herman Melville (1966). “Billy Budd”, p.14, Hayes Barton Press

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• All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.

  Lydia M. Child

  Failure, People, Looks

  Letter to John Fraser, 1868.

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• Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.

  James Madison

  Men, Human Nature, Being Human

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Honesty is a selfish virtue. Yes I am honest enough.

  Gertrude Stein

  Honesty, Virtue, Enough

  Gertrude Stein, Brenda Wineapple (2002). “Three Lives”, p.255, Simon and Schuster

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• Sure
  love is cruel
  and selfish
  and totally obtuse--
  at least, blinded by the light,
  young love is.

  William Carlos Williams

  Love Is, Light, Sure Love

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.289, New Directions Publishing

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• The difficult part of love
  Is being selfish enough.

  Philip Larkin

  Love, Enough, Difficult

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982”, p.48, Faber & Faber

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• a society driven mainly by selfish individualism has all the potential for sustainability of a collection of angry scorpions in a bottle.

  David Ehrenfeld

  Scorpions, Bottles, Individualism

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• In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love.

  Joyce Maynard

  Mother, Children, Airplane

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• Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Beauty, Expression, Imagination

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.327, New Directions Publishing

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• When I was in grade school and we had to write papers about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wanted to be a social worker or a missionary or a teacher... Then I got involved with tennis, and everything was just me, me, me. I was totally selfish and thought about myself and nobody else, because if you let up for one minute, someone was going to come along and beat you. I really wouldn't let anyone or any slice of happiness enter... I didn't like the characteristics that it took to become a champion.

  Chris Evert

  Happiness, Teacher, School

  "'I've Lived A Charmed Life'". Interview with Sally Jenkins, www.si.com. May 25, 1992.

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• Single mothers have as much to teach their children as married mothers and as much love to share--maybe more. Yet their motives are often labeled selfish and single-minded--never mind all the babies brought into the world to snag husbands, "save" faltering marriages or produce heirs.

  Anne Cassidy

  Mother, Baby, Children

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• The child's personality is a product of slow gradual growth. His nervous system matures by stages and natural sequences. He sits before he stands; he babbles before he talks; he fabricates before he tells the truth; he draws a circle before he draws a square; he is selfish before he is altruistic; he is dependent on others before he achieves dependence on self. All of his abilities, including his morals, are subject to laws of growth. The task of child care is not to force him into a predetermined pattern but to guide his growth.

  Arnold Gesell

  Baby, Children, Maturity

  Arnold Gesell, Frances Lillian Ilg (1951). “Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School (From the Former Clinic of Child Development, School of Medicine at Yale University)”

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• As a director, you have a thousand things going on in your head, and of course, that's going to be difficult. That's going to mean that some things get overlooked. And so, for us as performers, being the selfish pricks that we are, we're sitting there being concerned about ourselves all the time and our character's through-line.

  Jamie Campbell Bower

  Character, Mean, Sitting

  Source: collider.com

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• As an athlete you're taught to be selfish. When I'm training, it's usually all about me.

  Ronda Rousey

  Athlete, Training, Taught

  Source: bleacherreport.com

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• Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Ignorance, Mirrors

  Thomas Sowell (1987). “Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays”, William Morrow

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• The world may not applaud us for wiping running noses, driving in carpools, or talking with our teenager into the wee hours of the morning. And until they are trained, our children might not thank us either. But as we set aside our own selfish desires and glorify God by joyfully serving our children, we are pursuing true greatness according to the Bible. Let us do so with tenderness, affection, and with a smile!

  Carolyn Mahaney

  Running, Morning, Children

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• Some might say that looking inside of ourselves for spiritual truths is egocentric and selfish, and that egolessness and selflessness lie in working for others in the world. But until we find our inner truth, our work in the world will always revolve around our 'selves'. As long as we think about the world in terms of 'self' and 'others', our actions will be selfish. Our 'self' follows us wherever we go, so positive results will be limited.

  Tarthang Tulku

  Spiritual, Lying, Thinking

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• The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Men, Yield

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.448, Modern Library

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• How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Energy, Earth

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• Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, andhave an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Umpires, Fire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.185, Penguin

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• The scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person,and became a showman, turning his gifts to marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Growth, Use

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1528, Delphi Classics

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• At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Work, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.46, Library of America

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• Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven't even got a self to express.

  Graham Greene

  Expression, Ends, Havens

  Graham Greene (1982). “A Burnt-Out Case”, Viking Adult

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• Immediately upon the fall, the mind of man shrank from its primitive greatness and expandedness, to an exceeding smallness and contractedness... Before, his soul was under the government of the noble principles of divine love, whereby it was enlarged to the comprehensiveness of all his fellow creatures and their welfare... [But] sin, like some powerful astringent, contracted his soul to the very small dimensions of selfishness, and God was forsaken, and man retired within himself, and became totally governed by narrow and selfish principles and feelings.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Powerful, Fall, Greatness

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