Selfish Quotes - Page 26

• The Man who works for others, without any selfish motive, really does good to himself.

  Ramakrishna

  Men, Doe, Motive

  Ramakrishna, Mahendra Nath Gupta (1942). “The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna”, Ramakrishna Vivekanada Center

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• I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important. I simply can't think about anything else, that's all.

  Henry Miller

  Falling In Love, Thinking, Differences

  "Tropic of Cancer".

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• Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu. "I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter. "Then let's do it. That's us in spades.

  Orson Scott Card

  Strong, Thinking, Ambitious

  Orson Scott Card (2009). “Children of the Mind”, p.185, Macmillan

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• ...even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it's used for selfish or cowardly reasons. - Mr. Penderwick

  Jeanne Birdsall

  Deceit, Tiny, Reason

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• Is this what you have in mind,' I asked the Dalai Lama, 'when you say in teachings that the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the world are the most selfish beings of all, that by cultivating altruism they actually achieve ultimate happiness for themselves?' Yes. That's wise selfish,' he replied. 'Helping others not means we do this at our own expense. Not like this. Buddhas and bodhisattvas, these people very wise. All their lives they only want one thing: to achieve ultimate happiness. How to do this? By cultivating compassion, by cultivating altruism.

  Dalai Lama

  Wise, Teaching, Mean

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• For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me... All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me... We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing; unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

  Amy Tan

  Running, Daughter, Fall

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• There are always rebels and radicals, I suppose,' McCleethy allows. 'Those who live on the fringes of society. But what do they contribute to the society itself? They reap its rewards without experiencing its costs. No. I submit that loyal, hardworking citizens who push aside their own selfish desires for the good of the whole are the backbone of the world. What if we all decided to run off and live freely without thought or care for society's rules? Our civilization would crumble. There is a joy in duty and a security in knowing one's place...It is the only way.

  Libba Bray

  Running, Civilization, Knowing

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• Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.

  Dean Koontz

  Struggle, Heart, Humility

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Taking: A Novel”, p.216, Bantam

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• All men are selfish, brutal and inconsiderate--and I wish I could find one.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Men, Wish, Inconsiderate

  SHULAMITH FIRESTONE (1970). “THE DIALECTIC OF SEX”

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• You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  Love, Hate, Jealous

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1964). “Best Ghost Stories of J. S. LeFanu”, p.302, Courier Corporation

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• Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.

  James M. Barrie

  Children, Heartless, Special

  James M. Barrie (2015). “Peter Pan: Top 100 Classic Novels”, p.86, 谷月社

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• A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow "for company." Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Children, Adults

  C. S. Lewis (1971). “The Four Loves”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?' You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.' That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

  Agatha Christie

  Attitude, Thinking, Missing

  Agatha Christie (1984). “Five complete Hercule Poirot novels”, Random House Value Pub

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• I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Pain, Women, Liars

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• When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true too . . . she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Uncles, Children, Pigs

  The Secret Garden ch. 1 (1911)

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• It is impossible to be both selfish and happy.

  Joyce Meyer

  Impossible

  "Joyce Meyer: If I Had One More Sermon to Preach, This Is What I'll Say" by Katherine Weber, www.christianpost.com. June 7, 2016.

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• Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

  Margaret Atwood

  Princess, Want, Remember

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• At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts us to make roses stand before thorns. Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse— at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older, I to love and you to be loved, we have, no matter how, by our wills survived to keep the jeweled prize always at our finger tips. We will it so and so it is past all accident.

  William Carlos Williams

  Love, Sorry, Past

  William Carlos Williams, Charles Tomlinson (1985). “Selected Poems”, p.215, New Directions Publishing

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• I wasn’t sure which of us was being more selfish—her, for wanting something that no one could promise, or me, for not promising her something that was too painfully impossible to want.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Promise, Want, Impossible

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)”, p.183, Scholastic Inc.

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• He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting.

  Shirley Jackson

  Men, Interesting, Surprise

  Shirley Jackson (2010). “Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches”

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• What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation, God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.

  Brennan Manning

  Butterfly, Eagles, Eggs

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• She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?

  Richard Yates

  Complicated, Reason, Feels

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• Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Grief, Tears, Unhappiness

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• People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.

  David Mitchell

  Suicide, Careers, Ideas

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• I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Fool, Loose Women, Wanton

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