Selfishness Quotes

• Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

  Napoleon Hill

  Love, Inspirational, Family

  Napoleon Hill (2008). “The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder's Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams”, p.273, Penguin

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• I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Peace, Pain

  The 14th Dalai Lama's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1989.

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• When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

  John Ruskin

  Motivational, Witty, Attitude

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• Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

  William E. Gladstone

  Selfish, Race, Curse

  Speech in Hawarden, Wales, May 28, 1890.

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• Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. 'How everything affects me' is the center of all that matters-self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Pride, Self, Matter

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• Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Integrity, Selfish, Creativity

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect

  George Sand

  Selfish, Self Respect, Self

  George Sand (2000). “Indiana”, p.145, Chicago Review Press

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• 

  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Inspirational, Broken Heart

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• In one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Struggle, Self, Worry

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• What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself?

  Joseph Joubert

  Mind, Introducing

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• Our selfishness will condemn us to the worst suffering that we ourselves have invented - loneliness.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Loneliness, Inspiration

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• Selfishness at the expense of others happiness is demonism.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Others Happiness, Expenses

  Henry Ward Beecher, Truman Jeremiah Ellinwood (1872). “The Original Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”, p.243

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• There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Wisdom, Selfish People

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.61, First Avenue Editions

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• Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Expression, Ego, Four Agreements

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• Take the selfishness out of this world and there would be more happiness than we should know what to do with.

  Josh Billings

  Would Be, World, Should

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• 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

  Marriage, Hate, Selfish

  Stephen Kendrick, Alex Kendrick (2008). “The Love Dare”, p.11, B&H Publishing Group

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• Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

  Erich Fromm

  Selfish, Love You, Greed

  Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.105, Open Road Media

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• Selfishness is the biggest form of helplessness as it makes the person blind so much that he fails to search his true self for being always in the lurch.

  Anuj

  Self, Failing, Blind

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• Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.

  George Eliot

  Littles, Poor, Robust

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.176

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• Offended self-love never forgives.

  Giovanni Ruffini

  Self, Forgiving, Never Forgive

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• A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Disappointment

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.232, Princeton University Press

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• Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Love, Impossible, Pity

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

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• Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance.

  Graham Greene

  Happiness, Ignorance, Men

  Graham Greene (1960). “The Heart of The Matter”

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• Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Agents, Confidential, Caution

  Woodrow Wilson, Mario R. DiNunzio (2006). “Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president”, p.101, NYU Press

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• It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone.

  Owen Feltham

  Heaven, Desire, Way

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