quotations about selfishness
The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 15, 1858
It is hard to feel safe and have good connection in a relationship if you feel your partner is only concerned with their own needs and is not showing up for you. Most of us tend to pull back and focus on ourselves when we feel this too, which means we can become selfish. This is a recipe for disaster in a marriage, because if everyone is focused on what they aren't getting -- no one is giving anything.
KIM GILES
"Is selfishness the problem in your relationship?", KSL, July 24, 2017
Foolish believers
Of hope and prayer
Marching blindly into nothingness
They shall never know
The exquisite taste of selfishness
WURDULAK
"The Exquisite Taste of Selfishness"
Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doth.
JOHN OWEN
attributed, Essays on the Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character?
If Self be predominant, the man is unsociable.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Where selfishness wholly rules the mind, we do not recognize the noblest and most perfect model of human nature.
MRS. WILLARD
attributed, Day's Collacon
A selfish man performs an act of goodness by painful and strenuous effort, and merely to escape the reproaches of conscience.
FRANCIS WAYLAND
The Elements of Moral Science
Let not a man's self be to him all in all.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear.... Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.
ELIZABETH GOUDGE
The White Witch
The weakness of the social affections and the strength of the private desires constitute selfishness; a vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbours it.
JAMES MACKINTOSH
Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Take the selfishness out of this world, and there would be more happiness than we should know what to do with.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sometimes we strive, undeterred
To walk as one toward our goal
But as people stray toward more selfish ways
We see we have no control
BAD RELIGION
"Dream of Unity"
Selfishness at the expense of others' happiness is demonism.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
To be selfish is to sacrifice the nobler for the meaner ends, and to be sordidly content.
HUGH R. HAWEIS
Speech in Season
The force of selfishness is as inevitable and as calculable as the force of gravitation.
GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD
Six Months in Italy
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
JANE AUSTEN
Mansfield Park
Like the leprosy, [selfishness] requires a miracle to cure it, and then is hard to stay cured.
LEVI CARROLL JUDSON
The Probe, or, One Hundred and Two Essays on the Nature of Men and Things
You can call me selfish
But all I want is your love
And you can call me hopeless, baby
Cause I'm hopelessly in love
You can call me unperfect but who's perfect?
Tell me what do I gotta do
To prove that I'm the only one for you?
So what's wrong with being selfish?
NSYNC
"Selfish"
Selfishness is viral. If you get screwed, that makes you more likely to want to screw the next guy down the line.
JONN ELLEDGE
"Why does the right find politics easier than the left? Because selfishness is viral", New Statesman, May 31, 2017