#selfish

Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn't easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens - I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#inspirational #prayer #selfish #serve #unselfish

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things, the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#pacifism #sacrifice #selfishness #war #men

God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself. ↗

— Criss Jami

#considerate #delight #favor #god #happiness

Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives. ↗

— Lawana Blackwell

#selfish #forgiveness

The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#greed #materialism #needs #selfishness #vice

I am a greedy, selfish bastard. I want the fact that I existed to mean something. ↗

— Harry Chapin

#existed #fact #greedy #i #i am

Our enemies are our evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express. ↗

— George A. Smith

#deeds #evil #express #figure #habit

The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#pleasure #selfishness #age

I suppose that one of the reasons I wrote "In Contempt" was because of the money. After the trial I came to realize that there were things that I needed to do if I was to protect myself and my family, so there were some selfish reasons for it. ↗

— Christopher Darden

#because #came #contempt #family #i

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#inspire #love #qualities #selfishness