#selfish

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears. ↗

— Cesare Pavese

#envies #far #fast #fears #light

Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good. ↗

— Arthur Peacocke

#desires #flourished #good #held #humanity

The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason. I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#conflict #empathy #erich-fromm #humility #love

We usually live our lives with the belief that "I sacrifice myself for everyone else," rather than thinking that "everyone else helps me. ↗

— Jae Woong Kim

#life #philosophy #selfishness #attitude

Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart. ↗

— Gregory Maguire

#fiction #maguire #selfishness #smart #wicked

I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#miss-marchmont #selfish #suffering #villette #nature

Listen, kiddo,” he said. “I’m a selfish prick, and I want to be the greatest fuck of your life and ruin you for every man who comes after me. But I’m not a mind reader, so I need some help. Otherwise I could end up as the douchebag who’s got shitty taste in wine and totally traumatized you when you were thirty. ↗

— Cara McKenna

#selfish #life

Ah, selfish. There’s that word again.” Sherry smirked. “It’s been hurled at me many a time, because being a mother and wife is all about selflessness, see?” She imitated a perky, syrupy-sweet voice. “Giving up every molecule of your soul. If you want anything for yourself, you’re accused of being selfish. Marriage and especially motherhood mean being condemned to play second fiddle your entire life. ↗

— Andrea Lochen

#repeat #selfish #selfless #women #year

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#christian #christian-behavior #poor #religion #selfish

Indeed this gentleman's stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#selfishness #sensitiveness #stoicism #respect