#selfish

You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love. ↗

— Agatha Christie

#generosity #love #selfishness #love

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

Relinquishing selfish wants, one is free to allow others to travel their own paths under the will of God. (18) ↗

— Prem Prakash

#freedom #god #god-s-will #selfishness #spiritual-paths

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others. ↗

— Charles William Eliot

#cannot #choking #commandment #develop #development

There are no generalizations in American politics that vested selfishness cannot cut through. ↗

— John Gunther

#american politics #cannot #cut #generalizations #politics

I refuse to be crude and selfish in any way. ↗

— DeForest Kelley

#crude #i #refuse #selfish #way

It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself. ↗

— Tanith Lee

#aware #even #ever #i #i write

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