#selfish

Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account; and should I labour with you upon my own account, in expectation of a return, I know I should be disappointed, and that I should in vain depend upon your gratitude. Here then I leave you to labour alone; You treat me in the same manner. The seasons change; and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security. ↗

— David Hume

#farming #individualism #selfishness #change

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#cruelty #ethics #ethics-in-religion #morality #morality-without-religion

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self. ↗

— Criss Jami

#barricade #coward #cowardice #desert #ego

Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects. ↗

— William Wilberforce

#sin #nature

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. ↗

— Herbert Spencer

#cage #fish man #law #man #selfish

Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#sympathy #beauty

Bravery is not an act of intelligence; it is just selfishness and stupidity. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#intelligence #selfishness #stupidity #intelligence

[G]iving yourself some loving attention is not selfish. It is sensible. If you feel loved and cherished--even if it is only by yourself--then you will have more love to give to others, too. (83) ↗

— Penelope Quest

#giving #love #self-loving #selfishness #life

What did an invisible God want from a bunch of frail, selfish people? The only thing Landon could figure was that He'd like for them to learn to love and help one another. Why else would they be living on such a difficult planet? ↗

— Cindy Woodsmall

#love #selfish #thinking #love

I suppose it is that sickness and weakness are selfish things and turn our inner eyes and sympathy on ourselves, whilst health and strength give love rein, and in thought and feeling he can wander where he wills. ↗

— Bram Stoker

#love #selfishness #sickness #love