#selfish

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today. ↗

— Pope Paul VI

#become #block #building #building block #constantly

Of course, the idea of a six months' holiday is enough to make anyone laugh at anything, but I find that besides that I was a good deal harassed and run down, and I am glad to cut off from everything and start fresh. I feel miserably selfish about it all the time. ↗

— Richard H. Davis

#am #anyone #anything #besides #course

Childlessness doesn't make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#makes #people #selfish #selfishness

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. ↗

— William Makepeace Thackeray

#most #next #old #selfish #suppose

I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#become #come #encourage #i #life

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

I'm not a person or a selfish player, but we have to move the ball more, and we have to look further the team game, because we have enough talent to use different players. ↗

— Pau Gasol

#because #different #different players #enough #further

We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet -- our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire. ↗

— Nancy Pearcey

#fear #selfishness #death

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