#selfishness

Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain? ↗

— Alan Lightman

#selfishness #love

The only gift I have to give, is the ability to receive. If giving is a gift, and it surely is, then my gift to you is to allow you to give to me. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#giving #greed #greedy #humor #receive

I respect all the innocent souls because they are kind enough to forgive the selfish people around them. ↗

— Saurabh Sharma

#innocent #inspirational #selfishness #forgiveness

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

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world, is and remains imortal. ↗

— Albert Pine

#make-a-difference #selfishness #inspirational

Though my work may be menial, though my contribution may be small, I can perform it with dignity and offer it with unselfishness. My talents may not be great, but I can use them to bless the lives of others.... The goodness of the world in which we live is the accumulated goodness of many small and seemingly inconsequential acts. ↗

— Gordon B. Hinckley

#service #unselfishness #inspirational

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action. ↗

— Daniel Goleman

#empathy #selfishness #social-intelligence #intelligence

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

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

— John Gunther

#american politics #cannot #cut #generalizations #politics