#selfishness

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#humility #love #narcissism #narcissistic #objective

It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive. ↗

— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

#selfishness #sin #theosophy #virtue #life

I believe I may assert that they were really in possession of deep and growing happiness. It ended. Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering- and it ended when circumstances caused each to feel that the one's interest was not in the chief consideration in the other's thoughts. ↗

— Emily Brontë

#love #selfishness #love

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#makes #people #selfish #selfishness

What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness. ↗

— Len Deighton

#love #selfishness #ss-gb #youth #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

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#selfishness #humor

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want. ↗

— Mother Teresa

#love #selfishness #usa #violence #love

Everyone wants a piece of you. The trick is what piece to give. ↗

— Solange nicole

#humor #life #people #selfishness #society

In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#selfishness #suffering #love