#selfishness

All love may begin by being passionate, especially for younger people. But in the process of living together, they have to learn and practice love, so that selfishness--the tendency to possess--will diminsh, and the elemetns of understanding and gratitude will settle in, little by little, until their love becomes nourishing, protecting, and reassuring," (41). ↗

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

#passion #selfishness #life

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

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

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

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#inspire #love #qualities #selfishness

The subsistence mentality of a person is a prison in which his personal joy is detained. If you want to live in joy, you don't live for yourself alone. Live for others too! ↗

— Israelmore Ayivor

#detain #egoism #food-for-thought #generous #happiness

The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few. ↗

— John L. Lewis

#few #greed #many #movement #neglect

...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one--we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. ↗

— James Salter

#faith #loneliness #regret #selfishness #age