Selfishness Quotes

“It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.”
― Nella Larsen, Passing

“The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places. (p 57)”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“When we don’t put the brakes on our self-absorption, we have nothing stopping us from total self-destruction. We become the fruits of our actions.”
― Zeena Schreck, Beatdom #11: The Nature Issue

“...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, Light Years

“ما هي مزايا الأنانية ؟
ألا تتحدث عن أحد سواك”
― أنيس منصور, لحظات مسروقة

“A humanitarian seldom makes a good lover. For a lover’s world revolves around their lover, while a humanitarian’s world revolves around the world.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It is not really a small thing when in small things we resist self.”
― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

“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, Dracula

“The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can't break this window. I can't even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone at risk. I won't let myself do that.

I'm not selfish like Lily.

I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I pres so heard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I'm hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control.”
― Courtney Summers, This is Not a Test

“Most parents are not really ‘supportive’ because they want their kid(s) to succeed; they ‘support’ their kid(s) as an attempt to avoid appearing to have bred a failure, or, failures … in the eyes of their peers and/or neighbours.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It is possible that our present-day discussion about needs might be framed more by secular psychological theories than by Scripture. If this is so, we should be careful about saying, "Jesus meets all our needs." At first, this has a plausible biblical ring to it. Christ _is_a friend; God _is_ a loving Father; Christians _do_ experience a sense of meaningfulness and confidence in knowing God's love. It makes Christ the answer to our problems. Yet if our use of the term "needs" is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs.”
― Edward T. Welch, When People Are Big and God is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man

“To Love oneself is Ok but,to love only oneself isn't!”
― Krishna Kumar Kanagal

“It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we
should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than
we have knowledge of.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“What is it about the American obsession with productivity and responsibility that makes it so difficult for us to allow ourselves a little time to solve the puzzle of our own lives, before it’s too late?”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“To be wrecked begins with an experience that pulls you out of your comfort zone and self-centeredness, whether you want it or not.”
― Jeff Goins

“Of all the vices which degrade the human character, Selfishness is the most odious and contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most mon¬strous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both in States and Families. As a selfish man will impoverish his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them into war.”
― William Makepiece Thackeray

“After our loved one dies: we cry, not because they left; but because they left us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Nature is infinitely rich and diverse in her ways. She can be seen to break her most unchanging laws. She has made self-interest the motive of all human action, but in the great host of men she produces ones who are strangely constituted, in whom selfishness is scarcely perceptible because they do not place their affections in themselves. Some are passionate about the sciences, others about the public good. They are as attached to the discoveries of others as if they themselves had made them, or to the institutions of public welfare and the state as if they derived benefit from them. This habit of not thinking of themselves influences the whole course of their lives. They don't know how to use other men for their profit. Fortune offers them opportunities which they do not think of taking up.
In nearly all men the self is almost never inactive. You will detect their self-interest in nearly all the advice they give you, in the services they do for you, in the contacts they make, in the friendships they form. They are deeply attached to the things which affect their interests however remotely, and are indifferent to all others. When they encounter a man who is indifferent to personal interest they cannot understand him. They suspect him of hidden motives, of affectation, or of insanity. They cast him from their bosom, revile him.”
― Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

“Boredom is for the selfish.”
― Patti Digh, What I Wish For You: Simple Wisdom For A Happy Life

“A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for?”
― H.M. Forester

“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, Wuthering Heights

“...and as a result yet today we are unable to distinguish between sympathy and selfishness.”
― M.H. Rakib, The Cavalier

“Some of us -" She paused as she sought the words. " - don't die unless we want to. The selfish ones never do.”
― Alex Bledsoe, Wisp of a Thing

“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, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

“How good is good enough,since you are only good for your selfishness.”
― peter adejimi

“Bravery is not an act of intelligence; it is just selfishness and stupidity.”
― M.F. Moonzajer

“Being a 'good' parent is more about the parent, and, less about the 'supposedly-could-have-been-bad' child.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“When the same qualities which we admire in ourselves are seen in others, even though they be superior, maliciously lower and carp at them.”
― John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols