Selfish Quotations | Page 7

You instantly become less selfish. You can't be the biggest person in the world anymore-they are. [Motherhood] really grounds you.

Sometimes you have to be selfish to get what you want and move forward in life.

Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.

nothing may be more selfish than remorse ...

That we are selfish gives us the opportunity to gain the power so that, in time, we might be selfless. To give back what we have learned. To teach what we know, and shorten the journey for those who will come after us.

Man liveth from hour to hour, and knoweth not what may happen; Influences circle him on all sides, and yet must he answer for his actions: For the being that is master of himself, bendeth events to his will, But a slave to selfish passions is the wavering creature of circumstance.

The number one thing on any team that will keep your players from being selfish is respect for the other players.

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

he'd once believed that the answer lay somehow in the music he created, he suspected now that He'd been mistaken. The more he thought about it, the more he'd come to realize that for him, music had always been a movement away from reality rather than a means of living in it more deeply. .. he now knew that burying himself in music had less to do with God than a selfish desire to escape.

Love is patient and kind.It's never jealous.Love is never boastful or conceited.It is never rude or selfish.It does not take offence and is not resentful

To one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion. No wonder the Prophet Joseph Smith urged, "Let every selfish feeling be not only buried, but annihilated" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 178). Hence annihilation - not moderation - is the destination! . . . Meekness is the real cure, for it does not merely mask selfishness but dissolves it!

Ironically, brothers and sisters, the natural man who is so very selfish in so many ordinary ways is strangely unselfish in that he reaches for too few of the things that bring real joy. He settles for a mess of pottage instead of eternal joy.

We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.

A narcissist society, in which each person is busy looking out for number one, can build neither brotherhood nor community. Aren't we glad in this Easter season and in all seasons that Jesus did not selfishly look out for number one? No wonder we have been told, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,' and this includes self-worship! (Ex. 20:3; emphasis added). One way or another, the grossly selfish will finally be shattered, whimpering, against the jagged, concrete consequences of their selfishness.

In contrast to the path of selfishness, there is no room for road rage on the straight and narrow way.

That's why charity work is very selfish at the same time, because it makes you feel good.

I was really conflicted. I had always planned to help the world. Instead, I was going to become an actress? That seemed like such a selfish thing to do.

It seemed that the time would come evolutionarily when humans might have acquired enough knowledge of generalized principles to permit a graduation from class-two (entropically selfish) evolution into class-one (syntropically cooperative) evolution, thereafter making all the right moves for all the right reasons.

...if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.

I think sometimes for me that sounds like almost being selfish. I am not about personal records.

Thinking it selfish to dwell on her own sufferings, when in the midst of wretches, who had not only lost all that endears life, but their very selves, her imagination was occupied with melancholy earnestness to trace the mazes of misery, through which so many wretches must have passed to this gloomy receptacle of disjointed souls, to the grand source of human corruption.

Do something today that you think is too delicious, too selfish, too wacky to fit within the rules of your life.

Selfish men were...trying to make capital for themselves out of the sacred cause of civil rights

The nicest people fall in love indiscriminately ... while under the influence of that pre-eminently selfish lunacy they may make the most outrageous demands upon their friends with no other excuse than their painful need.

A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything.

I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.

But I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is.

God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. ... When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.

Marriage is just an elaborate game that allows two selfish people to periodically feel that they're not.

Huamns, uregulated, are cruel and capricious; violet and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good.

If the impure and the unjust, the drunkard and the licentious, are loathsome to us, what must be the infinite loathing of an infinitely pure Spirit for those who are worldly and selfish, licentious and cruel, ambitious and animal! But with this great loathing is a great pity. And the pity conquers the loathing, appeases it, satisfies it, is reconciled with it, only as it redeems the sinner from his loathsomeness, lifts him up from his degradation, brings him to truth and purity, to love and righteousness; for only thus is he or can he be brought to God.

The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress!

All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.

It is wonderful how shy even liberal ministers generally are about trusting people with the plain truth concerning their religion. They want to veil it in a supernatural haze. They are very reluctant to part with the old idea that God has given to Jews and Christians a peculiar monopoly of truth. It is a selfish view of God's government of the world, and it is time that we knew enough to outgrow it.

People do things with terrible motivations and those motivations are selfish and self-interested and financially driven.

I think I was a pretty selfish athlete.

I've been a pretty selfish mom and a very unselfish athlete for about three years now and it's time to put my family first. It's probably time to move on.

A lot of the time, the British press make me ashamed and embarrassed to be British. They give others the impression that the British are selfish, envious and bitter people, which is simply not true in my opinion. I think that British people in general are really nice and friendly.

In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love.

I'm just being selfish..... I'm here on my own free will... I used to always cry and give up... I nearly went the wrong way... But you... You showed me the right way... I was always chasing you... Wanting to overtake you... I just wanted to walk with you... I wanted to be with you... You changed me! Your smile saved me! So I'm not afraid to die protecting you!!! Because I-- Love You...

People are suspicious of single men on vacation, after they get to a certain age: they assume that they're selfish, and probably a bit pervy. I can't say they're wrong.

You're either selfish, or you're a servant...but fundamentally selfish people are terrible friends, terrible lovers, terrible spouses, terrible Christians, terrible parents. They leave a terrible legacy. Will you be selfish? Will you be a servant?...A good marriage is a servant and a servant.

Pleasure for others is the only pleasure possible to me. I assure you I'm quite selfish! - I'm greedy for the happiness of those I love - and if they can't or won't be happy I'm perfectly miserable.

The more good I do, the more money has come in. You have to learn to give. You're not born to give. You're born selfish.

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself.

Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.

Dear Scarlett! You aren't helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you." -Rhett Butler

I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.

money appears to motivate only our interest in ourselves, making us selfish and self-centered...Money makes people feel self-sufficient, which also means they don't need or care about others; it's each man for himself

Man is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish, and unethical animal on earth.

Great leaders have to know when to divide that line from being selfless to being selfish, and he perfectly chose the time to be selfish and made plays.

I've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It's essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don't know. I only know there has been your mind here and my mind here, and the afternoons have been like none I can remember.

Everyone has to contribute to the common good. To not do so can be described in one word: selfish.

We just played unselfishly. At times this year, we've played selfish, but today we passed the ball. ... We were just very supportive of each other.

I want to show the world that you do have some artists that are ready to go to the next level, and instead of being selfish with their career they'll open up the door to other people. I'm in a position to open up the door to help other people do what I do.

For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?

Marriage is no way of life for the weak, the selfish, or the insecure.

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.

My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.

Unless you love yourself, you can't love anybody. Be selfish.

A lot of times you'll hear horror stories about actors being incredibly selfish and only wanting themselves to shine, but for me, it's not about just one person. It's about the whole team. That's the way I look at acting. That's the way I look at everything I do.

I just want that unconditional love, the kind you get with a family member. You might get lucky enough to find that unconditional love in a friend or a lover, but it's very rare. So if I ever have a kid, it'd be so that I could look in those eyes and know that this child is a piece of me and will love me the same way I love, but I think that's selfish of me.

You’re selfish and you’re cold, and I’m tired of getting frostbite when I touch you. (Acheron)

The only thing that was sharper and that scarred more was the selfish actions of those you loved when they made it crystal clear that they cared more for themselves than they did for you. Especially when it was someone you trusted to always put you first.

Men are selfish and don't think about anything else but them self." pg. 45

Disease. Filth. Waste. Crime. Brutality. What’s there to like? (Solin) There’s brutality on Olympus. (Arik) True. But I hate humanity as much as I hate the gods. Both groups are selfish bastards bent on destroying everything around them. They were given a perfect world and rather than enjoy it, they’d rather destroy it and each other. Excuse me if I don’t look at them with love in my eyes but rather scorn in my heart. (Solin)

Yeah. Just keep the live feed going so that I can see it and pretend I’m there, too. (Tory) Yes, my queen. Anything else you’d like? (Geary) A million dollars and Brad Pitt. (Tory) You forgot world peace. (Geary) I’m feeling a bit selfish today. Teenage hormonal overdose, I think. Or just general excitement. (Tory)

Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence-by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. ... So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed-only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

Remember that no matter how selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have been today, every time you take a breath, you make a flower happy.

My philosophy is as simple as ever - smoking, drinking, moderate sexual intercourse on a diminishing scale, reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward.

I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?

I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid, unshakeably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.

And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give.

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!

It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had. John Steinbeck in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

I’m a fan of the word selfish. Self. Ish. When I say I have gotten a lot more self-ish, I mean I am less concerned with what people think of me. I’m not worried about how I’m perceived. Selfish has always gotten a bad rap. You should do for you.

Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

I just try to find ways to love the people that I'm around. It's hard sometimes because I'm selfish and I want to focus inwardly but when I can fight against that and look at other people's needs, it's really a stark contrast to what people are used to in such a selfish environment.

No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.

...because I'm sure that as soon as things really get back to "normal," once our kids or grandkids grow up in a peaceful and comfortable world, they'll probably go right back to being as selfish and narrow-minded and generally shitty to one another as we were.

The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice, it is much EASIER to be selfish.

Raw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness.

The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough....

If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.

Sometimes the coaches tell me to be selfish, but my game won't let me be selfish.

A lot of people were saying that I was a selfish person and a selfish player. You know, it got to me.

Everywhere I've been, I've been the best player. I love being a leader, and I love being the best. I just want to get better. It's not about being cocky or selfish or anything like that. It's just how I am.

Only you could love such a vile, selfish peacock, Evie.

I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.

In fact we do not try to picture the afterlife, nor is it our selves in our nervous tics and optical flecks that we wish to perpetuate; it is the self as the window on the world that we can't bear to thinkof shutting. My mind when I was a boy of ten or eleven sent up its silent scream at the thought of future aeons -- at the thought of the cosmic party going on without me. The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise of the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.

The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.

It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference about the well-being of others'.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.

Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.

Secrets are inherently selfish. The longer you keep them, the harder it is to put yourself in other people's shoes about them and the more irrational your thinking surrounding it becomes.

There are always rebels and radicals, I suppose,' McCleethy allows. 'Those who live on the fringes of society. But what do they contribute to the society itself? They reap its rewards without experiencing its costs. No. I submit that loyal, hardworking citizens who push aside their own selfish desires for the good of the whole are the backbone of the world. What if we all decided to run off and live freely without thought or care for society's rules? Our civilization would crumble. There is a joy in duty and a security in knowing one's place...It is the only way.

The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery.

Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world.