Famous Quotes & Sayings

Catherynne M. Valente

I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.

Benjamin Spock

A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.

Carol Shields

So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal other.

Beth Moore

God is not harsh; He is holy. He is not selfish; He is sovereign. He is not unfeeling; He is all-knowing. Like David, we need to come to know Him, and respect Him; and, like David, we will love Him more.

Bernard of Clairvaux

Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.

Bob Marley

Be not selfish in your doings: pass it on.

Bill Walton

Never forget - happiness ends when selfishness begins.

Chelsea Clinton

Millennials are often portrayed as apathetic, disinterested, tuned out and selfish. None of those adjectives describe the Millennials I've been privileged to meet and work with.

Charley Reese

If you look at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook, the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or corporations.

Aisha Tyler

Marriage is a mystery and part of it is just being kind to each other, not being selfish.

Ai Weiwei

Artists are the worst [people]. They are selfish, self-centred; they don't care what happens.

Jane Austen

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Jane Austen

From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

Jane Austen

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed....

Jason Biggs

Getting married has shifted my focus, in such a profound way. You just realize, "Oh, I can't be so selfish anymore. There's someone else."

Jason Alexander

Acting is not terribly important work, and I have always felt a bit of guilt about pursuing something that is so selfish. I love doing it, but it is never something that feels like it's going to change or save the world.

Janos Kadar

I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means.

Janos Kadar

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.

Calvin Coolidge

Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.

Alan Lightman

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?

Charles Jencks

Science is a victim of its own reductive metaphors: 'Big Bang,' 'selfish gene' and so on. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene fitted with the Thatcherite politics of the time. It should actually be the 'altruistic gene,' but he'd never have sold as many books with a title like that.

Charles Dance

You have to be selfish to be an actor.

Aprilynne Pike

But love is something that has to be as selfish as it is unselfish. You can't make yourself love someone because you feel like you should. Just wanting to love someone isn't enough.

Ashley Greene

I've gotten very good at detaching whenever I have to go away for three months, which I realize is hard on friends and kind of selfish.

Berthold Auerbach

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Brad Pitt

It may be a brief interruption - just a few seconds - but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called 'emergency.' Don't be so damn selfish.

Jane Goodall

Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.

Jamie Campbell Bower

As a director, you have a thousand things going on in your head, and of course, that's going to be difficult. That's going to mean that some things get overlooked. And so, for us as performers, being the selfish pricks that we are, we're sitting there being concerned about ourselves all the time and our character's through-line.

Juvenal

Be, as many now are, luxurious to yourself, parsimonious to your friends. [Lat., Esto, ut nunc multi, dives tibi pauper amicis.]

Charles Evans Hughes

Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses.

Richard G. Scott

Marriage provides an ideal setting for overcoming any tendency to be selfish or self-centered. I think one of the reasons that we are counseled to get married early in life is to avoid developing inappropriate character traits that are hard to change.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.

Aung San Suu Kyi

The act of willingly subtracting from one's own limited store of the good and the agreeable for the sake of adding to that of others reflects the understanding that individual happiness needs a base broader than the mere satisfaction of selfish passions. From there, it is not such a large step to the realization that respecting the susceptibilities and rights of others is as important as defending one's own susceptibilities and rights if civilized society is to be safeguarded.