Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Deliberately seeking solitude-quality time spent away from family and friends-may seem selfish. It is not. Solitude is as necessary for our creative spirits to develop and flourish as are sleep and food for our bodies to survive.

Samuel Smiles

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

Samuel L. Jackson

The [Oregon] Journal in its head and heart will stand for the people, be truly Democratic and free from political entanglements and machinations, believing in the principles that promise the greatest good to the greatest number-to ALL MEN, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude... It will be a fair newspaper, not a dull and selfish sheet...

W. H. Auden

Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

William Clark

Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be.

Wayne Dyer

We must honor our worthiness in order to receive what we want. In our society we are conditioned to believe that we are not worthy, and that it is even selfish to want to be able to attract things into our lives.

Walt Disney

The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievements, but rather with the things we do for others

Saul Bellow

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.

Sarah Dessen

But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.

Rod Serling

Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.

Sarah Mlynowski

Why do you think people cheat?," I asked. "Because they're bored? Because they can? Because they're selfish and think they're entitled to anything they want? Because they don't think they'll get caught?

Sarah MacLean

Love isn't one-sided and selfish.It is full and generous and life-altering in the best of ways.Love does not destroy, Gabriel.It creates.

William E. Gladstone

Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

W. Somerset Maugham

I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.

W. Somerset Maugham

I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

Yann Martel

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

Robert Greene

We're selfish to some degree, that's not a criticism and it doesn't mean that we are all narcissists. But in any situation our minds naturally evolve to what's in it for me? How does this affect me? Can this benefit me? Can this harm me? Then we might move on from that and have a more altruistic point of view about things but that's almost always our initial response.

Robert Baden-Powell

Yet one more item is needed to complete success, and that is the rendering of service to others in the community. Without this the mere satisfaction of selfish desire does not reach the top notch.

Ricardo Antonio Chavira

My son's the most precious thing to me: He's changed me from being selfish to selfless.

River Phoenix

We take these animals and completely violate who they are. We use them, abuse them, and deprive them all their lives…then we cut their throats, shred them and eat them! Morally, I’m against it, ethically, I can’t justify it, and ecologically, it’s just insane. The thought of meat-eating makes me shudder. As far as wearing fur is concerned, it is the rudest, most inconsiderate, selfish and sick façade I can imagine.

Richard Pryor

Sure, I have friends, plenty of friends, and they all come around wantin' to borrow money. I've always been generous with my friends and family, with money, but selfish with the important stuff like love.

Swami Vivekananda

We are all the time, from our childhood, trying to lay the blame upon something outside ourselves. We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.

Rumi

Once you conquer your selfish self, all your darkness will change to light.

Tom Peters

The selfish leader will attempt to lead others for their own gain and for the detriment of others.

Rush Limbaugh

We, the United States, have to be guilty. We have to be guilty. We have to be underperforming. We have to be not showing compassion or dignity or whatever code word is used to transmit the notion that we're mean-spirited, that we're selfish, and that we're probably bigoted and racist and don't want people here like that.