Top 100 Quotes About Not Selfish
#1. I cannot lose you. Don't you get that? You weren't supposed to be mine. I am, and will always be, too dangerous for you, but I'm selfish and want you anyway. Now that I have you, you cannot leave me. I'm not letting you go - and
Carrie Ann Ryan
#3. When you talk of not wanting children, it is impossible to avoid sounding defensive, like you're trying to prove the questionable beauty of a selfish and too-tidy existence.
Meghan Daum
#4. While we may not be called to martyr our lives, we must martyr our way of life. We must put our selfish ways to death and march to a different beat. Then the world will see Jesus.
Michael Tait
#5. Whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#6. The actions driven by fear and guilt are not an antidote to lukewarm, selfish, comfortable living. I hope you realize that the answer is love.
Francis Chan
#7. You remind us that we're selfish bastards. You're not one of us, that way.
E. Lockhart
#8. Not having children is seen as supremely selfish, as though the people having children were selflessly sacrificing themselves in a valiant attempt to ensure the survival of our endangered species and fill up this vast and underpopulated island of ours.
Geoff Dyer
#9. The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness. That might sound selfish, but it's not. Only a sociopath or a hermit can find happiness through extreme selfishness. A normal person needs to treat others well in order to enjoy life.
Scott Adams
#10. The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.
Edmund Burke
#13. Good travels at a snail's pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.
Mahatma Gandhi
#14. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.
Oscar Wilde
#15. Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.
Marcus Aurelius
#16. You're unbelievable and completely selfish, Liam. This is not how I raised you.
Heidi McLaughlin
#17. Long ago it took a Copernicus to tell a provincial world that this planet was not the center of the universe. Some selfish moderns need a Copernican reminder that they are not the center of the universe either!
Neal A. Maxwell
#18. 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.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#19. Love is an activity, not a feeling ... True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish.
Stephen L. Carter
#20. Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.
Thornton T. Munger
#21. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.
Gustave Flaubert
#22. Relationships based on selfish reasons will not give you love, fulfillment or inner-happiness.
Hina Hashmi
#23. At worst, we're considered selfish or immature; women who don't want to have children are regarded as unnatural, traitors to their sex, if not the species.
Tim Kreider
#24. 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.
Mekhi Phifer
#25. Does this thing I wish to do express more life, more happiness, more peace to myself, and at the same time harm no one? If it does, it is right. It is not selfish.
Ernest Holmes
#26. Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.
George Bernard Shaw
#27. You are not one of Pentrigrel's creations. This is not where you belong. He will not keep his word to you. He is concerned only with himself. You cannot condemn yourself to this over Lunette's fate.
T.A. Miles
#28. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish. I
Elizabeth Gilbert
#29. It is not selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from non-love; it is the aim of the action.
M. Scott Peck
#30. I can't love him. I don't. This feeling is not the selfish, grasping need that I've seen tear apart my family, writhing through heir hearts like worms through rotten apples.
Rosamund Hodge
#31. Show me an 'easy person,' and I will show you a selfish one. Good-natured he may be; why not? since the disastrous consequences of his 'easiness' are generally shouldered by other people.
Fanny Fern
#32. People with mental illnesses aren't wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can't be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward.
Matt Haig
#33. Gaining control over your health and well-being is one of those times in your life that you get to be completely selfish and not feel bad about it. If you want to meet your goals, you have to make it about you. You have to make it work for you and you alone. Anything less is a setup for failure.
Jennifer Hudson
#34. 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.
LeBron James
#35. The truth is, I think we are a self-less society, not a selfish society. Because we're so busy now.
Phil McGraw
#36. because I know I would do the best job. Maybe the only thing that's important to you is money, but that matters the least to me. Leaders care about the common good, not the self-interest of one selfish man.
E.L. Todd
#37. I would not be a good mother. I mean, I love being an aunt to my niece and nephew. And I used to want to, like, adopt 10 kids - because I had friends who were adopted, and I thought that was the coolest thing, to be chosen. But again, my job is too selfish.
Kelly Clarkson
#38. Can you not see it? Can you not feel how badly I want you? I'm a selfish bastard, I'm worse then you'll ever know, but I'll answer to God or anyone else who tries to stand in our way so long as I know you're safe.
Alexandra Bracken
#39. She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?'
'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere.
Agatha Christie
#40. 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.
Neil Gaiman
#41. If we are to say no to covetousness, we must learn to say yes to contentment. This involves learning to be content with what we have (Hebrews 13:5). Much of our discontentment may be traced to expectations that are essentially selfish and more often than not completely unrealistic.
Alistair Begg
#42. I want to speak directly to the audience, to say, 'I'm like you - I'm frustrated, I'm not an expert, I don't have a manual on parenting, I make mistakes, I'm selfish too.'
Bernie Mac
#43. Waking up is not a selfish pursuit of happiness, it is a revolutionary stance, from the inside out, for the benefit of all beings in existence.
Noah Levine
#44. Love is not selfish or unkind. Nor is it boastful or disloyal. Love is simply a deep feeling found within the heart that money cannot buy.
April Haney
#45. A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution.
Mahatma Gandhi
#46. Your unhappiness doesn't help anyone else - and in fact, as I mentioned in another answer, happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.
Gretchen Rubin
#47. I am selfish, father? Because I will not become the thing I despise?"
"And narrow, Philips, to despise what you do not know."
"I am to be a painted popinjay! I tell you, sir, Cleone may take me as I am!"
"Or leave you as you are," said Sir Maurice gently.
Georgette Heyer
#48. I get many letters every day from people who got married because they wanted their own selfish needs satisfied, and have only later come to realize that this does not work.
Billy Graham
#49. It wasn't my doing. It is the drink and the laudanum and the opium and that bloody refusal to live. That selfish grief. I thought I could change it with magic, but I can't. People will be who they are, and there is not enough magic in any world to change that.
Libba Bray
#50. Duty exists and it's real. It means sharing any gift or talent that you have with people who need it. It means not being afraid or selfish or tight - but open.
Eva Ibbotson
#51. I do not think it is selfish to want to donate a kidney "only" to family members.
Mallory Ortberg
#52. I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love.
Then - I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish woman.
Then - I can do this. Millions of women have been mothers.
Then - I feel very alone. I do not know what I'm capable of.
Megan Mayhew Bergman
#53. What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.
John Fowles
#54. I did not want His cold love. I wanted human love - clasping, selfish, and hot. I wanted to smell the rank sweat of the men ... I wanted love - reeking, drunken, hungry love.
Jennifer Donnelly
#55. Wanting love is not selfish, Rain. We're all born missing the connections that make us complete.
C.L. Wilson
#56. Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.
Theodore Roosevelt
#58. 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.
Robert Baden-Powell
#59. Self esteem is not the same as being self centered, self absorbed or selfish. Self esteem is also not complacency or overconfidence, both of which and set us up for failure. Self esteem is a strong motivator to work hard. Self esteem is related to mental health and happiness.
Glenn R. Schiraldi
#60. I want to live not for selfish gain, but for selfless devotion.
Tanner Di Bella
#61. He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting.
Shirley Jackson
#63. I'm not a selfish actor. I believe that it's a team effort. You're not in a scene by yourself.
Taraji P. Henson
#64. Anyone could father a child. But a good parent puts his child's needs before his own. A parent should be selfless not selfish.
Penelope Ward
#65. Capitalism satisfied the Christian demand for an institution that channels selfish human desire toward the betterment of society. Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism - it is in human nature.
Dinesh D'Souza
#66. Not that I'm the kind of person who would actually inflict emotional pain on another human being out of a selfish, twisted need for revenge.
I just like to think about it.
Jennifer Gilby Roberts
#67. Sometimes we forget to, or feel guilty when, we take time to nourish our own souls. It is not selfish to spiritually fill ourselves because we need that time to find the delicate balance in our lives. Only then can we truly be of service to others.
Debra Siegrist
Arin Murphy-Hiscock
#68. I wasn't sure which of us was being more selfish - her, for wanting something that no one could promise, or me, for not promising her something that was too painfully impossible to want.
Maggie Stiefvater
#69. But sitting out tests that have proven essential in lifting the achievement of at-risk students is shortsighted, if not selfish.
Anonymous
#70. It is not selfish to be happy. It is your highest purpose. Your joy is the greatest contribution you can make to life on the planet. A heart at peace with its owner blesses everyone it touches.
Alan Cohen
#71. People are mistaken when they think chasing your dream is a selfish thing to do. As if perhaps being average is an act of humility. As if perhaps wasting the talents you were given is proof that you're a considerate individual.
It's not.
Jon Acuff
#72. If not to shape me into a better man; a better husband, a better father, a better son, a better brother, a better friend ... then all of my experience, success, and education will have been a selfish waste.
Steve Maraboli
#73. If I assume the 'truth' to be negotiable based on whether or not it serves my agenda, then my agenda has become my 'truth.' And the 'truth' of the matter is, when I do this I've chosen to take a treacherous path through some very deep woods where neither path nor woods exist.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#74. Arts and disciplines of that kind are fundamentally selfish; they're all designed to benefit the pupil - not the world - "Ishmael
Daniel Quinn
#75. Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues ... you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity ... you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that.
Flannery O'Connor
#76. No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
Julia Cameron
#77. I have my opinions about the way my father was. But they are my opinions, not necessarily the truth, and they are certainly not the whole spectrum of what this man was going through. It's my young, selfish interpretation of that person.
Dennis Christopher
#78. There's not one good thought in that place. There's nothing but waste and want. I can feel his selfish cravings and an abyss of secrets I hope to never know.
Steve V. Cypert
#79. Prayer is not an attempt to get God to agree with you or provide for your selfish desires, but that it is both an affirmation of His sovereignty, righteousness, and majesty and an exercise to conform your desires and purposes to His will and Glory
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#80. It's usually pointed out that women are not fit for political power, and ought not to be trusted with a vote because they are politically ignorant, socially prejudiced, narrow-minded, and selfish. True enough, but precisely the same is true of men!
George Bernard Shaw
#81. If you're not ready to consider marriage or you're not truly interested in marrying a specific person, it's selfish and potentially harmful to encourage that person to need you or ask him or her to gratify you emotionally or physically.
Joshua Harris
#82. The task of government was not to stop selfish striving - a hopeless task - but to harness it for the public good.
Ron Chernow
#83. 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.
Beth Moore
#84. I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.
Jo Nesbo
#85. But you ... you have no fucking clue how unbelievably beautiful and desirable you are. You're not calculating and selfish. And you make me want to be better.
Woods
Abbi Glines
#86. 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.
William Clark
#87. The whole point of being in love with someone is to make sure their life is the best life it can be. It's not about being selfish. It's not about how great that person makes you life, It's about making their life wonderful.
Cherie M. Hudson
#88. By nice women ... you probably mean selfish women who have no more thought for the underprivileged, overworked women than a pussycat in a sunny window for the starving kitten in the street. Now in that sense I am not a nice woman, for I do care.
Nellie L. McClung
#89. Truthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.
Stephen Colbert
#90. True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.
Stephen L. Carter
#91. Man is a rebel, and a rebel is naturally in confusion. He is in conflict with every other rebel. For a rebel by his very nature is selfish. He is seeking his own good and not the good of others.
Billy Graham
#92. You, sir, are not only a selfish asshole, but you're a coward. You didn't have the balls to stand and fight for what was yours, instead you chose to flee and force others into a fight that wasn't even theirs to begin with.
Rose Wynters
#93. An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.
Clara Barton
#94. Genes are selfish,3 selfish genes create people with various mental modules, and some of these mental modules make us strategically altruistic, not reliably or universally altruistic.
Jonathan Haidt
#95. The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.
Thomas A. Edison
#96. IF I can do it and you can do it, if I have a story and you have story.
Deyth Banger
#97. Human beings are more or less formulas. Pun intended. We are not any one thing that is mathematically provable. We are more or less than we are anything. We are more or less kind, or more or less not. More or less selfish, happy, wise, lonely.
Adi Alsaid
#98. Courage ... is not a selfish attribute: it is only possible if you are pursuing a wider and more worthy goal.
Ted Malloch
#99. Today, our air, food, water-all are polluted. If we do not stop exploiting nature for our temporary selfish gains, we will destroy the world.
Mata Amritanandamayi
#100. I was selfish that way, wanting people to bend and give me the love I needed, not necessarily the love they knew how to give.
Tarryn Fisher
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