Quotes About Selflessness

It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with I, me, mine, that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.

To the extent that there is attachment to 'I,' 'me,' 'mine,' there is no attachment to, and therefore no unitive knowledge of, the divine Ground.

The nature of things is such that the unitive knowledge of the Ground which is contingent upon the achievement of a total selflessness cannot possibly be realized, even with outside help, by those who are not yet selfless.

Greedy contemplatives want to possess themselves of the light without bothering about compassion.

In his anxiety to be just to others he was often prepared to be unjust to himself. He was always ready to sacrifice his own rights rather than run any rish of infringing the rights of others.

In the last analysis the great patriots were those who identified personal ambition with the welfare of their country. The traitor, as often as not, was one who, failing to recognize where the true interests of his country lay, identified his personal ambition with the less noble aspirations of his people.

The true man of genius deliberately subordinates himself, reduces himself to a negative, and allows his genius to play through him as It will. We all know how stupid we are when we try to do things. Seek to make any other muscle work as consistently as your heart does without your silly interference -- you cannot keep it up for forty-eight hours.

He took with him into private life his enemies and his wounds, the only profits that generally accrue to honest people who are guilty of having worked for their country rather than for themselves.

If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep.

Mma Ramotswe had expected no thanks for what she had done. You helped other people—you just did. Had her van broken down, then she would have hoped that somebody would have done the same for her, and she thought that they would.

of being linked with each other, we have every temptation to be selfish and unmoved by others and by their plight. Our towns, our cities, our places become no more than hotels, with all that lack of intimacy that is a feature of hotels – strangers under one roof, no more. Well, we should not be strangers to one another. We

Everybody wanted to look after the world, but nobody wanted to give up anything they already had.

Giving gave every bit as much pleasure as receiving—if not more, and denying that pleasure to others could be churlish.

It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you—which unrealistic wish, to become the other, is such a true and revealing symptom of love, its most obvious clue, its unmistakable calling card.

Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unlike these people were modern politicians, who thought only of power and tricks.

Like so many women, her life seemed to be all about the needs of others. Auden had said something about that, she reminded herself—something witty. We are here on this earth to help others, but he had no idea why the others were here.

Man loves in order to live in another a life missing in himself, for perhaps love does love what it lacks: we want to be what we love, even if what we love wants us to be, when we love, what we are.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father's agony and a mother's feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

I maintain my pride in the face of men, but I abandon it before God, who drew me out of nothingness to make me what I am.

When you continually tell Life: "there are things that I lack and things that I want", Life will return that exact experience. But when you continually tell Life: "I have all that I need and am free to serve others", Life will return that exact experience: you will have all you need and will be free to serve others.

The odd thing, my dear," said her father, "is that once one has ceased trying to protect self, one finds one's self in a very comfortable position." "Where?" asked Kale "In Wulder's care.

Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.

And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.

When I think about all the patients and their loved ones that I have worked with over the years, I know most of them don't remember me nor I them. But I do know that I gave a little piece of myself to each of them and they to me and those threads make up the beautiful tapestry in my mind that is my career in nursing.