Quotes About Selflessness

There's a special kind of man who plants a tree when he knows he'll move on before it's big enough for him to sit in it's shade.

She couldn't know anyone, but someone still needed her. She couldn't be anyone, but she could still love.

I've decided it's not about me at all. It's a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my future death, like when teenagers distance themselves from their parents in preparation for leaving home.

We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love- all kinds- was really about.

Again, this made me think of Daisy, and her white lie about the dresses. We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love--all kinds--was really all about.

Everyone that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" And she had tried, truly and honestly, tried so hard that sometimes, despite the nun's kindness and patience, she thought she might go mad with the effort.

In other words, after Winthrop has acquired all his butter firkins, food stirrers, and beer along with six dozen candles, twenty thousand biscuits, and twenty-nine sides of beef, he goes through the Bible and writes down a bunch of verses commanding him to be willing to cheerfully give all that stuff away. My firkin is your firkin being one of Christianity's primary creeds.

A good man can bear to listen to another talk about himself.

I discovered, however, in the early days of our marriage that, in having her way, she put my interests ahead of her own.

Unhappiness that is caused by too much success is a high-class problem. That's the sort of unhappiness people work all of their lives to get. If you find yourself there, and I hope you do, you'll find your attention naturally turning outward. You'll seek happiness through service to others. I promise it will feel wonderful.

I assume some or even most successful people started out selfishly, but success changes you. It's not a coincidence that Brad Pitt is helping to build homes after the Hurricane Katrina disaster or that Bill Gates is one of the most important philanthropists of all time. Success does that. The

Believers are called to be servants, and that invariably involves periodically putting others' needs ahead of our own and in rare circumstances can involve laying down one's life for another. It does not, however, obligate believers to neglect their legitimate self-interest.

Driven by petty ambition, we serve only ourselves. St. Josemaria put it well: "Those who are 'ambitious,' with small, personal, miserable ambitions, cannot understand that the friends of God should seek to achieve something through a spirit of service and without such'ambition.' " We should never confuse Christian humility and modesty with a will to underachieve.

One of the most important roles the family plays is as the first place where young people grow accustomed to considering the needs of other individuals and the community ahead of themselves.

Whenever we think of ourselves doing something for someone else, we are in some way denying our own responsibility. Whatever we do is done because we choose to do it, and we make that choice because it is the one that satisfies us the most. Whatever we do for someone else we do because it fulfills a need we have.

Allein wer andre wohl zu leiten strebt muß fähig sein viel zu entbehren

El que por complacer a los demás, contra su gusto y sin necesidad, se fatiga corriendo tras la fortuna, los honores u otra cosa cualquiera, es siempre un loco.

Those only obtain love who seek it not.

Only he who gives is happy.

If that which harms oneself as well as one's neighbor deserves the name [of vice]. Is it not enough that we cannot make each otjer happy; should we in addition deprive each other of that pleasure which every heart may sometimes grant itself?

A i onima je dobro koji svoja dronjava zaposlenja, pa ?ak i strasti, krste velelepnim imenima i pripisuju ih ljudskom rodu. Kao pothvate ispolinske, preduzete za spas i blagostanje celokupnog ?ove?anstva. Blago onome ko može da je takav!

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

Simply having children does not make mothers.

Being in love is an elaborate state of anticipation for the continual exchanging of certain kinds of gifts. The gifts can range from a glance to the offering of the entire self. But the gifts must be gifts: they cannot be claimed. One has no rights as a lover--except the right to anticipate what the other wishes to give.