Quotes About Selflessness

We're so selfish that we talk about after the war and look forward to new clothes and shoes, when actually we should be saving every penny to help others when the war is over, to salvage whatever we can.

Se possiamo salvare qualcuno tutto il resto è secondario.

O ja, ich will nicht umsonst gelebt haben wie die meisten Menschen. Ich will den Menschen, die um mich herum leben und mich doch nicht kennen, Freude und Nutzen bringen. Ich will fortleben, auch nach meinem Tod. (S.238f.)

How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves!

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

There is no cosmic importance to your getting published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

I would give her the same advice God always gives me if I think to ask: Go do some anonymous things for lonely people, give a few bucks to every poor person you see, return phone calls. Get out of yourself and become a person for others, while simultaneously practicing radical self-care: maybe have a bite to eat, check in with the sky twice, buy some cute socks, take a nap.

Your three-year-old and your work in progress teach you to give. They teach you to get out of yourself and become a person for someone else. This is probably the secret to happiness. So that's one reason to write. Your child and your work hold you hostage, suck you dry, ruin your sleep, mess with your head, treat you like dirt, and then you discover they've given you that gold nugget you were looking for all along.

I never used to take my turn. I always gave my turn away. I helped others have a great turn. I must have had a clipboard by the time I was six, because by then I had a whole caseload of people to keep track of. After they had all gotten a turn, then maybe I could go, if there was time and it didn't bother anyone. Now I take my turn, as a radical act.

Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.

Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one's resources; it belongs to that natural order of giving that seems to renew itself even in the act of depletion. The more one gives, the more one has the give - like milk in the breast.

what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.

When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music—then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.

He was happy for other people's success.

Before you pity yourself, take a great deal closer look at others, and then decide with whom you would, or could, change places, and what sacrifice of your nature you would be prepared to make in order to do so. Knowing you as I do, I think precious little.

to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What

to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What a waste of the essence of a man that he should never give enough of himself to any cause, that he should always hear that passive, cowardly voice uppermost which counts the cost and puts caution first. One would grow old and die with the power of one's soul untasted.

Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his faults and vulnerabilities, Hester, too, would rather have been alone than accept anyone else.

we do good when we make others forget their sorrow, make them forget for a little while

Let me pay the price for you instead.

Do it for a world that will never knew you or thank you, but a world that you can now truly save.

One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about.