Quotes About Selflessness

We all just get along. No matter what. Whether it suits our personal needs or not. Personal needs are a priveleged affectation.

Who cleans up the messes selfish people make? Someone has to.

My love is not water in a bucket, you know. It's not as if someone else can drink it all up and leave none for you.

Surely her sacrifice, my sacrifice, could not be in vain.

Sacrificers," said Matchett, "are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice

The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.

To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes AND The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others. AND We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

If her own situation was a cup of poison, then she should drink from it herself and not expect Isabel to sip.

you don't have to know just what people are doing and feeling to be of assistance to them. Your own life seems to you like a very small lighted room, with great darkness all around it, and you can't see out into the darkness and know what is happening there. But light and warmth from your room can go out into the darkness if you don't have the windows selfishly curtained, keep a brave fire burning, and light all the happy candles you can.

If you think this life is all there is," he said, "then self-sacrifice must seem to you sheer insanity. If you do not think so then it is only common sense. It all depends on your point of view." (Hilary Eliot to David Eliot, Chapter 9)

In moments of exaltation one expressed sentiments that outstripped one's spiritual capabilities by a vast span; and she knew well that unless God is sought for Himself alone, with a selflessness of which she was at present incapable, He is not to be found.

Though I am able to do nothing else in this life, except only seek, my life seeming to others a vie manquee, yet it will not be so, because what I seek is the goodness of God that waters the dry places. And water overflows from one dry patch to another, and so you cannot be selfish in digging for it.

When you take things personally, she knew, the world becomes very small. It is you and nothing is smaller. When you manage not to do that, the world opens wide.

There's something about her," Caire said in a low voice. "She cares for everyone about her, yet neglects herself. I want to be the one who cares for her.

Those who think themselves entitled to everything, often find themselves entitled to nothing.

Wohltätigkeit ist nur einer andere Art, dafür zu sorgen, dass Menschen nicht nach mehr streben.

Fear made people greedy and therefore selfish; that small minority who honestly did not care for themselves in that way, who could sincerely say that money was unimportant to them, almost always had no dependants.

that small minority who honestly did not care for themselves in that way, who could sincerely say that money was unimportant to them, almost always had no dependants.

Thinking too much just brings it back to me, me, me—but thanking takes my eyes off myself and my mistakes and puts them on others, on things bigger than myself. I can't stand here very long without being humbled at how small I am and amazed at how big and beautiful our world is.

Abyss calls to abyss." It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where the abyss of our nothingness encounters the Abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God. There we will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love.

He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan. At Rome he restored the Pantheon, the voting enclosure, the Basilica of Neptune, very many Temples, the forum of Augustus, the baths of Agrippa . . . Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the bank of the Tiber and the temple of the Bona Dea.

I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don't know they have embarrassed themselves. I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.

And then I remembered that one time, when I was pregnant with Chrissy, I had looked down at my big stomach and put my hand over it and thought: Whoever you are, you do not belong to me. My job is to help you get into the world, but you do not belong to me. And remembering this now, I thought: Lucy, you were absolutely right.

I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don't know they have embarrassed themselves.