Quotes About Selflessness

A small girl among those being evacuated to Sorinnes had lost her shoes, so an American soldier from the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion forced a German prisoner at gunpoint to take off his boots and give them to her. They were much too large, but she was just able to walk, while the German soldier faced frostbitten feet.

she apprehended the rare purity of accomplishment which brought no personal gain.

An in-the-box organization is filled with people who are focused on themselves and on being justified. Imagine, in contrast, an organization where everyone is focused on others and on achieving results.

The proud man counts his newspaper clippings; the humble, his blessings.

The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

El filósofo no pretende aparecer si no tal cual es, busca la verdad con el solo fin de conocer sin mira alguna de interés personal; su vida es un sacrificio perpetuo en honor a la ciencia.

It is not easy for a generous person to grow rich, since he is ready to spend, not to take or keep, and honors wealth for the sake of giving, not for itself. Indeed, that is why fortune is denounced, because those who most deserve to grow rich actually do so least.

it's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. you'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating

I have wrought my simple plan If I give one hour of joy To the boy who's half a man, Or the man who's half a boy.

Nothing a woman gives is worth having unless she gives it of her own free will.

Even after she'd given the last bit of what she had for him.

Miss Fielding had no fears of ultimate survival, even in beauty. When she passed on, she would draw after her every trailing mist of herself, effacing herself so completely that even after her death, even after her bones, which she could not help, were gone, she would be a bother to no one, would intrude on no mind.

Das ist zu viel, dachte sie, ich leiste Verzicht auf dieses Selbst, danke ab, gebe freiwillig ab, was ich sowieso nie haben wollte; was es auch von mir will, kann es haben.

And you have three children, bless them. "Remember your own and you'll forget the next man's," my mother says.

One must be humble, one must keep personal preferences and antipathies in the background, if one wishes to discover the realities of the world.

To love one's neighbour as oneself — a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs as strongly counter to the original nature of man.

Un egoism puternic protejeaz? împotriva îmboln?virii, îns? trebuie, în cele din urm?, s? începi s? iubeÅŸti, pentru a nu ajunge bolnav ÅŸi trebuie s? te îmboln?veÅŸti când, ca urmare a unei frustr?ri, nu poÅ£i iubi.

Schuldgefühle, ... sind die fundamentalen Kräfte, die Großzügigkeit und Altruismus zugrundeliegen.

Is this the madness at the heart of it? Do I believe that if I am good to him, if I act selflessly and make sacrifices for him, do I believe that if I love Apollo - beautiful, aging, melancholy Apollo - I will wake one morning to find him gone and you in his place, back from the land of the dead?

When you have a child, you have to put things aside, though. You have to live for them, if not for yourself. I was aware of this. I knower that I could not let myself die inside, so I struggled through and made a way for myself. Most important, I tried to find a way to get joy into my life. I made a way for the possibility of joy. I looked for it anywhere I could find it. I got up early and stepped out onto the porch to see day come in.

Horror can only be borne if one ceases to think of the individual identity of those involved;

But what does the word insist mean after a whole life of love and understanding? I have never asked anything for myself that I did not also wish for him.

Love is then renunciation of all possession, of all confusion. One renounces being in order that there may be that being which one is not.