Quotes About Selflessness

The wise man consents to everything, for he identifies himself with nothing. An opportunist without desires.

Renunciation is the only kind of action that is not degrading.

Today's Wisdom: Be it health or be it leisure, Be it skill we have to give, Still in spending it for others Christians only really live. Not in having or receiving, But in giving, there is bliss; He who has no other pleasure Ever may rejoice in this. —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.

I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.

Sweetness which comes from benefiting someone is more delolicious than honey and butter.

The knowledge that at any moment you would be expected to and in fact would sacrifice your life for that of another man, for the benefit of the common good, made for a supremely noble act in a world more and more devoid of anything remotely virtuous.

Man inherits the capacity for loyalty, but not the use to which he shall put it. The persons and causes (if any) to which he shall devote himself are suggested to him, often, indeed, imposed upon him, by education and environment. Nevertheless, they are his by choice, not by hereditary compulsion. And his choice may be bad. He may unselfishly devote himself to what is petty or vile, as he may to what is generous and noble.

Personality cults by contemporary painters infuriate me. One must seek the opposite, fade away more every day, and find exactingness only in the act of painting, and always forget oneself.

A woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making a sacrifice.

The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.

One of the most important rules of the science of manners is an almost absolute silence in regard to yourself.

Esistono poi degli individui nati mercenari che non fanno alcun bene agli amici o ai parenti per il fatto che è dovuto; mentre dal fare un piacere a sconosciuti, traggono un pizzico d'amor proprio: più il cerchio dei loro affetti è vicino, meno amano; più si allarga, più diventano premurosi.

If I try to say what it is now, it's very simple: I realised the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.

It always pays to be generous with that which costs you nothing.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.

The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.

When you live in God, your day begins when you lose yourself long enough for God to find you, and when God finds you, to lose yourself

You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.

A woman asking 'Am I good? Am I satisfied?' is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about themselves, the less they talk to other women, the more they try to please their husbands, the happier the marriage is going to be.

In a very short time, I have come to realize that a mother will do almost anything - lie, cheat, even steal - for the sake of her child.

the giver of comfort, not the recipient.

When someone works for less pay than she can live on -- when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently -- than she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made of a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life.