Quotes About Selflessness

Perhaps my daughter needed the experience of possessing the things before she could give them. (In fact, unless I possess something, can I ever really give it?)

In fact, unless I possess something, can I ever really give it?)

As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well—a law as inexorable as gravity.

whether you are a mailman, a hairdresser, an insurance salesman, a housewife—whatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well—a law as inexorable as gravity.

Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.

But we are not the center of the universe, you and I, neither as individuals nor as the representatives of the whole human race. God's universe must be considered as one great whole composed of interrelated parts, and its majestic purpose is not the gratification of our puny selves.' 

agreed with Harry Truman. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.

You cannot live a perfect day," he said, "without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

There are two kinds of ignorance: blindness and self-deception. Blindness is ignorance of the basic realities of existence: impermanence, dukha, and selflessness. … Self-deception is our belief that we can know intellectually what things are. 'Oh! That's water,' we say. 'Hydrogen and oxygen.' And then we dismiss the actual experience of the moment. ([I]f you really want to know what water is, just take a drink, or go for a walk in the rain, or take a swim.)

S]elfless action, action done while free of a sense of self. Action in which you don't see yourself as separate from other things.

W]ith the sense of self gone, ... actions naturally become uncalculated and free.

I]f we see the fleeting nature of all things without overlaying what we see with concepts, … the notion of a permanent self doesn't occur. … [T]here's still thought and sensations, there's no notion of a permanent self – only a peace of mind and fearlessness.

Mirabelle, who never takes credit for her attractiveness, believes it is not she he is responding to, but rather something independent of her.

son lo seres humanos capaces de actos generosos, desinteresados, incluso heroicos? Desde luego. ¿Son asimismo capaces de actos despiadados de apatía? Desde luego.

pesar de lo egoísta que un hombre pueda suponerse —escribió Smith—, evidentemente existen algunos principios en su naturaleza que lo llevan a interesarse por la suerte de los demás y a convertir la necesidad de éstos en necesaria para sí mismo, aunque no le proporcione nada, salvo el placer de contemplarlo.»

How selfish soever man may be supposed," Smith wrote, "there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

How selfish soever man may be supposed," Smith wrote, "there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it." There

Ecstatic technology isn't limited to silicon chips and display screens. As John Lilly's early research established, it's the knowledge of how to tweak the knobs and levers in our brain. When we get it right, it produces those invaluable sensations of selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness.

And the benefits of selflessness go beyond silencing our inner critic. When free from the confines of our normal identity, we are able to look at life, and the often repetitive stories we tell about it, with fresh eyes. Come Monday morning, we may still clamber back into the monkey suits of our everyday roles—parent, spouse, employee, boss, neighbor—but, by then, we know they're just costumes with zippers.

Experiencing the selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness of nonordinary states of consciousness can accelerate learning, facilitate healing, and provide measurable impact in our lives and work. But we have to revise or tactics and upend convention to make the most of those advantages.

The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, at least not if you want them to listen to you. You can't say that my interests are special compared to yours any more than you can say that the particular spot that I am standing on is a unique part of the universe because I happen to be standing on it that very minute.

Around 500 BCE, in what the philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, several widely separated cultures pivoted from systems of ritual and sacrifice that merely warded off misfortune to systems of philosophical and religious belief that promoted selflessness and promised spiritual transcendence.

A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on "Not everyone, just me!" falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that "here," the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe.

When you love someone, it doesn't really matter if they love you back or not. Having love in your heart for someone is its own reward. or punishment, depending on the circumstances.