Quotes About Selflessness

When my friends began to have babies and I came to comprehend the heroic labor it takes to keep one alive, the constant exhausting tending of a being who can do nothing and demands everything, I realized that my mother had done all of these things for me before I remembered. I was fed; I was washed; I was clothed; I was taught to speak and given a thousand other things, over and over again, hourly, daily, for years. She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.

When I read, I ceased to be my-self, and this nonexistence I pursued and devoured like a drug.

thinking: I don't want my little girl to come out blind or gouged up. I'm not cheap, I'm scared. It's the story of my life: not stingy, just a goddamn coward.

Te?, po válce, se vÅ¡ak sebeobÄ›tování cení výÅ¡e než umÄ›ní pÃ…â"¢ežít.

A king with no place to lay his head. A king who came to serve, not to be served.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you can make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost....

BaÅŸkas?na zarar vermek için ne yapacaksan?z onu önce kendinize yap?n.

He'd had enough suffering right now to last him forever with plenty left over for others if they didn't have enough and wanted to have some more.

Ironically, when you surrender your need to hog the glory, the attention you used to need from other people is replaced by a quiet inner confidence that is derived from letting others have it.

You always feel good when you give to others. Rather than diluting the positive feelings by telling others about your own kindness, by keeping it to yourself you get to retain all the positive feelings.

Rather than diluting the positive feelings by telling others about your own kindness, by keeping it to yourself you get to retain all the positive feelings.

Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination.

Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.

Debemos enseñar a nuestros hijos el altruismo ya que no podemos esperar que éste forme parte de su naturaleza biológica

a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection'

even with selfish genes at the helm, nice guys can finish first.

And what there is to learn from almost any human experience is that your own interests usually do not come first where other people are concerned--even the people who love you--and that is all right. It can be lived with.

don't see what this has to do with us." I say back, "Does everything have to be about you? Can you not project yourself outside yourself? Can you not take on another's life for your own benefit?

The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down?

Nothing else mattered. Of course there was "the rest of my life," both present (my degree course) and future (job, salary, social position, retirement, pension, death). You could say that I put this part of my life on hold. Except that's not right: she was my life, and the rest wasn't. Everything else could and must be sacrificed, with or without thought, as and when necessary. Though "sacrifice" implies loss. I never felt a sense of loss.

We praised them when they were kind to others but told them not to expect to be rewarded for their good deeds. We scolded them whenever they tried to talk back. We taught them never to accept a handout. We taught them never to brag. We taught them everything we knew.

To return to that realm of shadows for your sweetheart's sake, Clodagh, is a breathtaking act of selfless love. I think you are the only talisman he needs.

I would never do anything just for spite.