Quotes About Selflessness

Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.

It is difficult to being without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise.

There is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving . . . half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

There is no generosity without sacrifice.

When it's for each other that people give things up they don't miss them

She existed in that view wholly for the small house in Chelsea; the moral of which moreover, of course, was that the more one gave oneself the less of one was left. There were always people to snatch at one, and it would never occur to them that they were eating one up. They did that without tasting.

There's no generosity without some sacrifice.

I'm taking a trouble for you I never dreamed I should take for any human creature.

E non puoi sempre piacere a te stessa, qualche volta devi piacere agli altri! [...] ma c'è una cosa che è anche più importante: devi spesso dispiacere agli altri.

There may be unselfish natures, there may be disinterested feelings.

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.

It's like saying to a drowning man: What a pity, what a pity! If you had only let me teach you how to swim! Everybody wants to right the world, nobody wants help his neighbor. They want to make a man of you without taking your body into consideration. It's all cockeyed.

Jesus made a number of explicit statements, injunctions really. All to the effect that one was to take no thought but to respond immediately to any appeal for aid. And to respond in large measure. To give your cloak as well as your coat, to walk two miles and not one. And as we know well, with these injunctions went another, more important one—to return good for evil. "Resist not evil!

everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself.

When all his other gifts could not prevail, he at last made a gift of himself, to testify his affection and engage theirs.

El amor perfecto es una especie de autodestrucción, un ausentarse de uno mismo; es una especie de muerte voluntaria en la que el amante muere para sí mismo, y para todos sus intereses, y ni siquiera piensa ni se preocupa más por ellos, y no tiene más interés que agradar y complacer al objeto de su amor.

There comes a point in your life when the Lord opens your eyes to understand what the Christian life was meant to be. It isn't just going to heaven when you die; it's dying to self on earth and allowing Him to live through you.

Only that which is truly given, answered the bell-like voice. Only that good which is done for the love of doing it. Only those plans in which the welfare of others is the master thought. Only those labors in which the sacrifice is greater than the reward. Only those gifts in which the giver forgets himself.

The life of man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams but in active charity and in willing service.

fasting, prayer and almsgiving

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.

As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.