Quotes About Selflessness

Even the desire of contemplation can be impure, when we forget that true contemplation means the complete destruction of all selfishness—the most pure poverty and cleanness of heart.

We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others. What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean, first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.

As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be "as gods." We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives.

What a strange thing! In filling myself I had emptied myself

It is only when we have lost all love of our selves for our own sakes that our past sins cease to give us any cause for suffering or for the anguish of shame. For the saints, when they remember their sins, do not remember the sins but the mercy of God, and therefore even past evil is turned by them into a present cause of joy and serves to glorify God.

We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we can everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others, yet at the same time, before we can go out to others we must find ourselves.

For love does not seek a joy that follows from its effect: its joy is in the effect itself, which is the good of the beloved...love, therefore, is its own reward.

Less and less conscious of themselves, they finally cease to be aware of themselves doing things, and gradually God begins to do all that they do, in them and for them, at least in the sense that the habit of His love has become second nature to them and informs all that they do with His likeness.

If any man would save his life, he must lose it," and, "Love one another as I have loved you." It is also contained in another saying from St. Paul: "We are all members one of another.

I who am without love cannot become love unless Love identifies me with Himself. But if He sends His own Love, Himself, to act and love in me and in all that I do, then I shall be transformed, I shall discover who I am and shall possess my true identity by losing myself in Him. And that is what is called sanctity.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy

His was the unconstrained vision of human nature, in which man was capable of directly feeling other people's needs as more important than his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially, even when his own interests or those of his family were involved.

It would be hard to find anywhere in history a record of any other country going to such efforts, for so long, in a cause from which it could gain so little and lose so much.

You are a Queen. Let mine be the joy of giving you your kingdom.

Tu vois, je crois que... Cette lutte de tous les jours, elle repose sur l'amour. Pas sur l'ambition, le besoin d'avoir, de posséder, mais sur l'amour... Pas l'amour de sois non plus. Ça c'est le malheur, c'est ce qui nous fait tourner en rond. Non ! Sur l'amour des autres, l'amour de la vie. Quand tu aimes, tu es sauvée.

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.

Love exists to the extent that you give it away.

The Sun Never Says." Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.

Prayer is often stereotyped in our culture as a form of pietism, a lamentable privatization of religion. Even many Christians seem to regard prayer as a grocery list we hand to God, and when we don't get what we want, we assume that the prayers didn't "work." This is privatization at its worst, and a cosmic selfishness.

Seek joy in what you give, not in what you get

Yet he hadn't asked for anything that he hadn't been willing to give himself. - Mahri

Be petulant, selfish, and happy? Or be generous . . . and miserable.

I would rather lay down my life for others' freedom than die quietly in slavery.