Quotes About Selflessness

We're passing on something of ourselves to others. I feel that's what makes our life full of meaning. It's hard to have meaning in a closet, encapsulated by nothing. I think you really have to expand yourself and your life and do what you can for other people.

As a character actor, you have to understand that it's not about you. You have to remember it's about someone else's life. And your character is just passing through.

And so, this was the final major theme we found: that when a group of people, no matter how small or ordinary, was willing to die out to their selfish desires, the life which came out of that death was immeasurable, and continued to affect lives far into the future.

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you do is for yourself—and there isn't one. —Wei Wu Wei

The love that arises from God is a love that loves anonymously, a love that acts without such self-centred reflections, that gives without thought. Our lives should be full of acts of love of this kind, and yet, by definition, they will be invisible to us.

As Meister Eckhart once said: When one can do the works of virtue without preparing, by willing to do them, and bring to completion some great and righteous matter without giving it a thought – when the deed of virtue seems to happen by itself, simply because one loved goodness and for no other reason, then one is perfectly virtuous and not before.

The truth is, I think we are a self-less society, not a selfish society. Because we're so busy now.

that the greatest happiness lies in living for others. The self and its appetites, the satisfaction of which only yields deeper hungers, are to the soul as mooring cables to an airship. To cut them willingly and without regret is to know true emancipation, the kind that cannot be granted by constitutions, proclamations, manifestos. Yes

Alexander refused to drink when his army could not. He took the helmet of precious water and poured it on the ground in full view of his army. To the parched men, for their king to share in their suffering in this way meant more than the water soaking into the sand. They were so heartened, says Arrian, it was as if they had each drunk every drop that he poured on the ground.

The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.

I've come to believe that in life it's best to live for a purpose greater than oneself.

If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have and my own preconceived, silly notions of what I think I am—and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God—then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen. —John McLaughlin

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

Her temperament has never been competitive; she immediately wants to disappear, to obliterate herself, to make way for them.

The giving of love took nothing from others.

Most women are trained to put their own needs second, the needs of any man—including a violent man—first.

Life is rich it's full of gifts-the more you have the more there is to share. You know its men with small souls who think there isn't enough to go around. They fight to keep their little grasp on their tiny piece of the world and they're always angry because they're never satisfied. They're cursed with a hole they can never fill. They may get things done but they can never keep what they've achieved.

you could help people most by not giving them the burden of your heart.

Generosity is, by definition, disinterested." (p.157)

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift

From this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people's good.

From my father's point of view, without a thought for self, a true patriot stands up against the stones of condemnation and speaks for those who are given no real voice in the halls of justice or the halls of government.

I just gotta keep reminding myself: Every time I do an interview or something, my volition really has to be just to serve, to help people. Not to feel like I'm important.

When our neighbor's personality possesses harsh qualities, we show our love by not voluntarily provoking those qualities in any way. Past experience shows us what upsets a person, so in their presence we are careful not to do or say those things that cause anger. We are self-effacing.