Quotes About Selflessness

Act with kindness but do not expect gratitude.

He who is concerned only with the purity of his own life ruins the great human relations.

He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.

What you don´t want done to yourself, do not do to others.

You yourself desire rank and standing; then help others to get rank and standing. You want to turn your merits to account; then help others to turn theirs to account.

To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.

The best way to die well is to live well. To die for another would give your death meaning. Ignoring for the time being the fact that the other is going to die anyway.

That's the walkaway dilemma. If you take without giving, you're a mooch. If you keep track of everyone else's taking and giving, you're a creep scorekeeper. It's our version of Christian guilt—it's impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The worst thing is to be worrying about what someone else is doing, because that has nothing to do with whether you're doing right.

I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's.

When we look at other people comparatively and competitively, we're not seeing them as our brothers and sisters. We're not loving them more than we love ourselves, and we we're definitely not seeing them as God sees them.

I have always been particularly touched by the proverb about the purpose of life being to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

If I am secure in God's devotion, then I am free to love others without depending on them to meet my need for love.

He would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself completely to anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, a very insidious form of prostitution.

she would be free of mundane care, she was a pure will towards right. She had sold herself, but she had a new freedom. She had got rid of her body. She had sold a lower thing, her body, for a higher thing, her freedom from material things.

Ans?z?n içine doÄŸdu, bir güneÅŸ gibi: Hepsinden, bana, aÅŸklar?n?n cesedi ile kulluk etmelerini istemiÅŸtim. Sonunda da onlara, ancak kendi aÅŸk?m?n cesedini verebildim. Bu bedenimdir -al?n,yiyin- cesedim.

Now I look with wonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is outside me, beyond me, not me. Behold, that which was once negative has now become the only positive. The other being is now the great positive reality, I myself am as nothing. Positivity has changed places.

There is a simple way to become a buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Seek nothing else.

it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.

A good deed, said the prophet Mohammed, is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another. Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer? Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia.

The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.

If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can't radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to get something out of the other person in return – if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.

It is an interesting paradox that the more you surrender the credit for something you've done, the more memorable you become, and the more you actually end up receiving credit.

So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.

It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.