Quotes About Selflessness

American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.

That what appears to be egoism so often isn't.

Some persons can give themselves away to an ambitious pursuit and have that be all the giving-themselves-away-to-something they need to do. Though sometimes this changes as the players get older and the pursuit more stress-fraught. American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.

That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention ad awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad, petty, unsexy ways every day.

true decency was very different from pathological generosity, because pathological generosity did not take into account the feelings of the people who were the object of the generosity?

Here is the truth - actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested. - David Foster Wallace, from The Pale King

That a person who did something for somebody's gratitude was more like a 2-D cutout image of a person than a bona fide person.

As everyone is well aware, it is so difficult to do something nice for someone and not want them, desperately, to know that the identity of the individual who did it for them was you, and to feel grateful and approving towards you, and to tell myriads of other people what you 'did' for them, so that you can be widely acknowledged as a 'good' person.

there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.

As everyone is well aware, ti is so difficult to do something nice for someone and not want them, desperately, to know that the identity of the individual who did it for them was you, and to feel grateful and approving towards you, and to tell myriads of other people what you 'did' for them, so that you can be widely acknowledged as a 'good' person.

It's the sort of love whose measure is what it has cost, what one's given up for it. Whether there's choice involved is, at a certain point, of no interest... since it's the very surrender of choice and self that informs the love in the first place.

The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity, but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least deserve it.

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just.

Wisdom! To leave his wife, to leave his babes, His mansion and his titles, in a place From whence himself does fly? He loves us not. He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight,             Her young ones in her nest, against the owl. All is the fear and nothing is the love, As little is the wisdom, where the flight So runs against all reason

I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapor of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others uses.

To give yourself away keep yourself still, And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all, What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call, All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more. Then if for my love thou my love receivest, I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest, But yet be blam'd, if thou this self deceivest By willful taste of what thyself refusest.

Love loving not itself, none other can.

And I think it was a great Frenchman, Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one's own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own. I knew nothing about you and that boy, nothing at all.

When I saw my little sister kneeling in the center of that snow-white circle, and that old crutch laying on the ground beside her, I forgot about ponies and .22s. I wanted my little sister to get that old leg of hers fixed up. I wanted that more than anything I had ever wanted in my life. That was going to be my wish. Once

I believe that service lies in this--that each of us should use in the highest way, to the very widest possible extent, the abilities and powers they have been given. I believe that to be content with humbler service, when one is able to stand greater responsibility, is only cowardice.

Love is not a possession to hoard. You give it away. It's a blessing and a balm.