Quotes About Selflessness

Be daily, therefore, on your knees, in a solemn deliberate performance of this devotion, praying for others in such forms, with such length, importunity, and earnestness, as you use for yourself; and you will find all little, ill-natured passions die away, your heart grow great and generous, delighting in the common happiness of others, as you used only to delight in your own.

and have not Charity (that is, have not the Spirit of Christ) it profiteth me nothing.

God pours out his choicest blessings on those who are anxious that nothing shall stick to their hands. Individuals who value the rainy day above the present agony of the world will get no blessing from God.

H. P. Barker warns: It is positive disloyalty to seek our crown before the King gets his. Yet this is what some of the Christians at Corinth were doing. The apostles themselves were bearing the reproach of Christ. But the Corinthian Christians were "rich" and "honorable." They were seeking a good time where their Lord and Master had such a hard time.10

It is sweet to be nothing and less than nothing that Christ may be all in all.

I longed to spend and be spent for God.

They possess the self- effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don't need to prove anything to the world:

ALTRUISM WAS, from the very start, a problem for the Darwinian theory of evolution, if not something worse than a problem. As a result, Darwinians have always been under a certain temptation to "cut the knot," and deny the very existence of altruism. This

While grace does do away with the need for good works, it's grace which also makes good works truly possible. If good works don't play into your salvation, then doing them is a sheer act of love, both for those they benefit and to God. It's a way of solving the conundrum of how can a good work be truly good if the doer of the work expects to benefit from it in any way." -David Clark

In that moment she learnt one of the greatest secrets of life: It is often easier to fight for others than it is for yourself.

If expecting something in return is your reason for giving, you are really not giving- you're swapping. If you receive something in return for your gift, what you receive is a bonus - not a repayment of a debt.

After a bit, Mr. Leon said, 'This idea that you don't necessarily act in your own best interests struck me very hard when I first read Dostoevsky. Each man may choose to do things against his own interests because it preserves his personality.

The secret of successfully giving yourself away lies not so much in calculated actions as in cultivating friendly, warm-hearted impulses. You have to train yourself to obey giving impulses on the instant -- before they get a chance to cool. When you give impulsively, something happens inside of you that makes you glow, sometimes for hours.

When love is involved no sacrifice is too great.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and 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.

Love always involves not just saying yes to someone but also saying no to self. The life of love is a life of death to the kingdom of self.

Giving is taking is giving.

Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the persuit of evil.

the extraordinary self-importance of the Jesuit conviction that an all-knowing and all-powerful being would freely choose to entrap himself in flesh and undergo terrible suffering, all for the sake of a single species, designed to be imperfect, only some of which were going to be rescued from damnation anyway.

For it is in giving that we receive. -St. Francis

You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. -John Bunyan

It's not how much we give but how much we put into giving. -Mother Teresa

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. -The Teacher, The Book of Proverbs

There is an old saying, "It is amazing what you can achieve if you are not wedded to who gets the credit." The