Love Selfishness Quotes & Sayings

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love. — Arthur Conan Doyle

People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love. . . . It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts. . . . There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. - Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows — Rebecca Frankel

Someone sent me a letter that had one of the best quotes I've ever read. It said "What is to give light must endure burning." It's by a writer named Viktor Frankl. I've been turning that quote over and over in my head. The truth of it is absolutely awe-inspiring. In the end, I believe it's why we all suffer. It's the meaning we all look for behind the tragedies in our lives. The pain deepens us, burns away our impurities and petty selfishness. It makes us capable of empathy and sympathy. It makes us capable of love. The pain is the fire that allows us to rise from the ashes of what we were, and more fully realize what we can become. When you can step back and see the beauty of the process, it's amazing beyond words. — Damien Echols

The act of love ... is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself. — Albert Camus

The reason for the simplicity isn't disdain for uniqueness, as the other factions have sometimes interpreted it. Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed, and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one. I try to love it. — Anonymous

Love is what freed me from the cell of my selfishness. — Seth Adam Smith

There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish. — Lydia Davis

It was because all we wanted was each other's constant love and attention and for no one else to receive that love and attention, which is a selfish and difficult place to be in a relationship. We were emotionally retarded, and that was the best we could do at the time. — Anthony Kiedis

All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live. — Swami Vivekananda

If I had the right, I would forbid you to go anywhere without me. Not out of selfishness, but because being apart from you is like trying to live without breathing. — Lisa Kleypas

I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough."
"Waiting for perfect love?"
"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for. — Haruki Murakami

Of course I love you. It is my fault that you have not known it all the while (the flower to little prince) — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love. — Agatha Christie

As we become aware of our spiritual nature, we recognize our true essence. We are immortal and divine. Renouncing violence, hate, dominance, selfishness, and ownership of people and things becomes even easier with this recognition. Accepting love, compassion, charity, hope, faith, and cooperation becomes the natural thing to do. — Brian L. Weiss

Lust is raw selfishness. It's all about my wants, my needs, my pleasure. Most love songs are actually lust songs. — Rick Warren

This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot close off the loves and hates of all that back there in the real world the memories will overtake you and swamp you and wilt your tenacity. Tenacity stamina ... close off to everything and everyone but your writing. That s the bloody price. I don t know maybe it's some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe it's part of the killer instinct. Unless you can stash away and bury thoughts of your greatest love you cannot sustain the kind of concentration that breaks most men trying to write a book over a three or four year period. — Leon Uris

Sometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don't know where to look for it any longer. And I don't know if I would recognize it if I found it. And the longer I look, the more selfish I grow.For I think only of my own happiness. i think I have lost the ability to make someone else happy. If I ever had it. And I suppose we can never be happy unless we can also give happiness. — Mary Balogh

The more surely you rear your children in the ways of the gospel of Jesus Christ, with love and high expectation, the more likely that there will be peace in their lives. Set an example for them. That will mean more than all the teaching you can give them. Do not overindulge them. Let them grow up with respect for and understanding of the meaning of labor, of working and contributing to the home and its surroundings, with some way of earning some of their own expense money. Let your sons save for missions, and encourage them to prepare themselves, not only financially, but spiritually and in an attitude to go out to serve the Lord without selfishness of any kind. — Gordon B. Hinckley

We look for love, we open our heart and we become vulnerable, just to find selfishness. — Miguel Ruiz

Knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. All those bitter home truths she had flung at me, right from the beginning ... and still loved me; was so blind that she still loved me. One day she had said: When you love me (and she had not meant "make love to me") it's as if God forgave me for being the mess I am; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and so give me a sense of responsibility towards her. — John Fowles

In short, selfishness is the opposite of love. — Tim LaHaye

All love may begin by being passionate, especially for younger people. But in the process of living together, they have to learn and practice love, so that selfishness
the tendency to possess
will diminsh, and the elemetns of understanding and gratitude will settle in, little by little, until their love becomes nourishing, protecting, and reassuring, (41). — Thich Nhat Hanh

Believe me, people do change and they change often and many times through their lifetime. However, due to naiveness, passivity and selfishness, they commonly change towards a more negative self, becoming less than they were. Positive changes are destined for those that seek them. Our world is, by default, designed to bring us down. In order to go up, one must consciously seek to dream and manifest dreams, by learning, reading, asking meaningful questions and actively making connections with others. One must, at least, love. — Robin Sacredfire

Let us make a pledge that, if not all day or all night long, at least for a few moments every day, we will make an effort to experience love, love that is free from selfishness, free from desire, free from expectation, love that is complete freedom. — Gurumayi Chidvilasananda

For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving? — George MacDonald

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love was selfish, wasn't it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another's mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it. — Alexandra Bracken

At the end of the day we can't be that selfish to accept the love they think we deserve. — Sarvesh Jain

Loving yourself doesn't make you selfish. When done correctly, the exact opposite occurs, because you know that selfish behaviors are negative for your mind, body and spirit. — Donald L. Hicks

The word 'love,' used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphemy taught in our times. — Honore De Balzac

Love has no meaning if it isn't shared. We have been created for greater things - to love and to be loved ... To love a person without any conditions, without any expectations. Small things, done in great love, bring joy and peace. To love, it is necessary to give. To give, it is necessary to be free from selfishness. — Mother Teresa

Love - massively destructive to hatred, selfishness and greed. Use liberally. — Cathryn Louis

Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only to betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason.
I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears. — Erich Fromm

The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life. At the same time, it can reveal our hardness of heart and are fears. Their cry is so demanding, and we are frequently seduced by wealth, power and the values of our societies. We want to climb the ladder of human promotion; we want to be recognized for our efficiency, power and virtue. The cry of the poor is threatening to the rich person within us.
We are sometimes prepared to give money and a little time, but we are frightened to give our hearts, to enter into a personal relationship of love and communion with them. For if we do so, we shall have to die to all our selfishness and to all the hardness of our heart. — Jean Vanier

Love of self without love of God is selfishness; love of neighbor without love of God embraces only those who are pleasing to us, not those who are hateful. — Fulton J. Sheen

Very quickly I begin to understand the selfishness of my love, the inappropriateness of my relationships, when I realise that every time I fuck it feels as if I am wrestling with demons. — Luke Davies

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self. — Criss Jami

The fruit of the Spirit is love. Why? Because nothing but love can expel and conquer our selfishness. — Andrew Murray

Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another. — Steven Pinker

We do not have feelings which change us, but feelings that suggest to us the idea of change. Thus love does not purge us of selfishness, but makes us aware of it and gives us the idea of a distant country where this selfishness will disappear. — Albert Camus

Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't. — Jonathan Franzen

His eyes twinkled as he smiled. "Love everyone, serve everyone, and feed everyone. Serve like Hanuman without selfishness and greed. This is the key to realizing God. — Radhanath Swami

God uses people not only to nurture us, but also to open our eyes to sins, selfishness, and denial in us. Love also means saying, "I hold this against you," as Jesus did when he confronted the churches (Rev. 2:4, 14, 20). Being confronted on character issues isn't pleasant. It hurts our self-image. It humbles us. But it doesn't harm us. Loving confrontations protect us from our blindness and self-destructiveness. — Henry Cloud

By the time we were knit in our mothers' wombs, our lives were like open books before Him
every sentence read, every paragraph indented, every chapter titled, every page numbered. He knew it all in advance
all the sin, all the selfishness, every weakness. Yet He chose to love us
lavishly. — Beth Moore

Helen,
You ask if I regret our engagement.
No. I regret every minute that you're out of my sight. I regret every step that doesn't bring me closer to you.
My last thought each night is that you should be in my arms. There is no peace or pleasure in my empty bed, where I sleep with you only in dreams and wake to curse the dawn.
If I had the right, I would forbid you to go anywhere without me. Not out of selfishness, but because being apart from you is like trying to live without breathing.
Think on that. You've stolen my very breath, cariad. And now I'm left to count the days until I take it back from you, kiss by kiss.
Winterborne — Lisa Kleypas

What you learn about yourself is that you continue to see that you're selfish. It's so easy, in our Laodicean culture with all the different things that grab our minds that aren't of eternal value, to let those tentacles wrap themselves around your heart. That's one of the reasons why we love going overseas. It helps us to break free of those things. We've been on all of these trips, but it's easy to slide back into the selfishness of life. That's what we find out about ourselves. — Aaron Kampman

A trustworthy marriage has weathered temptation and anger and jealousy, resentment, self-righteousness and a little bit of selfishness. When you get over and get through that, then maybe you can see the light to love. — Ruby Dee

I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. — George MacDonald

All too often, as we know from experience, people do not choose life; they do not accept the gospel of life, but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure and not by love ... As a result, the Living God is replaced by fleeting human idols, which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death. — Pope Francis

Instead of living to subdue the earth in love as God purposed, men have tried to subdue each other, by exercising lordship over people through selfishness, lust for power, greed, jealousy, wrath, hatred, murder and all malignant forms of sin. — Sunday Adelaja

The message of this season that is applicable throughout the year lies not in the receiving of earthly presents and treasures but in the forsaking of selfishness and greed and in going forward, seeking and enjoying the gifts of the Spirit, which Paul said are 'love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith,meekness,temperance: against such there is no law' (Gal. 5:22-23). — James E. Faust

If we are to build that Zion of which the prophets have spoken and of which the Lord has given mighty promise, we must set aside our consuming selfishness. We must rise above our love for comfort and ease, and in the very process of effort and struggle, even in our extremity, we shall become better acquainted with our God. - Gordon B. Hinckley — Gordon B. Hinckley

Love created this world, & the lack of it can kill it. Selfishness, self-absorption , arrogance & indifference never built anything. — John Hope Bryant

Love is the most ethically consistent experience, because selfishness and altruism no longer seem opposed or in conflict. — Peter Breggin

The truth is that each of us fall short of loving unconditionally. We don't love others the way God loves us. Yet Jesus extended perfect love by living and dying for all of our sins. In spite of our failures, weaknesses, and selfishness, He sacrificed His own life so we could have eternal life. — Dana Arcuri

Here is, in truth, the whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love, and needs no harsh vibration to convince it of true being. — Patanjali

Here is the answer to the riddle of love. Love implies relation. If lived in isolation, it becomes selfishness; if absorbed in collectivity, it loses its personality and, therefore, the right to love. — Fulton J. Sheen

Nothing can create more dramatic changes than simple and pure love and compassion. When people pray, their prayers are listened, but the answers manifest in forms that their selfishness blinds them to see. — Robin Sacredfire

Immediately upon the fall, the mind of man shrank from its primitive greatness and expandedness, to an exceeding smallness and contractedness ... Before, his soul was under the government of the noble principles of divine love, whereby it was enlarged to the comprehensiveness of all his fellow creatures and their welfare ... [But] sin, like some powerful astringent, contracted his soul to the very small dimensions of selfishness, and God was forsaken, and man retired within himself, and became totally governed by narrow and selfish principles and feelings. — Jonathan Edwards

Why all of these broken homes? What happens to marriages that begin with sincere love and a desire to be loyal and faithful and true one to another? There is no simple answer. I acknowledge that. But it appears to me that there are some obvious reasons that account for a very high percentage of these problems. I say this out of experience in dealing with such tragedies. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most of it. — Gordon B. Hinckley

What it felt to me was like the dissolution of my idea of myself. I felt like separateness evaporated. I felt this tremendous sense of oneness. I'm quite an erratic thinker, quite an adrenalized person, but through meditation, I found this beautiful serenity and selfless connection. My tendency towards selfishness, I felt that kind of exposed as a superficial and pointless perspective to have. I felt very relaxed, a sense of oneness. I felt love. — Russell Brand

the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The — Ayn Rand

Through the practice of devotion to God, I was coming to learn that preserving loving relations in this world required much forgiveness, tolerance, patience, gratitude, and humility. An essential virtue of humility is to accept others for what they are, despite differences. I contemplated again how the tendency to judge others is often a symptom of insecurity, immaturity, or selfishness, and I yearned to rise above it. Everyone is a child of God. God loves all of His children. If I wish to love God, I must learn to love those whom He loves. — Radhanath Swami

Norbu rejects the Western stereotype of Tibetans as an innately nonviolent people, a romantic notion which he thinks gratifies many Western people discontented with the aggressive selfishness of their societies but obscures the political aspirations of the Tibetan peoples and the variety of means available to them to achieve independence. In 1989, he published a book about one of the Khampa warriors of eastern Tibet, who fought the invading Chinese Army in 1950 and then initiated the bloody revolt against Chinese rule that eventually led to the Dalai Lama's departure for India.
"We are ordinary Tibetans," Norbu told PBS. "We drink; we eat; we feel passion; we love our wives and kids. If someone sort of messes around with them, even if they're an army, you pick up your rifle. — Pankaj Mishra

Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best loves and affections. Mr. Dombey's young child was, from the beginning, so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. — Charles Dickens

All things are sold: the very light of heaven is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, the smallest and most despicable things that lurk in the abysses of the deep, all objects of our life, even life itself, and the poor pittance which the laws allow of liberty, the fellowship of man, those duties which his heart of human love should urge him to perform instinctively, are bought and sold as in a public mart of not disguising selfishness, that sets on each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The mistakes of my youth have allowed me to see what true love is through the experience of its absence. They have allowed me to see that love is not a feeling but an action. It is the laying down of one's life for the beloved. It is not the laying down of someone else's life or body for our own gratification. Ultimately, as a Christian, I have come to see that love is not merely an action but a commandment. We are commanded to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor - and our enemy. Clearly true love has nothing to do with selfishness in any — Joseph Pearce

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure
if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence. — W. Somerset Maugham

Those who make hostility a daily manner are often left in the lurch at difficult times. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude 'cynicism.' And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed. But this kind of cynicism is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception. — Erich Fromm

I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm interested in us.' - Julia — George Orwell

Love opens all channels, while Fear closes them down. Love facilitates sharing, while Fear demands selfishness. Love allows us to be exposed, while Fear insists we be covered. Love provides unconditional acceptance, while fear stipulates requirements. Love enables abundance. Fear chases abundance away. — Donald L. Hicks

Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

I thought he'd pick me, I know he has kids, but when it came down to it, I really thought he'd pick me."
Tears rolled down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed.
"I know I'm selfish"
"You're human"
"I wanted him to abandon his children — Anna McPartlin

Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Unconditional love. That's what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn't he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain? — Alan Lightman

Love, just to love. Don't wait for a reason to love. That is selfishness. — Debasish Mridha

While it only takes one spouse to be friendly, it takes both spouses to be friends. When both spouses are unfriendly, the marriage is marked by conflict and coldness. When one spouse is friendly and the other is unfriendly, the marriage is marked by selfishness and sadness. But when both spouses each make a deep, heartfelt covenant with God to continually seek to become a better friend, increasing love and laughter mark the marriage. — Mark Driscoll

And this might sound strange but part of why I love her so much is that I don't take it for granted. I don't like to admit it but whenever I put my hand out a part of me worries that maybe she's not going to be there this time, that she's finally sick of all my selfishness and drama...' Sarah squeezes my hand tightly and presses her temple on my shoulder. '...and that's why I freaked out, but then she's always there for me and I'm so goddamn grateful I wonder what I could have possibly done to deserve her. If you want to know what a soul mate is, Marissa, that's it. Sarah's my soul mate. I would stand in front of a train for her, and I love her because she'd do it for me too. — Eric Lindstrom

It is a great mistake to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless extractor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she extracts love, to the uttermost farthing. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the past, I used to think real love was anti-capitalistic.
I believed love, as the modern world understood it, was an endless siege fueled by the impossibility of healthy co-dependence.
One person always gave. One person always took.
Selflessness and selfishness.
I was wrong.
Real love is unto itself. For every person, it's different, and no one can presume to explain its complexity using mere words.
For me, love comes down to the moments of pure, unadulterated happiness in your life. — Renee Ahdieh

Adultery is a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out. And out of meanness and selfishness and lying flow love and joy and peace beyond anything that can be imagined. — Rose Macaulay

To behold virtue in her proper form is nothing else but to contemplate morality stripped of all admixture of sensible things and of every spurious ornament of reward or self-love. How much she then eclipses everything else that appears charming to the affections, every one may readily perceive with the least exertion of his reason, if it be not wholly spoiled for abstraction. — Immanuel Kant

Incarnation is good news not because it offers us a way out of the mess of this world, but because it shows us what God's love looks like here and now. — Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can - working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!
Impatience, on the other hand, is a symptom of selfishness. It is a trait of the self-absorbed. It arises from the all too-prevalent condition called "center of the universe" syndrome, which leads people to believe that the world revolves around them and that all others are just supporting cast in the grand theater of mortality in which only they have the starring role. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Think long and hard whether you have reached that mature stage of selflessness for this one you think you love so much. The love you enjoy will be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it will cost you your independence.... The responsibility of marriage and family demands time, and when we cheat on that, we rob ourselves of the investment returns. — Ravi Zacharias

Lord, Open my eyes to see where you would lead me. Awaken my ears that I would hear your voice guiding me. Inspire my mind that I may comprehend your love for me. Soften my heart that I would offer grace to those I meet. Watch my feet that I would tread upon your kingdom paths. Guard my heart from selfishness that I would give freely. Inspire my words that I may speak of hope and healing. O Lord, I follow you. Amen. — Oliver Powell

When Christ's love fills our hearts, it puts selfishness on the run. — Billy Graham

Men," said Mr. Kyle, "people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love."
After these words were spoken, a thoughtful silence settled over the men. The mood was broken by the deep growling voice I had heard back in the washout.
"It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts," he said. "There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. — Wilson Rawls

It is not up to us to particularize, but rather to deduce that the concepts of human rights originated from the divine influence because, as far as we are concerned, we are compelled to recognize our slow individual evolution from fierce selfishness toward a universal love, from the iniquity toward true justice. — Chico Xavier

Love is a curious mixture of opposites, a blend of extreme selfishness and total devotion. A paradox! Besides which, love, everybody is always talking about love, love, but love isn't something you choose, you catch it like a disease, you get trapped in it, like a disaster. — Amos Oz

It's been said that love is all there is; that a lack of love causes people to do evil things. I can buy that. Take it a step further: capitalism, by itself, is not a bad thing; but when taken to an extreme, as it has been in America - when Christmas is but a measuring stick for how well the economy is doing, when Wall Street and the banking industry turn nescient heads to morality in pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, when love of money overshadows love of self and others - what then?
In the grand scheme of the universe - whatever that scheme may be - when one considers its immensity, that it has existed for billions of years, some of us realize how insignificant our seventy or eighty years is; while others, for whatever reason (selfishness?) pursue materialism to a vulgar degree. In the end, what does all that matter, really?
It's nice to spoil oneself from time to time; but really, life's true gift to oneself is doing and giving to others. That's love. — J. Conrad Guest, Novelist

I have learned that men live not by selfishness, but by love. — Leo Tolstoy

Selfishness is like a disease that suffocates our capacity to love. While love asks us to deny ourselves for the sake of another, selfishness demands we put ourselves first at their expense. When we choose to be self-centered, we become less kind and content - more needy, sensitive, and demanding. More unsatisfiable. Moodiness and impatience, laziness and irresponsibility, are only selfishness in disguise. — Stephen Kendrick

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves! — Jerome K. Jerome

That hierarchical inequality, the need for self surrender, the willing sacrifice of self to others, hold sway in the realm beyond Nature. It is indeed only love that makes the difference: all those very same principles which are evil in the world of selfishness and necessity are good in the world of love and understanding. — C.S. Lewis

It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over over any soul be loved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. — George MacDonald

Chastity by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality or lack of esteem for it: rather it signifies spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, and able to advance it towards its full realization. — Pope John Paul II

Selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were all anti-life. Love, heroism, self-sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense. These were the gifts of God to men. With — Ernest Gordon