Quotes about selfishness

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Just as a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror is obscured by dust, just as the embryo rests deep within the womb, wisdom is hidden by selfish desire.

— Bhagavad Gita

Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself.

— Julio Cortazar

The force of selfishness is as inevitable and as calculable as the force of gravitation.

— Hailliard

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.

— Doug Horton

As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

— Helen Keller

Lovers never get tired of each other because they are forever talking about themselves.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

How a sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated in him as his only duty,

— Charles Lamb

I've given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.

— Oscar Levant

I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes. I had one thousand and sixty.

— Imelda Marcos

In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

Selfishness, not love, is the actuating motive of the gallant.

— Mme. Roland

If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

No man will work for your interests unless they are his.

— David Seabury

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

— Tertullian

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

— William M. Thackeray

He who takes but never gives, may last for years but never lives.

— Source Unknown

He who is wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package.

— Source Unknown

Know the Self as Lord of the chariot, the body as the chariot itself, the discriminating intellect as the charioteer, and the mind as the reins. The senses, say the wise, are the horses; selfish desires are the roads they travel.

— Katha Upanishad

None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.

— Benjamin Whichcote

If you think about yourself then you've lost sight of the ball.

— Mike Willesee

Selfishness is the only real atheism; unselfishness the only real religion.

— Israel Zangwill