SELFISHNESS

Related Subjects: Avarice, Conceit, Gifts, Interest, Magnanimity, Misanthropy

1. It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.—ALFRED ADLER, Social Interest
   

2. People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.—AESOP, The Dog in the Manger
   

3. I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.—BURKE, On the Sublime and Beautiful
   

4. The world will always be governed by self-interest. We should not try to stop this, we should try to make the self-interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent people.—SAMUEL BUTLER, Note Books
   

5. Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.—GLADSTONE
   

6. That man who lives for self alone
   Lives for the meanest mortal known.—JOAQUIN MILLER, Walker in Nicaragua
   

7. We are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier.—SIR WILLIAM OSLER, Life of Sir William Osler
   

8. I love my friends well, but myself better.—Proverb
   

9. He is a slave of the greatest slave, who serveth nothing but himself.—Proverb
   

10. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
    

11. High though his titles, proud his name,
    Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—
    Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
    The wretch, concentred all in self,
    Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
    And, doubly dying, shall go down
    To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
    Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.—SCOTT, The Lay of the Last Minstrel
    

12. Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
    As self-neglecting.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry V
    

13. That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
    And follows but for form,
    Will pack when it begins to rain,
    And leave thee in the storm.—SHAKESPEARE, King Lear
    

14. Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.—THACKERAY, The Virginians
    

15. There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core, and remind them how you give them a core one time, they make a mouth at you, and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core.—MARK TWAIN, Ton Sawyer Akroad
    

16. Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.—ISRAEL ZANGWILL, Children of the Ghetto