Quotes About Selfish Man

“No man is more cheated than the selfish man.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

“A PRIME TRUTH - MAN IS SELFISH
(Name of chapter)”

— William J. Federer

“Paradox is beloved of novelists. The despised savior, the humane whore, the selfish man suddenly munificent, the wise fool, and the cowardly hero. Most writers spend their lives writing about unexpected malice in the supposedly virtuous, and unexpected virtue in the supposedly sinful.”

— Thomas Keneally

“The Man who works for others, without any selfish motive, really does good to himself.”

— Ramakrishna

“Let us be today's Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today's church. With Christ's light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God's image, which is soiled in today's humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful.”

— Oscar A. Romero

“It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.”

— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

“The key is to understand that our children don't belong to us-they belong to God. Our goal as parents must not be limited by our own vision. I am a finite, sinful, selfish man. Why would I want to plan out my children's future when I can entrust them to the infinite, omnipotent, immutable, sovereign Lord of the universe? I don't want to tell God what to do with my children-I want Him to tell me!”

— Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

“Religion is about integration, about successfully bringing the selfish ego into line with the centre of the personality where God exists, as a divine spark, in every human being. Religion is about helping man to live in harmony with his true self and to become the person God's designed him to be.”

— Susan Howatch

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish ... You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”

— Simone De Beauvoir

“Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire ... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.”

— Bernard Of Clairvaux

“You don't have to apologize," Treston said. "I know where I work, I know what I do to make a living, and I know it's not the most respectable place in Vegas. But frankly, Chad, if you don't mind my saying so, I think you have a lot to learn about good manners."
Chad blinked. "What do you mean?"
Treston reached for his wine glass, finished off what was left to wash down the last forkful of chewy escargot, and said, "All I'm saying is you haven't stopped harping about that blond, and I have to tell you it's getting a little tired now. Seriously, man. It's a little insulting, too." He leaned forward, looked into Chad's eyes, and held his hand. "Look, I know how hard it is for selfish men like you to understand empathy. Lord knows I've been with enough of them.”

— Ryan Field

“Money appears to motivate only our interest in ourselves, making us selfish and self-centered ... Money makes people feel self-sufficient, which also means they don't need or care about others; it's each man for himself”

— Margaret Heffernan

“A good man cares about others. A good man has not only selfish desires. He is not only centered in himself. A bad man has no concern for others. He has only selfish concerns. He is centered in his own world.”

— Swami Dhyan Giten

“Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose - to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury - he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others ... At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance - the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought - they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it.”

— Ayn Rand

“He still went out nearly every night. I thought, is this what he's going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don't really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he loving? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there's no way to get it back ...”

— Candace Bushnell

“Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail ...”

— Thomas Hardy

“It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses
affections
vices perhaps they should be called
were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may ridicule me
I am quite willing that you should
I am a fit subject, no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew"
he nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally arriving
"it is just possible they would do the same.”

— Thomas Hardy

“She wasn't a tragic widow, after all, just another woman betrayed by a selfish man. It was a smaller, more familiar role, and a lot easier to play.”

— Tom Perrotta

“But I'm a selfish man. I've wanted you since you fell into my office. You are exquisite, honest, warm, strong, witty, beguilingly innocent; the list is endless. I'm in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.”

— E.L. James

“Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted. That is not allowed. Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. A mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries. Consider what the spirit is: air, and never the same air, but vomited out and gulped in again every instant. Finally, the intelligence.
Think of it this way: You are an old man. Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.”

— Marcus Aurelius

“I am selfish - you have already said so- and as a selfish man I think not of what others would do in my situation, but of what I intend doing myself.
Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo (Kindle Locations 11677-11678).”

— Alexandre Dumas

“Every woman I have known has actually deepened my spiritual awareness. Even if I have been a selfish man and treated them badly ... There were two women, I won't name them, who had a powerful religious effect on me. The ancient idea of a muse is there.”

— John Tavener

“A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.”

— Richard Whately

“I wish to pay my debt. To give you the night I owe' ...
'Oh, Charlotte. You play with fire.'
'Do I?'
Roman looked at the woman in front of him, calm and collected, but there was heat there, such precious heat that was straining. Offering.
It took only one second for the words to form and emerge. 'Consider the debt of the night wiped free.'
He saw her blink. Stunned.
Watched the disappointment form. He felt nearly giddy as her disappointment form.
'What, but-'
'But what?' He smiled, loving the look on her face, even the desire that was slowly shuttering - for he would obliterate those shutters with his next words. 'You think I am freeing you? ... I am a selfish man.'
'A selfish man takes what is offered to him.' Was that doubt in her voice, doubt of her charms?
'No, a selfish man destroys what is offered to him and demands more. He demands everything.”

— Anne Mallory

“What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.”

— Herbert Spencer

“The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Of course flattery seldom works with discerning people. It is shallow, selfish and insincere. It ought to fail and it usually does. True, some people are so hungry, so thirsty, for appreciation that they will swallow anything, just as a starving man will eat grass and fishworms.”

— Dale Carnegie

“I can't stand Tiger Woods. He is the most selfish man I've ever played golf with.”

— Stewart Rahr

“Each man seeks his own interest, not the general interest. Let his own selfish interests be touched, and all concord is at an end.”

— Sabine Baring-Gould

“I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.”

— Jerry Lewis

“A selfish man is a thief.”

— Jose Marti

“Suffering, he thought later, could rob a man of his empathy, could turn him selfish, could make him depreciate all other sufferers.”

— Eleanor Catton

“Do not cry for me, Azrael. Do not waste your tears. You made your decision. And this is mine. Sacrifice seems to be my destiny. A funny thing for a selfish man, isn't it? They always called me weak back then ...”

— Melissa De La Cruz

“The abortionist I worked for, he's a very greedy man, a selfish man.”

— Norma McCorvey

“If a man works without any selfish motive in view, does he not gain anything? Yes, he gains the highest. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. It is more paying from the point of view of health also. Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. In the first place, a man who can work for five days, or even for five minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to do it, but in the heart of our hearts we know its value, and the good it brings. It is the greatest manifestation of power - this tremendous restraint; self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing action.”

— Swami Vivekananda

“Now you see, Tom," said Mr. Harthouse ( ... ); "every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures.”

— Charles Dickens

“I'm a selfish, little pig of a man.”

— Lewis Black

“He beheld in swift succession the incidents in the brief tale of his experience. His wretched home, his still more wretched school-days, the years of vicious life he had led since then, one act of selfish dishonour leading to another; it was all clear and pitiless now, all its squalid folly, in the cold light of the dawn. He came to the hut, to the fight with the Porroh man, to the retreat down the river to Sulyma, to the Mendi assassin and his red parcel, to his frantic endeavours to destroy the head, to the growth of his hallucination. It was a hallucination! He knew it was. A hallucination merely. For a moment he snatched at hope. He looked away from the glass, and on the bracket, the inverted head grinned and grimaced at him ... With the stiff fingers of his bandaged hand he felt at his neck for the throb of his arteries. The morning was very cold, the steel blade felt like ice.
("Pollock And The Porrah Man")”

— H.G. Wells

“TRIBUTE TO A DOG The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.”

— Dean Koontz

“Zoe gave him a look that was difficult to interpret. Eventually she asked, "What makes you sure I couldn't handle you?"
She didn't know what she was asking for, from a man who couldn't remember what it was like to be innocent. Lightly gripping her hair, Alex forced her face close to his. The blond curls danced around his fingers and tickled the backs of his hands. " I 'm a bastard in bed, Zoe," he said quietly. " I 'm selfish and mean as the devil. I have to have all the control. And I 'm ... not nice”

— Lisa Kleypas

“I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and child.
It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, of intellectual development. If there is a man in the world who is not willing to give to every human being every right he claims for himself, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a question of honesty. The man who is not willing to give to every other the same intellectual rights he claims for himself, is dishonest, selfish, and brutal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

“A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest.”

— Benjamin Butler

“All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.”

— Berthold Auerbach

“The selfish man cuts away the sand from under his own feet, he digs his own grave; and every time, from the beginning of the world until now, God Almighty pushes him into the grave and covers him up.”

— Charles Henry Fowler

“Every man has his own reason for every deed. Usually it is selfish.”

— David Gemmell

“Every selfish man, strangely enough, becomes a self slayer”

— Sadhu Sundar Singh

“A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.”

— Samuel Johnson

“I have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a much less historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society-he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity.”

— Arthur Koestler

“Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

“What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray