Selflessness Quotes

Of course love is blind; it keeps me blind to myself. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The root of all evil: that the slavish morality of meekness, chastity, selflessness, absolute obedience, has triumphed - ruling natures were thus condemned (1) to hypocrisy, (2) to torments of conscience - creative natures felt like rebels against God, uncertain and inhibited by eternal values.

In summa: the best things have been slandered because the weak or the immoderate swine have cast a bad light on them - and the best men have remained hidden - and have often misunderstood themselves. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Until you stop making it about you, you'll never understand. ~ Chris Morgan (SON)

What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be safer for them if we keep them out, true friendship means letting them in. We cannot decide for them what they are willing to suffer with us and for us. While we certainly don't want to see our friends suffer, friendship isn't about protecting each other from pain so much as it is about helping each other to become what God has called us to be. ~ Mark Mossa

In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an element of disappearing to a place that's not me. It's "the selflessness of writing". It seldom happens, but when it does it's worth quite a lot. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Its not what the universe gives us that matters, but what we give the universe ~ Lauren Myracle

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment–just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!–an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. ~ Ayn Rand

You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

All I'm saying is that I want you to be happy. I don't care how it happens, or what it takes to facilitate it. I don't care if it happens with me or without me. I don't care if you use me to get there, or if I'm entirely irrelevant to your process. None of me is attached to how your happiness happens; I care only that it does. ~ Agnostic Zetetic

Vanity is found in the most unlikely places: in combination with kindness, and selflessness, and generosity. ~ Ernesto Sabato

There isno feeling sadder or more hopeless than the coolingof a friendship between two men. Between a man anda woman a delicate web of terms and conditions is always negotiated. Between men, on the other hand, the deep sense of friendship rests on its selflessness: we expect no sacrifices, no tenderness from each other, all we want is to preserve a pact wordlessly made between us. Perhaps I was really the guilty one, because I did not know you well ~ Sandor Marai

A dog has one aim in life... to bestow his heart. ~ J.R. Ackerley

So we know that human nature, and that includes our nature, yours and mine, can very easily turn people into quite efficient torturers and mass-murderers and slave-drivers...To the extent that the statement is true, and there is such an extent, it's just not relevant: human nature also has the capacity to lead to selflessness, and cooperation, and sacrifice, and support, and solidarity, and tremendous courage, and lots of other things too. ~ Noam Chomsky

That, however, is - mediocrity, though it be called moderation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I think that she is everything I have ever loved about our religion distilled down to fit into one person, everything about the faith that is both selfless and responsible. ~ Ann Patchett

You shouldn't live for yourself alone but you must also learn to live the Christian life ~ Sunday Adelaja

I am an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people. ~ Katharine Hepburn

We sat on the dusty floor like that for what felt like hours, our legs intertwined in the kneeling position. Like the demon and the angel reaching for one another on Jet's arm, I felt half of everything. Half pure, half used. Locked in a dark, beautiful embrace. One I wouldn't wish on anyone yet one I wouldn't ever reverse if given the chance.
Not when it had the power to save a life. - Skylla Warden ~ Rachael Wade

If your heart, mind, and actions are selfish, they will ultimately divide you, others, or entire [establishments]. When motivation is pure and selfless, it will result in helping bring others together. ~ A.J. Darkholme

You may think the actions that mean the most are the ones we get credit for, but I happen to believe they mean more when people aren't aware. ~ Marilyn Grey

Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself. ~ Maya Angelou

Emotion. It's a lethal weakness of our kind. A sickness that inhibits logic and eventually drives our minds toward the breaking point. It's our kryptonite – our fatal flaw and our saving grace.

After all, emotions make us who we are. They make us capable of love and compassion and selflessness, bring out the best in us.

At the same time, they ruin us. Make us feel hatred and pain and guilt. Cause our muscles to lock, our pulses to spike, our hearts to split in half.

These things called…feelings…could break every single one of us, if we let them. ~ Tiana Dalichov

Selfishness is easy to find. Selflessness is a much rarer beast. ~ Stewart Stafford

Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the steady adherents of (global) conflict because they are forever fighting both themselves and others to do whatever they think that they want to do. ~ Criss Jami

The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness. ~ Eric Hoffer

When a problem in community arises, be the first to volunteer. ~ Isabella Koldras, Solidarity That Binds The World Together.

Give until it hurts. ~ Corazon Cojuangco Aquino

When we begin to take responsibility for our multi-bio-dimensional inner nature ... when we begin to see AND understand both the angel and the devil within us, and endless other tendencies and qualities, from sexual capacity to artistic and intellectual potential, from sadism to masochism, from gentleness and tenderness to roughness and brutality, from heart to heartlessness, from selflessness to selfishness, from kindness to hatred - only then do we begin to manifest our human fullness. It is ONLY at that point, fully human, that we are capable of becoming something more ... as in metamorphosis ... something born within from the opposites. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

Whenever we take the focus off ourselves and move it outward, we benefit. Life's most fortunate ironies are that what's best for the long run is best now, and selflessness serves our interests far better than selfishness. The wider our circle of considerations, the more stable we make the world - and the better the prospects for human experience and for all we might wish. The core message of each successive widening: we are one. The geometry of the human voyage is not linear; it's those ripples whose circles expand to encompass self, other, community, Life, and time. ~ Carl Safina

Although I'm seldom aware enough to see it, the greater cost regarding that which I possess was not what I paid for it, but what someone along the way sacrificed so that I might have the opportunity to pay for it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Greater love hath no man then this, that a man lay down his life for his friends ~ The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

There is no such thing as selflessness. There are only fair and unfair selfishness. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Ambrose loved the way Fern looked. But he wondered suddenly if he loved the way she looked because he loved the way she laughed, the way she danced, the way she floated on her back and made philosophical statements about the clouds. He knew he loved her selflessness and her humor and her sincerity. And those things made her beautiful to him. ~ Amy Harmon

I knew by the way he looked at her that he held her in a higher regard than he held even himself. No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodeness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know.
My father: Erudite-born, Abnegation-grown. He often found it difficult to live up to the demands of his chosen faction, just as I did. But he tried, and he knew true selflessness when he saw it. ~ Veronica Roth

The purpose of salt is to change the nature of what it invades without calling attention to itself. Attracting attention to yourself in the Kingdom of God is like seducing the bride because you are the best man of the groom. ~ Kingsley Opuwari Manuel

I do not look at myself. I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began ~ C.S. Lewis

DeadPool reminds me for some other films which are sci-fi, like Selflessness and Mr.Nobody....But the speech is awful it must be fixed! ~ Deyth Banger

I learned that leadership is about falling in love with the people and the people falling in love with you. It is about serving the people with selflessness, with sacrifice, and with the need to put the common good ahead of personal interests. ~ Joyce Banda

Responsibility sounds pretty straightforward, but it's more than keeping a schedule or running a company or expanding a vision into a global enterprise. It's being able to attack a problem from any angle. It's knowing where to push and when to pull. And when heroism meets responsibility, it's sending the people you care about out to save the world, not knowing if they'll return. ~ Pamela Bobowicz

We should be selfless in our practice as believers ~ Sunday Adelaja

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form. ~ Sue Grafton

HERE'S THE THING about motherhood. It exhausts you and thrills you. It kicks you in the butt, and the very next second makes you feel like a superstar. Most of all, it teaches you to be selfless. Let me rephrase that. It doesn't really teach you this. It creates a new selflessness within you, which grabs hold of your heart when you first take your child into your arms. In that profound moment of extraordinary love and discovery, your own needs and desires become secondary. Nothing is as important as the well-being of your beautiful child. You would sacrifice anything for her. Even your own life. You would do it in a heartbeat. God wouldn't need to ask twice. ~ Julianne MacLean

I say all this to note the paradox of that generation of Americans that spent childhood in the Depression, fought in World War II as teenagers, and as adults built the country as we know it today, for better or worse, richer or polluted, in plutonium and in health. That paradox is one of excess and selflessness. It was a generation that acted first, thought later. Ours, on the other hand, thinks almost everything into oblivion. Ours projects all, yet seems at a loss to do anything that will substantially alter what we so brilliantly project, most of which is payment for fifty years of excess since the war - chemical water, dying forests, soaring deficits, clogged arteries, rockets and bombs like hardened foam from a million panting mouths. ~ Gregory Orfalea

Day and night. Give and take. But never to die. Each have their time. ~ Zechariah Barrett

When indeed it is in God we live, and move, and have our being. We cannot draw a breath without his help. ~ Jonathan Edwards

These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage. ~ R.H. Blyth

If outside forces and culture were the reasons behind declining and non-influential churches, we would likely have no churches today. The greatest periods of growth, particularly the first-century growth, took place in adversarial cultures. We are not hindered by external forces; we are hindered by our own lack of commitment and selflessness. ~ Thom S. Rainer

We moved around a lot at first as a kid, and then I was on the road at 17, and new in town by the time I got to LA, and then famous again with that whirlwind. I did really want substance in my life, and when I stopped with the road for my children, it was really because I didn't want to miss out. It wasn't just selflessness. I didn't want to miss out on that. ~ Lynda Carter

It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him. I felt such an honor to be associated with such a player. ~ Alex Ferguson

I have a soft spot in my heart for suicidal people. I know that others make presumptions about suicidal people, painting them with the darkest of paints; but the way that I see it, these are people who look out into the world and see how broken it is and they look into their lives and they remember all the people they've hurt and then they look into themselves and they are faced with how ruined they are and they think that if they can't make anything really better then they just shouldn't exist anymore. It's not a form of selfishness or mental illness. It's a form of extreme state of empathy and selflessness. Suicidal people really are the best kinds of people. But they need to know that this world has a place for them, that this world needs the kind of light that they carry with them as they walk through it, they need to know that they have a home. That their type of darkness is like the darkness of the universe: it's the type of darkness from whence comes forth the light! Some people are just okay with everything, they don't feel the pain and the guilt that comes with the way that this world is. And I don't think that the lack of feeling makes anybody healthier in the mind. Our world is sick. And some people know that. These are not the sick people, these are the beautiful creatures! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

We just can't shake monogamy. It definitely demands a kind of rigor and discipline and selflessness. But it's also fun. ~ Claire Danes

Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves. ~ Stephen Kendrick

Paradise is not the place in which you arrive but the journey toward it. Sometimes I think victories must be temporary or incomplete; what kind of humanity would survive paradise? The industrialized world has tried to approximate paradise in its suburbs, with luxe, calme, volupté, cul-de-sacs, cable television and two-car garages, and it has produced a soft ennui that shades over into despair and a decay of the soul suggesting that Paradise is already a gulag. Countless desperate teenagers will tell you so. For paradise does not require of us courage, selflessness, creativity, passion: paradise in all accounts is passive, is sedative, and if you read carefully, soulless. ~ Rebecca Solnit

But to mean it when I say that I want my life to count for His glory is to drive a stake through the heart of self - a painful and determined dying to me that must be a part of every day I live. ~ Louie Giglio

Why is it so important for you to give back? I honestly feel like it's our responsibility as citizens of the world to ground ourselves in selflessness and all do our part. ~ Solange Knowles

Love actually is a great act of the will. It's when I say, "I desire your good, not for my sake but for yours". To love is to break out of the black hole of the ego and say, "My life is about you". ~ Bishop Robert Barron

Christine and I haven't raised our children. A whole community of selfless Christians has contributed to helping them become faithful, competent adults. ~ Clayton Christensen

When we are meditating in a haunted graveyard, or even in our rooms, frightening external and internal appearances may arise during Chöd practice. If this happens, check the two 'superstitions' - the external, frightening appearance, and the internal appearance of the inherently existent 'I' that is frightened. Do they exist from their own sides? With determination, check for the 'I' that experiences fear, whether of a sight or a sound. Recalling that our purpose is to compassionately sacrifice ourselves to the spirits, and remembering emptiness of the three spheres of giving, we mix our minds with space and visualize the spirits consuming our bodies as well as our sense of an inherently existent self. After the spirits have eaten the body, again investigate the two superstitions. It is by checking for the independent 'I' that we come to realize emptiness. ~ Zongtrul Losang Tsöndru

If you want to conquer lust for wealth, love selflessness and sparing way of life. ~ Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov

Minimalism in the service of others is a logical extension of the same ethos of selflessness. ~ Joshua Becker

Leadership, Alpha, comes at a cost. You see, we expect that when danger threatens us from the outside, that the person who is actually stronger, the person who is better fed, and the person who is teaming with serotonin and actually has higher confidence than the rest of us; we expect them to run towards the danger to protect us. This is what it means to be a leader. The cost of leadership is self interest. If you're not willing to give up your perks when it matters, then you probably shouldn't get promoted. You might be an authority but you will not be a leader. Leadership comes at a cost. You don't get to do less work when you get more senior, you have to do more work. And the more work you have to do is put yourself at risk to look after others. That is the anthropological definition of what a leader IS.

Why Leaders Eat Last: http://vimeo.com/79899786 ~ Simon Sinek

Within that tired body, lies a soul so persistent in love, repentant in serving others before yourself. I see the person who can sympathize all layers of the human experience. I see you. ~ Karen A. Baquiran

If you serve a mission faithfully and well, you will be a better husband, you will be a better father, you will be a better student, a better worker in your chosen vocation. Love is of the essence of this missionary work. Selflessness is of its very nature. Self-discipline is its requirement. Prayer opens its reservoir of power. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

To exist
is to be at one point in time.

To live
is to experience every passing moment
with your five senses and your mind open

To Thrive
is to think beyond what is best for each of us right now
and to act upon what is best for our world for the future.

And that is the rarest thing of all.

It is our collective selflessness
that can give us a chance to create a forever. ~ K. Chayne

The only honorable, desirable kind of fear that shouldn't be feared is the fear of harm on a loved one. It's the kind of fear that leads to self-sacrifice and the kind of fear where you would truly jump in front of a bus to save another. ~ Criss Jami

When we're constantly thinking about ourselves, our world shrinks. ~ Seth Adam Smith

Oh. A bigger studio. It dawns on me, stupid me, that Henry could win the lottery at any time at all; that he has never bothered to do so because it's not normal; that he has decided to set aside his fanatical dedication to living like a normal person so I can have a studio big enough to roller-skate across; that I am being an ingrate.
"Clare? Earth to Clare ... "
"Thank you," I say, too abruptly. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

The devotion of such titans of spirit as Lenin to an Ideal must bear fruit. The nobility of his selflessness will be an example through centuries to come, and his Ideal will reach perfection. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

If the selflessness of phenomena is analyzed and if this analysis is cultivated, it causes the effect of attaining nirvana. through no other cause does one come to peace. ~ Gautama Buddha

I wish I could take it all away from you sweet thing. Her mom said simply. It was a strange sentence. Darkly poetic. One that with a subtle shift in vocal inflection could have been a curse instead of a sweet proclamation of motherly selflessness. ~ Claire Lombardo

A whisper of selflessness echos boundlessly. ~ Aisha Mirza

Easter is the invulnerable tale of utter selflessness where at an inestimable cost God did for us what He did not need done for Himself. And that kind of 'doing' happens every day. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Selfishness is the absence of selflessness ~ Thabiso Monkoe

The sudden and total disappearance of Mawlana aroused resentment among his disciples and students, some of them becoming highly critical of Hazrat Shams, even threatening him. They believed Hazrat Shams had ruined their spiritual circle and prevented them from listening to Mawlana's sermons. In March of 1246 he left Konya and went to Syria without warning. After he left, Mawlana was grief stricken, secluding himself even more rather than engaging with his disciples and students. He was without a doubt furious with them. Realising the error of their ways, they repeatedly repented before Mawlana. Some months later, news arrived that Hazrat Shams had been seen in Damascus and a letter was sent to him with apologising for the behaviour of these disciples. Hazrat Sultan Walad and a search party were sent to Damascus to invite him back and in April 1247, he made his return. During the return journey, he invited Hazrat Sultan Walad to ride on horseback although he declined, choosing instead to walk alongside him, explaining that as a servant, he could not ride in the presence of such a king. Hazrat Shams was received back with joyous celebration with sama ceremonies being held for several days, and all those that had shown him resentment tearfully asked for his forgiveness. He reserved special praise for Hazrat Sultan Walad for his selflessness, which greatly pleased Mawlana. As he originally had no intention to return to Konya, he most likely would not have returned if Hazrat Sulta ~ Shams Tabrizi

Serenity of mind produces an expanding awareness that fosters creative selflessness, which in turn enables us to experience unabashed harmony communing in rhythmical bliss with nature. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When I ask people to contemplate selflessness, the sometimes react as if I've asked them to put their house on the market or give away all their money. If there was a self that existed in the way we think, discovering selflessness would be like putting our house on the market. But in the Buddhist tradition, the discovery of selflessness is called "completely joyful." It's not called "the raw end of the deal," or "I'd rather go back to bed," or "This is scary and depressing." ~ Sakyong Mipham

There's nothing wrong with helping someone without a cost. Especially if there's no end return. ~ Solange Nicole

A leader in sports, business, or any other field of endeavor should possess and provide the same qualities inherent in a good parent: character, consistency, dependability, accountability, knowledge, good judgment, selflessness, respect, courage, discipline, fairness, and structure. ~ John Wooden

Love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. ~ Ronald Reagan

God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself. ~ Criss Jami

What irritates me most about him is his natural goodness, his inborn selflessness. ~ Veronica Roth

I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yeh, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating. ~ Sebastian Faulks

To inspire is to lead through a selfless compassionate character, which displays moral integrity as a path for all… ~ Husam Wafaei

Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one's own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God's Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did - who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did - mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence.

Too often the love which is proclaimed in the churches suppresses this element of loss and need and death in activity. As a Christian, I often speak of love as helping others, but I ignore what this does to the person who loves. I ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending and losing and deterioration of the self. I speak of love as if the person loving had no problems, no needs, no limits. In other words, I speak of love as if the affluent dream were true. This kind of proclamation is heard everywhere. We hear it said: 'Since you have no unanswered needs, why don't you go out and help those other people who are in need?' But we n ~ Arthur C. McGill

I want to feel proud and happy about my selflessness. But what happens when being selfless takes away a big part of your self? ~ Jaye Robin Brown

[Forster] quotes approvingly from this discussion, from The Magic Flute [by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson]
"Lord Buddha was your gospel true?"
"True and False."
"What was true in it?"
"Selflessness and Love."
"What false?"
"Flight from Life. ~ Zadie Smith

We carry out our lives assuming ourselves to be something substantial and unchanging, and we become deeply attach[ed] to this assumed self (this attachment is known in Sanskrit as ātma-grāha). But we attach to more than simply a notion of a self. We also reify the things that we see, hear, and think, into substances, and attach to them as well. This is called attachment to dharmas (Skt. dharma-grāha). Among these two attachments, it may be the case that we can earnestly reflect and bring ourselves to the awareness of our attachment to self, making an effort to avoid it. But attachment to dharmas occurs at such a subtle level that stemming it based on conscious reflective awareness is practically impossible for most people. We grasp at all dharmas (all phenomena), despite the fact that they are nothing more than a provisional combination of elements according to certain conditions. Taking these as the framework created from our past experiences, along with accordance to our individual circumstances, we see, hear, and think. When we regard the content of such seeing, hearing, and thinking to be accurate, attachment to dharmas ends up being far more difficult to come to reconcile than attachment to self. How do you deal with something that is virtually unnoticeable? This attachment to dharmas engenders the cognitive hindrances (jñeya-āvaraṇa), while attachment to self engenders the afflictive hindrances
(kleśa-āvaraṇa). Nirvāṇa is said to manifest based on the removal of t ~ Tagawa Shun'ei

The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity. ~ Ayn Rand

I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life. ~ Anthony Perkins

...there is power in self-sacrifice. ~ Veronica Roth

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

When your intentions are honest and pure, when you speak or act from a place of selflessness and love, the feedback and returns are unimaginable and immeasurable. ~ Nike Campbell-Fatoki

She put others before herself and yet you hate her. What did she do to you? ~ Edward Kitsis And Adam Horowitz

Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire. ~ Philip Larkin

Man is an extremely complex creature: he usually acts in an unselfish manner for selfish reasons. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For the Christian, every man is homo viator, whose sole purpose (and soul's purpose) is to travel through the adventure of life with the goal of getting to heaven, his ultimate and only true home, facing many perils and temptations along the way. The enemy of homo viator is homo superbus (proud man), who refuses the self-sacrifice that the adventure of life demands and seeks to build a home for himself within his "self." Such a man becomes addicted to the sins that bind him, shriveling and shrinking to the pathetic size of his gollumized self. The drama of life revolves around this battle within each of us, between the homo viator we are called to be, and the homo superbus we are tempted to become. This drama is mirrored in Middle-earth in the struggles between selflessness and selfishness within the hearts of hobbits and men. ~ Joseph Pearce

There is no limit to the potential of brethren working together in complete brotherhood and selflessness toward spiritual goals. The power of God working through such channels will bring unimaginable blessings to all concerned. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Let us be, then, warriors of the heart, and enlist in our inner cause the virtues we have acquired through blood and sweat in the sphere of conflict - courage, patience, selflessness, loyalty, fidelity, self-command, respect for elders, love of our comrades (and of the enemy), perseverance, cheerfulness in adversity and a sense of humor, however terse or dark. ~ Steven Pressfield