Even the early droplets of selfish decisions suggest a direction. Then the little inflecting rivulets come, merging into small brooks and soon into larger streams; finally one is swept along by a vast river which flows into the “gulf of misery and endless wo” (Hel. 5:12).
Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any...
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Theodore Dreiser
Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract....
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Edward O. Wilson
...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.
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Bill McKibben
Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
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William Wilberforce
That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth
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Alastair Reynolds
More Quotes By Neal A. Maxwell
Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus!
God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.
The laughter of the world is merely loneliness pathetically trying to reassure itself.
I testify that He is utterly incomparable in what He is, what He knows, what He has accomplished and what He has experienced. Yet, movingly, He calls us His Friends
There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.
