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Selflessness Quotes

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Selflessness Quotes

“The neglected pioneer of one revolution, the honoured victim of another, brave to the point of folly, and as humane as he was brave, no man in his generation preached republican virtue in better English, nor lived it with a finer disregard of self. {On American founding father and hero, Thomas Paine}”

“We have to go back,” Kaladin said softly. “Storm it, we have to go back.” He turned to the members of Bridge Four. One by one, they nodded. Men who had been the dregs of the army just months before—men who had once cared for nothing but their own skins—took deep breaths, tossed away thoughts for their own safety, and nodded. They would follow him. Kaladin looked up and sucked in a deep breath. Stormlight rushed into him like a wave, as if he’d put his lips up to a highstorm and drawn it into himself. “Bridge up!” he commanded.”

“Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.”

“We Are One” Dr. Debasish Mridha In the silent heart of being, there is no you, no me, only seeing. No body, no mind, no fleeting soul, only consciousness, vast, complete, and whole. The stars and the atoms hum the same song, echoing unity where we thought division belonged. Each thought, each form, a shimmering tone, waves of One, forever flowing, never alone. The tree, the sky, the sea, the stone…. all mirror the self, the self unknown. For life and death are but a play, of One eternal light in rhythmic sway.”

“She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can't have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken? She resented, too, the nurse, or the many nurses, who had attended my father in the various hospitals. She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone—to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.”

“The radical fights not for himself but for ideas, and ideas have a way of living on — they don’t kill as easily as man, and he knows that in the end the best ideas or wav of life will prevail. The radical’s affection for people is not lessened, nor is he hardened against them even when masses of them demonstrate a capacity for brutality, selfishness, hate, greed, avarice, and disloyalty. He is convinced that these attitudes and actions are the result of evil conditions. It is not the people who must be judged but the circumstances that made them that way. The radical’s desire to change society then becomes that much firmer. Each blow makes him a stronger radical.”

“When truth only emerges after power fades, it is not conviction—it is convenience. Silence in privilege, and noise in rejection, is not principle—it’s manipulation. Thus, we must always question the sincerity of those who suddenly find their voice only after losing proximity to power. For such a late awakening smells more of selfishness than of selflessness.”

“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.”

“Charitable endeavour exalts the prestige and the status of the giver. This may sound unduly cynical but as with all philantrophic activity, it is not easy to unravel the mutually reinforcing motives of selflessness and self-interest. All that can safely be said is that most members of the royal family have difficulty distinguishing between concern about society, concern about the social order and concern about what best to do so they can remain at the top of it.”

“We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.”

“The amazing thing about becoming a parent is that you will never again be your own first priority. The gift of motherhood is the selflessness that it introduces you to, and I think that's really freeing... I think it allows you to put yourself in other people's shoes...the empathy that it slugs you with, being a mother. And I think it makes you a better storyteller.”