103 Inspiring Quotes On Selfishness

In our journey through life, we often encounter the complex interplay between self-care and selfishness. Navigating this delicate balance can be challenging, with moments that demand introspection and a reevaluation of our actions. To help illuminate and inspire your path, we’ve curated a collection of the top 103 quotes on selfishness. These powerful reflections from thinkers, visionaries, and leaders offer profound insights into understanding selfishness and its impact on personal and collective well-being. Join us as we delve into these inspiring words, allowing them to spark thought, inspire change, and perhaps foster a deeper sense of empathy and self-awareness.

1. “You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and kindness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be. ” - Tony Kushner

2. “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” - Oscar Wilde

3. “Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.” - George Eliot

4. “Manifest plainness,Embrace simplicity,Reduce selfishness,Have few desires.” - Lao Tzu

5. “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” - Albert Camus

6. “I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

7. “People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.” - David Mitchell

8. “Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect” - George Sand

9. “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.” - St. Bernard of Clairvaux

10. “Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.Listen to it carefully.” - Richard Bach

11. “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” - Daniel Goleman

12. “The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.” - Herman E. Daly

13. “There are some people that see the half full cup and get upset about where the other half of the cup went... With an attitude like that, they will never be happy. I see a half full cup and I immediately take half of someone else’s cup and then I have a full cup and I’m happy. With the right attitude, life is really very simple." Peter Pan from 'Leaving Neverland' (Why Little Boys Shouldn't Run Big Corporations)” - Daniel Prokop

14. “We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.” - Christopher Hitchens

15. “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

16. “There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.” - Lydia Davis

17. “He could not believe that any of them might actually hit somebody. If one did, what a nowhere way to go: killed by accident; slain not as an individual but by sheer statistical probability, by the calculated chance of searching fire, even as he himself might be at any moment. Mathematics! Mathematics! Algebra! Geometry! When 1st and 3d Squads came diving and tumbling back over the tiny crest, Bell was content to throw himself prone, press his cheek to the earth, shut his eyes, and lie there. God, oh, God! Why am I here? Why am I here? After a moment's thought, he decided he better change it to: why are we here. That way, no agency of retribution could exact payment from him for being selfish.” - James Jones

18. “If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.” - P.G. Wodehouse

19. “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 result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strung up by the thumbs, when we hear the ominous shot which marks the end of another victim who has thought to break loose, we may be sure that in another instance life has been misunderstood--we may be sure that society has been struggled against until death alone would stop the individual from contention and evil.” - Theodore Dreiser

20. “You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.” - Sheridan Le Fanu

21. “Here I am going to say something which may come as a bit of a shock. God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to be lovable. Worthy of love. Able to be loved by Him. We don't start off being all that lovable, if we're honest. What makes people hard to love? Isn't it what is commonly called selfishness? Selfish people are hard to love because so little love comes out of them.” - William Nicholson

22. “God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.” - William Nicholson

23. “Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.” - Alexandre Dumas

24. “A selfless act out of even the purest desire to do for others, will be selfish in the satisfaction and happiness it brings to one doing it.” - Ashly Lorenzana

25. “It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction . . . [n]ot even when confronted by infinity.” - Gentry Lee

26. “Just two choices on the shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self.” - Ken Collier

27. “Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self-forgetfulness. Hence where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. Each forgets self and lives for others.But where there is selfishness it mars joy. One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of life in any home. It is like an ugly bush in the midst of a garden of flowers. It was selfishness that destroyed the first home and blighted all the loveliness of Paradise; and it has been blighting lovely things in earth's home ever since. We need to guard against this spirit.” - J.R. Miller

28. “Each one of us is selfish, including me.” - Santosh Kalwar

29. “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

30. “Nobody knows you as well as our spouse. And that means no one will be quicker to recognize a change when you deliberately start sacrificing your wants and wishes to make sure his or her needs are met. ” - Stephen Kendrick

31. “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).” - Neal A. Maxwell

32. “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.” - Edward O. Wilson

33. “My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.” - Gary Shteyngart

34. “No man is more cheated than the selfish man.” - Henry Ward Beecher

35. “It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.” - W. Somerset Maugham

36. “People don't want other people to be people.” - Gene Wolfe

37. “Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay...cats were all about using people” - Jonathan Franzen

38. “We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear," he said. "Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.” - Elizabeth Goudge

39. “People like us, we think differently, don't we? We are different. We do all the things that others do. But when it comes down to it, we don't need anyone else. We're happy doing what we do and having obligation interferes with that. And sometimes I think we don't even need ourselves. What's most important is to find out whether we're right or not.” - Simon Morden

40. “I content myself with the fact that the general system of our trade is a system of selfishness, is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature much less by the sentiments of love and heroism but is a system of distrust not of giving, but of taking advantage.” - Joshua Ferris

41. “To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.” - Alan Bennett

42. “If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.” - Criss Jami

43. “As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.” - Criss Jami

44. “It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the average person can do to force everyone to live how they would prefer. A simple vote is among the largest yet most acceptable forms of bigotry, and that is because people play the card only when they feel that in doing so it conveniences themselves.” - Criss Jami

45. “When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.” - Criss Jami

46. “Being self-sufficient is not selfish; it is a need. Harming others or yourself is not selfish because it will never benefit the self; it is just stupid.” - Elizabeth Cartwright

47. “Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.” - Blaise Pascal

48. “It all depends on what people you're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish.” - Derek Landy

49. “Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.” - Victor Hugo

50. “Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?” - Cormac McCarthy

51. “Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account; and should I labour with you upon my own account, in expectation of a return, I know I should be disappointed, and that I should in vain depend upon your gratitude. Here then I leave you to labour alone; You treat me in the same manner. The seasons change; and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security.” - David Hume

52. “Love is the most selfish of all the passions.” - Alexandre Dumas

53. “Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?” - Alan Lightman

54. “It was because all we wanted was each other's constant love and attention and for no one else to receive that love and attention, which is a selfish and difficult place to be in a relationship. We were emotionally retarded, and that was the best we could do at the time.” - Anthony Kiedis

55. “Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.” - Aristophanes

56. “Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals.” - Fulton J. Sheen

57. “Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.” - Harry S. Truman

58. “One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run.” - Mike Norton

59. “Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.” - Ouida

60. “What are you really living for? It's crucial to realize that you either glorify God, or you glorify something or someone else. You're always making something look big. If you don't glorify God when you're involved in a conflict, you inevitably show that someone or something else rules your heart.” - Ken Sande

61. “Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

62. “Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.” - Rick Yancey

63. “I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.” - Christopher Hitchens

64. “Selfishness Stops The Flow Of Blessings To You and Others” - Brenda Johnson Padgitt

65. “In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.” - David Mitchell

66. “One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all distort the image of reality that is reflected in our minds. Grace does not completely correct this distortion all at once: but it gives us a means of recognizing and allowing for it. And it tells us what we must do to correct it. Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.” - Thomas Merton

67. “The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.” - Thomas Merton

68. “How arrogant you areTo think your wretched Self so singular!The disappointments of this world will dieIn less time than the blinking of an eye,And as the earth must pass, pass by the earth Don't even glance at it, know what it's worth;What empty foolishness it is to careFor what must one day be dispersed to air!” - Farid ud-Din Attar

69. “God comes right out and tells us why he gives us more money than we need. It's not so we can find more ways to spend it. It's not so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children. It's not so we can insulate ourselves from needing God's provision. It's so we can give and give generously (2 Corinthians 8:14; 9:11)” - Randy Alcorn

70. “What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness.” - Len Deighton

71. “Everyone wants a piece of you. The trick is what piece to give.” - Solange nicole

72. “The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of parading private inclinations, of a kind that repel normal people, as if those inclinations were, all by themselves, marks of authenticity and virtue, of suffering and oppression.” - John Derbyshire

73. “When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.” - Robert Penn Warren

74. “Obviously, the choice between human selfishness and divine Selfishness is not about leaving or not leaving a relationship. More important are the day-to-day opportunities in the course of relationship. It is really the choice of living from the heart or living from fear. And how do you live from fear? Saying "yes" when your heart wants to say "no." Saying "no" when your heart wants to say "yes." By not listening to your heart (i.e., what is best for your soul), you compromise your truth, and cause suffering in the relationship. You may be afraid of hurting your friend. You may be afraid of losing their love and friendship. Whatever it is you are afraid of, it is still fear that is ruling you, rather than love.” - Joyce Vissell

75. “In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love.” - Pope Benedict-XVI

76. “Kujiua ni ubinafsi kwa sababu ya watu wanaokupenda.” - Enock Maregesi

77. “She also keeps talking about the Billie Holiday record she bought for me. And she says she wants to expose me to all these great things. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I'll have to listen to Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to all the time. It almost feels like of the three things involved: Mary Elizabeth, me, and the great things, only the first one matters to Mary Elizabeth. I don't understand that. I would give someone a record so they could love the record, not so they would always know that I gave it to them.” - Stephen Chbosky

78. “Nafasi yako peponi itapotea iwapo utamruhusu Pluto (kiongozi wa ahera) akukaribishe bazarai (makao makuu ya ahera) kwa kuchukua maisha yako mwenyewe. Kujiua ni kujipenda zaidi kuliko unaowapenda. Anayejiua hujifikiria zaidi yeye kuliko wengine.” - Enock Maregesi

79. “I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change — most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink — are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.” - Kathe Koja

80. “The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason. I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.” - Erich Fromm

81. “You selfish bitch!"She had known for a long time that putting her needs above those of Adam's wife and children was indeed selfish. She had no real answer to the accusation thrown at her."I'm sorry" she said, with her head in her hands."you're sorry?" came her adversary's disbelieving reply."I am. I'm sorry he married you when he was in love with me. I'm sorry I couldn't have loved someone else. I'm sorry your marriage is a joke and I'm sorry that I'm alone. I'm sorry for a lot of things - for you, for your kids, for me and for him. I spend most of my time being sorry."For a moment there was silence at the end of the line."all you had to do was stay away""if only I could have." tears escaped and raced down her cheeks."I hate you!” - Anna McPartlin

82. “I thought he'd pick me, I know he has kids, but when it came down to it, I really thought he'd pick me."Tears rolled down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed."I know I'm selfish""You're human""I wanted him to abandon his children” - Anna McPartlin

83. “I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm interested in us.' - Julia” - George Orwell

84. “Indeed this gentleman's stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself.” - Charles Dickens

85. “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want.” - Mother Teresa

86. “Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.” - Criss Jami

87. “...perhaps great sins start as simple weakness, and the consistent placing of self before others.” - Anne Perry

88. “...I committed a sin the day I refused you - I discovered metal inside me where my heart should be - forgive me, Love, for acting on principles...” - John Geddes

89. “You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.” - Agatha Christie

90. “...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.” - Bill McKibben

91. “Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.” - Piero Gheddo

92. “Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.” - Immanuel Kant

93. “Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be.” - Randy Alcorn

94. “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.” - William Wilberforce

95. “I don't want you to leaveWhich is exactly why I should. But don't worry. I'm essentially a selfish creature. I crave your company too much to do what I should.” - Stephenie Meyer

96. “All love may begin by being passionate, especially for younger people. But in the process of living together, they have to learn and practice love, so that selfishness--the tendency to possess--will diminsh, and the elemetns of understanding and gratitude will settle in, little by little, until their love becomes nourishing, protecting, and reassuring," (41).” - Thich Nhat Hanh

97. “To Love oneself is Ok but,to love only oneself isn't!” - Krishna Kumar Kanagal

98. “I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can't break this window. I can't even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone at risk. I won't let myself do that.I'm not selfish like Lily.I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I pres so heard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I'm hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control.” - Courtney Summers

99. “The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places. (p 57)” - Bryant McGill

100. “It is not really a small thing when in small things we resist self.” - Thomas A. Kempis

101. “It is possible that our present-day discussion about needs might be framed more by secular psychological theories than by Scripture. If this is so, we should be careful about saying, "Jesus meets all our needs." At first, this has a plausible biblical ring to it. Christ _is_a friend; God _is_ a loving Father; Christians _do_ experience a sense of meaningfulness and confidence in knowing God's love. It makes Christ the answer to our problems. Yet if our use of the term "needs" is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs.” - Edward T. Welch

102. “When we don’t put the brakes on our self-absorption, we have nothing stopping us from total self-destruction. We become the fruits of our actions.” - Zeena Schreck

103. “It's way too easy to see the real face of a person. They're amiable and full of pretense when they want something from you, but the minute you don't give in, back away or put yourself first (like they do) is the minute they show you who they really are.” - Donna Lynn Hope