Selfishness - christiansquoting.org.uk

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves -Gene Fowler, "Skyline"

O take heed of this squint eye to our profit, pleasure, honour, or anything beneath Christ and heaven; for they will take away your heart ... that is, our love, and if our love be taken away, there will be little courage left for Christ.- WILLIAM GURNALL

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. - John Andrew Holmes

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. - Thomas Henry Huxley

He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.- Samuel Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good." -Samuel Johnson: Taxation No Tyranny

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights. - Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims", 1804-1815

Where no man thinks himself under any obligation to submit to another, and, instead of co-operating in one great scheme, every one hastens through by-paths to private profit, no great change can suddenly be made; nor is superior knowledge of much effect, where every man resolves to use his own eyes and his own judgment, and every one applauds his own dexterity and diligence, in proportion as he becomes rich sooner than his neighbour. - Samuel Johnson: Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain

There can be no place for self entirely - Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) to his captains.

The world is living today in what might be described as an era of carnality, which glorifies sex, hates restraint, identifies purity with coldness, innocence with ignorance, and turns men and women into Buddhas with their eyes closed, hands folded across their breasts, intently looking inward, thinking only of self. -Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979) _The Cross and the Beatitudes_ [1937]

Religion should never become the subject of selfishness, yet I fear some treat it as if its chief end were personal spiritual gratification. When a man's religion totally lies in saving only himself and in enjoying holy things for himself, there is a disease within him. When his judgment of a sermon is based on the one question, "Did it feed me?" it is a swinish judgment. There is such a thing as getting a swinish religion in which you are yourself first, yourself second, yourself third, yourself to the utmost end. Did Jesus think or speak in that fashion? Contemplation of Christ Himself may be carried out so as to lead you away from Him. The recluse meditates on Jesus, but he is as unlike the busy, self-denying Jesus as any can be. Meditation, unattended by active service in the spreading of the Gospel among men, well deserves the rebuke of the angel, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?" -Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)

The centre of trouble is not the turbulent appetites -- though they are troublesome enough. The centre of trouble is in the personality of man as a whole, which is self-centred and can only be wholesome and healthy if it is God-centred.-William Temple (1881-1944)