"Selflessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he scores! Look at all that valiance, that beauty of life gone out to perish for a cause it knows to be right; think of the generosity of that giving by the young men; think of the faithful courage of the women who steel themselves to let them go; think of the increase of spirit and selflessness which everywhere rises to meet the claim. All over the land which goes to war that is happening (and in the enemy's land it is the same), making war a sacred and a holy thing. And having got it so sanctified, then the Devil can do with it almost what he likes. That's what ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... more detail the suffrage campaigns and the National and International councils in which we took part; now it is of her I wish to write—of her bigness, her many-sidedness, her humor, her courage, her quickness, her sympathy, her understanding, her force, her supreme common-sense, her selflessness; in short, of the rare beauty of her nature as I learned ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... centre of his business interests, and lose himself on the hills above Weircombe. Not accident, but a high design had been hidden in this incident—a design in which Self had been transformed to Selflessness, and loneliness to love. "I should like to believe in God—if I could!" This he had said to his friend Vesey, on the last night he had seen him. And now—did he believe? Yes!—for he had benefited by his first experience of what a truly God-like love may be—the love ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Manifestation there must be a feminine element (das ewig-weibliche). And thirdly, the possibility of vicarious moral action. On the first, I need only remark that one of those legends of Sakya Muni, which are so full of moral meaning, is beautified by this selflessness. On the second, that Kuan-yin or Kwannon, though formerly a god, [Footnote: 'God' and 'Goddess' are of course unsuitable. Read pusa.] the son of the Buddha Amitâbha, is now regarded as a goddess, 'the All-compassionate, Uncreated Saviour, the Royal Bodhisat, who (like ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... he said, "is bestowed impartially upon sot and Samaritan. I helped the little fellow next door to the bathroom this afternoon while his mother was away at work, and my selflessness had its ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... government can do, and must do, it us ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighters' courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that ...
— Inaugural Presidential Address - Contributed Transcripts • Barack Hussein Obama
... realizing. Then the foreboding silence became more dreadful than any sound.... It was terrible for Lane. That strange cold knot in his breast, that coil of panic, seemed to spring and tear, quivering through all his body. What had he known of torture, of sacrifice, of divine selflessness? He understood now how the loved and guarded woman went down into the Valley of the Shadow for the sake of a man. Likewise, he knew the infinite tragedy of a ruined girl who lay in agony, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... forgiveness, charity, and a sympathy that makes the man brother to all who endure and suffer. The individual himself is nothing; he has nothing to hope for, nothing to gain, nothing to win, nothing to lose; for the first time and the last he has a selflessness that is wide as the world, and wherein there is no room for the recollection of a wrong. In this memory of a great love, there is a nourishing source of strength by which the possessor lives and works; he is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... only in Buddhism and the Indian religions, but in Christianity too, that the ideal of selflessness is preached with all fervour. In the last the symbol of death has been used for expressing the idea of man's deliverance from the life which is not true. This is the same as Nirvnana, the symbol of ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... conflict with childish ideals which made personal gain first. A new impulse to forget self in loving service confronts the old self seeking and self love. Then the truth that "No man can serve two masters," fastens itself upon the soul and decision waits between self and selflessness. In a struggle that often shakes a life to its foundations, the great choice is made and the soul yields itself servant to obey. Though a reversal of either choice is possible, it rarely occurs. This decision usually ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... that time—who, born in the gutter, still loved to wallow in his native element, and who measured all his fellow-creatures by the same standard which he had always found good enough for himself. In this man there was neither the enthusiastic patriotism of a Chauvelin, nor the ardent selflessness of a Danton. He served the revolution and fostered the anarchical spirit of the times only because these brought him a competence and a notoriety, which an orderly and fastidious government would obviously ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
