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Selfishness: Quotations from Burning Words

Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and I will show you one who will never be admitted there.— OWEN FELTHAM

Did any man at his death ever regret his conflicts with himself, his victories over appetite, his scorn of impure pleasure, or his sufferings for righteousness' sake?— W. E. CHANNING

A man as he goes down in self, goes up in God. It is interesting to trace this in the experience of the apostle Paul, as gathered from his Epistles. In the year of our Lord 59, he is the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God. In the year of our Lord 64, after four years more of growth in grace, he is "less than the least of all saints." But in the year of our Lord 65, and not long before he was about to receive his crown in heaven, he is "the chief of sinners."— DR. CHEEVER

I hold, in truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.— TENNYSON

If we desire to do what will please God, and what will help men, we presently find ourselves taken out of our narrow habits of thought and action; we find new elements of our nature called into activity; we are no longer running along a narrow track of selfish habit.— J. F. CLARKE

O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.— THOMAS À KEMPIS

A man is called selfish, not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's. The very heart and root of sin is in an independent spirit. We erect the idol self; and not only wish others to worship, but worship ourselves.— RICHARD CECIL

We can neither change nor overpower God's eternal suffrage against selfishness and meanness.— JAMES MARTINEAU

Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man, myself.— THOMAS BROOKS

The selfish man cuts away the sand from under his own feet, he digs his own grave; and every time, from the beginning of the world until now, God Almighty pushes him into the grave and covers him up.— C. H. FOWLER

Alas! how many souls there are full of self, and yet desirous of doing good and serving God, but in such a way as to suit themselves; who desire to impose rules upon God as to His manner of drawing them to Himself. They want to serve and possess Him, but they are not willing to be possessed by Him.— FENELON

It is self-love and its offspring self-deception, which shut the gates of heaven, and lead men, as if in a delicious dream, to hell.— CHRISTIAN SCRIVER

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.— C. H. SPURGEON,

Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.— JOHN OWEN

If you seek in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt.— JONATHAN EDWARDS

If we look only to self even in spiritual things, it is still selfishness though possibly on a somewhat higher plane than before. -— A. P. VAN GIESEN

There is a sickly habit that men get of looking into themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We are always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one who is thinking how he appears to others becomes dizzy with affectation. He is too conscious of what he is doing, and self-consciousness is affectation. Let us aim at being natural. And we can only become natural by thinking of God and duty, instead of the way in which we are serving God and duty.— F. W. ROBERTSON

We are too much haunted by ourselves; we project the central shadow of ourselves on every thing around us. And then comes in the gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this - to forget self in God.— F. W. ROBERTSON

I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it?— ELIZABETH PRENTISS

Less, less of self each day, And more, my God, of Thee !— HORATIUS BONAR

Think about yourselves; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay to you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. May God keep our hearts pure from that selfishness which is the root of all sin.— CHARLES KINGSLEY