It seems kind of selfish now, when I think about why I started this event. Ten years ago my son, Jacob, was a sophomore here. He had written a paper about John Steinbeck. He wanted to present this paper at one of the conferences I went to, but I told him they didn't let students do that.
kind present son written selfish students paper john
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce
woman selfish divorce guy
How small an selfish is sorrow. But it bangs one about until one is senseless. (letter to Edith Sitwell, shortly after the death of George VI)
death sorrow small letter selfish
I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that sounds selfish to a lot of people and I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing. But that's the way I'm doing it.
rights sound life people children sounds selfish thing
He is a man who is ready for redemption. He has lived a selfish, hedonistic life for the last 20 years and is now faced with looking at himself in the mirror
life man redemption selfish mirror ready
I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
mistakes friendship life control hell times hard insecure selfish worst deserve
I am selfish. I am brave.
brave selfish
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.
vision sleep choice philosophy life power ego confidence real sense naked body values experience reason spirit desire charity person surrender worthy selflessness sex enjoyment convictions virtue corruption philosophers stand act matter fact fake blind selfish performing motive accept love result attractive
Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul.
rules proof perception men beauty rest art soul lies color fair beautiful judgment knowledge arts fire dependence lost study learn doctrine pretense pictures taste amusement selfish minds souls cold form
Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself,. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.
race purpose gifts writing work action peace art courage human children world earth fear actor attention gift hurt writer end creative write angels spite shame question act born unique selfish path cancer cold part cure scientist planet god destroy give
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.
people faith religion morality selfishness ethics cruelty stupidity selfish stupid evidence imperfections atheism side
I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
anger travel life man work enjoy friends good loneliness mad woman write succeed difficult selfish myself books
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
mystery literature writing personality lies true struggles good attention book writers lazy write instinct prose vain writing-craft struggle illness understand selfish motives baby demon books thing resist
If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.
religion christ christian-behavior jesus poor serve nation pretend selfish love christian needy
This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. Love is not possessive. Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. Love is not touchy. Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen.
trust manners people men truth relationships evil good endurance ideas patience end limits lose wickedness speak fact selfish fallen love hope christian thing
Four days before my mother's funeral there was a pouring of rain, and if it continued, as was usual in July in Changchow, the city would be flooded, and there could be no funeral. As most of us came from Shanghai, the delay would have meant some inconvenience. One of my relatives - a rather extreme but not an unusual example of a Christian believer in China - told me that she had faith in God, Who would always provide for His children. She prayed, and the rain stopped, apparently in order the a tiny family of Christians might have their funeral without delay. But the implied idea that, but for us, God would willingly subject the tens of thousands of Changchow inhabitants to a devastating flood, as was often the case, or that He did not stop the rain because of them but because of us who wanted to have a conveniently dry funeral, stuck me as an unbelievable type of selfishness. I cannot imagine God providing for such selfish children. There was also a Christian pastor who wrote the story of his life, attesting to many evidences of the hand of God in his life, for the purpose of glorifying God. One of the evidences adduced was that, when he has got together 600 silver dollars to buy his passage to America, God lowered the rate of exchange on the day this so very important individual was to buy his passage. The difference in the rate of exchange for 600 silver dollars could have been at most ten or twenty dollars, and God was willing to rock the bourses in Paris, London, and New York in order that this curious child of His might save ten or twenty dollars. Let us remind ourselves that this way of glorifying God is not at all unusual in any part of Christendom.
purpose philosophy life idea order faith family days city children story difference america individual day christians selfishness imagine child rain stop delay hand selfish unusual flood london rock part important paris china relatives pagan save funeral god curious christian extreme pastor
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.
culture patriotism death society moment pride feel individual day selfishness tragedy nationalism falsehood honest vanity die universal patriotic selfish popular pop-culture pop popular-culture individuals patriot routine god love
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.
nature death loving hate word selfishness hatred selfish indifference cruel love
It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
force life absence death true world fear dreaming respect moving person bad eyes forward natural selfish afraid ending dying worse
I am afraid of reduction. After a lifetime's independence- yes, selfish independence- I am terrified of being reduced to childhood once more, to helplessness, to seas of confusion from which the cruel lucid intervals poke up like rock shoals. I don't want to sit in my chair and be fed, much less do I want to be handed over to medical professionals.
medical death confusion fear childhood helplessness selfish afraid rock cruel
If you are distant and misanthropic, selfish or cruel, you will find yourself alone in life and death.
life death find selfish cruel way-of-life
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? Why am I? After a moment's thought, he decided he better change it to: why are here. That way, no agency of retribution could exact payment from him for being selfish.
chance accident content retribution change death moment thought earth fear fire individual selfishness searching eyes lie press mathematics selfish geometry probability warfare statistics agency god
A lack of common sense usually ends in some heroic feat, much like the soldier who dives onto the grenade so that others may live.
example heroes faith genius courage bravery metaphor sacrifice common-sense risk self-sacrifice fool metaphors selfishness selflessness simile crazy hero risk-taking beast warrior selfish soldier courageous
These are the few ways we can practice humility: To speak as little as possible of one's self. To mind one's own business. Not to want to manage other people's affairs. To avoid curiosity. To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully. To pass over the mistakes of others. To accept insults and injuries. To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked. To be kind and gentle even under provocation. Never to stand on one's dignity. To choose always the hardest.
mistakes forgiveness gossip kind curiosity insult dignity acceptance humility rejection humble quiet selfish difficulty forgotten dislike injury
Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.
forgiveness selfish
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