Quotes about Selflessness

Christopher Hitchens

He preferred yielding his own wish to gratify others, rather than to insist upon having his own way.

The only way love can be shown in this world is by sacrifice —namely, the surrender of one thing for another. Love is essentially bound up with choice, and choice is a negation, and negation is a sacrifice. When a young man sets his heart upon a young woman and asks her to marry him, he is not only saying "I choose you"; he is also saying "I do not choose, I reject, all others. I give them all up for you." Apply this to the problem of lust.

A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.

He now clearly perceived the truth which was henceforth to be the centre of his life, namely, that while she was there, while he had her near him, he would need nothing except for her sake and fear nothing except on her account. He was not even conscious of feeling extremely cold, having taken off his coat to cover her.

Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

Because love means renouncing strength.

Everything he did, he did for Sabina, the way Sabina would have liked to see it done.

I love animals. They give so much to you and demand so little. And you can trust them.

Sacrifice is the essence of love, which is the essence of God.

Wheresoever we seek our own, there we fall from love.

He does much who loves God much, and he does much who does his deed well, and he does his deed well who does it rather for the common good than for his own will.