Character Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.

— Reinhold Niebuhr

The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— John Owen

That which is inherent in man is his virtue.

— Mahatma Gandhi

“his very benevolence is selfish;”

— Walter Scott

A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest.

— Benjamin Butler

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too…

— Edmund Burke

Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up…

— Charles W. Chesnutt

Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.

— Samuel Johnson

Man is naturally more disposed to beneficent than selfish actions. This we learn even from the history of savages. The domestic virtues have something…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Every man has his own reason for every deed. Usually it is selfish.

— David Gemmell

Of all influences that cause men to choose wrong, selfishness is undoubtedly the strongest. Where it is, the Spirit is not.

— William R. Bradford