Reflecții și Maxime vol. I.

Selfish: person with bad taste, more interested in himself than in me; inconsiderate of others' selfishness.

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Strange: in this commandment of altruistic morality, selfishness is proposed as an example to follow.

In the name of love for our neighbor, we are asked at every turn to sacrifice ourselves for the "selfishness" of others.

Man has always accepted as logical and rational all that his egoism has agreed upon, placing it above reality.

Whoever does not come out of the ME, does not reach the absolute and does not decipher life either.

When you've lit a torch, you can't hold it down.

Be just before you are generous, be humane before you are just.

When a grain of sand in your shoes annoys you, do not imagine that all mankind has stopped from its glorious path.

Be careful when you want to help others, not to wrong others... There is no generous act if it is not right.

Why, when the thing can be done without any loss to us, should we not let another partake of goods which, benefiting the receiver, cause no loss to the giver.

The charitable say: "He who gives to the poor lends to God." Curious almsgiving: to make usury even with God.

The morality that would require you to look at yourself, cannot claim to remember your fellows.

People condemn selfishness: but "self-love" is nothing but the "instinct of preservation": otherwise, without this instinct both the individual and the species would be lost... and this is how the moralists who teach us to love each other too much I put dynamite in our souls to destroy our race.

Altruism springs from selfishness just as sunlight springs from a shadow.

Do danie; but if you are unable, save the poor from the shame of asking by extending your hand.

Truly generous people are always ready to become compassionate when the enemy's misfortune exceeds the bounds of their hatred.

The man who gladly shows the way to the lost, does as if he were to kindle a light from his own light; does it light less for you, if you have lighted from your torch also another's?

Egoism has only itself as its sole goal. Egoism constrains, concentrates man on himself: it gives him a dense, solid principle of life; but it makes him bounded, making him indifferent to anything not immediately related to his well-being.

There is a kind of generosity: when, out of a start of kindness and affection, we give to others the very thing that we also need; when to lessen the suffering of others, we are ready to share it.

Altruist: ...reasonably selfish.

To look after one's own interests and take care of them does not mean something contrary to the nature of human society, as long as this does not cause an injury to the rights of another.

In life we ​​each carry a flag on which is written in large letters: ME.

Slavery is not a state conducive to generosity and forgiveness. Generosity is the virtue of the strong.

Man always finds high motives for his selfish actions. The anthropophagus, who eats his parents for lack of meat, is convinced that he is doing a moral act...

Altruism:... the virtue of the strong.

Many love only the love others have for them.

Selfishness is the desperate urge to steal a ray that does not illuminate others.

Give to each his due, and to you what remains.

Selfishness means making your being the prison of your soul.

Only the death of the egoist is complete; none of it remains with others.