Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carol Shields

So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal other.

Alan Keyes

You can't build marriage on a foundation of selfish hedonism, because that would be to promise people only roses, and marriage is also thorns.

Alan Keyes

Selfish hedonism is not a pejorative. It is a description - an exactly accurate description of what is involved in homosexual relations.

Charlotte Bronte

I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.

Charles Trevelyan

If the Irish once find out that there are any circumstances in which they can get free government grants, we shall have a system of mendicancy [begging] such as the world never knew”. After a million had starved to death he stated “The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

Charles Trevelyan

The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

Charles Dudley Warner

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

Charles Dickens

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time.

Charles Dickens

Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with the former.

Charles Dickens

My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention

Charles Dickens

I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.

Charles Spurgeon

The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem.

Richard G. Scott

To be humble is to be teachable.

Ricky Gervais

Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.

Djuna Barnes

Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same.

Djuna Barnes

I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat.

David Krumholtz

It was a frying-pan-to-the-face moment for me where I had to get humble and really cherish it. I was really sad when [Numbers] was over. I'll just say that. Really sad.

David Dewhurst

Normally, I've found in my life that the louder you speak, probably, the less of a fighter you are. All the fighters I've had a chance and the honor to serve with didn't pat themselves on the back, were pretty humble men and women.

Brad Pitt

So I swear to God, I took one year where I just said, This year, I'm just going to cop to it and say to people, 'Okay, where did we meet?' But it just got worse. People were more offended. Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I'll say, 'Thank you for helping me.' But I piss more people off. You get this thing, like, 'You're being egotistical. You're being conceited.' But it's a mystery to me, man. I can't grasp a face and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.

William Shakespeare

These signs have marked me extraordinary, And all the courses of my life do show I am not in the roll of common men.

William Shakespeare

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance: they are but beggars who can count their worth.

William Shakespeare

Conceit in weakest bodies works the strongest.

Ben Jonson

The world knows only two, that's Rome and I.

Ben Jonson

[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.

Ayn Rand

Why no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.

Dario Fo

I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and... pssss... they deflate.

James McTeigue

Without sounding conceited about it, it was hard but it did not seem like such a huge leap, because I had done a lot of big films and been around enough talented directors to know what to do if I was in their position.