Georges Bernanos Quotes

Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

The howl of self-interest is loud ... but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.

I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.

There's no such thing as altruism.

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?

I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.

The poison of selfishness destroys the world.

I'm not too selfish or unselfish.

As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books? "Self.

Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself.

In order to help usher in the golden age we must see the good in people. We must know it is there, no matter how deeply it may be buried. Yes, apathy is there and selfishness is there - but good is there also. It is not through judgment that the good can be reached, but through love and faith.

Some, like Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, have a hard time loving anyone, even themselves, because of their selfishness. Love seeks to give rather than to get. Charity towards and compassion for others is a way to overcome too much self-love

Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others.

In short, selfishness is the opposite of love.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

There is a need for everyone's brain to be imprinted with more self-enhancing impulses: the impulse to peace over violence, love over fear, compassion over selfishness.

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?

Nobody acts purely selfishly.

There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.

All pity is self-pity.

Only one human being recognized as one's neighbour is necessary in order to cure a man of self-love