Eric Hoffer Quotes

Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.

There is nothing so high as renunciation of self.

You've got to be dedicated and throw yourself into parts and auditions in a way that is completely selfless.

I've just become obsessed with ballroom dancing. I signed up for the introductory course, which was like a four-week thing. By the end of it, I was hooked. I love it. It's sort of flirty, but it's not sexual. I can't quit until I've got it down and I can really dance. I'm there four or five times a week.

He will have true glory who despises it.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

I love football, but being away from it is tough.

Unconsciousness of self is not so much unselfishness as it is the mental ability to extinguish all thought of one's self - exactly as one turns out the light.

A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.

We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves

Cut out the love of self, like an autumn lotus with thy hand!

Oh, I'm a martyr to music.

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself.

True love is the parent of humility.

I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.

Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.

There is no greater love than this. There is no greater gift that can ever be given. To be willing to die, so another might live -- there is no greater lover than this.

There are other books in a man's library besides Ovid, and after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets up and is free. We have all been there; we have all had the fever--the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, Rinaldo, downward: but it burns out, and you get well.

Love is a vulnerable thing. Falling in love is like a great drug.

He often wondered whether it were possible to be more possessed by desire for any other woman. The fact was that they functioned well together, and they had a connection as addictive as heroin.

My greatest strength is the love for my people, my greatest weakness is that I love them too much.