Ivan Turgenev Quotes

Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.

The world calls for, and expects from us, simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility, detachment, and self-sacrifice. Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man.

One who has no love in his heart will try to possess everything for himself. One who has love in his heart is ready to sacrifice everything, including his own body, for the benefit of others.

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.

To love is to will the good of the other.

I want to be that person who could sacrifice everything for others.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious.

Why does God endow us with compassion?

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.

A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant of the society.

I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life.

Improv requires one thing I lack that I think most mothers need - the basic instinct to put someone else first.

I guess I'm way too kind and generous, and a saint - if you can believe that!

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else.

The exercise of benevolence is joy to loving hearts: the more pain it costs, the more joy it is. Kind actions make us happy, and in such joy we find communion with the great heart of Jesus.

Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.

You get everything you could have ever wished for if you're willing to give that eternal bliss away to somebody else, to give it back.

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most.

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.