David Brooks Quotes

I was deaf and dumb and blind to all but me, myself and I.

Relationships are give-and-take, and when you're a tennis player, you're certainly not giving. You have to be self-absorbed. It has to be about you.

When I was 20 or 21, I didn't... I won't say care about anything, but you're like in your own world - you made something that you always wanted to do, and then you kind of think only about your family and yourself.

I never really look at other people; I just worry about myself.

I'm not selfish before a fight or afterwards, but for the time of the fight itself, I have to think totally of myself.

Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.

Every true passion thinks only of itself.

Our own selfishness makes us the most arrant cowards; our own selfishness is the great cause of fear and cowardice.

If you want to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you and what people think of you.

Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.

In my own pursuit of God, I often became preoccupied with ME! It was easy to think that being constantly aware of my faults and weakness was humility. It’s not! If I’m the main subject, talking incessantly about my weaknesses, I have entered into the most subtle form of pride.

Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

Babies and the old are permitted self-absorption. In between, it provokes resentment.

We feel most small, we feel most challenged when we're only focusing on ourselves. Because even when you fulfill yourself, meaning you get what you think you want, you still find yourself in a position where it's never enough.

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.

Depression is the most extreme form of vanity.

Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assume importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.

Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.

No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

Doth any man live more to himself, or less to God, than the proud?