“If you seek in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt.”

“You desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

“When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart…”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

“What hinders that you should be a child of God? Is not salvation free? Is not the invitation to it flung out to you on every page of the New Testament? Is not Christ offered to you in all His offices? and are you not welcome to all His benefits if you want them? Is not the Holy Spirit promised to them that ask Him? Nothing can hinder you from being a Christian, but your own worldly, selfish, proud, obstinate, unworthy, and self- righteous heart.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

“At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find your inner motivation to seek for new ideas on your own.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment — then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.”

Jean Paul (1763–1825) German novelist

“Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

“All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

“Consciously giving up the last word is a secret prayer because the you that wants the last word isn't really you at all…it's that dark spirit of one-upmanship, that dark spirit of combativeness.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician