A man or a woman may be highly irritable, and yet be sweet, tender, gentle, loving, sociable, kind, charitable, thoughtful for others, unselfish, generous. [ Charles Buxton ]

A great man, I take it, is a man so inspired and permeated with the ideas of God and the Christly spirit as to be too magnanimous for vengeance, and too unselfish to seek his own ends. [ David Thomas ]

It is good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallowtrade; you must know where to find yourself. [ George Eliot ]

The awakening of our best sympathies, the cultivation of our best and purest tastes, strengthening the desire to be useful and good, and directing youthful ambition to unselfish ends, - such are the objects of true education. [ J. T. Headley ]

The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions, - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature. [ Guizot ]

Weakness can never be beautiful, either morally or physically: and though the feminine type may possess greater softness and more feeling, it must be active, firm, and healthy, or it cannot be beautiful; the weak mind, distracted by alternations of feeling, and constant craving for help and sympathy from others, cannot at the same time possess that tenderness and unselfish devotion which is the loveliest trait of the female character. [ M. Martell ]