There are more who want to be loved than who want to love.
[Y a plus de gens qui veulent être aimés que de gens qui veulent aimer eux-mêmes.]Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 6, ¶ 360 (1795) [tr. Merwin (1969)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:
There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
[Source (<1884)]
Men are more eager to be loved than anxious to love.
[tr. Mathers (1926)]
There are more people who want to be loved than there are people who want to love.
[tr. Dusinberre (1992)]
There are more people who want to be loved than people who want to love.
[tr. Siniscalchi (1994)]
Quotations about:
self-centeredness
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Ours is not the only story, just the most interesting one.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 4 (1966)
(Source)
Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) Russian film director, screenwriter, film theorist [Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский]
Sculpting in Time (1986) [tr. Hunter-Blair]
(Source)
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.