The greatest of all flatterers is self-love.—Rochefoucauld.
Self-love exaggerates both our faults and our virtues.—Goethe.
Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.—Rochefoucauld.
Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait.—Ruffini.
A prudent consideration for Number One.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.—Erasmus.
The most inhibited sin in the canon.—Shakespeare.
Ofttimes nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right.—Milton.
Whose thoughts are centered on thyself alone.—Dryden.
Self-reliance.—The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.—Samuel Smiles.