No one said being in a relationship would be easy, and for those who are with a selfish partner, it can often feel downright impossible.
If you're struggling to make your relationship work with someone who always puts themselves first, take comfort in knowing you're not alone.
These 75+ quotes about selfish love perfectly capture what you're likely feeling.
And while it may be difficult to stay hopeful and positive, remember that things can change if both partners are willing to put in the effort.
Quotes About Selfish Love
1. “Relationships based on selfish reasons will not give you love, fulfillment or inner happiness.” –Hina Hashmi
2. “The wrong person will never give you what you want, but they'll make sure they get what they want from you.”- Sonya Parker
3. “It's enough to indulge and to be selfish but true happiness is really when you start giving back.”- Adrian Grenier
4. “Each one lives, waving selfishness; indeed, it is human nature; whereas, one's motives exhibit its frame of mind and character, not nature.” Ehsan Sehgal
5. “It's good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.” Hugh Hefner
6. “Selfishness may result in one's sense of superiority, but life as such will surely deny them.” Eraldo Banovac
7. “When you're in a relationship, and you love someone, it can't always be about you, remember you have to give to receive.”- Unknown
8. “In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.” David Mitchell
9. “A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.” Richard Whately
10. “The best weapon for selfishness is selfishness for the cause of others.” Enock Maregesi
11. “All people ever do is think about themselves… For once, try considering the next persons feeling and stop being selfish!” – Unknown
12. “When you're in love with someone who is selfish, it's hard to put your own needs first..” – Unknown
13. “Selfishness leads to loneliness.” Wayne Gerard Trotman
14. “It's not my job to make you happy. It's your job to learn that only those who quit selfishly seeking their own happiness find it.” Richelle E. Goodrich
15. “Selfishness comes from poverty in the heart, from the belief that love is not abundant.” — Don Miguel Ruiz
16. “Insecurities, betrayal, and selfishness are the things that will never make you a happy person.” — Unknown
17. “Selfishness, not love, is the actuating motive of the gallant.” — Madame Roland
18. “The real measure of selfishness is by asking a person how much he is willing to sacrifice.” — Unknown
19. “There is only one all pervading God. It has only one message – Love all, encompass all and transcend the limits of the selfish gene.” –Amit Ray
20. “Love is an activity, not a feeling … True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish.” –Stephen L. Carter
21. “Love isn't supposed to be selfish.” –Ellen Hopkins
22. “Love wasn't selfless, and it wasn't selfish either. Love was equality. It was saying that another person's self was just as important as yours, and expecting them to feel the same way.” – Rose Lerner
23. “Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.” –Thornton T. Munger
24.”Cheating is the most selfish thing a person can do in a relationship! If you're not happy with the person you're with, then end it. It's that simple!”- Jerry Springer
25. “Do you resolve to do the right and to love the true, depend upon it you will get no assistance from this world? Of its maxims, nine out of ten are false, and the other one selfish; and even that which is selfish has a lie at the bottom of it.” –Charles Spurgeon
Selfish Love Quotes For Boyfriend
26. “No man is more cheated than the selfish man.” Henry Ward Beecher
27. “A man is nothing more than the things he does to get what he wants.” Hal Ackerman
28. “Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.” Erich Fromm
29. “Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?” Cormac McCarthy
30. “You have this one life. If you keep being selfish and unkind, it's going to come back to you.” Clemantine Wamariya
31. “Selfishness is the most unattractive virtue a mortal can possess.” Suyasha Subedi
32. “Selfish, a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their power of sacrifice.” George Eliot
33. “It is interesting how the selfish, the ignorant, and the constantly angry all tend to be the same person.” — Wayne Gerard Trotman
34. “Selfishness keeps man blind through life.” — Hazrat Inayat Khan
35. “What a cage is to the wild beast, the law is to the selfish man.” — Herbert Spencer
36. “With fools, there is no companionship. Rather than to live with men who are selfish, vain, quarrelsome, and obstinate, let a man walk alone.” — Buddha
37. “A selfish man doesn't care even if his best friend drowns beside him.” — Joe Cervantes
38. “One of the problems hanging out with me is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends, and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time.” – Neal Stephenson
39. “I can't need you, but I need you to need me. I know that makes me a selfish bastard, but it's all I can offer.” –Renea Mason
40. “For a man filled with a great, true, and unselfish love, even if it be on one side only, there open horizons and possibilities and paths which are closed and unknown to so many clever, ambitious, and selfish men.” –Ivo Andric
41. “Always be careful, aware and watchful – but never cheap and selfish.” –Sahara Sanders
42. “Love was sacrificing your selfish nature for someone you were more committed to than yourself” –Tarryn Fisher
Selfish Love Quotes For Girlfriends
43. “You don't need to be with your boyfriend if you're going to get mad about him being friends with girls. That's selfish” – Unknown
44. “Love isn't one-sided and selfish. It is full and generous and life-altering in the best of ways. Love does not destroy Gabriel. It creates.” –Sarah MacLean
45. “We exhaust ourselves more from the tension and the consequences of internal disharmony than from hard, unremitting work.”-Stephen Covey
46. “Love is just a word we use to describe what boils down to a selfish and temporary state of happiness.” – Sara Zarr
47. “God does not give heed to the ambitiousness of our prayers because he is always ready to give to us his light, not a visible light but an intellectual and spiritual one; but we are not always ready to receive it when we turn aside and down to other things out of a desire for temporal things.” –Saint Augustine
48. “Love, then, must be true to the ones we love and to ourselves, and also to its own laws. I cannot be true to myself if I pretend to have more in common than I actually have with someone whom I may like for a selfish and unworthy reason.” –Thomas Merton
49. “Mourning can be very selfish. When someone you love has died, you tend to recall best those few moments and incidents that helped clarify your sense, not of the person who has died, but of your own self.” –Russell Banks
50. “How she loved you, her bubeleh, her boychik, her darling, but there was something cloying in that love, something theatrical and selfish, and you knew it and, as soon as you were big enough, you kept her at a safe distance.” –Siri Hustvedt
51. “If you're not selfish enough to want to feel good, then you can't connect with the energy that is your Source which does always feel good.” –Esther Hicks
52. “The selfish and self-centered have a hard time being kind, even though you and I know that kindness is a source of relief to the soul.” –Janvier Chouteu-Chando
53. “People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them.” –Criss Jami
54. “The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls” –Dean Koontz
55. “She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.” –Gustave Flaubert
56. “Sexual love, Peter, is a profoundly selfish emotion. And selfish emotions are not the ones that lead to happiness.” –Ayn Rand
57. “I'm selfish. Selfish enough to want it all. And I know if I don't have you …I don't have anything.” –Katie Klein
58. “To achieve something, you need to be a little selfish…!” –Akansh Malik
59. “I was selfish that way, wanting people to bend and give me the love I needed, not necessarily the love they knew how to give.” –Tarryn Fisher
60. “When it's about your life, it's time to be selfish.” –Dee Dee Artner
RELATED: When It Matters: 57 “When No One Is Watching” Quotes
Quotes About Selfish Lovers
61. “Love without truth and honor is licentious in nature. Love without commitment is promiscuous and fleeting. Love without virtue and understanding is savage and selfish. Love without respect is short-lived. Love without these conditions is without God.” –David W. Stevens
62. “I love you because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us, dear, and selfish rascals. Neither of us cares a rap if the whole world goes to pot, so long as we are safe and comfortable.” –Margaret Mitchell
63. “Perfect love is any time you love unconditionally, without a selfish intent, without concern for personal gain.” –Erin McCarthy
64. “Everybody wants love, but not everyone wants to love.” –J. Limbu
65. “Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.” –Paramahansa Yogananda
66. “Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one's neighbor is superior to oneself.” –Aleister Crowley
67. “Love will make you reckless. It can drag out parts of you that common sense and fear usually keep hidden away. Because love is selfless and selfish.” –R.S. Grey
68. “He was only my Savior. My life was His, yet my love was bound in a selfish and worldly heart, and it would take years to manage it loose.” –Chila Woychik
69. “I know I should let you go, should let you walk away from me right now, but I can't do it. I can't. I'm selfish, and I'm in love with you, and I want nothing more than to keep you for myself.” –J.M. Darhower
70. “Romantic love is the most selfish of all emotions.” –Ellen Kenner
71. “It is not selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from non-love; it is the aim of the action.” –M. Scott Peck
72. “True love is not selfish. In time it accustoms itself to anything which secures happiness for its object.” –Sarah Chauncey Woolsey
73. “Those who claim that they can't change because people don't change are being selfish, ignorant, and abusive. They deserve no friends and no love. They deserve to be ignored.” –Robin Sacredfire
74. “Loving yourself doesn't make you selfish. When done correctly, the exact opposite occurs, because you know that selfish behaviors are negative for your mind, body and spirit.” –Donald L. Hicks
75. “As you can see, marriage is about putting away selfishness and taking on the concept of teamwork.” –Jim George
76. “The whole point of being in love with someone is to make sure their life is the best life it can be. It's not about being selfish. It's not about how great that person makes your life; It's about making their life wonderful.” –Cherie M. Hudson
77. “It was because all we wanted was each other's constant love and attention and for no one else to receive that love and attention, which is a selfish and difficult place to be in a relationship. We were emotionally retarded, and that was the best we could do at the time.” –Anthony Kiedis
78. “I told you that I needed you. But now I need you to survive. Forever. I won't live through this without you, and I'm selfish for telling you that, but it's the truth. You're my rock, Danika. I can't ever lose you, or I'll follow Jared; I know I will.” –R.K. Lilley
79. “I want my husband to lead me and our family. But in order for him to do that, I must be willing to submit to his lead. This does not mean I surrender my opinions or input or wisdom … it means I surrender my grip of control and selfish ways and trust him!” –Jennifer E. Smith
80. “Without love and kindness, life is cold, selfish, and uninteresting and leads to distaste for everything. With kindness, the difficult becomes easy, the obscure clear; life assumes a charm, and its miseries are softened. If we knew the power of kindness. We should transform the world into a paradise.” –Charles Wagner
81. “To join two things together, there must be nothing between them, or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.” –St. Catherine
82. “True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.” –Stephen L. Carter
83. “True devotion is motivated by love alone and devoid of selfish entanglements.” –Rick Hocker
84. “Love is selfish yet a selfless feeling.” –Heenashree Khandelwal
What are Your Favorite Quotes About Selfish Love?
I hope you've gained some insight after reading these 75+ quotes about selfish love.
And I hope you will make better decisions in your daily life as a result of the wisdom from these quotes.
Which of the above quotes about selfish love do you find most inspiring? Let us know in the comments below.
❤️ Related:
Alan is the founder of Subconscious Servant. He has a passion for learning about topics such as spirituality and the metaphysical world. The thing he loves to explore most though is manifesting with the law of attraction ✨.