SELF-CENTERED

From an unknown source comes an article titled, "How To Be Miserable." It says, "Think about yourself. Talk about yourself. Use "I" as often as possible. Mirror yourself continually in the opinion of others. Listen greedily to what people say about you. Expect to be appreciated. Be suspicious. Be jealous and envious. Be sensitive to slights. Never forgive a criticism. Trust nobody but yourself. Insist on consideration and respect. Demand agreement with your own views on everything. Sulk if people are not grateful to you for favors shown them. Never forget a service you have rendered. Shirk your duties if you can. Do as little as possible for others."

Daily Walk, June 29, 1993.

British actor Michael Wilding was once asked if actors had any traits which set them apart from other human beings. "Without a doubt," he replied. "You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves."

Today in the Word, April 2, 1993.

I gave a little tea party this afternoon, at 3. "Twas very small, 3 guests in all - I, myself, and me. Myself ate all the sandwiches while I drank all the tea. "Twas also I who ate the pie and passed the cake to me.

Traditional.

You may have heard the story of two friends who met for dinner in a restaurant. Each requested filet of sole, and after a few minutes the waiter came back with their order. Two pieces of fish, a large and a small, were on the same platter. One of the men proceeded to serve his friend. Placing the small piece on a plate, he handed it across the table.

"Well, you certainly do have nerve!" exclaimed his friend. "

What's troubling you?" asked the other. "Look what you've done," he answered. "You've given me the little piece and kept the big one for yourself." "How would you have done it?" the man asked. His friend replied, "If I were serving, I would have given you the big piece." "Well," replied the man, "I've got it, haven't I?" At this, they both laughed.

Daily Bread, August 11, 1992.

The trouble with some self-made men is that they worship their creator.

Bits & Pieces, October, 1989, p. 9.

One cold winter's day a crowd of people stood in front of a pet shop window and watched a litter of puppies snuggling up to each other. One woman laughed and said, "What a delightful picture of brotherhood! Look at how those puppies are keeping each other warm!" A man next to her replied, "No, ma'am, they're not keeping each other warm--they're keeping themselves warm."

Today in the Word, February, 1991, p. 20.

When Roy DeLamotte was chaplain at Paine College in Georgia, he preached the shortest sermon in the college's history. However, he had a rather long topic: "What does Christ Answer When We Ask, "Lord, What's in Religion for Me?" The complete content of his sermon was in one word: "Nothing." He later explained that the one-word sermon was meant for people brought up on the 'gimme-gimme' gospel. When asked how long it took him to prepare the message, he said, "Twenty years."

Resources, 1990.

God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.

D. L. Moody.

Come over here and sit next to me, I'm dying to tell you all about myself.

Oscar Wilde.

I have found within myself all I need and all I ever shall need. I am a man of great faith, but my faith is in George Gordon Liddy. I have never failed me.

Watergate conspirator George Gordon Liddy quoted  in The Christian Century, 9-28-77, p. 836.

When Mother Teresa was passing through a crowd in Detroit a woman remarked, "Her secret is that she is free to be nothing. Therefore God can use her for anything."

Michael Glazier, Inc. catalog advertising Free to be Nothing.

Julian Huxley was committed to an evolutionary humanism. He believed: "Man's most sacred duty and at the same time his most glorious opportunity, is to promote the maximum fulfillment of the evolutionary process on this earth; and this includes the fullest realization of his own inherent possibilities."

J. Huxley, Religion without Revelation, p. 194.

The smallest package in the world is a person wrapped up in himself.

Traditional.

Bart Starr, former quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, was describing to a group of businessmen how his coach, Vince Lombardi, held absolute power. He stated that, as you entered Vince's office, you noticed a huge mahogany desk with an impressive organization chart behind it on the wall. The chart had a small block at the top in which was printed: "Vince Lombardi, Head Coach and General Manager." A line came down from it to a very large block in which was printed: "Everybody Else!"

Unknown.

The most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself...the only sustaining love involvement is with yourself...When you look back on your life and try to figure out where you've been and where you're going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriages, your children, your pain, your happiness--when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself...The only thing you have is working to the consummation of your own identity. And that's what I've been trying to do all my life.

Shirley MacLaine.

It is vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.

Blaise Pascal.

SELF-ABSORPTION

Clifton Fadiman, in The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, tells a story about Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who achieved popular success with his novels Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969).

One summer in the 1940s, Nabokov and his family stayed with James Laughlin at Alta, Utah, where Nabokov took the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths. Fadiman relates: "Nabokov's fiction has never been praised for its compassion; he was single-minded if nothing else. One evening at dusk he returned from his day's excursion saying that during hot pursuit near Bear Gulch he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream. "'Did you stop' Laughlin asked him. "'No, I had to get the butterfly.'" The next day the corpse of an aged prospector was discovered in what has been renamed, in Nabokov's honor, Dead Man's Gulch." While people around us are dying, how often we chase butterflies!

Vernon Grounds.

Humor

At a party: "My husband and I have managed to be happy together for 20 years. I guess this is because we're both in love with the same man."