Mamacita says:  Everybody is selfish on occasion; it’s human nature to want to “feel good,” and “look out for Number One” and think things like “this is best for ME,” and “I won’t share my candy!” and “It’s all for me and about me and because of MEEEEE and for my benefit!!!!” and “I want the whole thing!”   Everybody has days – or years – of wishing things were different. . . more about ME.  More about what I want.  More about what I DESERVE.  We all want, as Colin and Martha’s wise mother Susan Sowerby  told Mrs. Medlock, “. . . the whole orange.”  And if you’ve read The Secret Garden – insipid movie versions won’t do – you know what happens to people who grab for the whole orange.  And rightly so.

And still, and yet, we want the whole orange and we don’t want to share it with anybody.

This is fine, if you’re single and childless.

People who’ve made promises, and/or had children, however, had best think twice before saying such things, and five or six times before acting on them.  The world is watching, and it’s taking notes.  Is this really the example you want to set for those children you created?  Well, to each his own.  There are many people in the blogosphere and in real life (there is no difference any more, actually, as far as I’m concerned)  of whom I have a high opinion and consider good friends, whose lifestyles I would never be able to emulate, but that’s neither here nor there and absolutely none of my business except that everything is my business when it concerns people I love, and as I’ve stopped most of my judgmental rants, because if you’re looking for imperfection, look no further than right here, you’ll not find nearly as many rants here as you once did because one is never too old to learn valuable lessons, even though I would rather die a horrible death than cause an ounce of such pain for someone I loved, or once loved, everyone is different and everyone deals with everything differently, although if the woman I met on the elevator in the college the other day is reading, this one is for you, bitch.  Thinking back, I wish I’d grabbed your child and run with him.

(Are there any awards for the longest, most horrible, run-on sentence in the world?)

1. All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction. — Oscar Wilde

2. I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. –Jane Austen

3. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. –Oscar Wilde

4. The one who loves the least, controls the relationship. –Dr. Robert Anthony

5. It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones. — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

6. You shouldn’t punish others for your own choices. –Anonymous

7. There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us. — Dr. Laurence J. Peter

8. Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself. –Henry Ward Beecher

9. Modesty and unselfishness: These are the virtues which men praise, and pass by. — Andre Maurois

10. Self is ingenious, crooked, and, governed by subtle and snaky desire, admits of endless turnings and qualifications, and the deluded worshippers of self vainly imagine that they can gratify every worldly desire, and at the same time possess the Truth. — James Allen

11. All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12. You can’t get unless you give. And you have to give without wanting to get. — T.H. White

13. No man is more cheated that the selfish man. — Henry Ward Beecher

14. There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive, the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others. — Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton

15. Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples. — George Eliot

16. Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous. — James Anthony Froude

17. To be selfish is to sacrifice the nobler for the meaner ends, and to be sordidly content. — Hugh Reginald Haweis

18. What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself? –Joseph Joubert

19. How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another’s grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

20. It never enters the lady’s head that the wet-nurse’s baby probably dies. — Harriet Martineau

21. Offended self-love never forgives. — Giovanni Ruffini

22. Formerly thy soul was great, ardent, vast; the entire circle of the universe found place in thy heart. O Charles, that thou hast become small, that thou hast become miserable, since thou lovest no one but thyself! — Schiller

23. Take the selfishness out of this world and there would be more happiness than we should know what to do with. — Henry Wheeler Shaw

24. Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

25. Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it. — Douglas Horton

26. As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel. — Rick Danko

27. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

28. I was surprised by how much I like being a father; surprised at what a decent father I am, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to dump my selfishness. — Michael Zaslow

29. Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible. — Elizabeth Bowen

30. Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race. William E. Gladstone

31. The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. — John Kenneth Galbraith

32. To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. — Adam Smith

33. Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
— Richard Bach

34. None are so empty as those who are full of themselves. –Benjamin Whichcote

35. Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself. — Julio Cortazar

36. If you think about yourself then you’ve lost sight of the ball. –Mike Willesee

37. Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.
— Lawana Blackwell

38. Glory built on selfish principles is shame and guilt. — William Cowper

39. We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive. — Lord Byron

40. He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies. — Tertullian

41. If all the people in this world, in which we live, were as selfish as a few of the people in this world, in which we live, there would be no world in which to live. — W. L. Orme

42. The human being who lives only for himself finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don’t put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others. — B. C. Forbes

43. If you think only of yourself, if you forget the rights and well-being of others, or, worse still, if you exploit others, ultimately you will lose. You will have no friends who will show concern for your well-being. Moreover, if a tragedy befalls you, instead of feeling concerned, others might even secretly rejoice. By contrast, if an individual is compassionate and altruistic, and has the interests of others in mind, then irrespective of whether that person knows a lot of people, wherever that person moves, he or she will immediately make friends. And when that person faces a tragedy, there will be plenty of people who will come to help. — Dalai Lama

44. If you live only for yourself you are always an immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellowmen. — Beran Wolfe

45. He who is wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package. — Anonymous

46. Just as a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror is obscured by dust, just as the embryo rests deep within the womb, wisdom is hidden by selfish desire. — Bhagavad Gita

47. You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.
–Anita Brookne

48. That man who lives for self alone, Lives for the meanest mortal known. — Joaquin Miller

49. Love is what is left in a relationship after all the selfishness is taken out. — Nick Richardson

50. The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places. —
Bryant H. McGill

Bonus points if you understood the Secret Garden reference.  Me, I always loved Susan Sowerby; she had more guts than anybody else in the book.  After all, it was her letter that. . . nah, read it for yourself.