The underlying dynamic of [our] destructive patterns and behaviors is a deep-seated inability to transcend the self, to choose the good of the Other above one's own, to "lay down one's life," actually or figuratively, in small matters or in great, for those we love. Perhaps, even more fundamentally, it is that we cannot disentangle ourselves from our self-concern enough to love those outside our own circle of relations and friends. We are really incapable of that selfless movement that is the unique glory and dignity of the human being.
— Sandra M. Schneiders, Spiritual Questions for the Twenty-First Century by Mary Hembrow Snyder, editor