selflessness

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others
noun acting with less concern for yourself than for the success of the joint activity

From selfless + -ness.

Loss of ballast, resistance offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact--this is what has hitherto been known as morality. — Ecce Homo: Complete Works, Volume Seventeen, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Acts have been performed--and are repeated hourly--acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,--not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. — That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day, Richard Dehan
The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards "selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart." — Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

altruism

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