Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use selfless in a sentence

11 example sentences · adjective

Selfless means having, exhibiting or motivated by no concern for oneself but for others; unselfish. Example: “Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.”

Examples of selfless by meaning

adjectiveHaving, exhibiting or motivated by no concern for oneself but for others; unselfish.

  • In a selfless act of gratitude for saving his mother's life, Peter committed to giving money to his local breast cancer charity each year for the rest of his life.
  • Because a certain degree of selfless behavior is essential to the smooth performance of any human group, selflessness run amok can crop up in political contexts.2011 March 10, Natalie Angier, “The Pathological Altruist Gives Till Someone Hurts”, in The New York Times

More sentences with selfless

  • Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.From the entry virtuous
  • Romantic love is not selfless but selfish.2009, Alexander-Stamatios G. Antoniou, Handbook of Managerial Behavior and Occupational Health, page 186. From the entry one-way street
  • That leading light, whose value-laden vision guided the nation's manumissive march with selfless steps, was frail, firm Jaya Prakash Narain.1990, V[aidyanathapuram] R[ama Iyer] Krishna Iyer, “Humans without Rights”, in Human Rights and Inhuman Wrongs, New Delhi: B. R.…. From the entry manumissive
  • Princip had even found time to learn by heart the entirety of The Mountain Wreath, Petrović-Njegos's stirring epic celebration of the selfless tyrannicide Miloš Obilić.2012, Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, Penguin, published 2013, page 51. From the entry tyrannicide
  • It is said to be this woman's selfless devotion that turns her children into well-adjusted adults—and we can only commiserate with her heavy burden.1995, Merete Leonhardt-Lupa, “A Mother's Sexuality”, in A Mother Is Born: Preparing for Motherhood During Pregnancy, Westport, Conn.…. From the entry madonnalike
  • It catches an American athleticism and energetic team spirit that still seem to smash European notions of ballet classicism, as does its dancers’ selfless manner and their practicelike costumes.2008 June 9, Alastair Macaulay, “In Student Steps and Leaps, a Survey of National Styles”, in The New York Times, archived from the…. From the entry athleticism
  • The ‘trick’ in love-indoctrination was that while maternalism was genetically selfish and therefore genetically encourageable, from an observing mind’s point of view it was selfless behaviour.1988, Jeremy Griffith, Free: The End of the Human Condition, Centre for Humanity’s Adulthood, →ISBN, page 140. From the entry encourageable
  • “Eternal love” and “selfless love” are both equivocations, and utraquisms—that an unstable state can remain unchanged eternally or that self can be eliminated and love retained.1972, Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu, A Thinker's Note Book: Posthumous Papers of a Buddhist Monk, page 50. From the entry utraquism
  • Localism may strengthen not just the selfless (eg, people who want to build a village hall) but also the selfish (who want to stop any new building in their backyard).2010 July–August, “(please specify the article title)”, in The Economist, London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 27. From the entry localism

Meaning of selfless

  1. adjective Having, exhibiting or motivated by no concern for oneself but for others; unselfish.

Full definition of selfless

Questions about selfless in a sentence

How do you use selfless in a sentence?
Selfless is used as an adjective. For example: “Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.”
What is a short sentence with selfless?
“Romantic love is not selfless but selfish.”
What does selfless mean?
Selfless means having, exhibiting or motivated by no concern for oneself but for others; unselfish.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: selfless (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use selfless in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/selfless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.