“To construct oneself, to know oneself—are these two distinct acts or not?”

“To act out of desperation is to act out of instinct. To let oneself get to that point however, is to ignore self-preservation.”

“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.”

“Meditation is the act of non judgment towards oneself, when you stop judging yourself will be at peace.”

“The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.”

“Painting is an act, a sequence of movements one bears within oneself, whose source is one's inner being.”

“Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride because it was the most destructive way of being different.”

“Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
-- Limelight (1981)”

“To trust is a profound commitment, and to trust is to make oneself vulnerable... It’s such an optimistic act, because you’re putting your faith in the hands of someone or something which you expect to remain constant, even if the circumstances change.”

“There is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the lowly, and the common, even though it may seem almost the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and security. Here it is only a euphemism for escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. … Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”—the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems.”