Quotes about self

page 9

“When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity. And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.”

“Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.”

“How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities?… I never feel the four walls around the substance of the self, the core. I feel only space. Illimitable space.”

“When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.”

“Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.”

“It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.”

“The only one who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self.”

“The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom

Rebellious. Living.
Against the Elemental Crush.
A Song of Color
Blooming
For Deserving Eyes.
Blooming Gloriously
For its Self.”

“Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.”

“D’Artagnan: Why is Athos sitting by himself?
Aramis: He takes his drinking very seriously. Not to worry, he’ll be his usual charming self by morning.”

“I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way…. I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.”

“… it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing…”

“That's kind of what trust is, isn't it? A willful self-delusion.”

“I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.”

“It’s said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. Each becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.”

“If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”

“To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders.”

“The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness.”

“Sit down every day and DO IT. Writing is a self-taught craft; the more you work at it, the more skilled you become. And when you're not writing, READ.”

“Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.”

“Not likely!” Howl yelled. “I’m a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell my self I’m not doing it!”

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”

“Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.”

“my feeling is that if you're not self-obsessed you're probably boring.”

“Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.”

“My father, Zeus, did not love me. The demigods at Camp Half-Blood did not love me. Python and the Beast and his comrades at Triumvirate Holdings did not love me. It was almost enough to make me question my self-worth.

No, no. That was crazy talk.”

“Good manners reflect something from inside-an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.”

“Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.”

“I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.”

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”

“The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.”

“Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.”

“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.
Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.”

“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent?”

“When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.”

“public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self.”

“What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think?”

“The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”

“To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that’s a trophy enough for a guy’s ego, huh?”

“Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”

“a human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.”

“Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there's no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.”

“I have peanut M&M's up there."
"Not my style"
"Raisinets."
"Feh."
"Sam Adams."
Thor narrowed his eyes. "Cold?"
"Downright icy."
Thor crossed his arms over his chest and told him self he was not pouting like a five-year-old. "I want Milk Duds.”

“A difference in self loathing? Please. The only difference between a gun and a rope is the time it takes to tie the knot.”

“a friend is a second self”

“Perhaps we shall learn, as we pass through this age, that the 'other self" is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look into a mirror.”

“Self-pity is like chocolate; as you get older, you can only afford a little bit.”

“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

“The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

“For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.”

“Note to self:
Do not under any circumstances fall in love again.”

“Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self”

“Once, maybe I would have thought you a fool, but… well, that's kind of what trust is, isn't it? A willful self-delusion? You have to shut out that voice that whispers about betrayal, and just hope that your friends aren't going to hurt you.”

“The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.”

“I felt the need to clarify we were there for the self defense class, in case he also taught about dog breeding or riding the high seas.”

“Here I had a wonderful man who cared for me
and I was screwing around with a self-absorbed, conniving monster who'd betrayed me
in the worst possible way.”

“Listen to me: I never married because I was too easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It's much better to be too easily interested.”

“Self respect, Colie. If you don't have it, the world will walk all over you.”

“Sometimes, when things take longer than you thought they would, it's just a gentle reminder from your greater self that you have more time than you thought, and that there's a journey to enjoy.”

“What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?”

“We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.”

“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

“If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again.”

“Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.”

“That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.”

“Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.”

“Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.”

“The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.”

“Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self.

Don't limit yourself to being a mere fountain when you contain an ocean.”

“I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queen's on thrones, without self-respect and peace.”

“Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.”

“The mind thinks thoughts that we don't plan. It's not as if we say, 'At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.”

“Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost”

“Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves.”

“Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.”

“There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it.”

“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”

“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where’s the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”

“To truly esteem oneself means that one must be capable of feeling shame or self-disgust when one does not live up to a certain standard”

“A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.”

“I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible---
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.”

“I've always known I was gay, but it wasn't confirmed until I was in kindergarten.

It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF.”

“I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.”

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to
self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt,
that's real power.”

“I will be” is a confession that “I am not “ The Father's will is always “I AM.” Until you realize that YOU are the Father (there is only one I AM and your infinite self is that I AM), your will is always “I will be.”

“Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.”

“Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.”

“I let myself feel good and sorry for myself, but only for a second. Daddy always said that the most useless of all human emotions was self-pity.”

“To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility…”

“Being brave and self-confident doesn't necessarily start inside… It starts with the rest of the world, and it leads back to you.”

“Homework is a term that means grown up imposed yet self-afflicting torture.”

“It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.”

“To participate requires self-discipline and trust and courage, because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, as my friend Dale puts it, How alive am I willing to be?”

“The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.”

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself.”

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained;… the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.”

“Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.”

“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”