Quotes about yourself
page 28

“The thing that really breeds career longevity in this profession is doing good work. You can make $20 million a movie, but does that mean you'll still have a job when you're 60? It's a profession that eats people up and wants constant turnaround, so you have to dedicate yourself to learning and making the most of whatever gift you may have.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/2000/05/11/2000-05-11_a_renaissance_man_tackles_sh.html (2000-05-11) 2000&ndash;2004

People, Learning

“[Y]ou have to save yourself before you can save anyone else.”

Philipp Meyer book American Rust

American Rust (2009)

“Someone might object, "But you do not express yourself like Cicero". What of it? I am not Cicero. But I think I express my own self.”
Non exprimis, aliquis inquit, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero; me tamen, ut opinor, exprimo.

Poliziano (1454–1494) Italian writer

Epistolae 8, 16. Quoted in Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (1995) by Martin L. McLaughlin, p. 203.

Thinking

“You do have to rise above. If you're true to yourself and you're confident with who you are and you really know where you're coming from, you'll be fine. No matter what anyone says and no matter what anyone tries to do to you.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

Confidence

“If you want to follow The Way of Men, if you want to advance a return to honor and manly virtue, if you want to steel yourself against an uncertain future—start a gang.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

How To Start A Gang
The Way of Men (2012)

Men, Way, Future

“One of the flabby lines you hear sometimes is, 'Speak truth to power'. Power knows the truth. It's speaking the truth to yourself that's the challenge.”

Barry Sanders (1938) American academic, author

Oregon Live Saturday, April 16, 2011

Truth

“A prime time to catch yourself putting on your personality is in the moments between sleeping and waking.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 136

Sleep, Time, Personality

“There is only one thing in your life YOU can be sure of. That one thing is this moment, now. The last moment has gone forever. The next moment has not come. YOU can become fully conscious only when you are living in the moment. To begin to live in the moment you have to know it exists and understand it. To understand it you have to observe it in relation to yourself and in relation to life. When you understand it, when you become conscious, you will see it is all that exists. To see this is to glimpse reality.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Life, Understanding, Reality

“Think deeply about this: what are you going to ask of Christ when you are in his Church? You come stepping in softly, seeking quiet under her vaulted roofs (unless, of course, you come out of mere vanity) in order to forget your problems and preoccupations [-] languidly immersing yourself in the majesty of the sacred chorales and in the aromatic clouds of incense: and then to sleep[-] But this is not the peace of Christ. My peace I give you, my peace I leave you. He said My, which is not the peace of this world. But you want to establish the Church in the peace of the world, and that is why the others, when they come, cannot enter without war cries rising from their overwrought lungs. They rebel, filling the temple with blashemous roars, they eject the terrified faithful, who had been half asleep, they insult or kill the ministers at the altar, knock over the altar itself, smash the stone saints, burn the church [-] so it is that she once again becomes, for them, the church of the Christ that died on the cross. [-] This time, do not leave her rebuilding to others. Do not wish to put up sturdier walls for these will not give her a better defense [-] Nor should you ask the rich to contribute too much money for the reconstruction, lest the poor, should receive the benefice with mistrust. Let it be the poor who rebuild her, for then they will do so according to their fashion and only in this way will they love her.”

Joan Maragall (1860–1911) Spanish writer

Love, Money, War, World

“Be loyal and trustworthy. Do not befriend anyone who is lower than yourself in this regard. When making a mistake, do not be afraid to correct it.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter I

“There were a significant number of questions I had asked myself and, as you know, when you really ask yourself the questions, you give better answers than if we merely read the conventional answers.”

Albert Messiah (1921–2013) French physicist

Il y avait un nombre important de questions que je m'étais posées et, comme vous le savez, lorsqu'on se pose vraiment les questions, on donne de meilleures réponses que si l'on se contente de lire les réponses convenues.
explaining how he came to write his textbook on quantum mechanics, in Descente au coeur de la matière, an interview edited by [Stéphane Deligeorges, Le monde quantique, Editions du Seuil, Sciences et Avenir, 1984, 2020089084, 111]

Question, Reading

“Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called "morals." Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul — and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code… so automatically your stomach did flip-flops… and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong. Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

"Jubal Harshaw"
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

Sex, Feeling, Soul, Problem

“In a street brawl, I strike men quicker than lightnin', you seen what happened in my last fight, friend? Aight, then! L's a clever threat, a lyricist who never sweat, comparing yourself to me is like a Benz to a Chevrolet”

Big L (rapper) (1974–1999) American rapper

Men, Fight

“Consider yourself having been reasonably humiliated in front of ten million people. Now, without saying another word, turn around, and find the exit. Goodbye.”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLQ3fw-7_hA&feature=bf_next&list=UUNOaQAKNIBe0AHquR9ttP0g&lf=plcp
Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Dismissing a statement or case

People

“You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn’t want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/zbigniew-brzezinski-nato-putin-ukraine_n_5760068.html (September 3, 2014). Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.

People, Parting

“Harry Dresden: Discussing a problem with yourself is almost never a good way to secure a divergent viewpoint.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Ghost Story (2011), Chapter 21

Way, Problem

“Virginia Woolf thought one of the pleasures of reading contemporary novels was that they forced you to exercise your judgment. There was no received opinion about a book. You had to decide for yourself whether it was good.”

Tim Parks (1954) British writer

"Why Read New Books?" The New York Review of Books (11 November 2014).

Pleasure, Books, Exercises, Reading

“"There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

Way, Time, Reading, Sun

“Don't resurrect relationships with negative people off of good memories. You will only remind yourself why they became your past in the first place.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Official Website (2009)

People, Memory, Past

“When you are about to badger the weak,
Then imagine yourself before a more powerful man.”

Thiruvalluvar book Tirukkuṛaḷ

Verse XXV.10
Tirukkural

Imagination

“The mantra is forget your size discover your shape and transform yourself.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

As quoted in "Exclusive Trinny and Susannah Interview" by Caz Moss in Female First http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/entertainment/Trinny+And+Susannah-40852.html?Vote=5 (19 September 2007)

Forgetting

“Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

May 1776 http://books.google.com/books?id=8DcUAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Sir+you+have+but+two+topicks+yourself+and+me+I+am+sick+of+both%22&pg=PA53#v=onepage, p. 313 Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's alright really, an' then when you see him again; it's like asthma an' you can't breath. I tell you what. He hates you too, Ralph —"
"Me? Why me?"
"I dunno. You got him over the fire; an' you're chief an' he isn't."
"But he's Jack Merridew!"
"I been in bed so much I done some thinking. I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can't hurt you: but if you're standing out of the way he'd hurt the next thing. And that's me."
"Piggy's right, Ralph. There's you and Jack. Go on being chief.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 5: Beast from Water

Hate, People, Way, Thinking

““You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”
She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will… There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”…
“No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.””

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (pp. 362-363; ellipses represent elisions of descriptive sections)

Life, World, Disappointment, Way

“Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?”

Aldous Huxley book Time Must Have a Stop

Time Must Have a Stop (1944)

Death

“Uasti was a good teacher,” he said. “She made you look a little way into yourself, see what you could become.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 5 (p. 402)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Way, Teachers

“When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.”

Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor

Source: Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), p. 418

Quotes

“Propaganda,” Trevor said. “Let’s call it psychology. You say a thing so often and so well that after a time everyone believes it. Even, finally, yourself.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XLII (p. 215)

Time

“The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 6.

Fear, Courage, Dependency, Forgetting

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Interview with Amanda Craig, "Grand dame of letters who's not going quietly," The Times, London (23 November 2003)
Variant: Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Thinking

“Jesus is without question the most eloquent man who ever lived. Those who heard Him said, 'Never a man spoke like this Man.' The most eloquent of philosophers sits at His feet and marvels at both His words and His life. To those who disagree, I would simply challenge you to read the Gospel of John, and see for yourself. Never did any man speak like this Man.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Life, Question, Reading

“You have to pick yourself up from where you fell.”

Chang Ching-sen (1959) Taiwanese politician

Chang Ching-sen (2018) cited in " Taichung to host first Asia-Pacific Youth Games in 2019: mayor http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201809030021.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 7 March 2018.

“Take heed not to be transformed into a Caesar, not to be dipped in the purple dye, for it does happen. Keep yourself therefore, simple, good, pure, grave, unaffected, the friend of justice, religious, kind, affectionate, strong for your proper work. Wrestle to be the man philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, save men. Life is brief; there is but one harvest of earthly existence, a holy disposition and neighborly acts.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 30
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Life, Men, God, Justice

“You can so wonderfully be yourself here”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

in Paris Quote of Mondrian from his postcard to a Dutch girlfriend, Paris 1911 (written in his first week in Paris), by Mondrian's recent biographer Hans Janssen, of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; as cited by Alastair Sooke, in 'Mondrian - the Joy of Being Square'; BBC culture, 10 July 2017 http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170710-mondrian-the-joy-of-being-square 1910's

“A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid. And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it. Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

The Raven Cycle Series, The Dream Thieves (2013)

People, Secret, Time

“Do yourself what you wish others to do.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 1021

“Don’t judge yourself,” he said. “None of us are ever good at it.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 5 (p. 402)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

“[…] Perhaps the easiest way to convince yourself is by scanning the literature of soft psychology over the last 30 years and noticing what happens to theories. Most of them suffer the fate that General MacArthur ascribed to old generals—They never die, they just slowly fade away. In the developed sciences, theories tend either to become widely accepted and built into the larger edifice of well-tested human knowledge or else they suffer destruction in the face of recalcitrant facts and are abandoned, perhaps regretfully as a “nice try.” But in fields like personology and social psychology, this seems not to happen. There is a period of enthusiasm about a new theory, a period of attempted application to several fact domains, a period of disillusionment as the negative data come in, a growing bafflement about inconsistent and unreplicable empirical results, multiple resort to ad hoc excuses, and then finally people just sort of lose interest in the thing and pursue other endeavors.”

Paul E. Meehl (1920–2003) American psychologist

Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology (1978)

Fate, People, Way, Literature

“"Papa is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs General. "Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company — on entering a room, for instance — Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.”

Charles Dickens book Little Dorrit

Bk. II, Ch. 5
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)

“Believing in anyone more than you believe in yourself causes you to suspend your own judgment, which leads to counter-self-actualization, or self-deactivation.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 4 “Iconoclastic means “I Can!”” (p. 106)

“Surely just about everybody has faced a moral dilemma and secretly wished, "If only somebody — somebody I trusted — could just tell me what to do!" Wouldn't this be morally inauthentic? Aren't we responsible for making our own moral decisions? Yes, but the virtues of "do it yourself" moral reasoning have their limits, and if you decide, after conscientious consideration, that your moral decision is to delegate further moral decisions in your life to a trusted expert, then you have made your own moral decision. You have decided to take advantage of the division of labor that civilization makes possible and get the help of expert specialists.We applaud the wisdom of this course in all other important areas of decision-making (don't try to be your own doctor, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, and so forth). Even in the case of political decisions, like which way to vote, the policy of delegation can be defended. … Is the a dereliction of [one's] dut[y] as a citizen? I don't think so, but it does depend on my having good grounds for trusting [the delegate's] judgment. … That why those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: if they themselves haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of this delegated authority over their own lives, then they are in fact taking a personally immoral stand.This is perhaps the most shocking implication of my inquiry, and I do not shrink from it, even though it may offend many who think of themselves as deeply moral. It is commonly supposed that it is entirely exemplary to adopt the moral teachings of one's own religion without question, because -- to put it simply — it is the word of God (as interpreted, always, by the specialists to whom one has delegated authority). I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular point of moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because "that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs… ] [sic] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh… ]" [sic], should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life, Wisdom, God, Faith

“"Admiring yourself? You won't look so pretty when the Clave gets through with you."
"You do seem obsessed with my looks. Could it be that all this is because you're attracted to me?"”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Imogen and Jace, pg. 302
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Variant translations:
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.
Part I, Book I: A Nice Little Family, Ch. 2 : The Old Buffoon; as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, p. 44
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Love, Pleasure, Truth, Lying

“You delude yourself that you live in a free country because you never test the boundaries of that freedom.”

Jacob M. Appel book The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up

The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (2012)

Freedom, Country

““I hate students,” [Zizek] said, “they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.
In a recent interview at this year’s Zizek Conference in Ohio, Zizek talked about his personal life before delving into his thoughts on teaching. “I hate giving classes,” Zizek said, citing office hours and grading papers as his two biggest peeves. “I did teach a class here [at the University of Cincinnati] and all of the grading was pure bluff,” he continues. “I even told students at the New School for example… if you don’t give me any of your shitty papers, you get an A. If you give me a paper I may read it and not like it and you can get a lower grade.” He received no papers that semester. But it’s office hours that are the main reason he does not want to teach.
“I can’t imagine a worse experience than some idiot comes there and starts to ask you questions, which is still tolerable. The problem is that here in the United States students tend to be so open that sooner or later, if you’re kind to them, they even start to ask you personal questions [about] private problems… What should I tell them?”
“I don’t care,” he continued. “Kill yourself. It’s not my problem,””

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

As quoted by Eugene Wolters, " Professor of the Year: 'If You Don't Give Me Any of Your Shitty Papers You Get an A http://www.critical-theory.com/professor-of-the-year-if-you-dont-give-me-any-of-your-shitty-papers-you-get-an-a/'", Critical-Theory.com, May 26 2014; square brackets and lack of accent marks as in orginal

Life, Hate, People, Stupidity

“My outlook is that life is like a self-service restaurant and you have to help yourself. Sometimes when you see what the other fella has got, you want some of it too.”

Max Bygraves (1922–2012) Singer, comedian, actor

On being unfaithful to his wife; Daily Mail 24th May 2011

Life, Help

“Look at yourself. You came into this world, but what you have to realize is that you came from Him and you must return to Him. The light within you has to merge with that One Light. Then the dark show of life will disappear. My love you, my children. This is the most important thing to understand in life.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Come To The Secret Garden: Sufi Tales of Wisdom (1994)

Love, Life, Children, World

“Sometimes, my heart hurts so much, I beat it with my fists. I try to run. But you cannot run away from this. You cannot run from it. Wherever you run, it waits for you. Even when you think you have escaped it, it is there, where you have run to. It waits for you, to ambush you. It is like those vines called lianas, those tropical creepers that grow around you and strangle you. You cut off one branch, but there is another that grows. You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Playboy interview

Thinking, Waiting, Heart, Hurt

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: "I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?(Farquharson translation)
Ὄρθρου, ὅταν δυσόκνως ἐξεγείρῃ, πρόχειρον ἔστω ὅτι ἐπὶ ἀνθρώπου ἔργον ἐγείρομαι· ἔτι οὖν δυσκολαίνω, εἰ πορεύομαι ἐπὶ τὸ ποιεῖν ὧν ἕνεκεν γέγονα καὶ ὧν χάριν προῆγμαι εἰς τὸν κόσμον; ἢ ἐπὶ τοῦτο κατεσκεύασμαι, ἵνα κατακείμενος ἐν στρωματίοις ἐμαυτὸν θάλπω;
V, 1
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

World, Back To Work

“The vegan diet in the western industrial society is important to me because I feel that if you open yourself up to eating dairy and meat then you’re taking part in basically a holocaust for animals. You know it’s very different if you’re in some tribal situation where people are fishing — like how we used to live. Maybe we would have eaten meat sometimes. But this kind of American idea we have of traditional eating is the cause of so much torture and misery. I don’t want to eat that – it’s gross. Animals are my friends and so it feels weird to eat them.”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Daniela Sea Won't Take Part In An Animal Holocaust http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/09/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-daniela-sea-wont-take-part-in-an-animal-holocaust/", interview with Ecorazzi (9 December 2008).

People, Feeling, Idea, Fish

“Jack: Don, you're hanging yourself.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

“It was lonely, not even knowing yourself.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 4 (p. 41)

“For the music, it’s not about the individual — so the more you let the music speak for yourself, the more powerful the music will be.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

Carl Kozlowski (September 11, 2008) "Taste in the making: Tool’s Maynard James Keenan shifts his focus from writing dark lyrics to creating zesty wines" http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/taste_in_the_making/6378/, Pasadena Weekly. Southland Publishing.

Music

“The first step is, if you don't believe it yourself your team darn sure won't.”

Rex Ryan (1962) American football coach

[Rex Ryan's press conference, http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/jets/post/_/id/953/rex-ryans-press-conference-2, ESPN, McManus, Jane, August 6, 2010, http://www.webcitation.org/5x46RBB2S, March 9, 2011, March 9, 2011]

“All kinds of things set us back, but life goes on. You don’t shoot yourself. Soon this will be old news. People got lives to live, bills to pay, mouths to feed. Maybe a plane will go down with ninety people on it. Or a great man will be assassinated. That will be more important than Ali losing. I never wanted to lose, never thought I would, but the thing that matters is how you lose. I’m not crying. My friends should not cry.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Press conference, March 9, 1971, following his defeat by Joe Frazier, quoted in The Intercept, June 6, 2016 https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/

Life, People, Cry

“Everyday I fight a war against the mirror.
I can't take the person starin' back at me.
I'm a hazard to myself.Don't let me get me.
I'm my own worst enemy.
Its bad when you annoy yourself,
So irritating.
Don't wanna be my friend no more.
I wanna be somebody else.
I wanna be somebody else, yeah.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Don't Let Me Get Me, written by Pink and Dallas Austin
Song lyrics, Missundaztood (2001)

War, Fight, Personality

““It’s impossible to protect anyone completely without enslaving them. I think that’s something you’ve never understood because you’ve always demanded too much of yourself. You blame yourself for your sister’s death—”
“I didn’t watch her carefully enough.”
“What could you have done? Remember her life, not her death. She was brave and happy and arrogant, the way a child should be. You could only protect her more by chaining her to you with fear. She couldn’t live that way, not and remain the person you loved.””

Vonda N. McIntyre book Dreamsnake

Source: Dreamsnake (1978), Chapter 4 (p. 74)

Love, Life, Death, Happiness

“Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself — if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself — it is very difficult to take care of another person.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Quoted on his official website (30 December 2008) http://www.plumvillage.org/

Love, Personality

“You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them… I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.”

James Cagney (1899–1986) American actor and dancer

Cagney by Cagney, his autobiography (1976)

“You know, joining a gang is like having a family. It's feeling like you're part of something bigger than yourself. So we're either going to have gangs that murder and rob and do the things that are so destructive to the gang members and to the community. Or, we're going to have positive gangs. We're going to have positive alternatives for young people.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Clinton: We Need Positive Gangs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVD0pvWL6R4; as quoted in * 2016-04-21 Clinton: We Could Have Positive Gangs Chandler Gill Free Beacon http://freebeacon.com/culture/clinton-need-positive-gangs/. Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

People, Family, Feeling, Communication

“Robert Parish and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the two reasons I became a vegetarian fully in the first place. They where the first ones I saw and I was 27 at the time and there was an article about Robert Parish and one of his martial art forms and I remember playing against this guy and asking him how he was running up and down the court with me and I was in my twenties. He said, "you have to learn to pace yourself young fella". … Then I would go, "well then your car has no gas" and I thought about that. So at 27 I made the change. … I had a good career but Robert Parish had a view to look at stats and a better career. If I would have known how to take care of my body … then I would have played until I was 40 as well.”

John Salley (1964) American basketball player

“Along Came a Spider-An Interview With John Salley,” in Basketball 24/48/82 (12 August 2014) http://basketball244882.blogspot.com/2014/08/along-came-spider-interview-with-john_12.html.

Art, Cars, Guy, Learning

“You might as well sell yourself to slavery at once, as marry man you dislike.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLI : Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast; Helen to Esther

“The most important thing was the notion of information presentation and the notion of the integration of the audience into the information. One sees oneself exiting form the elevator. If one stands there for 8 seconds, one sees oneself entering the gallery from the elevator again. Now at the same time one is apt to be seeing oneself standing there watching Wipe Cycle. You can watch yourself live watching yourself 8 seconds ago, watching yourself 16 seconds ago, eventually feeling free enough to interact with this matrix realizing one's own potential as an actor.”

Ira Schneider (1939) American artist

Ira Schneider (1969), , Arts Magazine, Vol. 44, p. 21; As cited in: David Antin. Radical Coherency: Selected Essays on Art and Literature, 1966 to 2005. 2012, p. 81-82: On the Wipe Cycle

Feeling, Time

“If you find yourself despairing about the state of our great country, just think about how unlikely it would have seemed, back in the malaise days of 1979, that Jimmy Carter would one day return to Washington via Reagan Airport.”

James Taranto (1966) American journalist

From Best of the Web Today for October 1, 2010 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703859204575525930539967268.html

Thinking, Despair, Country

“I am sometimes also asked whether the October Crisis taught me anything about the art of governing, or about the means that were at my disposal for defusing the crisis. First of all, it taught me that you can be the prescient futurologist in the world, you can lay out the best-made plans and define your priorities with the utmost care, but if you show yourself to be incapable of managing a crisis when it arises, you will lose your right to govern and the whole thing will blow up in your face.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Part 2, 1968 - 1974 Power And Responsibility, p. 149-150
Memoirs (1993)

World, Art

“The time is getting closer for you to be coming [to Paula, in Paris]. Now I must ask you for your sake and mine, please spare both of us this time of trial. Let me go, Otto Otto Modersohn. I do not want you as my husband.... accept this fact; don't torture yourself any longer.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

Quote in ‎her Journal, Paris, 3 September, 1906; as quoted in Günter Busch, ‎Liselotte von Reinken (1998) Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals p. 278; as quoted in Stephanie D'Alessandro, ‎Milwaukee Art Museum (2003) German Expressionist Prints, p. 198
1906 + 1907

Time

“If you stand under a mountain and look up, you will get a bad pain in the neck. If you look at the ground and take one step, and then another step, then you come to a little bump. You think of how to climb over it; then you find a gap and you jump over it and you go on like that, one step at a time, and suddenly, you find yourself standing on top of the mountain.”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

The Rediff Cricket Interview, Kapil Dev

Pain, Mountain, Thinking, Time

“Here there was only yourself; a soul buried alive. Nothing to comfort you but your own life. Screaming from the pain of the blows which battered him down might have stopped, but the internal scream of self-loathing could never cease.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

as the ghost Dariat lies immobile in a wispy limbo
The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Naked God (1999)

Life, Pain, Soul

“Working yourself into the ground serves no one. It only decreases your chances of living a long and healthy life. Do you really want to sacrifice your health and long life for a big house, fancy car and hefty bank account?”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life, Health, Cars, Chance

“Why you exist, says Nietzsche with Søren Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance; but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 19

World

“Happiness has to be felt like water. Joy has to be felt like food. What good is it to have a picture of the sun at night? What will it light up? Can you imagine somebody carrying a picture of the sun and holding it out in the dark? In the same way, you have to experience this experience within for yourself. Nothing else will do. This is a living experience for living people.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Africa, August 9, 1990
1990s

Happiness, People, Food, Way

“You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Mrs. George
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

World, Learning

““You know I was once a human being, too, Doran. I remember how hard it was to marshal all the resources I needed to cure myself of the affliction. I also remember, quite clearly, how I always told people I had no interest in self-deification. It was a useful and sometimes necessary shield against interference.”
“Blow off,” said Doran. “Unless you have some specific threat you want to use on me.”
Choronzon laughed. “Not a threat. Just curiosity as to why someone so violently opposed to improving on the human model should decide to go against all his principles.”
“Sometimes,” said Doran icily, “mature people do things they don’t want to do. It’s called following higher principles. But someone without mortal concerns, say, like yourself, wouldn’t understand that.””

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 14 (p. 161).

People, Understanding, Affliction

“Your experience in the world of physical matter flows outward from the center of your psyche. Then you perceive this experience. exterior events, circumstances and conditions are meant as a kind of living feedback. Altering the state of the psyche automatically alters the physical circumstances. There is no other valid way of changing physical events. It might help if you imagine an inner living dimension within yourself in which you create, in miniature psychic form, all the exterior conditions that you know. Simply put, you do exactly this. Your thoughts, feelings and mental pictures can be called incipient exterior events, for in one way or another, each of these is materialized into physical reality.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. 9-10, Session 613

World, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“This is the truth of the matter. In every human being there is a capacity, the capacity for knowledge. And every person - the most knowing and the most limited - is in his knowledge far beyond what he is in his life or what his life expresses. Yet this misrelation is of little concern to us. On the contrary, we set a high price on knowledge, and everyone strives for this knowledge more and more. "But," says the sensible person, "one must be careful about the direction one's knowing takes. If my knowing turns inward, against me, if I do not take care to prevent this, then knowing is the most intoxicating thing there is, the way to become completely intoxicated, since there then occurs an intoxicating confusion between the knowledge and the knower, so that the knower himself will resemble, will be, that which is known. If your knowing takes such a turn and you yield to it, it will soon end with your tumbling like a drunk man into actuality, plunging yourself recklessly into drunken action without giving the understanding and sagacity the time to take into proper consideration what is prudent, what is advantageous, what will pay. This is why we, the sober ones, warn you, not against knowing or against expanding your knowledge, but against letting your knowledge take an inward direction, for then it is intoxicating." This is thieves' jargon. It says that it is one's knowledge that, by taking the inward direction in this way, intoxicates, rather than that in precisely this way it makes manifest that one is intoxicated, intoxicated in one's attachment to this earthly life, the temporal, the secular, and the selfish. And this is what one fears, fears that one's knowing, turned inward, toward oneself, will expose the intoxication there, will expose that one prefers to remain in this state, will wrench one out of this state and as a result of such a step will make it impossible for one to slip back into that adored state, into intoxication. p. 118”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

Life, Truth, Fear, Way

“Everything influences you in the way that you present your art to other people and the way that you create your art for yourself. Life is pretty much the influence, so growing up in Orem, Utah, and growing up in the church is obviously a huge factor in it for me. But there's a few others in my band that weren't raised in the church. So it's a combination of a lot of things.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Brian Orloff (July 24, 2003) "Get Warped - AFI", St. Petersburg Times, p. 22W.

Life, People, Art, Way

“What I'm suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do.”

James Carville (1944) political writer, consultant and United States Marine

March 11, 2002, interview with Joan Walsh http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2002/03/11/carville/print.html

Hell

“Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Idea, Sun, Patience

“If then I am addressing one of that numerous class, who read to be told what to think, let me advise you to meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a house ready furnished: do not come to look for it in a stonequarry. But if you are building up your opinions for yourself, and only want to be provided with materials, you may meet with many things in these pages to suit you.”

Julius Hare (1795–1855) British theologian

Guesses at Truth (1827)

Books, Thinking, Reading, Housing

“The important thing is to get yourself born. You’re entitled to that. But you’re not entitled to life. Because if you were entitled to life, then the life would have to be quantified. How many years? Seventy? Sixty? Shakespeare was dead at fifty-two. Keats was dead at twenty-six. Thomas Chatterton at seventeen.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End (1974)

Life, Dead

“Everybody wants to see the other fellow changed. Every nation wants to see the other nation changed. But everybody is waiting for the other fellow to begin. The Oxford Group is convinced that if you want an answer for the world today, the best place is to start with yourself. This is the first and fundamental need.”

Frank Buchman (1878–1961) Evangelical theologist

Remaking the world, The Speeches of Frank N.D. Buchman, Blandford Presss 1947, revised 1958, p. 24
Moral attitude

World, Change, Waiting

“Accept everything about yourself — I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end — no apologies, no regrets.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Clark Moustakas, as quoted in Sacred Simplicities: Meeting the Miracles in Our Lives (2004) by Lori Knutson, p. 141
Misattributed

“If you mean Mr. Weston to be one of your victims," said I, with affected indifference, "you will have to make such overtures yourself that you will find it difficult to draw back when he asks you to fulfil the expectations you have raised.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. XVI : The Substitution

Drawing, Indifference

“This war would be only a partial success if the whole lot of Jewry survived it, while we shed our best blood to save Europe. My attitude toward the Jews will therefore be based solely on the expectation that they must disappear. They must be done away with. Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

Speech at a meeting with soldiers, December 1941, quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 438 - by Eugene Davidson - 1997

War, Feeling, Success

“"You yourself created this Town. You made everything here. The Wall, the River, the Woods, the Library, the Gate, everything. Even this Pool. I've known all along."
"Then why did you not tell me sooner?"
"Because you'd only have left me here like this. Because your rightful world is there outside." My shadow sits down in the snow and shakes his head from side to side. "But you won't listen, will you?"
"I have responsibilities," I say. "I cannot forsake the people and places and things I have created. I know I do you a terrible wrong. And yes, perhaps I wrong myself, too. But I must see out the consequences of my own doings. This is my world. The Wall is here to hold me in, the River flows through me, the smoke is me burning. I must know why."”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 40, Birds

People, World

“A child has this relationship to a creative force, you know? Yeah, your parents gradually, you know, they gradually shove your face in the concrete, and so do your teachers and school system and…everything’s working against you, but…but…but the force of creativity nature is not working against you - it’s right there for you, at any time! You just…you know, you just have to be ready not to judge yourself and to be open to whatever’s gonna come through you and to-to be ready to not…to not…eeeh to not judge what comes through, but be alright with it, whatever it is, cause it’s just the universe of expressing yourself.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

On "The Heart is a Drum Machine" Documentary

School, Nature, Parent, Teachers

“Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond
January 17, 1864
General Lee:
I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina, who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your acquaintance & as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him & his remarkable weapon for yourself. I remain,
Your most ob't servant,
Josiah Gorgas
Colonel”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 5

Fight

“You can't upstroke yourself into toughness.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

" Josh Homme - Guitar Moves - Episode 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDUHq2mJx0" Noisey (May 29, 2013)

“I don’t have this concept that separates my art from my daily life. They are one thing to me. They are always one. How do you find the way to express yourself and how to communicate with others?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

Life, Art, Way, Communication

“Remember yourself.
You've got a Full House in your head tonight…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

"Remember yourself" was a motto of G. I. Gurdjieff, whose ideas were an early influence on Bush.
Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Housing

“Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nature

Wisdom, Truth, Effort, Animals

“Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2000s, 2001, Cynthia McKinney's Last Stand (2001)

Jerk

“Girl, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself!”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
CNN
2007-02-08
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/08/gb.01.html
Beck's real story segment on Nancy Pelosi's full-time airplane request.
2000s

Girl

“A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin.”

Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American advertising executive

As quoted in Street-Smart Advertising: How to Win the Battle of the Buzz (2006) by Margo Berman, p. 95

Idea

“And what does infinity mean to you? Are you not infinity and yourself?”

Dejan Stojanovic book Circling: 1978-1987

“Infinity,” p. 10
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “Recircling”

“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 11

Life, God, Imagination, Intelligence

“I don’t really remember writing it [The Day I Tried To Live]. I vaguely remember the verse. It was based on a tuning that Ben Shepherd had came up with. Lyrically, it was one of those songs that I thought everyone could connect with. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is maybe a sister song to it. It’s this feeling that could come over anyone, and has probably happened to everyone. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is the feeling of waking up one day and realizing you’re not happy with your life. Nothing happened, there was no emergency, no accident, you don’t know what happened. You were happy, and one day you just aren’t, and you have to try to figure that out.
With ‘The Day I Tried To Live,’ the attitude I was trying to convey was that thing that I think everyone goes through where you wake up in the morning and you just don’t know how you are going to get through the day, and you kind of just talk yourself into it. You may go through different moments of hopelessness and wanting to give up, or wanting to just get back into bed and say f— it, but you convince yourself you’re going to do it again. And maybe this is the last time you’re going to do it, but it’s once more around.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Entertainment Weekly, June 3, 2014 http://ew.com/article/2014/06/03/soundgarden-superunknown-spoonman-black-hole-sun-stories/, On depression and suicide

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“I paint very large pictures. I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them however, - I think it applies to other painters I know -, is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

1950's
Source: Interiors, Vol. 110, no 10, May 1951; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 172

Thinking, Painting

“Honey,” Jammer said, “you'll learn. Some things you teach yourself to remember to forget.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

Spoken to Jackie, Ch. 28
Count Zero (1986)

Learning, Forgetting

Quotes about yourself page 28

Quotes about yourself
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