“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”
VI, 39
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI
“You are where you are in life because of what you believe is possible for yourself.”
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.”
Source: Poke the Box
Variant: You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.
Source: You Can Heal Your Life
“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”
“You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.”
“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
“This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.”
Source: I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone
“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
Variant: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Source: What I Know For Sure
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
Variant: For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.
Source: 1984
Quando non si è sinceri bisogna fingere, a forza di fingere si finisce per credere; questo è il principio di ogni fede.
Source: Gli indifferenti (1929; repr. Milano: Corbaccio, 1974) p. 238; Tami Calliope (trans.) The Time of Indifference (South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press, 2000) p. 207.
Source: Love in a Cold Climate
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“From now on you must pray for your people and yourself three times a day.”
Mother Teresa, as quoted by Dawit Wolde Giorgis (1989) Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia, The Red Sea Press Inc., p. 213
1980s
Socrates, p. 145
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
“Drill your soldiers well, and give them a pattern yourself.”
Quoted in W. Lyon Blease, "Suvorof," 1926.
In Twitter (14 August 2017) https://twitter.com/notch/status/897158641962319878
The Great God
About Himself
Source: Gaura Devi. (1990). Babaji’s Teachings. P.7.
Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 28 : Renoir's quote to Vollard referring to the Isle Grenouillere, where he painted in 1869, together with Claude Monet.
On developing her inner experiences, as narrated in later years to her disciples at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, in "Birth and Girlhood", also in The Mother On Herself http://www.miraura.org/bio/herself.html
Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)
“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
Crime and Punishment (1866)
“Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.”
Variant: What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.
Source: The Analects, Other chapters, Chapter XVː23
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 287
http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm
Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
"Michael Jackson - Life in the magical kingdom" - Rolling Stone (February 17, 1983) http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/michael-jackson-life-in-the-magical-kingdom-19830217
"Michael Jackson - Life in the Magical Kingdom" Rolling Stone 1983
Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work
“Make yourself known as a philosopher, that is a free man.”
Epp. Apoll. 28
Letters
“Love your Country next to God, your honour, and most of all yourself.”
Inscription, UST Library, Manila, Philippines, 1 September 2013.
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 377
General
The Big Picture, 1996
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 125]
Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)
Volume 3, Ch. 17
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)
"David Attenborough at 90: 'I think about my mortality every day'" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/david-attenborough-at-90-i-think-about-my-mortality-every-day/, interview with Joe Shute, The Telegraph (29 October 2016)
12 July 1942, p. 488-89
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943
“Some of the words you'll find within yourself,
the rest some power will inspire you to say.”
III. 26–27 (tr. Robert Fagles); Athena to Telemachus.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
“I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.”
All and Everything: Views from the Real World (1973)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
“If you forget yourself, you become the universe.”
As quoted in The Awakening Artist: Madness and Spiritual Awakening in Art by Patrick Howe
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 10
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLc_MC7NQek&t=0s "2017 Personality 04/05: Heroic and Shamanic Initiations"
1880s, 1884, Letter to Theo (Nuenen, Oct. 1884)
Context: I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all.
Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. He wades in and does something and stays with it, in short, he violates, "defiles" - they say. Let them talk, those cold theologians.
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
Context: Shakespeare starts by assuming that to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack. This does not mean that everyone will turn against you (Kent and the Fool stand by Lear from first to last), but in all probability someone will. If you throw away your weapons, some less scrupulous person will pick them up. If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen. The second blow is, so to speak, part of the act of turning the other cheek. First of all, therefore, there is the vulgar, common-sense moral drawn by the Fool: "Don't relinquish power, don't give away your lands." But there is also another moral. Shakespeare never utters it in so many words, and it does not very much matter whether he was fully aware of it. It is contained in the story, which, after all, he made up, or altered to suit his purposes. It is: "Give away your lands if you want to, but don't expect to gain happiness by doing so. Probably you won't gain happiness. If you live for others, you must live for others, and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself."
“It is necessary to abandon yourself completely, and let the music do as it will with you.”
As quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (2003) by Simon Trezise, p. 120
Context: It is necessary to abandon yourself completely, and let the music do as it will with you. All people come to music to seek oblivion.
Letter to Larry Callen (14 July 1958), p. 133
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)
Context: I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. … For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.
“Think for yourself
'Cause I won't be there with you.”
Think for Yourself (1965)
Lyrics
Context: Do what you want to do,
And go where you're going to.
Think for yourself
'Cause I won't be there with you.
The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it’s civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. But the United Nations has what’s known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don’t even know there’s a human-rights tree on the same floor.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words. We shall, however, when occasion demands, enter into discourse sparingly, avoiding such common topics as gladiators, horse-races, athletes; and the perpetual talk about food and drink. Above all avoid speaking of persons, either in the way of praise or blame, or comparison. If you can, win over the conversation of your company to what it should be by your own. But if you should find yourself cut off without escape among strangers and aliens, be silent. (164).
"Looking For Your Own Face" as translated by Coleman Barks in The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia
Context: Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.
What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.
The Art of Peace (1992)
Context: The real Art of Peace is not to sacrifice a single one of your warriors to defeat an enemy. Vanquish your foes by always keeping yourself in a safe and unassailable position; then no one will suffer any losses. The Way of a Warrior, the Art of Politics, is to stop trouble before it starts. It consists in defeating your adversaries spiritually by making them realize the folly of their actions. The Way of a Warrior is to establish harmony.
“Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.”
“What you keep to yourself you lose, what you give away, you keep forever.”
Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s
“Give the Devil His Due”, 1st November 2014, https://youtube.com/XbiADYVORGE
Classified Appendix (p. 354)
The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
[Laughs] Don't get me wrong, he's a great player. He plays like a motherfucker!
Revolver interview; as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne "Says Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist Buckethead Auditioned For His Solo Band" http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ozzy-osbourne-says-ex-guns-n-roses-guitarist-buckethead-auditioned-for-his-solo-band/, Blabbermouth.net, January 5, 2005
There are many other options of organization for the future than those typically discussed today... In order to accomplish this task one must be free of bias and nationalism, and reflect those qualities in the design of policies. How would you approach that? This is a difficult project requiring input from many disciplines.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 6-7
“If you heal yourself you can heal others.”
"Dolph Lundgren | On healing and forgiveness | TEDxFulbrightSantaMonica" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNOE0dZpHcY on YouTube (28 October 2015).
