Self Quotes - Page 17

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.

Neal Shusterman

The "self," it seems today, is at the core of the nation's worldview rather than others (the common good), or God.

Martha MacCullough

Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?

Oscar Wilde

I think I’d rather be branded than submit to some of the things that you have to.” He said this without spite, just a soft statement of fact. “I’m not strong enough to do that.

Laura Bickle

There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed!

Augustine of Hippo

If I am not for myself, who will be?

Pirke Avoth

Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort.

Larry Crabb

Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why did Mother Teresa think that affluent Westerners often seemed poorer than the Calcutta poor, the poorest of the poor? The paradox comes to pass because the impoverishments and enrichments of a self in a world are not necessarily the same as the impoverishments and enrichments of an organism in an environment.

Walker Percy

Life isn't only about choice. Life is about how you provide value to your life and others.

Launa Rissadia

I simply love being me. You have no power to control my feelings because I own my own heart

che acebido

I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings of a fragile butterfly, it is how you touch and reveal those inner parts of yourself, without damaging the psyche, that determines whether the beauty is experienced and expressed and shared with others or, in fact, becomes the death of the self and Soul and psyche. I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.

Sophia Rose

Those stories tended to be located around the places where things went wrong, and people were cruel to one another, and so on. They reflected what was probably the most urgent truth operating in me at that time: oh, shit, things can go wrong, and if they do, people get hurt, and I might be one of them, in spite of the fact that I am, you know, me.

George Saunders

The harsh reality is that my flesh must die not so much because of what it does, but because of what it is.

Kelly Minter

I'd just killed some of the best riders in the world - and I was clean. I'd taken nothing - no EPO, no cortisone, no testosterone, no painkillers, no caffeine. I had justified to myself that I was a great rider without drugs - yet perversely given myself the green light to dope again. I'd proved what I could do clean - how much more could I do if I was doped?

David Millar

G. I. Gurdieff, "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"So-and-so-and-so-must-be; do-not-do-what-must-not-be. Mullah's favorite saying. p. 598

Gurdieff

What an idiot I'd been. What a spoilt brat. What a bloody fool.

David Millar

How far can you go in life if you don't love yourself?

Sean King

But, it’s not what they think of you that matters, it’s what you think of yourself. If I’d said something mean to them, I wouldn't like myself very much.

M. Latimer-Ridley

But now the other half of "us" was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I'd be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.

Jennifer Brown

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

Alain de Botton

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.

Kay Larson

We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.

Parker J. Palmer

Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.

Michael Ondaatje

Not at all. It's why people come. They say it's about looking smart, or beautiful, or professional, but it's not. Gray-haired ladies try to recapture their former brunette. Brunettes want to go blond. Other women go for colors that don't arise innature. Each group thinks it's completely different than the others, but I don't see it that way. I've watched them looking at themselves in the mirror, and they're not interested in conforming or rebelling, they just want to walk out of here feeling like themselves again.

Antony John

To know yourself you must know the transience of your self.

Ilyas Kassam

Suppose you turn your attention inward in search of this 'I'. You may encounter nothing more than an ever changing stream of consciousness, a flow of thoughts and feelings in which there is no real self to be discovered.

Jim Holt

As I, my real self, grew older, I entered more and more into the substance of my dreams. One may dream, and even in the midst of the dream be aware that he is dreaming, and if the dream be bad, comfort himself with the thought that it is only a dream. This is a common experience with all of us. And so it was that I, the modern, often entered into my dreaming, and in the consequent strange dual personality was both actor and spectator. And right often have I, the modern, been perturbed and vexed by the foolishness, illogic, obtuseness, and general all-round stupendous stupidity of myself, the primitive.

Jack London

To seek contentment is to release the novelty that lies within monotony

Ilyas Kassam

A truly free man is not free 'from' anything, nor free 'to' anything, he is just free. Free within himself.

Ilyas Kassam

I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.

Laurence Olivier

Frankl asserts that "the potentialities of life are not indifferent possibilities, but must be seen in the light of meaning and values." Such meaning and values cannot be imposed; each individual must seek out for himself or herself the meaning of each situation and the implications the present moment may have for the future.

William Blair Gould

We have to serve ourself many years before we gain our own confidence.

Henry S. Haskins

It's what's buried deep inside that frightens me because it's broken, like a shattered mirror.

Jessica Sorensen

Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.

G.I. Gurdjieff

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It’s been protected by the efficient armour, it’s never participated in life, it’s never been exposed to living and to managing the person’s affairs, it’s never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it’s never properly lived. That’s how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced...And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It’s their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can’t understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That’s the carrier of all the living qualities. It’s the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn’t come out of that creature isn’t worth having, or it’s worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful...And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears.And yet that’s the moment it wants. That’s where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that’s where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy.That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember.But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.

Ted Hughes

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.

N. Scott Momaday

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be…

Joan Didion

the abyss you stare into and that stares back at you is your reflection in the mirror - we all have it - that shadow self - that dark heart...

John Geddes

An apology given just to appease one's conscience is self-serving and better left unspoken!

Evinda Lepins

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.

James A. Michener

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

Neal Shusterman

If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature’s larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western Civilization.

Terence McKenna

There is only one you. Stop trying to devalue yourself by trying to be a copy of someone else.

Susie Clevenger

The finer natures were those that shone at the larger times.

Henry James

You're a Genius all the time

Jack Kerouac

From the Absolute to the Relative-from the Infinite to the Finite-from the Undifferentiated to the Differentiated-from the Unconditioned to the Conditioned and again from the Relative to the Absolute. That is the whole truth of the inexistance to the existentialist, formless to the form, Creator to the Creature, one to the every being, absolute to the inabsolute and vis-á-vis, soforth every single thing is temporary, non-existed, so do I, the dream that I dreamed off is simply a 'lie and impermanent too' same as in the mortal world whatever I do experience.

Upanishad

...to know an other's interior life you are his confessor or a writer - the one is admitted freely, the other intrudes by discerning of spirits

John Geddes

Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you?

Lionel Suggs

Love yourself enough to open your eyes, and open your eyes enough to love yourself.

Jay Woodman

I won't explain why. If you're interesting, you'll find out who I am. One clue, I'm a ghost.

Eka Prasetyani

We lose ourselves in things we love. We find ourselves there, too.

Kristin Martz

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,As souls only understand souls.

Walt Whitman

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.

Golda Meir

...we fear monsters because we fear the dark parts of ourselves...

John Geddes

How many people came and stayed a certain time,Uttered light or dark speech that became part of youLike light behind windblown fog and sandFiltered and influenced by it, until no partRemains that is surely you.

John Ashbery

There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.

Hunter S. Thompson

Do not compare yourself with anybody. Compare yourself with yourself, for yourself and by yourself. We are all uniquely pottered and purposed by our creator!

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

It's kind of depressing, if you think about it. I mean, me being so young, and yet so cynical and suspicious.

Meg Cabot

Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.

Adi Shankaracarya

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Self Quotes - Page 17

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