c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem  the more likely one will treat others with respect  kindness  and generosity. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.
— Nathaniel Branden
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
— Ethel Barrymore
Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not  a sense of humor was provided to console us for what we are.
— Mack McGinnis
It is the duty of youth to bring its fresh powers to bear on social progress. Each generation of young people should be to the world like a vast reserve force to a tired army. They should lift the world forward. That is what they are for.
— Charlotte P. Gilman
I looked always outside of myself to see what I could make the world give me instead of looking within myself to see what was there.
— Belle Livingstone
A true man never frets about his place in the world  but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature  and swings there as easily as a star.
— Edwin H. Chapin
My recipe for life is not being afraid of myself  afraid of what I think or of my opinions.
— Eartha Kitt
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing  and when I accepted that and found the way to do it  then I was able to write.
— Robert B. Parker
When one is pretending the entire body revolts.
— Anais Nin
When you affirm your own Tightness in the universe  then you co-operate with others easily and automatically as part of your own nature. You  being yourself  help others be themselves.
— Jane Roberts
So prodigal was I of youth  Forgetting I was young  I worshipped dead men for their strength  Forgetting I was strong.
— Vita Sackville-West
Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery  because we have ... the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality ... which  from time to time  reveals itself to be vain and illusory.
— Luigi Pirandello
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
— William James
It's OK if you mess up. You should give yourself a break.
— Billy Joel
Who we are never changes. Who we think we are does.
— Mary S. Almanac
It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble  but [we do know] it is our sacred duty.
— Florida Scott-Maxwell
Each of us has a day ... when he has to accept  finally  the fact that he is a man.
— Jean Anouilh
Nature never repeats herself  and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Style is something peculiar to one person  it expresses one personality and one only  it cannot be shared.
— Freya Stark
If you put a woman in a man's position  she will be more efficient  but no more kind.
— Fay Weldon
Accept your humanness as well as your divinity  totally and without reserve.
— Emmanuel
Why can a man not act himself  be himself  and think for himself? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power  that a borrowed word is weaker than our own weakness  however small we may be.
— Maria Mitchell
If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
— Maxwell Maltz
The fundamental problem most patients have is an inability to love themselves  having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives.
— Bernie S. Siegel
Who you are is a necessary step to being who you will be.
— Emmanuel
Ultimately  love is self approval.
— Sondra Ray
Unless I accept my faults  I will most certainly doubt my virtues.
— Hugh Prather
If I am not for myself  who is for me? And if I am only for myself  what am I? And if not now  when?
— Hillel
Accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open With the grace of woman  not the grief of a child ...
— Kara DiGiovanna
He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.
— Susan Sontag
Your problem is you're ... too busy holding onto your unworthiness.
— Ram Dass
Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long  even if it is  the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one.
— Louisa May Alcott
People in big empty places are likely to behave very much as the gods did on Olympus.
— Edna Ferber
What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us  it creates in us a capacity for the closest possible intimacy with God.
— Monica Baldwin
Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed.
— Channing Pollock
Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.
— Diana Black
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
— Lucille S. Harper
There is nothing so skillful in its own defense as imperious pride.
— Helen Hunt Jackson
Wounded vanity knows when it is mortally hurt  and limps off the field  piteous  all disguises thrown away. But pride carries its banner to the last  and fast as it is driven from one field unfurls it in another.
— Helen Hunt Jackson
In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.
— Marya Mannes
It is as proper to have pride in oneself as it is ridiculous to show it to others.
— Francois de La Rochefoucauld
If a man doesn't delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders  how is all life to become important to him?
— Sherwood Anderson
Your father used to say  "Never give away your work. People don't value what they don't have to pay for."
— Nancy Hale
Pride ... is the direct appreciation of oneself.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
— Margaret Fuller
Soften my hard self-opinionatedness  which time has hardened so exceedingly!
— Gertrude the Great
Self-esteem isn't everything  it's just that there's nothing without it.
— Gloria Steinem
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
— Judith Martin
Humility is like underwear  essential but indecent if it shows.
— Helen Nielsen
The more important the title  the more self-important the person  the greater the amount of time spent on the Eastern shuttle  the more suspicious the man and the less vitality in the organization.
— Jane O'Reilly
I'm glad I never feel important  it does complicate life.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
More people are ruined by victory  I imagine  than by defeat.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Vanity is the quicksand of reason.
— George Sand
I was somewhat drunk with what I had done. And I am always one to prefer being sober.
— Gertrude Stein
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
— Anne-Sophie Swetchine
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything.
— Joan Didion
I've always seen myself as a winner  even as a kid. If I hadn't  I just might have gone down the drain a couple of times. I've got something inside of me  peasantlike and stubborn  and I'm in it 'til the end of the race.
— Truman Capote
Success doesn't necessarily make you a happy person ... but without the confidence and security that comes from being totally happy  I believe you cannot achieve your true potential and ultimate success.
— Jinger Heath
Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies  and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
— Bertrand Russell
Tis the ignorant who boast.
— Carmen Sylva
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are  you aren't.
— Margaret Thatcher
There's one blessing only  the source and cornerstone of beatitude: confidence in self.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
If arrogance is the heady wine of youth  then humility must be its eternal hangover.
— Helen Van Slyke
Conquer but never triumph.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Only so far as a man believes strongly  mightily  can he act cheerfully  or do anything worth doing.
— Frederick W. Robertson
Experience tells you what to do  confidence allows you to do it.
— Stan Smith
Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself.
— William J. H. Boetcker
Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna  or it can smooth the edges  take away the insecurities  let the nice things come out.
— Barbara Walters
Humility is attentive patience.
— Simone Weil
The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else.
— Roy L. Smith
Believe that you can whip the enemy  and you have won half the battle.
— General J. E. B. Stuart
Such to me is the new image of aging  growth in self  and service for all mankind.
— Ethel Percy Andrus
The older I get  the greater power I seem to have to help the world  I am like a snowball-the further I am rolled  the more I gain.
— Susan B. Anthony
The real evidence of growing older is that things level off in importance.
— Gladys Taber
Oh  yes. I'd do it all again  the spirit is willing yet  I feel the same desire to do the work but the flesh is weak. It's too bad that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever.
— Susan B. Anthony
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
— Elizabeth Arden
It is sad to grow old  but nice to ripen.
— Brigitte Bardot
Maturity is coming to terms with that other part of yourself.
— Dr. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse
I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.
— Rita Mae Brown
A woman's always younger than a man of equal years.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It is often the case with finer natures  that when the fire of the spirit dies out with increasing age  the power of the intellect is unaltered or increased.
— Margaret Gatty
I'm like old wine. They don't bring me out very often  but I'm well preserved.
— Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
Perhaps middle age is  or should be  a period of shedding shells  the shell of ambition  the shell of material accumulations and possessions  the shell of the ego.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Age is totally unimportant. The years are really irrelevant. It's how you cope with them.
— Shirley Lord
We are always the same age inside.
— Gertrude Stein
There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind  your talents  the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source  you will truly have defeated age.
— Sophia Loren
I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway  less burdened.
— Flannery O'Connor
There are no old people nowadays  they are either "wonderful for their age" or dead.
— Mary Pettibone Poole
For inside all the weakness of old age  the spirit  God knows  is as mercurial as it ever was.
— May Sarton
Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene  but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.
— Florida Scott-Maxwell
We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience  almost beyond our capacity at times  but something to be carried high.
— Florida Scott-Maxwell
Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades. A mode of conduct  a standard of courage  discipline  fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.
— Jacqueline Bisset
Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.
— Muriel Spark
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls  why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
Old age is that night of life  as night is the old age of day. Still night is full of magnificence and  for many  it is more brilliant than the day.
— Anne-Sophie Swetchine
In youth we learn  in age we understand.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Change excites me. I am fifty years old. It's when the mind catches up with the body.
— Raquel Welch
Don't buy the garbage that you're over the hill at fifty. This country makes such a big thing about age  particularly if you're a woman. What I think is relevant is your experience  what you have to offer. I hope people will recognize that and keep going.
— Molly Yard
I refuse to admit that I am more than fifty-two  even if that does make my sons illegitimate.
— Nancy Astor
I used to dread getting older because I thought I would not be able to do all the things I wanted to do  but now that I am older I find that I don't want to do them.
— Nancy Astor
I am immortal! I know it! I feel it!
— Margaret Witter Fuller
Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult  whereas I am merely in disguise.
— Margaret Atwood
Youth is not a time of life  it is a state of mind. You are as old as your doubt  your fear  your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self-confidence young. Keep your hope young.
— Luella F. Phean
We Can't Afford to Doubt Ourselves I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door  I'll go through another door-or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.
— Joan Rivers
Our doubts are traitors  and make us lose the good we oft might win  by fearing to attempt.
— William Shakespeare
Kill the snake of doubt in your soul  crush the worms of fear in your heart  and mountains will move out of your way.
— Kate Seredy
I have never been nervous in all my life and I have no patience with people who are. If you know what you are going to do  you have no reason to be nervous. And I knew what I was going to do.
— Mary Garden
Our self-conceit sustains  and always must sustain us.
— Samuel Butler
Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures ... they are the weakest  however strong  who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.
— Christian Bovee
Faith in oneself ... is the best and safest course.
— Michelangelo
Strong people don't need strong leaders.
— Ella Baker
Might  could  would-they are contemptible auxiliaries.
— George Eliot
You've got to take the initiative and play your game ... confidence makes the difference.
— Chris Evert
Shyness is just egotism out of its depth.
— Penelope Keith
I felt a comedy ego beginning to grow  which gave me the courage to begin tentatively looking into myself for material.
— Joan Rivers
My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.
— Wilma Rudolph
If there be a faith that can move mountains  it is faith in one's own power.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.
— Bruce Barton
Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks on great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.
— Cicero
One's self-image is very important because if that's in good shape  then you can do anything  or practically anything.
— Sir John Gielgud
I've never had a humble opinion in my life. If you're going to have one  why bother to be humble about it?
— Joan Baez
They conquer who believe they can.
— John Dryden
The big gap between the ability of actors is confidence.
— Kathleen Turner
Women who are confident of their abilities are more likely to succeed than those who lack confidence  even though the latter may be much more competent and talented and industrious.
— Dr. Joyce Brothers
Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast  a man consumed with earnestness of purpose  with confidence in his powers  with faith in the worthwhileness of his endeavors.
— B. C. Forbes
Self-reverence  self-knowledge  self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to its possessor.
— John Milton
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
— Stephen Spender
Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself  and you begin to follow your own instincts-only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied  and when you are other people tend to be satisfied by what you do.
— Raquel Welch
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought  and not  as many of those who worry about their shortcomings believe  an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
— Emily Post
He can inspire a group only if he himself is filled with confidence and hope of success.
— Floyd V. Filson
A good sweat  with the blood pounding through my body  makes me feel alive  revitalized. I gain a sense of mastery and assurance. I feel good about myself. Then I can feel good about others.
— Arthur Dobrin
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
— Honore de Balzac
Measure yourself by your best moments  not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression.
— Robert Johnson
Oftentimes nothing profits more than self-esteem  grounded on what is just and right and well-managed.
— John Milton
The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.
— Arnold Bennett
The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.
— William Jennings Bryan
Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest  the more strongly you cultivate this belief  the more will reality and the world go forth from it.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.
— Ann Landers
In forty hours I shall be in battle  with little information  and on the spur of the moment will have to make the most momentous decisions  but I believe that one's spirit enlarges with responsibility and that  with God's help  I shall make them and make them right.
— General George S. Patton
Be always sure you're right  then go ahead.
— Davy Crockett
I always thought I should be treated like a star.
— Madonna
Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
— Thomas Merton
The ability to take pride in your own work is one of the hallmarks of sanity.
— Nikki Giovanni
Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.
— Vince Lombardi
"Glamour" is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way  mentally and physically and in appearance  and that  whatever the occasion or the situation  you are equal to it.
— Marlene Dietrich
To be confident is to act in faith.
— Bernard Bynion
Skill and confidence are an uncon-quered army.
— George Herbert
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity  and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
— Indira Gandhi
When the fight begins within himself  a man's worth something.
— Robert Browning
To put a tempting face aside when duty demands every faculty is a lesson which takes most men longest to learn.
— Gertrude Atherton
Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.
— Marie Chapian
You must have discipline to have fun.
— Julia Child
A little kingdom I possess  Where thoughts and feelings dwell  And very hard the task I find Of governing it well.
— Louisa May Alcott
Everybody's business is nobody's business  and nobody's business is my business.
— Clara Barton
I listen and give input only if somebody asks.
— Barbara Bush
The man who masters his own soul will forever be called conqueror of conquerors.
— Plautus
Temptations come  as a general rule  when they are sought.
— Margaret Oliphant
A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.
— Ida Tarbell
There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself.
— Louis XIV
Too often in ironing out trouble someone gets scorched.
— Marcelene Cox
When you borrow trouble you give your peace of mind as security.
— Myrtle Reed
Don't be curious of matters that don't concern you  never speak of them  and don't ask about them.
— Teresa of Avila
I will write of him who fights and vanquishes his sins  who struggles on through weary years against himself ... and wins.
— Caroline Begelow LeRow
What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are  and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.
— H. P. Liddon
He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down  and without walls.
— Bible
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
— Erma Bombeck
If you can't write your message in a sentence  you can't say it in an hour.
— Dianna Booher
Sweet words are like honey  a little may refresh  but too much gluts the stomach.
— Anne Bradstreet
I am  indeed  a king  because I know how to rule myself.
— Pietro Aretino
He who conquers others is strong  he who conquers himself is mighty.
— Lao-Tzu
A woman that's too soft and sweet is like tapioca pudding-fine for them as likes it.
— Osa Johnson
A little of what you fancy does you good.
— Marie Lloyd
Gammy used to say  "Too much scrubbing takes the life right out of things."
— Betty MacDonald
Who is apt  on occasion  to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.
— Harriet Martineau
The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.
— L. M. Montgomery
Superior people never make long visits.
— Marianne Moore
What lies in our power to do  it lies in our power not to do.
— Aristotle
It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are-not necessarily a religious feeling  but deep down  the spirit within-that you can begin to take control.
— Oprah Winfrey
Anger is only one letter short of danger.
— Anonymous
Without discipline  there's no life at all.
— Katharine Hepburn
Self-control is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.
— George Bernard Shaw
Many people have the ambition to succeed  they may even have a special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job  there is no need to master themselves.
— John Stevenson
Waiting is one of the great arts.
— Margery Allingham
Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking  you are boring somebody.
— Helen Gurley Brown
I know too well the poison and the sting Of things too sweet.
— Adelaide Proctor
Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect you have enough.
— Gail Sheehy
Transformation also means looking for ways to stop pushing yourself so hard professionally or inviting so much stress.
— Gail Sheehy
To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan  you should wear it inside  where it functions best.
— Margaret Thatcher
For fast-acting relief try slowing down.
— Lily Tomlin
This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.
— Phyllis McGinley
We don't want to push our ideas on to customers  we simply want to make what they want.
— Laura Ashley
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
— Marianne Moore
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving  and that's your own self.
— Aldous Huxley
He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.
— Taylor Caldwell
Not being able to govern events  I govern myself.
— Michel de Montaigne
As far as your self-control goes  as far goes your freedom.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
That is always our problem  not how to get control of people  but how all together we can get control of a situation.
— Mary Parker Follett
There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.
— Margaret Mead
He that would govern others should first be the master of himself.
— Philip Massinger
You've got to ensure that the holders of an opinion  however unpopular  are allowed to put across their points of view.
— Betty Boothroyd
There is space within sisterhood for likeness and difference  for the subtle differences that challenge and delight  there is space for disappointment- and surprise.
— Christine Downing
The highest result of education is tolerance.
— Helen Keller
In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained  no man can be truly free. He may have power  but he will not have freedom.
— Mary F. Robinson
Ambition  old as mankind  the immemorial weakness of the strong.
— Vita Sackville-West
When one clings to the myth of superiority  one must constantly overlook the virtues and abilities of others.
— Anne Wilson Schaef
The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.
— George Eliot
The only people who would be in government are those who care more about people than they do about power.
— Millicent Fenwick
Leaders can be moral-and they should be moral-without imposing their morality on others.
— Geraldine Ferraro
The fool shouts loudly  thinking to impress the world.
— Marie de France
Blessed is the man who  having nothing to say  abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
— George Eliot
It was enough just to sit there without words.
— Louise Erdrich
Talking too much  too soon  and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster.
— Meg Greenfield
A story is told as much by silence as by speech.
— Susan Griffin
Talk uses up ideas. ... Once I have spoken them aloud  they are lost to me  dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them  like bulbs  in the rich soil of silence do they grow.
— Doris Grumbach
Next to entertaining or impressive talk  a thoroughgoing silence manages to intrigue most people.
— Florence Hurst Harriman
Love understands love  it needs no talk.
— Frances Ridley Havergal
The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.
— Julia Ward Howe
Handle them carefully  for words have more power than atom bombs.
— Pearl Strachan Hurd
One sees intelligence far more than one hears it. People do not always say transcendental things  but if they are capable of saying them  it is always visible.
— Marie Leneru
The silence of a man who loves to praise is a censure sufficiently severe.
— Charlotte Lennox
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
— Hannah Moore
Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.
— Myrtle Reed
It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree  but smiles.
— Muriel Spark
All the feeling which my father could not put into words was in his hand- any dog  child  or horse would recognize the kindness of it.
— Freya Stark
Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.
— Gertrude Stein
Minimum information given with maximum politeness.
— Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
A gossip is one who talks to you about others  a bore is one who talks to you about himself  and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
— Lisa Kirk
Beware of allowing a tactless word  rebuttal  a rejection to obliterate the whole sky.
— Anais Nin
Violence of the tongue is very real- sharper than any knife.
— Mother Teresa
Don't confuse being stimulating with being blunt.
— Barbara Walters
The less said the better.
— Jane Austen
You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you!
— Isadora Duncan
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired  but by controlling that desire.
— Epictetus
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence  but in the mastery  of his passions.
— Lord Alfred Tennyson
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something  not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it  but that it is a moral imperative that we have it. Then is when we join the fashionable madmen  and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land  and then is when we are in bad trouble.
— Joan Didion
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies  the hardest victory is the victory over self.
— Aristotle
The basic difference between being assertive and being aggressive is how our words and behavior affect the rights and well-being of others.
— Sharon Anthony Bower
The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
— Samuel Johnson
He who reigns within himself and rules his passions  desires  and fears is more than a king.
— John Milton
To pursue yourself is an interesting and absorbing thing to do. Once you have caught the scent of a hidden being  your own hidden being  you won't readily be deflected from the tracking down of it.
— Cynthia Propper Seton
Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves  their abilities  their frailties  and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.
— Sydney J. Harris
If I could know me  I could know the universe.
— Shirley MacLaine
A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.
— Chuang-tzu
I believe that in our constant search for security we can never gain any peace of mind until we are secure in our own soul.
— Margaret Chase Smith
We should know what our convictions are  and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy  conscious or unconscious  depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is  so will be his ultimate truth.
— Carl Jung
Femininity appears to be one of those pivotal qualities that is so important no one can define it.
— Caroline Bird
I knew what my job was  it was to go out and meet the people and love them.
— Diana, Princess of Wales
People who concentrate on giving good service always get more personal satisfaction as well as better business. How can we get better service? One way is by trying to see ourselves as others do.
— Patricia Fripp
Resolve to be thyself  and know that he who finds himself  loses his misery.
— Matthew Arnold
Let us remember that within us there is a palace of immense magnificence.
— Teresa of Avila
Freedom is knowing who you really are.
— Linda Thomson
Knowing others is wisdom  knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
— Lao-Tzu
I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards becoming a champion.
— Billie Jean King
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
— Plato
The deeper interior you have the more you have in your library.
— Jacqueline Bisset
Follow your interests  get the best available education and training  set your sights high  be persistent  be flexible  keep your options open  accept help when offered  and be prepared to help others.
— Mildred Spiewak Dresselhaus
It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
— Queen Elizabeth II
As it turns out  social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.
— Susan Faludi
Saying "yes" to yourself means acknowledging what you have that's good and working on the things that aren't.
— Patricia Fripp
We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.
— Madeleine L'Engle
As simple as it sounds  we all must try to be the best person we can: by making the best choices  by making the most of the talents we've been given.
— Mary Lou Retton
You must love and care for yourself  because that's when the best comes out.
— Tina Turner
Show me a sensible person who likes himself or herself! I know myself too well to like what I see. I know but too well that I'm not what I'd like to be.
— Golda Meir
Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.
— Adrienne Rich
Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself-in fact  till it does that  it hardly is experience.
— Elizabeth Bowen
Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement.
— Spanish proverb
We are the same people as we were at three  six  ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so  perhaps  at six or seven  because we were not pretending so much then.
— Agatha Christie
Until we see what we are  we cannot take steps to become what we should be.
— Charlotte P. Gilman
When a man begins to understand himself  he begins to live.
— Norvin G. McGranahan
If you do not ask yourself what it is you know  you will go on listening to others and change will not come because you will not hear your own truth.
— Saint Bartholomew
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
— Thomas Mann
Sometimes a person has to go back  really back-to have a sense  an understanding of all that's gone to make them-before they can go forward.
— Paule Marshall
Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.
— Georges Gurdjieff
Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision  action  and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help. ... We find that bit by bit we can discard the old life-the one that did not work-for a new life that can and does work under conditions whatever.
— Anonymous
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
— Thales
You never find yourself until you face the truth.
— Pearl Bailey
It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself  but the most inconvenient  too.
— Josh Billings
Long ago I understood that it wasn't merely my being a woman that was preventing my being welcomed into the world of what I long thought of as my peers. It was that I had succeeded in an undertaking few men have even attempted: I have become myself.
— Alice Koller
He knows the universe and does not know himself.
— Jean de la Fontaine
There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.
— Carol Shields
No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
— Joseph Conrad
Nothing is easier than self-deceit.
— Demosthenes
Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.
— Wilma Rudolph
You can live a lifetime and  at the end of it  know more about other people than you know about yourself.
— Beryl Markham
Long tresses down to the floor can be beautiful  if you have that  but learn to love what you have.
— Anita Baker
I am no longer what I was. I will remain what I have become.
— Coco Chanel
I always introduce myself as an encyclopedia of defects which I do not deny. Why should I? It took me a whole life to build myself as I am.
— Oriana Fallaci
The happy man is he who knows his limitations  yet bows to no false gods.
— Robert W. Service
I shall be an autocrat  that's my trade  and the good Lord will forgive me  that's his.
— Catherine the Great
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do  than what one can.
— Lin Yutang
Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.
— Joshua L. Liebman
To say something nice about themselves  this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do.
— Nancy Friday
After my screen test  the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled  "She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!"
— Ava Gardner
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings  they gradually begin to seem mild  harmless  rather engaging little things  not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.
— Margaret Halsey
It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous  but rather the studious way we try to hide them  and our desire to act as if they did not exist.
— Giacomo Leopardi
Of all the idiots I have met in my life  and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little  I think that I have been the biggest.
— Isak Dinesen
A woman of mystique is fully aware of her flaws and weaknesses  yet she is strong enough to admit them and not be embarrassed by them.
— Jean Lush
Learning too soon our limitations  we never learn our powers.
— Mignon McLaughlin
Your thorns are the best part of you.
— Marianne Moore
I am simple  complex  generous  selfish  unattractive  beautiful  lazy  and driven.
— Barbra Streisand
If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another  before you do anything  you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.
— Marilyn vos Savant
I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain  the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
— Amy Tan
The precept  "Know yourself " was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind  but likewise that we might understand our own worth.
— Cicero
I believe that dreams transport us through the underside of our days  and that if we wish to become acquainted with the dark side of what we are  the signposts are there  waiting for us to translate them.
— Gail Godwin
It is a purely relative matter where one draws the plimsoll-line of condemnation  and ... if you find the whole of humanity falls below it you have simply made a mistake and drawn it too high. And you are probably below it yourself.
— Frances Partridge
Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature  with all its contradictions  appetites  aversions  rages  can one hope to understand a little ... oh  I admit only a very little ... of what life is about.
— Francoise Sagan
The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.
— Flannery O'Connor
We do not make beams from the hollow  decaying trunk of the fallen oak. We use the upsoaring tree in the full vigor of its sap.
— Sylvia Pankhurst
We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
— Adrienne Rich
Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time  a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race.
— Mary McLeod Bethune
There is a potential heroine in every woman.
— Jean Shinoda Bolen
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth  as human truth  all the maps change. There are new mountains.
— Ursula K. LeGuin
I hear the singing of the lives of women. The clear mystery  the offering  the pride.
— Muriel Rukeyser
For women there are  undoubtedly  great difficulties in the path  but so much the more to overcome. First no woman would say "I am but a woman!" But a woman! What more can you ask to be?
— Maria Mitchell
Ability is sexless.
— Christabel Pankhurst
We bear the world and we make it.... There was never a great man who had not a great mother-it is hardly an exaggeration.
— Olive Schreiner
Remember  Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did  but she did it backwards and in high heels.
— Faith Whittlesey
There may be ways in which we can work for change. We don't have to do dramatic things or devote our entire lives to it. We can lead normal lives but at the same time try hard not to be bystanders.
— Helen Bamber
Some people give time  some money  some their skills and connections  some literally give their life's blood . . . but everyone has something to give.
— Barbara Bush
Though I have no productive worth  I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity.
— Alice James
I was once the typical daughter  then the easily recognizable wife  and then the quintessential mother. I seem always to have reminded people of someone in their family. Perhaps I am just the triumph of Plain Jane.
— Helen Hayes
God wastes nothing.
— Jan Karon
To be a housewife is ... a difficult  a wrenching  sometimes ungrateful job if it's looked on as only a job. Regarded as a profession  it is the noblest as it is the most ancient of the catalogue. Let none persuade us differently  or the world will be lost indeed.
— Phyllis McGinley
It's this no-nonsense side of women that is pleasant to deal with. They are the real sportsmen.
— Phyllis McGinley
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all  there is only the meaning we each give to our life  an individual meaning  an individual plot  like an individual novel  a book for each person.
— Anais Nin
I see myself as Rhoda  not Mary Tyler Moore.
— Rosie O'Donnell
The surest sign of fitness is success.
— Olive Schreiner
From the first  I made my learning  what little it was  useful every way I could.
— Mary McLeod Bethune
I was not a classic mother. But my kids were never palmed off to boarding school. So  I didn't bake cookies. You can buy cookies  but you can't buy love.
— Raquel Welch
I am an ordinary person  but carried to extremes.
— Fay Weldon
I am not a glutton-I am an explorer of food.
— Erma Bombeck
I am because my little dog knows me.
— Gertrude Stein
There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried within. More inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains  more profound than the midnight sea: the solitude of self.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Whether it was work  marriage  or family  I've always been a late bloomer.
— Sigourney Weaver
Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world-making the most of one's best.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
I want  by understanding myself  to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
— Katherine Mansfield
Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.
— Cynthia Ozick
The delights of self-discovery are always available.
— Gail Sheehy
Whether there are innately female leadership styles ... is not really the right question. It is more important to ask why there has been so little attention paid to women leaders over the years as well as why the styles of leading more often exhibited by women are particularly useful at this critical moment in history.
— Charlotte Bunch
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature  but in men it is a vice.
— Boethius
Once  power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact  power has no sex.
— Katherine Graham
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much  but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking  what I'm looking at  what I see and what it means  what I want  and what I fear.
— Joan Didion
Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
— Louis Kronenberger
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
No one can figure out your worth but you.
— Pearl Bailey
There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.
— Philip James Bailey
He who knows himself best esteems himself least.
— H. G. Bohn
Thales was asked what was most difficult to man  he answered: "To know one's self."
— Diogenes
Oh  wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us  And foolish notion.
— Robert Burns
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
— George Eliot
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
— La Rochefoucauld
All men love themselves.
— Plautus
I to myself am dearer than a friend.
— William Shakespeare
To love one's self is the beginning of a life-long romance.
— Wilde Self-Made
He is a self-made man  and worships his creator.
— John Bright
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
— English proverb
Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.
— Andre Maurois
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it  we can never do anything wise in this world.
— Helen Keller
What poison is to food  self-pity is to life.
— Oliver C. Wilson
It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you.
— Lady Bird Johnson
Grumbling is the death of love.
— Marlene Dietrich
Being sorry for myself is a luxury I can't afford.
— Stephen King
To feel sorry for oneself is one of the most disintegrating things the individual can do to himself.
— Winifred Rhoades
Self-pity is one of the most dangerous forms of self-centeredness. It fogs our vision.
— Anonymous
To hear complaints is wearisome to the wretched and the happy alike.
— Samuel Johnson
Sympathy is never wasted except when you give it to yourself.
— John W. Raper
He who complains  sins.
— Saint Francis de Sales
This life is not for complaint  but for satisfaction.
— Henry David Thoreau
There is only one way to end a self-pity cycle: stop comparing yourself to others  and simply follow Christ.
— Linda Harry
Suffering isn't ennobling  recovery is.
— Christian N. Barnard
When any fit of gloominess  or perversion of mind  lays hold upon you  make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.
— Samuel Johnson
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
— George Bernard Shaw
The cure for grief is motion.
— Elbert Hubbard
I got the blues thinking of the future  so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges or scrub the floor.
— D. H. Lawrence
When you find yourself overpowered  as it were  by melancholy  the best way is to go out and do something.
— John Keble
The best mask for demoralization is daring.
— Lucan
Self-pity is a death that has no resurrection  a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink.
— Elizabeth Elliot
Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.
— Thomas Morton
Our family never had any hard luck  because nothing seemed hard luck to it  nor was it ever disgraced for there was nothing which it would acknowledge as disgrace.
— Boxcar Bertha
Others may argue about whether the world ends with a bang or a whimper. I just want to make sure mine doesn't end with a whine.
— Barbara Gordon
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough Without ever having felt sorry for itself.
— D. H. Lawrence
Old age is no place for sissies.
— Bette Davis
Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.
— Eugene Ionesco
Pain is inevitable  suffering is optional.
— M. Kathleen Casey
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
— George Eliot
Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy  discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives  humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.
— Shirley Hazzard
It's not the load that breaks you down  it's the way you carry it.
— Lena Home
The human mind can bear plenty of reality  but not too much unintermit-tent gloom.
— Margaret Drabble
Misery is a communicable disease.
— Martha Graham
If you believe  then you hang on. If you believe  it means you've got imagination  you don't need stuff thrown out on a blueprint  and don't face facts - what can stop you? If I don't make it today  I'll come in tomorrow.
— Ruth Gordon
Never give way to melancholy  resist it steadily  for the habit will encroach.
— Sydney Smith
Despair is criminal.
— Samuel Johnson
Even the cry from the depths is an affirmation: Why cry if there is no hint or hope of hearing?
— Martin Marty
God hates those who praise themselves.
— St. Clement
If you wish in this world to advance Your merits you're bound to enhance  You must stir it and stump it  And blow your own trumpet  Or  trust me  you haven't a chance.
— W. S. Gilbert
Let another man praise thee  and not thine own mouth.
— Bible
It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man.
— Augusta Gregory
I don't follow precedent  I establish it.
— Fanny Ellen Holtzman
Your future depends on many things  but mostly on you.
— Frank Tyger
The woman who can create her own job is the one who will win fame and fortune.
— Amelia Earhart
The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.
— Roseanne Barr
Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom?
— Hazel Scott
A man who finds no satisfaction in himself  seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
— Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The wise don't expect to find life worth living  they make it that way.
— Anonymous