c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
A man is master of himself to a certain point, but not beyond it. -William Crimsworth
— Charlotte Brontë, The Professor
If you forget who you've become remember who you are
— Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes volume 2
My anger feels hot and bilious but I keep it bottled until it doubles back and I'm mad at myself.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Year
Not like the me was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn't have to feel sorry for or have to fight for. -Felice
— Toni Morrison, Jazz
To be ‘one’ in one’s own hands is to be ‘one.’ To be ‘one’ in the hands of God is to be ‘one’ that is far too vast to be counted.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of “I” in your mind and whatever the “I” has identified with.
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
My 'Inner World' can only tap the GOODNESS in the World outside ! From within I see 'beauty', from within I see 'ugliness', from within I see 'divinity', from within I 'enjoy',from within I feel 'sadness' !It all starts from ME, goes all around and comes back to ME!!
— Abha Maryada Banerjee, Nucleus: Power Women: Lead from the Core
I 'OWN' some part of the evolution...I want to make my SHARE 'relevant' 'meaningful' and 'miraculous'!!
— Abha Maryada Banerjee, Nucleus: Power Women: Lead from the Core
‪#‎TRUTH‬ ‪#‎BEREAL‬We must be ruthlessly honest with and about Self..Self Assessments are often inflated or deflated or just imaginary..
— Abha Maryada Banerjee, Nucleus: Power Women: Lead from the Core
Life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally — and sometimes maddeningly — who we are.
— Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion
We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.
— Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It is the price we pay for these times of ours.
— Sōseki Natsume
You are the limit to yourself - raise yourself over it.
Love is that which gives of itself, not because anyone needs it or deserves it, but because that is what love does.
— Vivian Amis, I AM - The Key to Manifesting
The secret seemed to me much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one who had known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people, like a man who has risen from the grave, and at first I merely felt rather painfully out of my element; but soon I became aware of a very different feeling.Was it pride now? Perhaps; but at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather, for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated me - distinguished me - from other people was crucial; what no one said, what no one could say but myself, that was my task to say.
— André Gide
Inside our mind there is hidden place that contains the mind within the mind. There, you will find another version of yourself that may be your true self. We do not find that self by travelling, by searching. We find that self by sitting still, being quiet and looking inside. Ask yourself: who am I? And your true self will answer.
— Chloe Thurlow, Girl Trade
So this was what it was like not to be me.
— Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You
It's okay. We're all messed up in our own special way.
— Allison Rushby, Shooting Stars
He Who Owns Himself Is Never Alone.
— Unknown
The truth is he spends thirty minutes of every hour suspecting he has missed some essential clue about himself. And not only himself--he has a recurring fantasy that one night, while he was asleep, the entire world was transformed into an alien planet, but no one bothered to tell him, and he didn't have the instinct to figure it out, and here he is now on a wild new Earth, walking around like an imbecile, as if everything he knows hasn't fallen away behind him like a river plummeting over a precipice.
— Kevin Brockmeier, A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade
I think myself so terribly ‘clever’ that the need for God is blatantly irrelevant. And all the while, in the rapidly growing mess that I’m ‘cleverly’ creating, I rather quickly begin to realize that the only thing that is relevant is His relevance.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have travelled many places but still I find that perhaps the greatest journey is through one's own mind.
— Anonymous
I know everything of what i know, but of what i dont know i know nothing
— karah louis
When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent.
— Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
The worst battle you'll have to fight is between what you know and how you feel.
— Turcois Ominek
And when you reach the place where this understanding overtakes you; that there is no one in the world that will ever love you with the force and power you can love yourself with. That no saviour in the form of a spouse or best friend is coming to make you complete and that you are your own saviour, your own best friend and perhaps the only saviour and best friend you will have, you will soar on wings of eagles and amazing things will happen.
— Adunni Badmus
For I have nothing to lean on, nowhere to call my home and there is nowhere I will go for Christmas to rest my head and touch familiar walls. I have no degree to show on paper or employment to take care of my health or the reassurance that I can pay my rent. And I have no right to complain because this is the road I choose and I built it myself, not really knowing where I wanted it to lead, but I have hope in all things ahead and behind and I am learning to let myself go. Forget my own ego and believe that what I am doing is grander than my very own self.
— Charlotte Eriksson
I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
A gentle answer turns away wrath.
— Gary Chapman
Who put the S in comic to make cosmic? / The Self, which is the self of all beings - / choosing to disguise from themselves / that everything is just a game. // With a laugh we could turn / from all the seriousness we learned / and connect with every atom to create / breathtaking beauty with graceful ease.
— Jay Woodman
Here in this endless and gleaming wildernessI was removed farther than ever from the world of men --And I never saw so close and so clearlyThe image in the mirror of my own soul.
— Hermann Hesse, Poems
You are the only person that you'll have for the rest of your life. Cherish yourself. Treat yourself with kindness. Love yourself. Be your own caretaker.
— Dani N M.
Peace": the fruit of justice done especially to the Self.
— Alice Walker, The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers
By gazing inward the true reflection of the self is revealed.
— Miranda J. Barrett, A Woman's Truth: A Life Truly Worth Living
The outside world can only trigger or block your experience of your true nature. Each time something beautiful takes your breath away, that’s you experiencing yourself. Each time you fall in love with someone, that’s you experiencing yourself. Each time a child’s smile gives you unspeakable joy, that’s you experiencing yourself. Your true nature is beautiful. Life is the art of rediscovering yourself, again and again, in different forms, celebrating, rejoicing, welcoming. You are beautiful. You are life itself.
— Vironika Tugaleva
Changing yourself is not about changing of what you are. But changing other's perspective that they always think you are.
— Dancolin Flamiano
I keep telling myself sensible things, but I never seem to listen!
— K. Farrell St. Germain
You do not need permission to be you. Just be your authentic, brilliant, one-soul-only self. You are a marvel. Act like it!
— Toni Sorenson
There were times when it seemed the different parts of him where not all under the same management.
— Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz
Don’t do it! Don’t you dare think about giving up! EVERYTHING has a process. Work with the process, not against it. Move forward with purpose and never stop believing. You can do this! You know you can.
— Stephanie Lahart
There IS a better future for you! Get rid of that negative and defeated attitude. Stop tearing yourself down and learn to build yourself up. Speak positively about yourself. If you’re not satisfied with who you are and where you’re at in your life, have the courage to make a change and be a person that you can be proud of. Change can be scary, but change for the better is very rewarding in the end. You can do it! Do it for YOU.
— Stephanie Lahart
Sometimes the heart breaks... Sometimes you break... Sometimes you break your heart by breaking yourself for someone who wouldn't do the same...
— Marston James
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t be afraid to stand firm on the decisions that you make. Trust yourself. Believe in your instincts. Do what works best for YOU. Stay true to yourself and be good to yourself. Allow every decision that you make to empower, enrich, and add value to your life!
— Stephanie Lahart
Your self…is other people, all the people you're tied to, and it's only a thread.
— Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Purify your intentions, your inner being, your heart and be sincere in your actions,’ he wrote. ‘God looks into your heart, not at your outer form. He looks at what lies behind the clothes … He looks into your private sphere, not at your public show.
— Kristiane Backer, From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life
It's good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn't correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn't fall into any category, if he's not representative, half of what's demanded of him is there. He's free of himself, he has achieved a grain of immortality.
— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
...All who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end. All, save you. For you would not have death. You lost death, you lost life, in order to save yourself. Yourself! Your immortal self! What is it? Who are you?""I am myself. My body will not decay and die-""A living body suffers pain, Cob; a living body grows old; it dies. Death is the price we pay for our life and for all life.""I do not pay it! I can die and in that moment live again! I cannot be killed; I am immortal. I alone am myself forever!""Who are you, then?""The Immortal One.""Say your name.""The King.""Say my name. I told it to you but a minute since. Say my name!""You are not real. You have no name. Only I exist.""You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw your world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
No good can come from beating ourselves up for falling down—for feeling unhappy when we want to feel just the opposite.
— Toni Sorenson
If inanimate objects are left to stand in their world, and are not invited out to mingle with our sense of self, they will quietly console and delight us. But to bind possessions up closely with the mind is less than fair to both.
— Kennedy Fraser
The hardest thing of all, is just standing in front of a mirror and not recognizing the reflection.
— Klaudio Marashi
You won’t fail! That’s the fear in you lying to you. You will succeed! That’s why fear is trying so hard to stop you. I encourage you to take that first step. Walk into your purpose and do what you were born to do. Have faith in yourself. Have courage to move forward doubting NOTHING. Doubt has no place and serves no purpose. Give yourself a chance to uncover all of the greatness that’s within you!
— Stephanie Lahart
Self care, self love.Self esteem, self confidence
— Lailah Gifty Akita
To understand God we must understand ourselves. If I give you an apple and ask you, “What is that?” you reply, “An apple.”“How do you know it’s an apple?”“Because it just is.”“How did it get to be an apple?”“It came from an apple.”“Exactly. So when I ask you, ‘What are you?’ you can honestly say, ‘I am a child of God because I came from God.
— Toni Sorenson
The discipline gave me a sense of achievement. Not least, fasting is a test of willpower and, whenever I felt my willpower weakening, I would tell myself that I could eat as much as I wanted after sunset. But then the strange thing was that after fasting all day long, I tended to feel full with just a small snack.
— Kristiane Backer, From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life
everything that is in the world, there is a correspondence on every level of existence. The macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm, and the way we experience the outer world is a reflection of our inner state: it is our mirror. If we are in harmony with ourselves, then we will be in harmony with the outer world, i.e. God. If we change from within, then everything around us also changes. I certainly knew how true this was.
— Kristiane Backer, From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life
My mediocrity is no secret
—  My battles with it are
Born to love, Born to lead.Born to shine, Born to succeed.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
It's not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.
— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people – the ancients no less than us – have civilized themselves through the wilful repression of the old, animal self.
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
We will not wake up ten years from now and find we have passively taken on the character of God.
— Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds
The 2 extremes, neither one worse than the other: the result of bad religion is self-loathing and violence; the result of bad spirituality is self-worship and narcissism.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,And bar them out; but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed of all?If I could once lay down myself,And start self-purged upon the raceThat all must run ! Death runs apace.
— Christina Rossetti
Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.
— Yukio Mishima
Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in our wars, our destruction of the environment, our divisions, our desire to dominate others, the poverty we create and exploit. Only through self-knowledge can we reverse the damage we do with all the worldly knowledge we have, which has been only a higher ignorance.
— Ben Okri, A Time for New Dreams
Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.
— Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are a subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who has suffered from insomnia.
— Joseph Wood Krutch
Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically "meaningful," while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day and have their dealings with other men is consigned to the outer darkness of the "meaningless." Positivism has simply accepted the fractured being of modern man and erected a philosophy to intensify it. Existentialism, whether successfully or not, has attempted instead to gather all the elements of human reality into a total picture of man. Positivist man and Existentialist man are no doubt offspring of the same parent epoch, but, somewhat as Cain and Abel were, the brothers are divided unalterably by temperament and the initial choice they make of their own being.
— William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
I needed a break...from myself.
— Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
Remind to yourself that it's okay not to be perfect
— Ain Eineziz
There is nothing we could add to that which has already been created....perfection.
— Vivian Amis, The Essentials of Life
Stay unknown until you know what you want to be known for.#StokesNotes
— Craig Stokes
you actually do not hate you, you just hate the circumstances at the time
— Lugas Anegah
Stand up for who you are. Reject the status quo!
— Tara Adams
The only person that you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday
— Ain Eineziz
Relate to a life situation in the deepest sense: not from the standpoint of the ego that bemoans its fate and rebels against it, but from... the greater inner law that has left behind its small birth, the narrow realm of personal outlook, for the sake of renewal and rebirth.
— Max Zeller
The more severely he struggles to hold on to the primal face-to-face relation with God, the more tenuous this becomes, until in the end the relation to God Himself threatens to become a relation to Nothingness.
— William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It has happened to all of us; we are its victims, are we have no control over it.
— William Glasser
Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognitions of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.
— Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
Your relationship to yourself is and always will be directly reflected in all your relationships with others.
— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness
Don't mind what people say about youthe most important thing is what you believe you are.
— Val Irvin Mabayo
It is the thought that the least efficient way of of finding either happiness or pleasure is to pursue them. Put in terms of happiness, we can see it like this: To be happy you must quite literally "lose yourself". You must lose yourself in some pursuit; you need to forget your own happiness and find other goals and projects, other objects of concern that might include the welfare of some other people, or the cure of the disease, or simply in the variety of everyday activities with their little successes and setbacks.
— Simon Blackburn, Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love
If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it.I’m a mystic, but only in my body,My soul is simple and doesn’t think.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep
And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self.
— Joyce Carol Oates, Mudwoman
Know your self package to the core. Never lose the strength of assets, your values, what identifies and separates you, what makes you unique. No, you or I are perfect but we are who we are now and we should continue to move towards that better person God sees us to be.
— Eveth Colley
Like the medieval cartographers of Europe, who felt one would fall into endless space at the edges of the oceans of their maps, we fear the presumed nothingness of no-self. Fortunately, there have been many spiritual circumnavigators who have returned to tell the tale of the beauty beyond self.
— Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Aging: Awaken as You Grow Older
When the self is not engaged in apprehending objects it becomes aware of itself.
— Walter Terence Stace
A fuller expression of Self comes from the journey for greater wholeness.
— Kathryn V. White
Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognition of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.
— Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
Shall you live authentically who you are or will you spend your allotted living the life of someone you imagine your self to be?
— Earl R. Smith II
You are still what you think, despite what others think about you!
— Dr. Vivencio Ballano
That which enables us to know and understand aright in the things of God, must be a living principle of holiness within us.
— John Smith Jr.
Become what you should and not what you want to be.
— DeepSee
You can be yourself without pursuing yourself. Have you ever seen a dog chase his own tail? He just runs in circles.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
During relaxation we drop our guard. Particularly in conversation. Relaxed conversation leads to openness. And in openness we often reveal what should never be revealed.
— Edward Carey, Observatory Mansions
You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.
— Robin McKinley, Sunshine
You don’t care what anyone thinks about you,’ he said.‘That’s crazy,’ she said. ‘I care what everyone thinks about me.’‘I can’t tell,’ he said. ‘You just seem like yourself, no matter what’s happening around you. My grandmother would say you’re comfortable in your own skin.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent. Everywhere, in every family, every tribe, every great community, crimes, crimes, crimes. War is clean by comparison. The hangman is a gentle dove by comparison. Attila, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan reckless automatons by comparison. Your father, your darling mother, your sweet sister: do you know the foul crimes they harbor in their breasts? Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image.
— Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Someone who is said to have a big ego is thought to be full of themselves, to lack the ability to listen, to always rush to be at the top of the tree and to think their own ideas are the best.
— Gyalwa Dokhampa, The Restful Mind
Because we are made in God's image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves.
— Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
i have a body and I am grateful, as I find it to be a very useful instrument for expressing love, strength, flexibility, gracebut, I am not my body...
— Kate Mullane Robertson
...he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why.
— David Levithan, Every Day
Nothing is the whole story. The self’s curse – and the writer’s.
— Glen Duncan, By Blood We Live
There are things you should never give up on like your convictions and ambitions but most importantly…you should never give up on you. Keep making those sacrifices, keep running that race, keep advancing beyond your struggles to your eventual goal. You will deeply value your triumphs, if they’re not handed to you. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is worth having or attaining without labor and toil. So when you’re in your darkest hour and the road seems endless, no matter what, never ever give up on you…because only you will see you through. ~Jason Versey
— Jason Versey, A Walk with Prudence
Teach a person to think and they'll devise a way to eat for a lifetime
— William Robson
It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all *was* changed.
— Robin McKinley, Sunshine
SINK OR SWIM ALERTFolks with low self-esteem will push you under to save their drowning egosKamil Ali
— Kamil Ali, Profound Vers-A-Tales
Personality is a strategy devised by a child. Our true, original self lies under our personality, in the transpersonal ground of our being, at our core.
— Neal M. Goldsmith, Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development
I am proud of (knowing) who I am.
— GT Rodrigues
Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.
— Georgia O'Keeffe
He wondered if anyone really ever changed, or if stuff just piled on and on, covering up, but never erasing all the different parts. How deep would you have to dig to find who you started out as?
— Alex London, Proxy
Every angel is terrifying.Through the darkness, they move silently...I will go down into death with you.I must go where I must goTo see what I must seeIn that place where no one knows...... This is where love is taking me.You have been leadingMe, angels, in and out of death.I have no idea who you are.Eurydice. Is she nothingOr is she your mirror?I don't know anymore.I am at war.Perhaps that which is given - Being human - Is too hard,And so it is love that brings us,To what cannot be born,To ourselves,And so we must change,Must descend, guided by love, into the unknown.Lovers disappear in each other.Do they disappear forever?Where do they go?
— Kathy Acker, Eurydice in the Underworld
Love and self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both
— Leo Buscaglia, Love
When you understand what you’re truly worth, who is going to be able to make you feel worthless? No one.
— Toni Sorenson
He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It’s not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.
— Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
You want to be loved? Love yourself first and passionately. Forgive yourself readily. Care for every part of you. Only when you love yourself do you have love to give to others.
— Toni Sorenson
I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.
— John Banville, The Untouchable
If originality is a “sense of novelty and freshness” then, in the act of constructing ourselves, originality is not the goal. We construct a self-portrait, relying on existing objects – books, quotes from authors and artists, images, art – that we are more than happy to show off to others for them to use as masturbation material or for the material by which they align themselves. This is the new action painting – the curational archive. The referential self portrait. The portrait of any other artist could be readily used to explain yourself, just reblog it and caption it with “same.” The past consistently becomes the present, not through linear time, but through the constant reconstruction and relabeling of it.
— Gabby Bess
The goal of privacy is not to protect some stable self from erosion but to create boundaries where this self can emerge, mutate, and stabilize.
— Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
A journey through nature is always a road that leads to self-discovery.
— Toni Sorenson
When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on the screen of the night. My dead self came nearer, just as if it might want to shake hands with my real self. That's when I panicked and tried to run. But my dead self pursued me and finally caught me, entered me and controlled me. I'd felt then just the way I felt now. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head from which consciousness and memory leaked out and in their place the rash crowded in, and a cold like spoiled roast chicken. But that time before, shaking and clinging to the damp bench, I'd told myself, Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running.
— Ryū Murakami, Almost Transparent Blue
And I Said To My Soul, Be LoudMadden me back to an afternoonI carry in menot like a woundbut like a will against a woundGive me again enough manto be the childchoosing my own annihilationsTo make of this severed limba wand to conjurea weapon to shatterdark matter of the dirt daubers' nestsgalaxies of glassWhacking glintsbash-dancing on the cellar's fireI am the sound the sun would makeif the sun could make a soundand the gasp of rotstabbed from the compost's lumpen living deathis meO my life my war in a jarI shake you and shake youand may the best ant winFor I am come a whirlwind of wasted thingsand I will ride this tantrum back to Goduntil my fixed self, my fluorescent selfmy grief–nibbling, unbewildered, wall–to–wall selfwithers in me like a salted slug
— Christian Wiman, Every Riven Thing: Poems
If I say, “I am weak,” I ensure that I stay weak. If I say, “I cannot,” “I’m not the type to,” “I am not able,” then I set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I think of myself, so I shall be.
— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness
When you submit yourself to God and obey Him, you allow Him to do what He desires in your life. You make it possible for Him to lead you wherever He wants to use you.
— Jim George, One-Minute Insights for Men
She thought back to what he had said. /I could make you very happy./ It was something men said then, when they were trying to persuade you, and that was what they meant. It seemed rash and sweeping to her, dazzling but *presumptuous*. She had to try to see herself, then, as somebody who could be /made happy/. The whole worrying, striving, complicated bundle of her -- was that something that could just be picked up and /made happy/?
— Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth
My job as a coach isn't to 'fix' people it is to 'break' them and empower them to connect to their spirit and trust that they will be re-built into a new improved version given a little time and patience.
— Rebecca O'Dwyer Centred Woman
A journey through nature is always a road thatleads to self-discovery.
— Toni Sorenson
A journey through nature is always a road to leads to self-discovery.
— Toni Sorenson
We can never see what we never question, for we who escapes, blinds us
— Farley Maglaya
I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
— Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea
Conversion of our views of self in light of God is continual. We daily have to take the time to notice and trust in who he is in order to understand who we are. The book of Romans assures us that God's Spirit will fill each moment of our lives if we notice and trust the way he is repairing our humanity.
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes me angry.It's not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper. I say awful things when I'm angry. But it's not fair to me, either, that I was made this way.
— Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy
And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?
— Terry Pratchett
I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two.The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew.The changeless part was always true, The growing part was always new,And I wondered, when the tale was through, Which part was me, and which was you.
— Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind
In order to pronounce a book bad it is not enough to discover that it elicits no good response from ourselves, for that might be our fault.
— C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
The flight away from self to God is not a "forgetting self" in the sense that man thereby loses himself. Rather, in the experience of the Spirit there is bestowed on man the deepest possible experience of himself: for the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of revelation which illuminates the human spirit, in which it is immanent, by telling man what he is.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar
A true legacy is established over a lifetime and relates to what a human being does for others, not for himself.
— Bill Courtney, Against the Grain: A Coach's Wisdom on Character, Faith, Family, and Love
When the rose opens its heart, you will smell the fragrance of its soul.
— Jit Sharma
The flight away from self to God is not a "forgetting self" in the sense that man thereby loses himself. Rather, in the experience of the Spirit there is bestowed on man the deepest possible experience of himself: for the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of revelation which illuminate the human spirit, in which it is immanent, by telling man what he is.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar
In that moment, I felt differently to myself yet the essence of who I really was.Like a perfect state of balance.
— Tim Relf, Stag
You are accompanied through life, Emily Jesse occasionally understood, not only by the beloved and accusing departed, but by your own ghost too, also accusing, also unappeased.
— A.S. Byatt, Angels and Insects
Our real Self does not ask questions, as it does not require answers. It is there, it is present Now. We are only able to find it if we forget about questions and submit to the Self, radiating its light in the Present!
— Frank Wanderer
I am the cause of all my upsets. I am my worst enemy.
— Chuck Palahniuk
Between you and you, let there be no secrets. ~T.F. Hodge
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Our abilities and possibilities are at one and the same time very limited and quite infinite dependent on the depth of our relationship to our 'self', others and life itself.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
i was told i was conceited today.... but being conceited would imply that i see my self as being absolutely perfect.... but come on lets be real ........ EVERYONE KNOWS IM PERFECT.
— arik maldonales
To the extent that we retain the critical attitudes and destructive elements we have incorporated into our own personalities, we remain undifferentiated from our parents throughout our lifetime.
— Lisa Firestone, The Self Under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation
They implicitly trust that their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings are their own, and fail to recognize that they may be “channeling” someone else’s thoughts and feelings.
— Lisa Firestone, The Self Under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation
He liked what he had too much.
— Tim Relf, Stag
I really wanted to take her photo, so I walked up to the nearest adult and asked, 'Does she belong to you?' Suddenly the music stopped, and I heard: 'I belong to myself!
— Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York
Am I in love? – yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
— Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
That was with me for years--feeling I wasn't myself. And I do think I wasn't my real self then. Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it--slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone.
— Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup
Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
— Peter F. Drucker, Managing Oneself
Be grateful for every scar life inflicts on you. Where we’re unhurt is where we are false. Where we are wounded and healed is where our real self gets to show itself. That’s where you get to show who you really are
— Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead
When I turn my mind's eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things...
— René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
If you can't please yourself some of the time, how do you expect to please people all the time? Not everyone is going to appreciate you for your efforts and deeds.
— Anthony Liccione
For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.
— Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea
Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self.
— Franz Kafka
Truth is a relationship. As such, each one of us receives the truth and expresses it from within, that is to say, according to one's own circumstances, culture, and situation in life.
— Pope Francis
I think I possess because I do not try to give,Trying to give, I see that I have nothing.
— René Daumal, Mount Analogue
There are often beams in our eye that we know not of. Let us therefore ask that our eye may become single, for then we ourselves shall become wholly single.
— Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
I always believed that If I’m not carrying at least a slight poetically painful crack in my heart I’ve been cheated by nature.
— Annie Ali
The world has its own ways of treating us like what we will never be, but want to be. It relinquishes its grip on our souls while lulling us with the songs of freedom and conquest of beauty. It magnifies every tiny bit of something useless over an unfathomable presence of humanity. And we all waste the whole of our lives standing in queue for gaining its attention to be abdicated as if we never existed in the eyes of our fellow men.
— Annie Ali
Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think that that’s—that that’s it. That that’s the point, that that’s the goal, you know? And that’s the reason we’re here—because that’s so empty. And you as a writer know that it’s—if you as a writer think that your job is to get as many people to like your stuff and think well of you as possible … And I could, we could both, name writers that it’s pretty obvious that’s their motivation? It kills the work. Each time. That that’s maybe 50 percent of it, but it misses all the magic. And it misses, it doesn’t let you be afraid. Or it doesn’t, like, let you like make yourself be, be vulnerable. Or … nah, see, I’m not … Anyway, anyway.
— David Foster Wallace
The ultimate reality from which the path of this becoming could start off again will no longer rest on a ground of 'causa sui.' in any case the sense of a God who would alone be capable of giving an account of self. It is rather from the human and from what the human most irreducibly is that it is a question of starting off again. From the human as it objectively is before it starts to construct a language and a thinking which help to distance it from its beginning, from its prematureness without thinking it in the totality of its being.
— Luce Irigaray, Way of Love
We throw away real people searching for the "perfect" person the same way that we throw ourselves away searching for our "perfect" self.
— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness
It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness he realized now that somewhere inside it there was a move he could make to change his life, to become another person, but he'd never be able to guess what it was.
— Denis Johnson, Angels
To make yourself something less than you can be - that too is a form of suicide.
— Benjamin Lichtenberg
It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing – to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos – of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings – in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, 'This is I!
— Conrad Aiken, Blue Voyage
Why are you here?Where am I?You have come to this place… to lie in the ground?The derision in the question was clear.I have come to this place to find peace.And what is peace?Laughter in the recesses of his mind.This is peace. Perhaps it is. I don’t know.A pause.Talking to yourself, eh?There is no one else around.That is the beginning of wisdom.And what of it?Who are you?I am Peter.What are you?I… I am that which says I.Clever.Sometimes.He sparked a cigarette, nicotine bringing a touch of stability to his otherwise entirely too excited cognitions.What is I?I am.That is all?I don’t know.Where is I?Where am I?I am between this and that.This is again wisdom.He laughed aloud now, pulling deeply on his smoke, exhaling through clenched teeth.I am space.Of a sort.I am a character in a story.Sometimes.Nothing more?A page of your life turns. Do you see it?Sometimes.The blank of the page, the openness of its margins, do you see?Yes.This is the void of your unfolding imagination.Indeed.Would you fill it with your own story?I am void. I am between. I am neither this nor that. I am an idea of a between.What story would you have?Whatever I can. I am nothing.That is enough?No.What would you be?A man.This is also wisdom.
— Jeffrey Panzer, Epoch Awakening
one bothers oneself for nothing.
— Mbella Sonne Dipoko, A Few Nights and Days
Buddha is someone with a very advanced self-concept. His self-esteem is perfect; he has gone beyond doubt; he knows, and he is confident of his knowledge; he expresses himself with conviction. When the Buddha talks of himself in the first person he does so with clarity. He has a strong sense of identity and knows very well who he is. He gives accounts of his life experiences in the first person.
— Joy Manne, Was the Buddha a Shaman?
Although selfhood depends causally upon the existence of the brain, it amounts to something far more than the brain. This something is vague and intangible, and might best be described, I think, as a semi-fictional narrative that is in constant need of writing, editing, and preserving.
— Neel Burton, Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception
Though we rush ahead to save our time, we are only what we feel
— Neil Young
We're all guilty of dedicating time to people who didn't value it.
— Turcois Ominek
Such journeys have convinced me that it is not always possible to restore one's boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be.
— Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,no light and no land anywhere,cloudcover thick. I try to stayjust above the surface, yet I'm already underand living within the ocean.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
No matter the situation don't let your emotions overpower your intelligence.
— Turcois Ominek
The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible’.
— Joyce Carol Oates
Whatever you is, Onion," he said, "be it full.
— James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
I'm not the same. How could I be the same?
— Hilary T. Smith, Wild Awake