c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Centuries of navel-gazing. Millennia of masturbation. Plato to Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia. Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark. Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional cluster.I explored it all.Wegner thought it was an executive summary. Penrose heard it in the singing of caged electrons. Nirretranders said it was a fraud; Kazim called it leakage from a parallel universe. Metzinger wouldn't even admit it existed. The AIs claimed to have worked it out, then announced they couldn't explain it to us. Gödel was right after all: no system can fully understand itself.Not even the synthesists had been able to rotate it down. The load-bearing beams just couldn't take the strain.All of them, I began to realize, had missed the point. All those theories, all those drugdreams and experiments and models trying to prove what consciousness was: none to explain what it was good for. None needed: obviously, consciousness makes us what we are. It lets us see the beauty and the ugliness. It elevates us into the exalted realm of the spiritual. Oh, a few outsiders—Dawkins, Keogh, the occasional writer of hackwork fiction who barely achieved obscurity—wondered briefly at the why of it: why not soft computers, and no more? Why should nonsentient systems be inherently inferior? But they never really raised their voices above the crowd. The value of what we are was too trivially self-evident to ever call into serious question.Yet the questions persisted, in the minds of the laureates, in the angst of every horny fifteen-year-old on the planet. Am I nothing but sparking chemistry? Am I a magnet in the ether? I am more than my eyes, my ears, my tongue; I am the little thing behind those things, the thing looking out from inside. But who looks out from its eyes? What does it reduce to? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?What a stupid fucking question. I could have answered it in a second, if Sarasti hadn't forced me to understand it first.
— Peter Watts, Blindsight
A man who rightly governs self, may also govern family without the crippling cowardice, crutch of control.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Because you believed In yourselfYour tiny selfBecause you knewThere is no greater accomplishmentThan making someone love you
— Gabrielle Prendergast, Audacious
The only way you can reach your full potential is if you open up and allow your self to be exposed to how you really feel.
— Turcois Ominek
A personal revolution is the consequence of confronting self - as is.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
The self is the class (not the collection) of the experiences (or autopsychological states). The self does not belong to the expression of the basic experience, but is constructed only on a very high level.
— Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy
To bite off your shadow is neither easy nor painless. It demands a single-mindedness that is almost unknown in this day.
— Neil Gaiman, Brief Lives
you can tell who you are the way people respond to you.
— Turcois Ominek
you ask me a question I'll give you an answer…but don't look at me when I say something you don't want to hear.
— Turcois Ominek
In silence you shall face self...and have respect.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
If I'm to have a character that others admire, I need to focus on developing that character. I need to make decisions that are honorable and honest. I need to focus on others rather than myself. I need to be consistent in my dealings with other (while being careful to avoid what Emerson called "a foolish consistency"). I must obey the calls of my religious beliefs. And I must be true to myself, my God, and others. I should never seek the admiration of others, but if I develop an honest, loving, caring character, the admiration will come.
— Tom Walsh
...there is no better time to examine and understand one’s selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness.
— Robert Jackson Bennett, American Elsewhere
We always look behind, through, and beyond ourselves, never within.
— Vert
The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
— Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms
The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
Then he realized: 'I, indeed, am this creation; for I have poured it forth from myself.' In that way he became this creation. And verily, he who knows this becomes in this creation a creator.
— Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Realize you have awesome people around you who want to love you. Let them. Show them you love them back. (Actions trump words.) Do the forgiveness thing. If necessary-and it almost always is- do the forgiveness thing on yourself.
— Kari Luna, The Theory of Everything
Sometimes I get mail for people who lived in my home before I did, and sometimes my own body seems like a home through which successive people have passed like tenants, leaving behind memories, habits, scars, skills, and other souvenirs.
— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
Self-correction makes me check the ruler of my life against the yardstick of my inner voice. I acknowledge when I don’t measure up. Self-correction is an ongoing process. If done often enough, I can stop myself from straying off the path.
— Stella Payton
Writing is all at once an exploration of what is, and what is not. Of the known, and the unknown. A journey into the depths of self, and all of humankind.
— Madelaine Standing, Heaven In The Meat Packing District
You do not have an inferior function, it has you.
— C.G. Jung
Maybe it was better to be who he thought I was than who I thought I was.
— Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
There is no growth without risk. There is always something to be gained from any experience. It is up to us to interpret our truth of self.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Self is found in knowledge, devotion and concentration, in integrity, purity, moderation, self-control and intelligence.
— Gian Kumar
The best thing to learn from any government is that it does not get affacted by what other people talk or think about it.
— Amit Kalantri
Pride can be friend, ego can be foe...depending on which one we choose, or not, to conquer.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Following feeling, relying on liking or wanting, we are not free. The freedom to "do as we like" is not freedom of choice because we are ruled by the powerful property of feeling; we cannot choose apart from liking and disliking. Likes and dislikes may be articulated in the form of sophisticated-sounding opinions, but the decision is made for us by feeling. The Western world places a high value on personal feelings and opinions: Each individual "has a right" to an opinion. But rarely do we question how we have arrived at our opinion. Upon examination, we may discover that opinions tend to stem from convenience, familiarity, and selfishness–what feels good or what is pleasing or comfortable to us. Upon this basis, we act, and receive the consequences of our action. Even if we compile a large number of such opinions, there is no guarantee that we will develop a wise perspective as a ground for action. Often this process only creates a mass of confusion, for opinions of one individual tend to conflict with the opinions of another. If there appears to be agreement, we tend to assume this agreement will remain stable. But agreement only means that the needs of the individuals involved are temporarily similar, and when those needs shift, agreement will evaporate. To make certain decisions, we rely on logic or scientific findings, which are supposedly free from personal opinion but are still weighted with the opinions of a particular culture. This style of knowing is founded on particular distinctions and ignores other possibilities. The evidence is clear that the scope of modern scientific knowledge is limited, for this knowledge is not yet able to predict and control the side-effects resulting from its own use. Its solutions in turn create more problems, reinforcing the circular patterns of samsara. Only understanding that penetrates to the root causes of problems can break this circularity. Until we explore the depths of consciousness, we cannot resolve the fundamental questions that face human beings.
— Dharma Publishing, Ways of Enlightenment
You are always left with choice not chance
— sridhar Dasari
The self may be extinguished, but there are many selves and the Will creates them.
— S.R. Hardy
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Tonight the Internet seemed filled with versions of me, like a fun house filled with mirrors. Some of them made me look prettier, and some of them made me look uglier, and some of them chopped me right in half, but none of them were right.
— Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life
old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him -- or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.
— José Saramago, All the Names
You are here on earth to unearth who on earth you are.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect
— Nisargadatta Maharaj
Strangers are never seen through a window. When our eyes are cast upon another, we are in fact gazing into the depths of a mirror. If you truly desire to understand how you feel about yourself, just take an honest look at how you view the world around you.
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
Walls get made, walls crumble, buildings get built, buildings collapse, memories get made, memories last.
— Jill Telford
The moment you open yourself completely to the love that awaits your conscious embrace, you are no longer there to receive it.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
The act of underlining always contains an element of self-recognition.
— Eric    Weiner, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine
Why does it take a man's attention to make me see anything good about myself?
— E.M. Abel, Freeing Asia
When man meets himself upon the reflexion of the mirror, it is always advisable to ask the question "Who are you?". If an unsatisfactory answer comes forth, then one must delve into the far reaches of Self and understand why he failed to answer this simple, yet transcending question.
— Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla
Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.
— Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
I know many people who believe in God, and I expected to find Him on my way to the South Pole if he exists. My religious experiences were very different however, [only] involving myself, nature and the universe.
— Liv Arnesen
Self is one, personal and impersonal. But it is only on the personal level that one comes to know the Self.When you know the Self, you realize there are two types of knowledge. First is to know how to exist and second is to know the all-pervading spirit.
— Gian Kumar
Maybe it's not about the journey but rather the way you imagine the journey when you read a book.
— BeaOngjoco
Self is what makes mind think, but never needs the mind. Self is what makes bodies live, but needs no existence for itself. Self can be realized; not by knowledge but by revelation.
— Gian Kumar
Question who is the doer. Is it the mind or the Self?
— Gian Kumar
But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing?Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.
— Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
Staying requires being curious about who you actually are when you don't take yourself to be a collection of memories.When you don't infer your existence form replaying what happened to you, when you don't take yourself to be the girl your mother/father/brother/teacher/lover didn't see or adore. When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Live what you be, not what you see.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
At some point, it's time to stop fighting with death, my thighs and the way things are. And to realize that emotional eating in nothing but bolting from multiple versions of the above: the obsession will stop when the bolting stops. And at that point, we might answer, as spiritual teacher Catherine Ingram did, when someone asked how she allowed herself to tolerate deep sorrow, "I live among the brokenhearted. They allow it.
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth.
— Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven (Swedenborg, Emanuel, Works.)
If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.
— James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow
But replacing hunger for divine connection with Double Stuf Oreos is like giving a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic.
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help BookorHow you can survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist ChristiansorWhy is it that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos - novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes - you are beyond doubt the strangestorWhy is it possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you've been stuck with yourself all your life
— Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
He doesn't have anything like wisdom of age or hindsight. He's a biased historian of self, an emotional revisionist. We all are, for the most part.
— Marc Maron, Attempting Normal
At one point in my life you'll have my best but not my whole.
— Peter Adejimi
And when you try to live there, to live in a place where you're betraying yourself over and over, not only do you grow to resent the hell out of it, and resent the hell out of whomever you're betraying and censoring yourself for, but the very idea of your self begins slowly and inexorably to erode. Until you realize one day out of the clear blue that you have no idea who your self is, anymore.
— Ron Currie Jr., Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles
Rumors run wild when one sacrifices for self and temporarily forsakes those who assume entitlement to one's persona.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
What Althusser does… is to rethink the concept of ideology in terms of Lacan’s ‘imaginary’. For the relation of an individual subject to society as a whole in Althusser’s theory is rather like the relation of the small child to his or her mirror-image in Lacan’s. In both cases, the human subject is supplied with a satisfyingly unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object which reflects this image back to it in a closed, narcissistic circle. In both cases, too, this image involves a misrecognition, since it idealizes the subject’s real situation. The child is not actually as integrated as its image in the mirror suggests; I am not actually the coherent, autonomous, self generating subject I know myself to be in the ideological sphere, but the ‘decentred’ function of several social determinants. Duly enthralled by the image of myself I receive, I subject myself to it; and it is through this ‘subjection’ that I become a subject.
— Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless--a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
It is when you start to have the interest of people in your heart that when you start to make a change.
— Peter Adejimi
We are just a certain quantity of cells, all of us!
— Rossana Condoleo
Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.
— Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell
The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work
Then I thought, "No, I broke it myself. I broke it on purpose to pay myself back for being such a heel.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
It’s ego – the false self – that exalts the guru and declares the teaching sacred, but nothing is exalted or sacred, only true or not true.
— Jed McKenna
To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion of what one is... The whole surface of consciousness - for consciousness -is- a surface - must be kept clear of all great imperatives. Beware even of every great word, every great pose! So many dangers that the instinct comes too soon to "understand itself" --.Meanwhile, the organizing idea that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down - it begins to command, slowly it leads us back from side roads and wrong roads; it prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove to be indispensable as a means toward a whole - one by one, it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant task, "goal," "aim," or "meaning.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo/The Antichrist
Nature has gone to great lengths to hide our subconscious from ourselves. Why?
— Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
I lose part of myself that day and I don't want to lose even more.
— Miranda Kenneally, Things I Can't Forget
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.
— Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
The price we paid for the volumes of ourselves that we suffocated in the dark.
— Nicole Krauss, Great House
I'm persnickety," I confessed. "Not, incidentally, to the point of being snarly. But still. Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend." "Do you want to know why I never married?" "The question wasn't at the top of my list," I admitted. The old woman made me meet her eye. "Listen to me; I never married because I was easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It is much better to be too easily interested.
— David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth.
— Jed McKenna
When I said, “I am my mother, but I’m not,” I was saying my path would be my own.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it’s the one part of you the world can’t interfere with.
— Frank McCourt, 'Tis
From human problems come human solutions, which in turn spawn inspiration, creativity, insight and enlightenment. Without life's problems, life would become stagnant, dull and boring.
— Beth   Johnson, Thoughts From The Inside
Since I am never alone with myself. Since I am always watching the character playing my part in the scene, there is no possibility of spontaneity.
— Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist
The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
The self was both its origins and its journey.
— Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir
Sunny put on eyebrows, eyelashes, makeup, matching pajamas, a silk robe, and then say looking at herself in the vanity mirror in her bathroom. She had experienced moments in her life when she realized that she was actually alive and living in the world, instead of watching a movie starring herself, or narrating a book with herself as the main character. This was not one of those moments. She felt like she was drifting one centimeter above her physical self, a spirit at odds with its mechanical counterpart. She stood up carefully. Everything looked just right.
— Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine
It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that.
— Hillman Curtis, MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer
There is no shame in having been the woman I was. She made me the woman I am.
— Julie-Anne
always say something! is either to yourself or to the world around!
— Donald c.Nwokedi
Caroline had felt more comfortable thinking of beauty as something separate from her, like a scarf or a coat you could check before going in to a show. She wondered now, however, if she had treated more things as a part of herself rather than an accessory, perhaps everything would have turned out differently.
— Erica Bauermeister, Joy for Beginners
Love yourself enough to open your eyes, and open your eyes enough to love yourself.
— Jay Woodman
I won't explain why. If you're interesting, you'll find out who I am. One clue, I'm a ghost.
— Eka Prasetyani
We lose ourselves in things we love. We find ourselves there, too.
— Kristin Martz
Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,As souls only understand souls.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.
— Golda Meir
...we fear monsters because we fear the dark parts of ourselves...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
How many people came and stayed a certain time,Uttered light or dark speech that became part of youLike light behind windblown fog and sandFiltered and influenced by it, until no partRemains that is surely you.
— John Ashbery
There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976
Do not compare yourself with anybody. Compare yourself with yourself, for yourself and by yourself. We are all uniquely pottered and purposed by our creator!
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
It's kind of depressing, if you think about it. I mean, me being so young, and yet so cynical and suspicious.
— Meg Cabot, Ninth Key
Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.
— Adi Shankaracarya
Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.
— Gerald Brenan
I figure the more people think I'm just mildly weird, the less likely they are to know how weird I really am.
— Melanie Hooyenga, Flicker
...we each harbor a shadow self with shadowy motives and murky desires...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...people demonize certain types of crime - it's a way of distancing ourselves from the monsters...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...ambition or contentment? This simple question led me back to a more balanced view of life and put me in touch with the Me I used to know...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Cultivate the understanding that the self is not really an independently existing entity, and begin to view self instead in terms of it's dependent relation to others. Although it is difficult to say that merely reflecting on this will produce a profound spiritual realization, it will at least have some effect. Your mind will be more open. Something will begin to change within you. Therefore, even in the immediate term there is definitely a positive and beneficial effect in reversing these two attitudes and moving from self-centeredness to other-centeredness, from belief in self existence to belief in dependent origination.
— Dalai Lama XIV
In truth, there is no such thing as an “intuitive boundary” of a sensory state. That most philosophers take such states as brain-bound is not an intuition, but a prejudice.
— István Aranyosi, The Peripheral Mind: Philosophy of Mind and the Peripheral Nervous System
To be enlightened is to know oneself and not run away.
— Veronique Vienne
We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much it matters what we achieve, how rare and unfair are our professional failures, how rife with misunderstandings are our relationships, how deep are our sorrows. Melodrama is individually always the order of the day.
— Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.
— Laurence Olivier
Frankl asserts that "the potentialities of life are not indifferent possibilities, but must be seen in the light of meaning and values." Such meaning and values cannot be imposed; each individual must seek out for himself or herself the meaning of each situation and the implications the present moment may have for the future.
— William Blair Gould, Viktor E. Frankl: Life with Meaning
We have to serve ourself many years before we gain our own confidence.
— Henry S. Haskins
It's what's buried deep inside that frightens me because it's broken, like a shattered mirror.
— Jessica Sorensen, The Secret of Ella and Micha
Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.
— G.I. Gurdjieff
Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It’s been protected by the efficient armour, it’s never participated in life, it’s never been exposed to living and to managing the person’s affairs, it’s never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it’s never properly lived. That’s how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced...And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It’s their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can’t understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That’s the carrier of all the living qualities. It’s the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn’t come out of that creature isn’t worth having, or it’s worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful...And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears.And yet that’s the moment it wants. That’s where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that’s where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy.That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember.But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.
— Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes
We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.
— N. Scott Momaday
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be…
— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
the abyss you stare into and that stares back at you is your reflection in the mirror - we all have it - that shadow self - that dark heart...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
An apology given just to appease one's conscience is self-serving and better left unspoken!
— Evinda Lepins
Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.
— James A. Michener
Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.
— Neal Shusterman, Dread Locks
If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature’s larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western Civilization.
— Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
There is only one you. Stop trying to devalue yourself by trying to be a copy of someone else.
— Susie Clevenger
The finer natures were those that shone at the larger times.
— Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
You're a Genius all the time
— Jack Kerouac
From the Absolute to the Relative-from the Infinite to the Finite-from the Undifferentiated to the Differentiated-from the Unconditioned to the Conditioned and again from the Relative to the Absolute. That is the whole truth of the inexistance to the existentialist, formless to the form, Creator to the Creature, one to the every being, absolute to the inabsolute and vis-á-vis, soforth every single thing is temporary, non-existed, so do I, the dream that I dreamed off is simply a 'lie and impermanent too' same as in the mortal world whatever I do experience.
— Upanishad
...to know an other's interior life you are his confessor or a writer - the one is admitted freely, the other intrudes by discerning of spirits 
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you?
— Lionel Suggs
I simply love being me. You have no power to control my feelings because I own my own heart
— che acebido
I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings of a fragile butterfly, it is how you touch and reveal those inner parts of yourself, without damaging the psyche, that determines whether the beauty is experienced and expressed and shared with others or, in fact, becomes the death of the self and Soul and psyche. I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.
— Sophia Rose, Liquid Me: Poetry and Prose
Those stories tended to be located around the places where things went wrong, and people were cruel to one another, and so on. They reflected what was probably the most urgent truth operating in me at that time: oh, shit, things can go wrong, and if they do, people get hurt, and I might be one of them, in spite of the fact that I am, you know, me.
— George Saunders
The harsh reality is that my flesh must die not so much because of what it does, but because of what it is.
— Kelly Minter, No Other gods: Confronting Our Modern Day Idols
I'd just killed some of the best riders in the world - and I was clean. I'd taken nothing - no EPO, no cortisone, no testosterone, no painkillers, no caffeine. I had justified to myself that I was a great rider without drugs - yet perversely given myself the green light to dope again. I'd proved what I could do clean - how much more could I do if I was doped?
— David Millar, Racing Through the Dark
G. I. Gurdieff, "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"So-and-so-and-so-must-be; do-not-do-what-must-not-be. Mullah's favorite saying. p. 598
— Gurdieff
What an idiot I'd been. What a spoilt brat. What a bloody fool.
— David Millar, Racing Through the Dark
How far can you go in life if you don't love yourself?
— Sean   King
But, it’s not what they think of you that matters, it’s what you think of yourself. If I’d said something mean to them, I wouldn't like myself very much.
— M. Latimer-Ridley, Temperance
But now the other half of "us" was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I'd be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.
— Jennifer Brown
The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
— Alain de Botton
Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.
— Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists
We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.
— Parker J. Palmer
Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.
— Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost
Not at all. It's why people come. They say it's about looking smart, or beautiful, or professional, but it's not. Gray-haired ladies try to recapture their former brunette. Brunettes want to go blond. Other women go for colors that don't arise innature. Each group thinks it's completely different than the others, but I don't see it that way. I've watched them looking at themselves in the mirror, and they're not interested in conforming or rebelling, they just want to walk out of here feeling like themselves again.
— Antony John, Five Flavors of Dumb
To know yourself you must know the transience of your self.
— Ilyas Kassam
Suppose you turn your attention inward in search of this 'I'. You may encounter nothing more than an ever changing stream of consciousness, a flow of thoughts and feelings in which there is no real self to be discovered.
— Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
As I, my real self, grew older, I entered more and more into the substance of my dreams. One may dream, and even in the midst of the dream be aware that he is dreaming, and if the dream be bad, comfort himself with the thought that it is only a dream. This is a common experience with all of us. And so it was that I, the modern, often entered into my dreaming, and in the consequent strange dual personality was both actor and spectator. And right often have I, the modern, been perturbed and vexed by the foolishness, illogic, obtuseness, and general all-round stupendous stupidity of myself, the primitive.
— Jack London
To seek contentment is to release the novelty that lies within monotony
— Ilyas Kassam
A truly free man is not free 'from' anything, nor free 'to' anything, he is just free. Free within himself.
— Ilyas Kassam
I? This is the very root of all evil.
— H.M. Forester, The Dissidents
Don’t force your gifts: if you are a rascal, live like one; if you are half honest, be half honest; if you are completely honest, live absolutely honestly.
— Pierre Ceresole, For Peace and Truth: From the Note-books of Pierre Ceresole
I wondered what it would be like to be just myself all the time, but my self seemed to be far away, and made up of all sorts of things that didn't really exist.
— Jane Devin, Elephant Girl: A Human Story
You speak as if this is a good world with a little evil in it. Rubbish. It's a hellish one where the best a man can do is put a little sanity back and look after his own.
— David Hewson, Macbeth
There was a difference, I had decided, between knowing and believing. And I wanted both.
— Laura Bickle
We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can’t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don’t know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room.
— Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi
On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.
— Neal Shusterman, Dread Locks
The "self," it seems today, is at the core of the nation's worldview rather than others (the common good), or God.
— Martha MacCullough
Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?
— Oscar Wilde
I think I’d rather be branded than submit to some of the things that you have to.” He said this without spite, just a soft statement of fact. “I’m not strong enough to do that.
— Laura Bickle, The Hallowed Ones
There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed!
— Augustine of Hippo
If I am not for myself, who will be?
— Pirke Avoth
Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort.
— Larry Crabb, Inside Out: Real Change Is Possible If You're Willing to Start from The...
Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why did Mother Teresa think that affluent Westerners often seemed poorer than the Calcutta poor, the poorest of the poor? The paradox comes to pass because the impoverishments and enrichments of a self in a world are not necessarily the same as the impoverishments and enrichments of an organism in an environment.
— Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
Life isn't only about choice. Life is about how you provide value to your life and others.
— Launa Rissadia
Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.
— Marianne Williamson, The Law of Divine Compensation: Mastering the Metaphysics of Abundance
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
— Vincent van Gogh
The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy--angles leading their flocks out of the darkness.
— Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, ". . . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.
— Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God. If we are bored with life there is something wrong with our concept of God and His involvement in our daily lives. Even the most dull and tedious days of our lives are ordained by God and ought to be used by us to glorify Him.
— Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
I believe there's a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.
— Oprah Winfrey
If God gives you something you can do, why in God's name wouldn't you do it?
— Stephen King
Everybody has a vocation to some form of life-work. However, behind that call (and deeper than any call), everybody has a vocation to be a person to be fully and deeply human in Christ Jesus.
— Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives
But beware of this about callings: they may not lead us where we intended to go or even where we want to go. If we choose to follow, we may have to be willing to let go of the life we already planned and accept whatever is waiting for us. And if the calling is true, though we may not have gone where we intended, we will surely end up where we need to be.
— Steve Goodier
Behind every specific call, whether it is to teach or preach or write or encourage or comfort, there is a deeper call that gives shape to the first: the call to give ourselves away - the call to die.
— Michael Card, The Walk: The Life-changing Journey of Two Friends
Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental position of choice in modern life. “I have chosen you,” Jesus said, “you have not chosen me.” We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. We have no rights, only responsibilities. Following Christ is not our initiative, merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling. Once we have been called, we literally “have no choice.
— Os Guinness
Who is She? She is your power, your Feminine source. Big Mama. The Goddess. The Great Mystery. The web-weaver. The life force. The first time, the twentieth time you may not recognize her. Or pretend not to hear. As she fills your body with ripples of terror and delight.But when she calls you will know you’ve been called. Then it is up to you to decide if you will answer.
— Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman
It’s important to understand that at every point of opposition to who we are or to what God has called us to do, we are presented with the options of either conforming and giving in, or standing our ground and becoming stronger in who God has made us to be
— Gabriel Wilson
If you find what you do each day seems to have no link to any higher purpose, you probably want to rethink what you're doing.
— Ronald A. Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
The need itself is not the call. 
— Charles E. Hummel
Every believer is called to teach and each needs to exercise toward this function. Otherwise, they will remain a babe and never mature. Sharing what the believer has learned should begin as soon as a person comes to know the Lord.
— Henry Hon, ONE: Unfolding God's Eternal Purpose from House to House
People often ask if it was calling. My answer always is yes.
— Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Adventures call a valiant few, happenstance upon calls many.
— Anastasia Bolinder
Adventures call a valiant few, happenstance calls many.
— Anastasia Bolinder
There is a young abused girl whose recovery is dependent on your willingness to honour your calling as a pastor, social worker, psychologist, etc.
— D.S. Mashego
Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job-- not a calling.
— Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
A man with a victim mentality attracts autocrats into his life who will decide how he should live
— Sunday Adelaja
Diligence is God’s principle
— Sunday Adelaja
We must always remember that the Lord called us before we were born
— Sunday Adelaja
The price of your salvation was too high and so is the price of your calling
— Sunday Adelaja
Do not wait until you are rich before you start working for the Lord
— Sunday Adelaja
Once you make up your mind to be obedient to God, He will fight for you
— Sunday Adelaja
Evaluate yourself and your calling worthily enough and be proud of it
— Sunday Adelaja
Do not seek recognition or gratification from man — serve the Lord. He knows how to reward everyone
— Sunday Adelaja
Serve the Lord, do not look for excuses
— Sunday Adelaja
If you have a ministry, dedicate yourself to it, do everything with love and with a clean heart
— Sunday Adelaja
Be faithful in your calling and you will fulfill your ministry to the end
— Sunday Adelaja
God wants you to start doing something now. Begin with the little things you have the ability to do and He will help you
— Sunday Adelaja
God has His reward for everyone
— Sunday Adelaja
If you submit to your gift, you will become known and influential
— Sunday Adelaja
God created you for His high purpose, discovering and understanding that that purpose is important
— Sunday Adelaja
Some might ask whether the path is before us or within us. The answer is: Yes. We are both driven from within by our resident spirit and something outside calls forth the genius within us.
— Michael Meade, The Genius Myth
No one has a calling to sit in the pews of the church
— Sunday Adelaja