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Self Deprecation Quotes

Browse 55 quotes about Self Deprecation.

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Self Deprecation Quotes

“One day, she told me her favorite color was green. Do you know how much green I see in a day? Enough to remember any other color ain’t her favorite. Green. That’s a whole lifetime with a girl whose face emerges on leaves, tennis courts, the billboard on every nearest passion pit, the emerald fabric of my curtains, hotel salads, on a crumpled Washington, and the two forest eyes of my own that look back at me in the mirror and say, “Diana #1, Diana #2.” Ain’t that a bite. One day, I will lay outside to daydream about her for so long, fungi will grow on my pathetic body, plaguing me with her favorite color. Will she love my algae then?”

SadnessHeartbreakObsessionHeartacheAdmirationUnrequited LoveThe Goodbye SongSelf Deprecation
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“...sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I'm here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable... one's definition of sorry is deranged into a new word entirely, one that's charged and reused as both power and defacement at once. Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.”

WorkSorrySelf DeprecationApologies
Author:Ocean Vuong
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“The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with. Scruples are alien to the black panther. Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions. The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations. The self-critical jackal does not exist. The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly live as they live and are glad of it. The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos but in other respects it is light. There is nothing more animal-like than a clear conscience on the third planet of the Sun.”

LifeHumanityMoralityExperienceSelf Deprecation
Author:Wislawa Szymborska
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“Besides casual onlookers there were also permanent watchers. This was merely a formality: the artist would never swallow the smallest morsel of food. No one could possible watch the hunger artist continuously, therefore he was bound to be the sole spectator completely satisfied with his own fast. Such suspicions, anyhow, were a necessary accompaniment to the profession of fasting. Yet for other reasons he was never content. For he alone knew how easy it was to fast. Experience had proven that the interest of the public could be sustained for about forty days. But after that their enthusiasm began to wane. So on that day the cage was opened. Two doctors entered to measure the results of the fast, and two young ladies were selected for the honor of helping the hunger artist in a small table, on which was spread a carefully chosen meal. And at this moment the artist always turned stubborn. Why should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, breaking his own record as the greatest hunger artist of all time? - A Hunger Artist”

PainSufferingKindnessSelf DeprecationAttention Seeking
Book:Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories
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“One day, the ringmaster's eye fell upon the cage and he asked: "Why?" this perfectly good spot should be left standing there unused. Nobody knew, until one man remembered about the hunger artist. "Are you still fasting?" "Forgive me, everybody. "I've always wanted you to admire my fasting. "But you shouldn't admire it. Because I have to fast. I can't help it." "And why can't you help it?" "Because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had, I should have stuffed myself life you or anyone else." Those were his last words, but in his dimming eyes remained the firm conviction that he was still continuing to fast. And they buried the hunger artist, straw and all. - A Hunger Artist”

PainSufferingKindnessSelf DeprecationAttention Seeking
Book:Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories
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“Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport. His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.”

HumourBooksIndiaTennisAwardsSouth AfricaAutobiographyCricketSportSelf DeprecationCape Town1970Rugby UnionBlue BullsBlue Bulls Rugby UnionCurrie CupLlandudno Cape TownLoftus Versfeld StadiumWildeklawer Griquas
Author:Archie Henderson
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“The patient does not make light of manifestations of herself anymore, does not so often laugh or jeer at them, even if she still unconsciously passes them over or ignores them, even in the subtle way her parents dealt with the child before she had words to express her needs.”

HealingDark HumorHealing ProcessSelf DeprecationSelf Deprecating HumorLaughing At YourselfHealing From Child AbuseJeering At YourselfMaking Fun Of Yourself
Book:Drama of Being a Child Book Club
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“One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses—'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'—along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them.”

ReligionAtheismIronyJudaismMessiahJewsCursesSelf DeprecationHereticsJewishnessHiwi Al BalkhiMaimonidesOrthodox JudaismAbraham Ibn Ezra
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Fuck them all. I ought to have that tattooed on my forehead, for all the times I've thought it. Usually I am in transit, speeding in my Jeep until my lungs give out. Today, I'm driving ninety-five down 95. I weave in and out of traffic, sewing up a scar. People yell at me behind their closed windows. I give them the finger. It would solve a thousand problems if I rolled the Jeep over an embankment. It's not like I haven't thought about it, you know. On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive--the sum of the parts equals more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart.”

Self DeprecationSuicidal IdeationOrgan DonorJeepReckless DrivingReckless Behavior
Book:My Sister's Keeper
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“I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.”

IfsThinkingWritingHas BeensSelfArtistQualityGonePiecesForgivenCould Have BeenDefiningSymphonySelf Deprecation
Author:Dmitri Shostakovich
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“Adolescents swing from euphoric self-confidence and a kind of narcissistic strength in which they feel invulnerable and even immortal, to despair, self-emptiness, self-deprecation. At the same time they seem to see an emerging self that is unique and wonderful, they suffer an intense envy which tears narcissism into shreds, and makes other people's qualities hit them like an attack of lasers.”

PeopleFeelsKindSelfSeemsSufferingQualityWonderfulTearsDespairUniqueEnvySelf ConfidenceIntenseEmptinessImmortalSwingsNarcissismEmergingNarcissisticLasersEuphoricSelf Deprecation
Author:Terri E Apter
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“I think the biggest survival instinct that Midwesterners possess is self deprecation, it's almost a Buddha-like sense of humor in anything that is difficult to get through. They would prefer to laugh at difficulties, show their mettle through that, and toughen up and have a beer afterward. That's definitely the characteristic I've carried through me, and hope to never lose.”

ThinkingSelfShowsDifficultLosesLaughingSurvivalDifficultyInstinctBeerCharacteristicsSense Of HumorSurvival InstinctSelf DeprecationMettleMidwesterners
Author:Amy Pietz
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“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

WritingSometimesHumorFunnyUnderstandingCreativityIntelligenceCleverEpicInsperationalClevernessHipsterFunny But TrueSingle WordFunny MotivationalVery CleverSelf DeprecatingSelf DeprecationApril FoolsMimicrySelf Deprecating HumorFunny And WittyIrish AuthorFunny CleverClever And WittyBest FunnyMost CleverReally Clever
Book:Epigrams of Oscar Wilde
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