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Self Quotes

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Self Quotes

“So long as we judge ourselves by human comparisons, there is plenty of room for self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction kills faith, for faith is born of the sense of need. But when we compare ourselves with Jesus Christ, and through Him, with God, we are humbled to the dust, and then faith is born, for there is nothing left to do but to trust to the mercy of God.”

Needs Humans Long Self Jesus Left Christ Born Rooms Judging Jesus Christ Mercy Satisfaction Dust Plenty Compare Comparison Self-satisfaction Mercy Of God

Author:William Barclay

“The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining.”

Self Moving Suffering Failing Rivers Shining Life Changing True Self

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The first half of the 1960s was the apogee of what might be termed the Age of Cool - as defined by that quality of being simultaneously with-it and disengaged, in control but nonchalant, knowing but ironically self-aware, and above all inscrutably undemonstrative.”

Firsts Self Might Age Half Quality Knowing Defined 1960s Nonchalant

Author:Martin Filler

“Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

“Truth, though, is nothing in the face of self-falsehood, and principles are of no value if the idealist cannot live up to his own standards.”

Ifs Self Faces Values Principles Standards Falsehood Idealist

Book:Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt

Source: Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt

“But there is a devil of a difference between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply them selves to everything.”

People Self Used Differences Fit Devil Civilized Barbarians

Book:Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy

Source: Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy

“Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under the pretense of hindering another from doing one.”

Giving Self Advice Privilege Foolish Pretense Giving Advice

Book:A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published

Source: A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published

“We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”

People World Needs Firsts Self Heaven Wealth Pleasure Greater Example Pride Higher Fortune Leaving Calm Possession Deeper Pursuit Felicity

Book:The Two Paths

Source: The Two Paths

“Some seekers will do anything for their Self-realisation - except work for it.”

Self Seekers Realisation Self Realisation

Author:Sri Chinmoy

“Either consciously or unconsciously we are searching for the highest Self, which is at once eternal and infinite.”

Self Eternal Highest Infinite

Author:Sri Chinmoy

“Perform anonymous service. Whenever we do good for others anonymously, our sense of intrinsic worth and self-respect increases. ... Selfless service has always been one of the most powerful methods of influence.”

Self Powerful Influence Increase Method Self Respect Most Powerful Selfless Selfless Service

Book:Principle Centered Leadership

Source: Principle Centered Leadership

“Trust is the glue that holds everything together. It creates the environment in which all of the other elements win-win stewardship agreements, self-directing individuals and teams, aligned structures and systems, and accountability can flourish.”

Self Together Winning Individual Environment Team Elements Structure Agreement Accountability Stewardship Glue Win Win

Book:First Things First

Source: First Things First

“I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.”

Love Self Loss Virtue Saws Sacrifice Creation Succeed Luck Rewards Generosity Stirring Self Sacrifice

Book:Harlot's Ghost: A Novel

Source: Harlot's Ghost: A Novel

“One is least sure of one's self, sometimes, when one is most positive.”

Author:Conrad Aiken

“The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.”

People Stills Self Helping Spirit Class Virtue Self Help Higher Healthy Standards Raises Pulling Advancing

Author:Samuel Smiles

“Hamlet is every man's self-love with all its dreams realized. He wears all the crowns and carries every cross.”

Men Self Dream Self Love Crosses Every Man Carrie Crowns

Author:Hugh Kingsmill

“And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well -- but 'tis not true!”

Trying Wells Long Self Speak Vain Eloquent

Book:Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)

“No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.”

Feels Self Matter Truth Asks Awareness Self Awareness

Book:God Emperor of Dune

Source: God Emperor of Dune

“The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political, were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact, and therefore did not look for new foundations.”

World Looks Self Facts Political Process Religious Behinds Foundation Disaster Satisfied Realising Arrogant Creeds Uneasy Dissolution

Author:John Buchan

“The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.”

Wells Self Reality Seems Party Democracy Media Congress Officials Mature Soviet Rhetoric Unworthy Commentators Concealing Unanimity Sanctimonious

Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

“Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience - a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.”

“We need more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.”

Needs Self Cities Special Serious Unique Privacy Traffic Citizenship Imaginative Utopia Ecological Assessment Programmes Ingenious Special Relationship Plasticity Privacy And Freedom

Book:Soft City: Picador Classic

Source: Soft City: Picador Classic

“I sit at my table en grand seigneur , And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor; Not only the pleasure, one's self, of good living, But also the pleasure of now and then giving. So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! So pleasant it is to have money.”

Giving Self Done Pleasure Poor Tables Pleasant Now And Then Good Living

Book:Poems

Source: Poems

“I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.”

Self States Government Destiny India West Finals British Indian Empires Frontiers Formation Provinces British Empire Self-government Punjab

Book:Letters of Iqbal

Source: Letters of Iqbal

“Human intellect is natures attempt at self criticism”

Humans Self Criticism Intellect Self Criticism

Book:Stray Reflections: The Private Notebook of Muhammad Iqbal

Source: Stray Reflections: The Private Notebook of Muhammad Iqbal

“By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.”

World Self Imagination Identity Citizens Prejudice Locals Division Invited Frontiers Horseback

Author:Alain de Botton

“To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!”

Source: The Education of a British-Protected Child

“As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side through all His manifestations of Himself, there were the two aspects: "He showed Himself froward " (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of 'yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a Divine deliverer.”

“All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self. What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself - a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required. I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.”

I Can Self Actors Can Do Company Player Identity Jokes Theater Certainty Variety Permanent Unwilling Troupe

Author:Philip Roth

“Every woman must live by some sense of victory over disappointments, and Olympias was not the sort of woman to find compensation in her own powers of self-control and endurance.”

Self Victory Disappointment Endurance Live By Self Control Compensation

Book:Lives of Wives

Source: Lives of Wives

“Women from earliest times have been used as conveniences of communication with unseen, inaccessible powers, but always in the sense that such exposing of self to dangerous mysteries, such destruction of the understanding as was required to become the slave of unseen powers, did not matter because the communicant was only a woman, in herself an undetermined cipher - a nothing.”

Has Beens Self Matter Used Understanding Mystery Dangerous Communication Destruction Slave Unseen Convenience Exposing Inaccessible Ciphers

Author:Laura Riding

“The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced - that without intelligence we should be brutes - but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.”

“You young people yourselves are capable of performing anything. Our inventors can invent in a high level. Our innovators can innovate in a high level, only if they keep self confidence and believe that we can.”

People Ifs Believe Self Young Levels Capable Self Confidence Performing Inventor Innovators High Level

Author:Ruhollah Khomeini

“Not on the outer world For inward joy depend; Enjoy the luxury of thought, Make thine own self friend; Not with the restless throng, In search of solace roam But with an independent zeal Be intimate at home.”

World Self Home Joy Enjoy Depends Independent Luxury Intimate Contentment Inward Restless Zeal Solace Outer Worlds

Book:Gleanings

Source: Gleanings

“The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.”

Trying Mind Humans Self Human Beings Danger Instinct Bottom Deception Self Deception Declaring

Author:Stefan Zweig

“There is nothing that so raises a young man's self-esteem, that so contributes to the formation of his character as for him to find himself unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely on his own initiative and by his own efforts.”

Men Self Character Young Effort Self Esteem Tasks Raises Accomplish Esteem Young Man Initiative Formation

Author:Stefan Zweig

“I think life is self-examination. Certainly the voyage that one takes.”

Thinking Self Life Is Examination Voyages Self-examination

Author:Richard Gere

“I'm younger than I once was. Internally. Less self-conscious. Less insecure.”

Self Conscious Insecure Self Conscious

Author:Richard Gere

“I would rather quit public life at seventy, and quit it forever, than to retain public life at a sacrifice to my own self-respect. I will not vote for any law which will make fair for me and foul for another. The blacklist is the most cruel form of oppression ever devised by man for the infliction of suffering upon his weaker fellows.”

Men Self Form Law Suffering My Own Forever Sacrifice Fairs Vote Fellows Quitting Oppression Self Respect Seventies Foul Public Life Infliction

Author:Joseph Gurney Cannon

“The secret belief that the Lord of conscience loves and accepts each faithful sacrifice is the ultimate and sufficient support of all goodness; dispensing with the chorus of approving voices; replacing all vain self-reliance with a Divine strength; and with the peace of a reconciled nature consoling the inevitable sorrows of a devoted life.”

Source: Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons

“I don't want to name names because I don't want to draw too many direct comparisons but the history of Fascism is populated by people who need to subjugate other people and elevate their status and power to a level which is supreme. Usually, any psychological study of those people will reveal a sort of lost, damaged child, who is somehow heartbroken and doesn't have any self-worth.”

People Want Needs Children Self Names Lost Levels Study Draws Direct Supreme Self Worth Psychological Comparison Fascism Heartbroken

Author:Tom Hiddleston

“Chicago actors are hard-nosed. They're tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They're self-demanding.”

Self Hard Actors Tough Fellows Chicago

Author:Bill Murray

“The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.”

Author:Geoff Johns

“I always seem to be chosen to do very flattering things like the beard comb over or go to the bathroom with the door open on Sex and the City or be the guy people meow at in Super Troopers. It's great for self esteem.”

People Self Seems Guy Sex Cities Doors Self Esteem Chosen Esteem Bathroom Beard Flattering Combs Sex And The City

Author:Jim Gaffigan

“I think growing up in Indiana prepares anyone for a life in comedy. I do feel like there is a certain kind of self-effacing cynicism among all Hoosiers.”

Thinking Feels Kind Self Certain Growing Up Comedy Growing Cynicism Indiana Hoosiers

Author:Jim Gaffigan

“Nearly all the writing of our time is likely to disappear in a hundred years. Certainly most readers - and nearly all critics - feel that [Kurt] Vonnegut started to repeat himself, to grow increasingly self-indulgent and meandering, and to sometimes just blather in his later work. But his books up to "Slaughterhouse-Five" do possess a distinctiveness that will insure some kind of permanence, if only in the history of the 1960s and of science fiction.”

“It's easy to be a bad ass, it's easy to act like a bad ass, easy to act like a tough guy, it's easy to be a diva, and it's easy to be self absorbed. The list goes on and on but to me, I always just find it more important to be nice and kind.”

Kind Important Self Guy Easy Nice Goes On Tough Lists Ass Being Nice Bad Ass Self Absorbed Tough Guy

Author:Dwayne Johnson

“Above all else, philosophy ought to aim for clarification - of the self, one's place in the world, and the ways we make meaning. Philosophy, when practiced well, can be useful. It can enable us to grapple in productive ways with questions about the meaning of life and who I am and how I want to be in the world.”

World Way Want Wells Self Philosophy Ought Aim Who I Am Meaning Of Life Productive Places In The World Clarification

Author:Peg O'Connor

“The narrative that each person tells herself and others is a big part of how we construct our self-identities. It's one of the most important ways that we make sense of our past and present and understand our hopes for the future.”

Way Persons Important Self Bigs Past Identity Narrative Make Sense Our Past Constructs Past And Present Self Identity Hope For The Future

Author:Peg O'Connor

“I have a giant ego and terrible self-esteem, so I need to hit the re-set button fairly regularly - to get into presence, and humility, and being right-sized.”

Needs Self Self Esteem Humility Terrible Ego Esteem Giants Buttons

Author:Anne Lamott