59 Self development Quotes

Acting is not pretending or lying. It's finding a side of yourself that's the character and ignoring your other sides. And there's a side of me that wonders what's wrong with being completely honest.

I march to a different drummer, whose location, identity, and musical training haven't yet been established.

If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

The genius of Coleridge is like a sunken treasure ship, and Coleridge a diver too timid and lazy to bring its riches to the surface.

I try not to confuse roles and traits in my own life. Being the Perl god is a role. Being a stubborn cuss is a trait. :-)

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the 'atomic age' - as in being able to remake ourselves.

The older I get, the more I realize the importance of exercising the various dimensions of my body, soul, mind and heart. Taken together, these aspects give me a sense of wholeness. I want to be a whole human being rather than one who limps on one leg because I don't know how to use all of my parts. Intellectual, emotional, and physical activity are not separate entities. Rather, they are dimensions of the same human being.

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: 'There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important.' This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.

I am 'too fiery' : yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything.

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour. I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart. I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action; and want during times that beg questions, where something is up, to be among those in the know, or else be alone.

From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for too much knowledge is a curse.

I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher. -Ender's Game

One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else. It is well. ~ Ch 10

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

But there are very few people who can hold me in a way, to look at them and talk to me. And make me cry, and to talk to me about my life. And also to say, get out there. I believe in you. Go, go, go. And get me to go and go to get my life together. And for me to want to come back and say, look what I did.

It taught me that I had a lot more discipline than I thought; a lot more patience. [I became] more expressive, not only personally with my family, but in my music and my way of communicating.

How happy she had been in those days! How free! How full of hope! How rich in illusions! There were no illusions left now. She had had to part with some each time she had ventured on a new path, in each of her successive conditions -- as virgin, as wife, as mistress; all along the course of her life she had been losing them, like a traveler leaving a bit of his fortune in every inn along the road.

We are all born with God-given, unique traits and skills. But, as with all possibilities they will remain unrealized unless they are developed, nurtured, and put into practice. You may have the 'capacity' to love, but if left undeveloped, you will never gain the 'ability.'

Doesn't it occur to you that the very fact that you're asking me this question tells me there's something else for me to figure out, and therefore greatly increases the chance that I will figure it out?

He would know what was right. Yet with his marvelous gift of knowing right from wrong, why couldn't he realize that his yearning to be something other than himself was hopelessly wrong, was wasting his life and poisoning his heart?

You are Great, Little Man, when you are not small and petty. You are great when you carry on your trade lovingly, when you enjoy carving and building and painting and decorating and sowing, when you enjoy the blue sky and the deer and the dew and music and dancing, your growing children and the beautiful body of your woman or your man, when you learn to understand and think about life.

Toward another, he has gone To breathe an air beyond his own.

The efforts of most human-beings are consumed in the struggle for their daily bread, but most of those who are, either through fortune or some special gift, relieved of this struggle are largely absorbed in further improving their worldly lot. Beneath the effort directed toward the accumulation of worldly goods lies all too frequently the illusion that this is the most substantial and desirable end to be achieved; but there is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who recognize early in their lives that the most beautiful and satisfying experiences open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but are bound up with the development of the individual's own feeling, thinking and acting. The genuine artists, investigators and thinkers have always been persons of this kind. However inconspicuously the life of these individuals runs its course, none the less the fruits of their endeavors are the most valuable contributions which one generation can make to its successors.

The true woman will not be exponent of another, or allow another to be such for her. She will be her own individual self... Stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strength... She will proclaim the 'glad tidings of good news' to all women, that woman equally with man was made for her own individual happiness, to develop... every talent given to her by God, in the great work of life.

Never let your schooling interfere with your education.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

But exceed! exceed!

Hidden talent counts for nothing.

A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.

As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has-or ever will have-something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.

New Domestic Animals. I want to have my lion and my eagle about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them today, and be afraid of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me, and tremble?

O meine Bruder, ich weihe und weise euch zu einem neuen Adel: ihr sollt mir Zeuger und Zuchter werden und Saemanner der Zukunft, - wahrlich, nicht zu einem Adel, den ihr kaufen konntet gleich den Kramern und mit Kramer-Golde: denn wenig Wert hat alles, was seinen Preis hat. Nicht, woher ihr kommt, mache euch furderhin eure Ehre, sondern wohin ihr geht! Euer Wille und euer Fu?, der uber euch selber hinaus will, - das mache eure neue Ehre!

No talent, but a character.

What! Think you that my flashes show me Only in lightnings to excel? Believe me, friends, you do not know me, For I can thunder quite as well.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

I have studied these things - you have not.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

It's not that age brings childhood back again, age merely shows what children we remain.

The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny - that which we call character - but rather improving it and enhancing it as far as possible.

The man is born with a talent which he has meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

When I met Vanessa, I was still drifting. But being with her has just blown me away and made me a better man. Ten years ago I never would have believed in the kind of life I have now as a father, although I still wonder if it's OK to be this happy. (2004)

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

In this allegory the seeker, trying to reach the One, is drawn by two horses, one white and noble and temperate, and the other surly, stubborn, passionate and black. The one is forever aiding him in his upward journey to the portals of heaven, the other is forever confounding him. The Chairman has not stated it yet, but he is at the point at which he must now announce that the white horse is temperate reason, the black horse is dark passion, emotion. He is at the point at which these must be described, but the false note suddenly becomes a chorus.

Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.

My life has been one long journey.

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.

He who knows how to suffer everything can risk everything.