Selected self help quotes

1. In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.

2. I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

3. But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

4. If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

5. Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.

6. I could do great things, if I weren't so busy doing little things.

7. The things I fear may all be imaginary, so what I fear most is my imagination.

8. I'm in search of myself - have you seen me anywhere?

9. Some of my troubles are so familiar, I know them by their first names.

10. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

11. You must try to generate happiness within yourself. If you aren't happy in one place, chances are you won't be happy anyplace.

12. The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.

13. The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way.

14. I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

15. If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even dicier to listen.

16. He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

17. If you never budge, don't expect a push.

18. When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

19. I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.

20. As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

21. Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.

22. First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, 'I believe,' three times.

23. The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.

24. Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily...

25. In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

26. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

27. To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

28. The important thing is not to know who 'I' is or what 'I' is. You'll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels.

29. My biggest problem is what to do about all the things I can't do anything about.

30. By accepting you as you are, I do not necessarily abandon all hope of your improving.

31. Accept me for what I am - completely unacceptable.

32. A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

33. Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself - only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.

34. Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too.

35. So with that will prompt and prepared to serve all those whom I perceive to be servants of my Lord, I will speak of three things with simplicity and love as if I were speaking to my own soul.

36. You will never lose your nerve. Your life, probably, but never your nerve.'

37. Better to sink beneath the shock Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.

38. Find purpose, the means will follow.

39. . . . time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee. . . . I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

40. After having admired the women of Rome, say to yourself, 'I too am beautiful!' : In you I met a real person. I need not give you any other praise.

41. Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure: a larger heart, and a greater self-restraint, would put a calm autumnal sadness in the place of the instinctive outcry of pain.

42. Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for.

43. Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he worked his cause up to the cheerful day.

44. We are each responsible for our own life- no other person is or even can be.

45. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.

46. 'Heaven helps those who help themselves' is a well tired maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of a vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength.

47. If you have given way to anger, be sure that over and above the evil involved therein, you have strengthened the habit, and added fuel to the fire. If overcome by a temptation of the flesh, do not reckon it a single defeat, but that you have also strengthened your dissolute habits. Habits and faculties are necessarily affected by the corresponding acts... One who has had fever, even when it has left him, is not in the same condition of health as before, unless indeed his cure is complete. Something of the same sort is true also of diseases of the mind. Behind, there remains a legacy of traces and of blisters: and unless these are effectually erased, subsequent blows on the same spot will produce no longer mere blisters, but sores. If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: 'I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next every two, next every three days!' and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the Gods in thanksgiving. (75)

48. Free your mind, and the ass will follow

49. 'Help us to find God.' 'No one can help you there.' 'Why not?' 'For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean.'

50. Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in through the window.

51. I don't think you should ever be ashamed or afraid of who you are, or anything that's happened to you. Life is good, man. You can either feel like a victim all the time, or you can get off your ass and do what you want to do.

52. Dr. Bob managed so successfully to turn the answer to every question into a mini-lecture on self-esteem and positive thinking, that Ethan wanted Hazard to arrest him on charges of Felony Cliche and Practicing Philosophy Without An Idea.

53. (Addressing Billy Gunn) The night you won King of the Ring, you got down on your kness, and you said a prayer and it sounded like this: (whiny voice as Billy Gunn) 'Oh dear God, you see, my name's Billy, and I just won King of the Ring. But there's one problem. Everybody still thinks (in more strident tones)THAT I ABSOLUTELY SUCK!' And then Billy, the clouds parted, the Heavens opened, and God Himself spoke to you and said this: 'BOB,' 'But my name's Billy.' 'IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS! BOB, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT; YOU DO SUCK!'

54. Have this thought ever present with thee, when thou losest any outward thing, what thou gainest in its stead; and if this be the more precious, say not, I have suffered loss. (27)

55. When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many things! (35)

56. [Puis pour curieuse leczon, & meditation frequente] rompre l'os, & sugcer la substantificque mouelle.

57. If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

58. Il y a deux timidites: la timidite d'esprit, la timidite de nerfs ; une timidite physique et une timidite morale. L'une est independante de l'autre. Le corps peut avoir peur et trembler pendant que l'esprit reste calme et courageux, et vice versa. Ceci donne la clef de bien des bizarreries morales. Quand les deux timidites se reunissent chez un homme, il sera nul pendant toute sa vie.

59. Dimidium facti qui coepit habet; sapere aude; incipe!

60. Davey: I feel like a motivational speaker right now. 'You CAN do it! Positive minds, positive body. We're here to show you guys today that you CAN succeed with the right outlook.'

61. Prentice: This appalling situation is the result of my lax moral code. It's clean living and Teach Yourself Woodwork for me from now on!

62. Salvation of people depend upon themselves, upon their capacity for suffering and sacrifice.

63. Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards ...

64. The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded with doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help.

65. And dost thou seek to find the one in two? Only upon the old can build the new; The symbol which you seek is found in you.

66. I think I felt a bit trapped before I met Pete. Have you seen The Lavender Hill Mob? Alec Guinness plays this wonderful, colourful person who locks it all up and goes through the motions. I always felt a bit like that. But then I met the Pigman and he said, 'You can actually knock that on the head and get out.' So we threw ourselves into eternity. And it worked.

67. Ma raison, il est vrai, dompte mes sentiments, Mais, quelque autorite que sur eux elle ait prise, Elle n'y regne pas, elle les tyrannise.

68. Je consens, ou plutot j'aspire a ma ruine.

69. 'Let the fairy within you fly!'

70. Every now and then they were awarded prizes - Self-Help by Smiles, and other books suitable for perusal by persons suffering from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties.

71. The man's thirst for guilt was insatiable as the desert's for water.

72. 'Direction Creates TIME...Motivation creates ENERGY'

73. Wanting to be somebody else is a waste of the person you are. (True source unknown)

74. Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose - a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad - yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised. ~ Ch. 10

75. And when you get stranded/And things don't go the way you planned it/Dreamin of riches, in a position of makin a difference

76. To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

77. Even if you're a blind guy who wants to be clean, you're gonna miss the toilet someday, ya know?

78. I'm gonna go discover my inner nun.

79. A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise.

80. 'Can't hear you. I'm inside my protective blanket of fear.'

81. A man's gotta know his limitations.

82. Nec speres aliquid nec extimescas, exarmaueris impotentis iram; at quisquis trepidus pauet uel optat, quod non sit stabilis suique iuris, abiecit clipeum locoque motus nectit qua ualeat trahi catenam.

83. ...I am delighted to see how many young boys and girls have come forward to obtain honourable marks of recognition on this occasion,-if any effectual good is to be done to them, it must be done by teaching and encouraging them and helping them to help themselves. All the people who pretend to take your own concerns out of your own hands and to do everything for you, I won't say they are imposters; I won't even say they are quacks; but I do say they are mistaken people. The only sound, healthy description of countenancing and assisting these institutions is that which teaches independence and self-exertion...When I say you should help yourselves- and I would encourage every man in every rank of life to rely upon self-help more than on assistance to be got from his neigbours-there is One who helps us all, and without whose help every effort of ours is in vain; and there is nothing that should tend more, and there is nothing that should tend more to make us see the beneficence of God Almighty than to see the beauty as well as the usefulness of these flowers, these plants, and these fruits which He causes the earth to bring forth for our comfort and advantage.

84. You tell 'em hard on.

85. When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that's where they stay.

86. I'm full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.

87. 'I will go in this way Oh and I'll find my own way out'

88. 'And I cant believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been'

89. 'See you and me, have a better time than most can dream. Have it better than the best, so can pull on through. Whatever tears at us... whatever holds us down, and if nothing can be done, well make the best of whats around'

90. 'I find sometimes it's easy to be myself, sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else.'

91. Only damaged people want good things to happen to them through visualization. They want something for nothing.

92. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption - in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch.

93. For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.

94. Was sagt dein Gewissen? - 'Du sollst der werden, der du bist.'

95. What is the seal of liberation? - No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.

96. Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker.

97. Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

98. Swallow your poison, for you need it badly.

99. He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

100. At first I was almost about to despair, I thought I never could bear it - but I did I bear it. The question remains: how?