958 Self Quotes

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.

I just want to live each moment, but it's kind of hard to do that when you are asked to analyze yourself constantly. But it's also good in that you are forced to think about things that you don't ordinarily think about. I think it's strange.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.

To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.

There is a world which I alone rule, but it ends at my fingertips.

The most exciting place to discover talent is in yourself.

I like who I am, and am puzzled to find that not everybody shares this opinion.

Never underestimate the size and scope of my problems.

You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else.

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.

Man is a universe within himself.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.

I liked myself better when I wasn't me.

Anything you see in me is in you. If you want to see a vicious killer, that's who you'll see, do you understand that? If you see me as your brother, that's what I'll be. It all depends on how much love you have. I am you, and when you can admit that, you will be free. I am just a mirror.

I can't judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in.

I know what's best for me, after all I have been in the Claudette Colbert business longer than anybody.

It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it.

I'm a terrible long-term planner.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love - a simple duty.

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term 'escapism,' when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?

For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.

One must be something in order to do something.

Schon war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben.

I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angelic sprite.

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!

I wasn't the best kid in the world, but I wasn't an ax murderer, either. (1988)

I don't pretend to be 'Captain Weird', I just do what I do.

Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself.

Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.

Through a marvelous law of natural compensation, he who gives of himself grows, and he who turns inward and lives from small pleasures, is afraid to share them with others, and only thinks avariciously of cultivating his appetites loses his humanity and becomes loneliness itself. He carries in his breast all the dreariness of winter. He becomes in fact and appearance an insect.

To live is to be among men, and to be among men is to struggle, a struggle not only with them but with oneself; with their passions, but also with one's own.

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

Living wasn't easy for you, was it? You couldn't enter your own life, but you could be someone else. You weren't you then; you were safe.

I'm not a comedian. I'm Lenny Bruce.

I want to be Lenny Bruce.

Now, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm a great musicologist, but I'm a lot better than what I was described as for a long, long time; you know, people said I only knew three chords when I knew five.

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and always will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven.

Man is the microcosm: I am my world.

I am my world. (The microcosm.) (5.63)

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. (p. 34e)

I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days.

When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.

Speak up for yourself, or you'll end up a rug.

You know what my favourite quotation is?:It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, 'I am myne owene woman, wel at ese.'

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that - how to express this - you really must make the self. It's absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Parce que c'etait lui; parce que c'etait moi.

L'homme d'entendement n'a rien perdu, s'il a soimeme.

La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir etre a soi.

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

Tell me, when you are alone with him [ Max Beerbohm ] Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Lord Illingworth: I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.

When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot.

Nature has come to a point where now, unless you take individual responsibility, you cannot grow. More than this nature cannot do. It has done enough. It has given you life, it has given you opportunity; now how to use it, it has left up to you. Meditation is your freedom, not a biological necessity. You can learn in a certain period of time every day to strengthen meditation, to make it stronger - but carry the flavor of it the whole day.

Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern.

When you are no more, only then for the first time will you be.

Find moments when you are not, and those will be the moments when you will be for the first time...really. So I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very moment - perfect. I don't teach you any ideals, I don't teach you any oughts. I don't say to you be this, become that. My whole teaching is simply this: Whatsoever you are, accept it so totally that nothing is left to be achieved, and you will become a white cloud.

International rock star - gravy maker extraordinaire.

To be honest, I am a little bit crazy. I accept that. I've always been outrageous. I've never been the every day you. I've always gone over the top with everything.

I don't know if I'm a medium for some outside source. Whatever it is, frankly, I hope it's not what I think - Satan.