I AM

“ I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world." ”

“ What does it matter, what does any reality outside of myself matter, if it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am? ”

“ These and similar questions indicate that the askers were still seeking for themselves - namely, themselves in the true sense, in the sense of true living. "What I am is foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." ”

“ Beneath our experience of life which changes there is this great Living Essence. "I am that I am," profoundly, eternally true, self-consistent, with whom is no beginning of experience or purpose, yet controlling, harmonising, yea, originating all in the unfathomable depths of an eternal Will. ”

“ I am the same I. I have entered into a new environment more favourable for the exercise of my faculties, more adaptable to the acquisition of knowledge, more helpful, I trust, to growth in good. But I am the same "I." As I leave off here I begin there. I take into that world just myself as I have made it. If I have made the best of myself what more should I desire to take? Consciousness, Memory, Thought, Love, Character. If I have not made the best of myself, if I have acquired a distaste for God, for holiness, still I take in myself just as I stand. ”

“ So long as I feel myself what it pleases me to think myself, I care not. I am content to be to myself what I would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am. My own thought makes me me; my own thought of myself is me. ”

“ I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. ”

“ All I can say is, that the longer I live the more I am convinced that it is personal character which most helps the world forward, and I think our hearty allegiance to the truth which we clearly see will in the end teach us new truth. ”

“ If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am? ”

“ I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me to the contrary. ”

“ In this way our affirmation of the "I am" ceases to be the petulant assertion of our limited personality and becomes the affirmation that the Great I AM affirms its own I AM-ness both in us and through us, and thus our use of the words becomes in very truth the Great Affirmative, or that which is the root of all being as distinguished from that which has no being in itself but is merely externalized by being as the vehicle for its expression. ”

“ But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself, but from some Character in whose soul I now live. ”

“ But when it comes to the question as to where we are to look for the essential self in us which is able to say "I am I" it is found to be much more fantastic and ridiculous to look for it in the "little cells of the brain" than in some obscure "something," or "vanishing point of sensation," where mind and matter are fused together. ”

“ I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions.” ”

“ They tell me I am here to realize I know not what social end; but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am here to realize myself, to live. ”

“ I am by nature a child of imitation—apt to catch the spirit and temper of those with whom I come into contact—easily captivated by imposing manners—averse to all appearance of singularity—volatile and impetuous in my disposition; yet at the early age of twelve, I was so powerfully impressed with the truth and necessity of personal piety, that I do not think I ever spent a day without giving it my most serious attention. ”

“ Who is it that can tell me who I am? ”

“ He, nearest of the near, my own self, the reality of my own life, my body and my soul.—I am Thee and Thou art Me. That is your own nature. Assert it, manifest it. Not to become pure, you are pure already. You are not to be perfect, you are that already. Every good thought which you think or act upon is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the Infinity, the God behind, manifests itself—the eternal Subject of everything, the eternal Witness in this universe, your own Self. Knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degradation. ”

“ I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. ”

“ I myself, however,—that which I call me—my personality,—am not the man-forming power of Nature, but only one of its manifestations; and it is only of this manifestation that I am conscious, as myself, not of that power whose existence I only infer from the necessity of explaining my own. ”

“ Thy will be done. I yield up everything. "The life is more than meat"—then more than health; "The body more than raiment"—then than wealth; The hairs I made not, thou art numbering. Thou art my life—I the brook, thou the spring. Because thine eyes are open, I can see; Because thou art thyself, 'tis therefore I am me. ”

“ Es ist ein Selbstbewusstsein für ein Selbstbewusstsein. The idea 'I' is inseparable from the idea 'you.' I am I, on the whole, and in every definite aspect of my self-consciousness, in so far as I appeal to my fellow to recognize me. For example: I believe, and in believing conceive myself as demanding the approval of good judges. I esteem myself, and in doing so conceive myself as esteemed by others. ”

“ But I am I, and I won’t subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. ”

“ He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only. ”

“ "I am a man. I claim the right of expressing my feelings." ”

“ My life flows through my veins, not through his. The world shines into my consciousness, and I am not conscious of his consciousness. I wish I could love him, but I do not see why. I am an individual; he is an individual. ”

“ Here, and here first, are the contradictions which have beset us solved—here is an universal which can confront our wandering desires with a fixed and stern imperative, but which yet is no unreal form of the mind, but a living soul that penetrates and stands fast in the detail of actual existence. It is real, and real for me. It is in its affirmation that I affirm myself, for I am but as a ‘heart-beat in its system.’ And I am real in it; for, when I give myself to it, it gives me the fruition of my own personal activity, the accomplished ideal of my life which is happiness. ”

“ When I felt myself carried away, distracted by these conflicting motives, I said, No; man is not one; I will and I will not; I feel myself at once a slave and a free man; I perceive what is right, I love it, and I do what is wrong; I am active when I listen to the voice of reason; I am passive when I am carried away by my passions ”

“ Fully realizing this fractional mating of which we have spoken, I am led to question if we ever find one soul who meets every want, or whether we wander, gathering from this one, and that one, until the soul has all its emotions sounded, all its sentiments aroused and responded to. In my deepest, most earnest questioning for truth, this answer seems to be the only one, which gives me rest. ”

“ I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. ”

“ I am the object and end of my thoughts; back upon me as the alpha and omega of life, my thoughts return. My own glory is, and ought to be, my chief care; my ambition, to gather the regards of men to the one centre, myself. My pleasure is my pleasure. My kingdom is—as many as I can bring to acknowledge my greatness over them. My judgment is the faultless rule of things. My right is—what I desire. The more I am all in all to myself, the greater I am. The less I acknowledge debt or obligation to another; the more I close my eyes to the fact that I did not make myself ”

“ I am tasting the self-same life,—its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, which I so admire in other men. Do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past, what it cannot tell,—the details of that nature, of that day, called Byron, or Burke;—but ask it of the enveloping Now; the more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole,—so much the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books. ”

“ It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do Overlook the sun and the stars and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. ”

“ Is not this "I" looking out from behind your eyes this moment—the real man, of whom the body that you see is only the outward covering, of whom the brain is only the outward telegraphic instrument? Should not we adapt our thoughts to that tremendous fact? Instead of thinking "I have a soul," should we not rather think "I am a soul"? ”

“ Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me ”

“ I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. ”

“ I have succeeded beyond a doubt; none can exist in your minds of my identity-my self, for you have never breathed my name to this mortal. Again will I come to you and tell you of our lovely world which we enjoy, each according to individual development. ”

“ We discern some of the roots of our own being, and appreciate one side of our own character better—both as loving it and as noting where its weak points lie—when we see it thus remotely working in a bygone world and under outlived fashions, yet keeping so intimately true to the genius of the type. We get a glimpse of our vocation, see that we stand for a spirit that human life will always need to have expressed. ”

“ When we speak of the ego, do we mean the self of to-day, or of yesterday, or of some years back—or possibly some years in the future when we shall have found the expression now unhappily denied us? Do we mean the self of boyhood, or even of babyhood? or do we mean that of maturity, or of old age? Do we mean the self indicated by the mind alone, or by the spirit, apart from the body? ”

“ My first interest in life was centred in my relatives, later, in the people of mark with whom I lived; and I have developed my own personality only so far as it could serve my ardent wish to love, to admire, and to devote myself to others, or to be useful to any cause I espouse and uphold, so long as I deemed it worthy to be fought for and upheld.
My real vocation, in fact, would have been that of an apostle preaching the “good word” and reconciling men among themselves. I was much more ardent in play hours than in study, because I was busy amusing my schoolmates or settling their quarrels. ”

“ Fortunately I know what your higher self is, quite as well as you do, if not a little better—and I know that it is the self that most strengthens my love and courage, the self that most fills me with life. ”

“ Self-knowledge, sir, that most important of all sciences, I have yet to learn. Such have been my situations in life, and the natural volatility of my temper, that I have looked but little into my own heart in regard to its future wishes and views. From a scene of constraint and confinement, ill suited to my years and inclination, I have just launched into society. My heart beats high in expectation of its fancied joys. My sanguine imagination paints, in alluring colors, the charms of youth and freedom, regulated by virtue and innocence. ”

“ To know thyself—to know, for example, thy possibilities of health and strength for strenuous bodily or mental labour, to know thy worldly status, and what of influence is there open to thee or closed against thee; to know thyself, not as the crowd regards thee, but in all the secret workings of thy heart, controlling thy actions, biassing thy thoughts, influencing thy motives; to step aside out of the bustle of life and quietly take stock of thyself; to know how thou standest in view of eternity—that is wisdom. ”

“ Remember what your life is to all of us!”
“Then, of course, I’ve got to think of what it is to myself—being the only one I’ve got. Sometimes I don’t think much of it; but when I get a welcome like this it sets me up. ”

“ Mary. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old Greek proverb 'Know thyself' come to be so highly esteemed?
L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo's proverb, and the sun's;—but do you think you can know yourself by looking into yourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking out of yourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own interests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately ”

“ In my efforts to free myself from the pressure of the too gloomy and powerful, which continued to rule within me, and seemed to me sometimes as strength, sometimes as weakness, I was thoroughly assisted by that open, social, stirring manner of life, which attracted me more and more, to which I accustomed myself, and which I at last learned to enjoy with perfect freedom. ”