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Self quotes

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“My wealth is in my knowledge of self, love, and spirituality.” Muhammad Ali, “The Soul of a Butterfly” - 2004

“In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, “On Friendship” - 44 BC

“I had always been good company for myself.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.” Bruce Lee, “Tao of Jeet Kune Do” - 1975

“To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in one’s self.” Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex” - 1949

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter” - 1850

“He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.” Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five” - 1969

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” Lao Tzu, “Tao Te Ching” - 4th century BC

“Our hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love.” Marcel Proust, “Swann's Way” - 1913

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” - 1998

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“In the meantime let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.” William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” - 1600

“Your worst enemy . . . was your own nervous system.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” William Shakespeare, “King Lear” - 1623

“One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.” Jane Austen, “Persuasion” - 1816

“The aim of life is self-development.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.” Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” - 1984

“I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir . . . because I'm not myself, you see.” Lewis Carroll, “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” - 1865

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.” John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent” - 1961

“Things do not change; we change.” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” - 1854

“The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Haunted” - 2005

“every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.” Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations” - c. 170 - 180

“I don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“The more parts of yourself you can afford to forget the more charm you have.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Flappers and Philosophers” - 1920

“Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” James Joyce, “Ulysses” - 1922

“What greater wealth is there than to own your Me and to spend it on growing?” Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” - 1957

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.” Albert Einstein, “The world as I see it” - 1949

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.” Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” - 1877

“The outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day and forever.” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself?” George MacDonald, “Lilith” - 1895

“When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfil it.” George MacDonald, “Lilith” - 1895

“Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates. Once with his father, he is to himself of no more account.” George MacDonald, “Lilith” - 1895

“Only by the reflex of other lives can he ripen his specialty, develop the idea of himself, the individuality that distinguishes him from every other.” George MacDonald, “Lilith” - 1895

“Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.” John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” - 1689

“EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1911

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe if you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become obvious yourself.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the President’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.” Eleanor Roosevelt, “The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt” - 1961

“Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.” A. W. Tozer, “The Pursuit of God” - 1948

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” Blaise Pascal, “Pensées” - 1670

“This is why I am continuing my travels—not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die.” Hermann Hesse, “Siddhartha” - 1922

“But though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self.” Hermann Hesse, “Siddhartha” - 1922

“But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands.” Hermann Hesse, “Siddhartha” - 1922

Related topics

love others way appearance knowledge loneliness choice individualism individuality development mind happiness power change mirror action body teaching confidence responsibility

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Lilith (4)
Ham on Rye (4)
Siddhartha (4)
Self-Reliance (3)
Tao of Jeet Kune Do (3)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (2)
Jane Eyre (2)
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What I Know For Sure (2)
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Much Ado About Nothing (1)
King Lear (1)
Sense and Sensibility (1)
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