Best 12844 quotes in «self quotes» category

I suspect anyone self-satisfied enough to refuse lawful pleasures: we are not sufficiently rich in our separate resources to reject the graces of the universe when offered.

I take the love of God and self-denial to be the sum of all saving grace and religion.

I taught myself to write in order to understand who I was and so yes, writing was an act of self-actualization in the beginning.

It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so.

It almost seems as if autumn were the true creator, more creative than the spring, which is too even-toned, more creative when it comes with its will-to-change and shatters the much too ready-made, self-satisfied and really almost bourgeois-complacent image of summer.

It becomes increasingly clear that we won’t be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.

It always comes back to our insecurities, as we say, "Oh, I'm not as good as you." So instead of accepting that perhaps I am not as good as someone else in some ways and being comfortable with who I am as I am, I spend all my time denigrating you, trying to cut you down to my self-perceived size. The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours.

It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.

It certainly has not been in my self-interest to defend men.

It [childbearing] was never intended to be as time-consuming and self-conscious a process as it is. One of the deepest evils in our society is tyrannical nurturance.

It costs something to be a true Christian. It will cost us our sins, our self-righteousn ess, our ease and our worldliness.

It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

It changed my whole outlook. I lost a decade to self-pity, and the next thing I knew I was turning 40.

It didn't occur to him that she might have chosen to remain this way. That where he saw reserve and loneliness, Cassandra saw self-preservation and the knowledge that it was safer when one had less to lose.

It doesn't promote your life to reduce unearned guilt... You should get rid of that guilt. It's unearned. You don't deserve it. So when we guilt businessmen into giving, it's not in their self-interest.

I tell people to monitor their self-pity. Self-pity is very unattractive.

It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better.

I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.

I tend to think that the onus is on the writer to engage the reader, that the reader should not be expected to need the writer, that the writer has to prove it. All that stuff might add up to a kind of fun in the work. I like things that are about interesting subjects, which sounds self-evident.

It excites me when a person puts their whole self in a song or rhyme, or instrument. It fills me.

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?

It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

It has been said that self-respect is the gate of heaven, and the most cursory observation shows that a degree of reserve adds vastly to the latent force of character.

It has well been said that the arch-flatterer, with whom all petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.

It hath been said, that there is of nothing so much in hell as of self-will. The which is true, for there is nothing else there than self-will, and if there were no self-will, there would be no Devil and no hell. When it is said that Lucifer fell from Heaven, and turned away from God and the like, it meaneth nothing else than that he would have his own will, and would not be at one with the Eternal Will. So was it likewise with Adam in Paradise. And when we say Self-will, we mean, to will otherwise than as the One and Eternal Will of God willeth.

I think about what I wish I had known when I was a teen and tween. I struggled with a lot of insecurity and self-doubt as a young girl and the side-effects of that were long lasting, well into my late twenties.

I think acting has helped me come out of my shell because when I play a character, I can't be self-conscious.

It has taken me nearly twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public; and I am not sure that I am not still regarded as a suspicious character in some quarters.

I think a good role model has to be sexy. Real, empowered, self-possessed women are sexy. When you're really in control of your choices, your mood, your body, and your opinions, people find you sexy.

I think Alice [Cooper] probably, on some level, recognized that good old self-destructive streak that does happen in some people's lives. So, though I wasn't there with Alice and the Vampires, but I'd give anything in the world to have been, I had my own version, I suppose, a little later.

I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.

I think a lot of things will be self-correcting, even in America. After all, human societies are essentially self-organizing emergent systems. The catch is, how much disorder will we have to endure while this re-self-organizing process occurs.

I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.

I think a problem for most people in a fiduciary capacity is to eliminate self and greed and all those things so that they can actually be in a fiduciary capacity where the artist comes first or the client, whoever the client happens to be.

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.

I think because I did become a well-known face in my thirties and not in my twenties, I was pretty settled in my boots and I knew who I was. And I think there's a sort of Scottish thing, too, where you don't take yourself too seriously, and you don't get carried away with your own sense of self-importance.

I think as far as self-promotion goes, I probably have a lot to learn.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

I think a shotgun or a handgun that has a six-round clip is a very good, perfectly adequate weapon for self-defense, in the home. You simply can't create that kind of mayhem, if you have to reload.

I think a toxic message in a lot of Christianity has been that the self has to be annihilated in order for God to be found. I think that has been a toxic message.

I think as a mature artist, you're probably always trying to undo the compromises of one's self [in general]. It's not necessarily to do with youth.

I think buildings should imitate ecological systems. Ecological systems in nature before we had human beings you know interfere with them exist in a state of stasis - they are self-supporting, self-sustaining.

I think Bush is amateurish and self-serving, and frankly, it's disgusting.

I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later.

I think death has a right to its own courage and dignity and self-respect.

I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.

I think fame is something that you've achieved in your inner self that becomes known to others outside you. There are really very few famous people in history.

I think for anyone who follows the 'artistic life,' a certain amount of selfishness and self-involvement is part of the package. You're probably already disregarding a certain material life you could have.

I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way.

I think growing up in Indiana prepares anyone for a life in comedy. I do feel like there is a certain kind of self-effacing cynicism among all Hoosiers.