Oneself Quotes - Page 16

• There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

  Denis Diderot

  Mad, Psychological, Harm

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• To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile?

  Albert Camus

  Hurt, Earth, Injury

  Albert Camus (1987). “American journals”

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• I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.

  Walker Percy

  Fun, Doe, Persons

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.51, Open Road Media

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• There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.

  Henry James

  Two, Understanding, Way

  Henry James (2015). “The Complete Novels of Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady + The Wings of the Dove + What Maisie Knew + The American + The Bostonian + The Ambassadors + Washington Square and more (Unabridged): Confidence + Roderick Hudson + The Awkward Age + The Europeans + The Golden Bowl + The Other House + The Outcry + The Princess Casamassima + The Reverberator + The Sacred Fount….”, p.1700, e-artnow

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• A holiday gives one a chance to look backward and forward; to reset oneself by an inner compass.

  May Sarton

  Holiday, Giving, Environmental

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.105, Open Road Media

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• In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.

  Andre Gide

  Country, Order, Judging

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.277, Routledge

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• Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved.

  M. Scott Peck

  Love, Spiritual, Growth

  M. Scott Peck (2002). “The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth”, p.160, Simon and Schuster

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• Now if I do anything it is to tune souls instead of instruments. To harmonize people instead of notes. If there is anything in my philosophy, it is the law of harmony: that one must put oneself in harmony with oneself and with others.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Philosophy, Law, People

  Hazrat Inayat Khan “The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: The Mysticism of Sound, Music, The Power of the Word, Cosmic Language”, Library of Alexandria

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• Everything is deception: seeking the minimum of illusion, keeping within the ordinary limitations, seeking the maximum. In the first case one cheats the Good, by trying to make it too easy for oneself to get it, and the Evil by imposing all too unfavorable conditions of warfare on it. In the second case one cheats the Good by keeping as aloof from it as possible, and the Evil by hoping to make it powerless through intensifying it to the utmost.

  Franz Kafka

  Evil, Deception, Trying

  Franz Kafka (1954). “Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod”

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• To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone - but that is all it means.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, Sincerity, Sincere

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• One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.

  Erich Fromm

  Meaningful, Men, Knowing

  Erich Fromm (2012). “The Sane Society”, p.282, Routledge

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• It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Judging, Difficult

  Le Petit Prince ch. 10 (1943)

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• ... self-control is not control by oneself through one's own willpower but rather control of oneself through the power of the Holy Spirit.

  Jerry Bridges

  Self, Spirit, Willpower

  Jerry Bridges (2014). “Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate”, p.57, Tyndale House

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• To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.

  John Berger

  Beauty, Naked

  "John Berger obituary" by Michael McNay, www.theguardian.com. January 2, 2017.

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• To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness

  Erich Fromm

  Grief, Grieving, Mourning

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.195, Open Road Media

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• Within the mind there are no lies-no possibility of deceiving oneself; and yet, somehow we all manage to bypass the safety of truth in pursuit of dangerous desires.

  Wes Fesler

  Honesty, Lying, Safety

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• To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking - and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

  Maurice Blanchot

  Writing, Echoes, Order

  Maurice Blanchot (2015). “The Space of Literature”, p.29, U of Nebraska Press

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• One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Believe, Commitment, Passion

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• In the brush doing what it is doing, it will stumble on what one could not do by oneself.

  Robert Motherwell

  Brushes

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• To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.

  W. H. Auden

  Attention, Pay, Praying

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• What comes from oneself is nearly from no one. There is only me as a link.

  Eduardo Chillida

  Links

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• And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Loneliness, Simple

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• Unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are walleyed.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Party, People, House

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• There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.

  Seneca the Younger

  Wisdom, Courage, Fall

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• Facts, and facts alone, are the foundation of science... When one devotes oneself to experimental research it is in order to augment the sum of known facts, or to discover their mutual relations.

  Francois Magendie

  Knowledge, Science, Order

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