Oneself Quotes - Page 6

• There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Real, Sin

  The Golden Notebook "Free Women: 5" (1962)

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• How hard it is to have the beautiful interdependence of marriage and yet be strong in oneself alone.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Beautiful, Strong, Interdependence

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1981). “War within and without: diaries and letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939-1944”, Berkley

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• How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Hate, Thinking, Rejection

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2010). “Gift from the Sea”, p.33, Random House

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• To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.

  Jose Marti

  Simple, Dignity, Talent

  "Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos" edited by Carlos Ripoll, 1994.

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• It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

  Virginia Woolf

  Ridiculous, Curious, Protect

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2002, Delphi Classics

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• Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

  Simone Weil

  Humility, Compassion, True Humility

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• It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

  Herman Melville

  Writing, Literature, Impossible

  Herman Melville (2015). “Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville”, p.254, 谷月社

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• It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.

  Ayn Rand

  Running, Kindness, Eye

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.781, Penguin

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• When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Age, Able, Should

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• I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes... in a total misapprehension of character at some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.

  Jane Austen

  Mistake, Stupid, Character

  Jane Austen (2015). “Sense and Sensibility: Ignatius Critical Editions”, p.92, Ignatius Press

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• It's dangerous to assert oneself.

  Jeanne Moreau

  Dangerous

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• One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Uprising, Done, Chance

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Leopold Mozart (1966). “The Letters of Mozart and His Family”

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• There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.

  P.D. Ouspensky

  Dream, Remember, Possibility

  P. D. Ouspensky (2012). “A New Model of the Universe”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared

  Ian Fleming

  Love, Appreciation, Mistake

  Ian Fleming (1953). “Casino Royale”

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• To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.

  Henrik Ibsen

  War, Writing, Heart

  " Richard Eyre: In the spirit of Ibsen" by Richard Eyre, www.theguardian.com. September 20, 2013.

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• The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the other than it is to drive too hard and crash.

  Garth Stein

  Race, Long, Crash

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• When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Suicide, Suicidal, Doe

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• Envy is an insult to oneself.

  Yevgeny Yevtushenko

  Envy, Insult

  Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (1989). “Early Poems”, Marion Boyars Publishers

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• True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one's service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them.

  J. Oswald Sanders

  Greatness, Men, Giving

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• Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

  Cesare Pavese

  Life, Education, Mistake

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.40, Transaction Publishers

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• To convince oneself that one has the right to live decently takes time.

  Evita Peron

  Take Time, Convince

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• For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

  Zadie Smith

  Salt, Lost, Boiling

  Zadie Smith (2003). “White Teeth”, p.37, Vintage

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• I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom.

  Douglas Coupland

  Lying, Believe, Emotional

  Douglas Coupland (2012). “Life After God”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• My experience of living with people of diverse religions and cultures taught me that one will never be at peace with the other if one is at war with oneself.

  Tariq Ramadan

  War, People, Culture

  "An oft-repeated 'truth'" by Tariq Ramadan, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2004.

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• The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Way, Deceived

  "The Atlanta Co-Ed Murder". Book by Glen C. Carrington (p. 165), August 2010.

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