Oneself Quotes - Page 9

• Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Self, Stories, Consciousness

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• To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.

  Karen Horney

  Life, Giving, Feelings

  Karen Horney (2013). “Self-Analysis”, p.36, Routledge

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• As Thoreau famously sead, it doesn't matter where or how far you go - the farther commonly the worse - the important thing is how alive you are. Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.

  Pico Iyer

  Writing, Important, Alive

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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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• If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: "I know not this man." Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Suicide, Men, Self

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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• Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge." -Elinor Dashwood

  Jane Austen

  People, Giving, Judging

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• The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.

  Terence McKenna

  Confusion, Mind Blowing, Dying

  Terence McKenna (1998). “True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival”, M J F Books

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• If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

  Erich Fromm

  Christian, Mean, Reflection

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Struggle, Way, Sole

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• It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Tree, Earth, Possession

  Sylvia Townsend Warner (1978). “Lolly Willowes: or, The loving huntsman”, Charles River Books

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• The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Kindness, Real

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• To annihilate the world by annihilation of oneself is the deluded height of desperate egoism.

  Sylvia Plath

  World, Height, Desperate

  Sylvia Plath (2011). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.163, Faber & Faber

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• To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

  Alan Bennett

  Selfish, Easier, Pursuit

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• [To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

  Flannery O'Connor

  Humility, Self, Way

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.35, Macmillan

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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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• To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Underestimate, Exaggeration

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• To affirm is not to bear, carry, or harness oneself to that which exists, but on the contrary to unburden, unharness, and set free that which lives.

  Gilles Deleuze

  Bears, Harness, Contrary

  Gilles Deleuze (1998). “Essays Critical and Clinical”, p.100, Verso

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• The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Real, Understanding, Might

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.76, Macmillan

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• One must have tradition in oneself, to hate it properly.

  Theodor Adorno

  Hate, Tradition

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.81, Univ of California Press

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• Men sometimes speak as if humility and meekness would rob us of what is noble and bold and manlike. O that all would believe that this is the nobility of the kingdom of heaven, that this is the royal spirit that the King of heaven displayed, that this is Godlike, to humble oneself, to become the servant of all!

  Andrew Murray

  Kings, Believe, Humility

  Andrew Murray (2005). “Humility and Absolute Surrender”, p.20, Hendrickson Publishers

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• Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Ideas, Sincerity

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• Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Essentials, Capacity, Perceive

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2010). “Education and the Significance of Life”, p.14, Harper Collins

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