Self Absorption Quotes

• There's nothing that makes you more miserable (or less interesting) than self-absorption .

  Timothy Keller

  Self, Interesting, Miserable

  Timothy Keller (2013). “Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God”, p.21, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why hope to live a long life if we're only going to fill it with self-absorption, body maintenance and image repair? When we die, do we want people to exclaim 'She looked ten years younger,' or do we want them to say 'She lived a great life'?

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Life, Self, Years

  13 Copy quote

• When we focus on others, our world expands.

  Daniel Goleman

  Our World, Focus, Empathy

  Daniel Goleman (2011). “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships”, p.54, Random House

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the healthy pursuit of self-interest and self-realizatio n turns into self-absorption , other people can lose their intrinsic value in our eyes and become mere means to the fulfillment of our needs and desires.

  P. M. Forni

  Mean, Eye, Self

  19 Copy quote

• [Pope Francis]sees a world in need of the Gospel, and of friendship with Jesus Christ, as an antidote to the self-absorption and loneliness that are eating away at the solidarity of the human community.

  George Weigel

  Jesus, Loneliness, Self

  Source: eppc.org

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Self-absorption intensifies isolation, but permits it to go unnoticed.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Solitude, Isolation

  4 Copy quote

• To be sick and helpless is a humiliating experience. Prolonged illness also carries the hazard of narcissistic self-absorption.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Self, Sick, Hazards

  Richard Hofstadter (2011). “The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it”, p.398, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

  Adam Gopnik

  Sex, Writing, Self

  6 Copy quote

• Serving others breaks you free from the shackles of self and self-absorption that choke out the joy of living.

  James Hunter

  Self, Joy, Servant Leadership

  37 Copy quote

• Selfishness and self-absorption are deadly charm-exterminators.

  Loretta Young

  Self, Charm, Absorption

  11 Copy quote

• Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow. Awareness of others is a healthy antidote to this self-focus.

  Kevin Malarkey

  Wall, Self, Focus

  46 Copy quote

• To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.

  Tom Stoppard

  War, Eye, Artist

  Tom Stoppard (2011). “Travesties”, p.45, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am not the center of the universe. And it's a lesson that I keep having to learn; it's my ongoing work, I'd say. And being in a career that is predicated on a degree of self-absorption, that is a tricky thing to negotiate sometimes.

  Patrick Fabian

  Self, Careers, Degrees

  "Actor Patrick Fabian: The power of live music and being connected to emotions". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• David Bowie emerged as a rock star in the late '60s. And as Ken Tucker wrote, "In the face of the hippy era's sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption. His song 'Changes' announced the arrival of a new counterculture," unquote.

  David Bowie

  Song, Stars, Distance

  Source: www.npr.org

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Acting requires absorption, but not self-absorption and, in the actor's mind, the question must always be 'Why am I doing this?,' not 'How am I doing it?

  Maureen Lipman

  Self, Mind, Acting

  10 Copy quote

• Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.

  Sherry Turkle

  Lying, Insecure, Mirrors

  Sherry Turkle (2005). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, p.279, MIT Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good.

  Valerie Solanas

  Lying, Philosophical, Self

  53 Copy quote

• Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.

  Daniel Goleman

  Compassion, Our World, Self

  "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships". Book by Daniel Goleman, September 19, 2006.

  80 Copy quote

  Show source

• There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Loneliness, Self, Expression

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Echoes of the Jazz Age Collection: The Beautiful and Damned, Winter Dreams, The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and many more”, p.264, e-artnow

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I admire self-awareness more than probably any other quality, and I think in terms of what qualities are "good" in a person, it's a mostly subjective opinion, so I can't see a reason to think that self-absorption is inherently a bad thing.

  Marie Calloway

  Thinking, Self, Quality

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Self, Expression, Might

  8 Copy quote

• Particularly with middle-class people, self-absorption is a struggle.

  Benjamin Lewin

  Struggle, Class, Self

  "Ben Lewin on The Sessions: 'You can reach women without brute force'". Interview with Catherine Shoard, www.theguardian.com. January 3, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lonely people console themselves with self-absorption or curiosity.

  Mason Cooley

  Lonely, Loneliness, Self

  4 Copy quote

• During adolescence imagination is boundless. The urge toward self-perfection is at its peak. And with all their self- absorption and personalized dreams of glory, youth are in pursuit of something larger than personal passions, some values or ideals to which they might attach their imaginations.

  Louise J. Kaplan

  Dream, Passion, Self

  4 Copy quote

• When evangelizers rise from prayer, their hearts are more open; freed of self-absorption, they are desirous of doing good and sharing their lives with others.

  Pope Francis

  Prayer, Heart, Self

  8 Copy quote