Self Consciousness Quotes

• Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Self, Names, Consciousness

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.147

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• Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Names, Self, Ego

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.147

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• Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness.

  Bruno Bauer

  Self, Progress, Obstacles

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  Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Beauty

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

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• Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

  Theodor Adorno

  Mean, Reflection, Self

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.50, Verso

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  A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Beauty, Spiritual

  Letter of 1950, as quoted in "The New York Times", March 29, 1972.

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• In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.

  James Mark Baldwin

  Self, Two, Consciousness

  James Mark Baldwin (1913). “History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation”

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• Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

  Aaron Copland

  Inspirational, Art, Self

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• It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

  Stephen Fry

  Beauty, Depression, Laughter

  Stephen Fry (2011). “Moab Is My Washpot”, p.93, Random House

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• Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

  Helen Hayes

  Self, Theatre, Actors

  Helen Hayes (2014). “On Reflection: An Autobiography”, p.13, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Religious, Thinking

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• The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Self, Morbid, Cures

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.147

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• We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

  Thomas Merton

  Greatness, Achieve, Interest

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.128, Shambhala Publications

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• People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.

  Saadi

  Confidence, Loving Yourself, Sight

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• After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.

  Immanuel Kant

  Spiritual, Self, Personality

  Immanuel Kant (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Immanuel Kant (Illustrated)”, p.165, Delphi Classics

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• ...self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy.

  Nick Hornby

  Men, Worst Enemy, Self

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.131, Penguin

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• Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Creativity, Responsibility, Past

  "Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century". Book by Grace Lee Boggs, James Boggs, billmoyers.com. 1974.

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• I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

  Walter Dean Myers

  Notebook, Exercise, Self

  "An Interview With Walter Dean Myers About The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins". Interview with Richard F. Abrahamson and Linda M. Pavonetti, www.scholastic.com.

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• In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Self, Consciousness

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.342, Macmillan

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• There's good self-consciousness, and then there's toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Self, Psychics, Toxic

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• Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite—you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.” “I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.” “That’s the whole idea,” the girl said.

  Haruki Murakami

  Girl, Thinking, Self

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• I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feelings save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Country, Memories

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.80, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am.

  Nick Hornby

  Men, Thinking, Worst Enemy

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.131, Penguin

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• I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

  Dylan Moran

  Self, Gigs, Able

  "Half-cut? I'd be entirely cut, sliced and diced every which way". Interview with Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. December 06, 2006.

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• Free passion is radiation without a radiator, a fluid, pervasive warmth that flows effortlessly. It is not destructive because it is a balanced state of being and highly intelligent. Self-consciousness inhibits this intelligent, balanced state of being. By opening, by dropping our self-conscious grasping, we see not only the surface of an object, but we see the whole way through.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Buddhist, Passion, Intelligent

  Chogyam Trungpa (2010). “The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism; The Myth of Freedom; The Heart of the Bud dha; Selected Writings”, p.244, Shambhala Publications

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