Self-importance Quotes - Page 3

• If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

  Earl Wilson

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

  233 Copy quote

• Oh Lord, give us a sense of humor with courage to manifest it forth, so that we may laugh to shame the pomps, the vanities, the sense of self-importance of the Big Fellows that the world sometimes sends among us, and who try to take our peace away.

  Sean O'Casey

  Humor, Vanity, Self

  41 Copy quote

• The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

  Richard Francis Burton

  Death, Religious, Atheist

  "The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night". Book by John Payne, Terminal Essay: Social Conditions, fn. 13., 1885.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance ; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt.

  Chris Hedges

  Lying, Self, Deception

  124 Copy quote

• Rare indeed is the nature that does not become a little more intense when its own affairs come under discussion.

  Alice Duer Miller

  Doe, Littles, Affair

  4 Copy quote

• The first person I ever cared deeply and sincerely about was - myself.

  Louella Parsons

  Firsts, Sincerely, Persons

  16 Copy quote

• Too much self-regard has never struck me as dignified: trying to twist over my shoulder to view my own behind.

  Marge Piercy

  Self, Views, Trying

  Marge Piercy (2013). “Braided Lives”, p.6, PM Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.

  George Eliot

  Common, Mist, Walks

  George Eliot (189?). “The Spanish gypsy”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around...The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Block, Mistake, Creativity

  5 Copy quote

• Humour breaks down boundaries, it topples our self-importance, it connects people, and because it engages and entertains, it ultimately enlightens.

  John Agard

  Self, People, Enlightening

  66 Copy quote

• Good leadership is pervasive, persuasive, and persistent. Bad leadership is poisoned with pedanticism, posturing, self-importance.

  Marcia Whicker

  Leadership, Self, Good Leader

  Marcia Lynn Whicker (1996). “Toxic leaders: when organizations go bad”, Praeger Publishers

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are some films that arrive here from the international festival circuit almost incandescent with self-importance. They hover into the cinema in a kind of floating trance at how challenging and moving they are. They are films with a profound reluctance to get over themselves. They look up at the sceptical observer with the saucer-eyed saintliness of a baby seal in culling season, or a charity mugger smilingly wishing a nice day on the retreating back of a passer-by. One such is Babel.

  Peter Bradshaw

  Baby, Nice, Moving

  5 Copy quote

• To matter, to mind. ... What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy. ... Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind?

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Mind, Tragedy, May

  5 Copy quote

• before feminism was, Paglia was!

  Camille Paglia

  Feminism

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.253, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird.

  Ethan Hawke

  Successful, Vanity, Self

  "Ethan Hawke on Fame: 'The Demons Start to Tempt You'". Interview with Jeanne Wolf, parade.com. January 05, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think because I did become a well-known face in my thirties and not in my twenties, I was pretty settled in my boots and I knew who I was. And I think there's a sort of Scottish thing, too, where you don't take yourself too seriously, and you don't get carried away with your own sense of self-importance.

  Ashley Jensen

  Thinking, Self, Twenties

  4 Copy quote

• What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Concern

  Ivy Compton-Burnett (2011). “A Heritage and its History”, p.67, A&C Black

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• conceit is the devil's horse, and reformers generally ride it when they are in a hurry.

  Margaret Deland

  Horse, Devil, Conceit

  4 Copy quote

• Even in misery we love to be foremost, to have the bitter in our cup acknowledged as more bitter than that of others.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Cups, Misery, Bitter

  7 Copy quote

• Fear is being used by the political class as an excuse to accumulate more power and self-importance - and collect a lot more taxes to support their agenda.

  Doug Casey

  Self, Class, Support

  Doug Casey (2012). “Totally Incorrect”, p.89, Laissez Faire Books

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

  Kathleen Norris

  Humility, Exercise, Self

  Kathleen Norris (1997). “The Cloister Walk”, p.25, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.

  William Hazlitt

  Fashion, Real, Men

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1485, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are a sort of men, whose visages
  Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
  And do a willful stillness entertain,
  With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
  Of wisdom, gravity profound conceit;
  As who should say, I am sir Oracle,
  And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!

  William Shakespeare

  Wisdom, Dog, Men

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 88

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sympathy of most people consists of a mixture of good-humour, curiosity, and self-importance.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Sympathy, Self, People

  7 Copy quote

• Men astonish themselves far more than they astonish their friends.

  Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

  Men

  4 Copy quote