Self Quotes - Page 15

• Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Inner Peace, Understanding, Way

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• Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Change, Opportunity, Ideas

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.40, Shambhala Publications

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• Two things were falling apart, my personal life, my professional life. And I realized that all those things were supposed to make me happy, but nothing could fill me up except myself. So I went into analysis. I went to see a doctor, to talk about my lack of self-esteem. I don't know how to say it better: my lack of self-esteem, my insecurity, and how these things were not going to fill me up. And I'd better fix myself and then find out what I liked. For me, therapy was the greatest gift I could ever give myself. There's nothing I could have done for myself that would've been better.

  Sherry Lansing

  Self Esteem, Fall, Two

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Objectivity, Ideas, Brain

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• My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.

  Paul Klee

  Uncles, Hero, Eye

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.177, Univ of California Press

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• Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline -- and above all his interest in others -- these together make up the spirit of morale.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Responsibility, Discipline, Together

  Phyllis Bottome (1943). “Survival”, Boston : Little, Brown

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• Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.

  Demosthenes

  Real, Believe, Expectations

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• O, if there be any kind of life most sad, and deepest in the scale of pity, it is the dry, cold impotence of one, who has honestly set to the work of his own self-redemption.

  Horace Bushnell

  Redemption, Dry, Cold

  Horace Bushnell (1858). “Nature and the Supernatural: As Together Constituting the One System of God”, p.237

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• By His trials, God means to purify us, to take away all our self-confidence, and our trust in each other, and bring us into implicit, humble trust in Himself.

  Horace Bushnell

  Humble, Mean, Self Confidence

  Horace Bushnell (1858). “Sermons for the new life”, p.432

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• Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one's best self.

  Bel Kaufman

  Love Is, Expression, Giving

  Bel Kaufman (2012). “This and That: Random Thoughts and Recollections”, p.111, Open Road Media

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• If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged; it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Happiness, Mean, Way

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• An artist’s work is almost entirely inquiry based and self-regulated. It is a fragile process of teaching oneself to work alone, and focusing on how to hone your quirky creative obsessions so that they eventually become so oddly specific that they can only be your own.

  Teresita Fernandez

  Teaching, Artist, Creative

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• The worst effect of tutelage is that it negates self-discipline, and therefore people suddenly released from it are almost bound to make fools of themselves.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Discipline, People, Fool

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• Harris had the egotistical dogmatism of the self-made man who had painfully educated himself without contact with superior brains.

  Beatrice Webb

  Education, Men, Brain

  Beatrice Potter Webb (1963). “American diary, 1898”

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• if we continue with what is surely our greatest Western temptation, and think that in some way history owes us a solution, that we can, by pursuing our own most parochial self-interest, achieve in some miraculous way a consummation of world order, then we are heading not simply towards great disappointments, but towards disaster and tragedy as well.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Disappointment, Thinking, Order

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• Spring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Spring, Autumn, Sentimental

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

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• Woe to those who get what they desire. Fulfillment leaves an empty space where your old self used to be, the self that pines and broods and reflects. You furnish a dream house in your imagination, but how startling and final when that dream house is your own address. What is left to you? Surrounded by what you wanted, you feel a sense of amputation. The feelings you were used to abiding with are useless. The conditions you established for your happiness are met. That youthful light-headed feeling whose sharp side is much like hunger is of no more use to you.

  Laurie Colwin

  Success, Dream, Space

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• Prayer is intended to increase the devotion of the individual, but if the individual himself prays he requires no formula; he pours himself forth much more naturally in self-chosen and connected thoughts before God, and scarcely requires words at all. Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Prayer, Real, Feelings

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• In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.

  Mark Hopkins

  Christian, Eye, Sacrifice

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p.61, 1895.

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• This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good--these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

  James Martineau

  Jesus, Heart, Invisible Hand

  James Martineau (1905). “A Martineau year book: Extracts from sermons”

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• If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.

  James Martineau

  Dream, Indulge In, Giving

  James Martineau (1905). “Tides of the Spirit: Selections from the Writings of James Martineau”

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• I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.

  Anita Brookner

  Husband, Important

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• Up, then, with speed, and work;
  Fling ease and self away--
  This is no time for thee to sleep--
  Up, watch, and work, and pray!

  Horatius Bonar

  Sleep, Watches, Ease

  Horatius Bonar (1858). “Hymns of Faith and Hope ... Third edition”, p.262

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• Actually, when it comes to knocking the Canadian cultural scene, nobody outdoes Canadians, myself included. We are veritable masters of self-deprecation.

  Mordecai Richler

  Scene, Knocking, Masters

  Mordecai Richler (1970). “Canadian writing today”, Penguin Books

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• I am determined to seek self-sufficiency in energy as an urgent national priority. My goal is to make America independent of foreign energy sources by 1985.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Independent, America, Goal

  "A War Tat is Finishe". Gerald R. Ford's speech at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, www.historyplace.com. April 23, 1975.

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