Self Quotes - Page 9

• Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Blessed, Animal, Curiosity

  Nadine Gordimer (2012). “Living in Hope and History”, p.196, A&C Black

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• The poorest education that teaches self-control is better than the best that neglects it.

  Dorothy Nevill

  Neglect, Teach, Poorest

  Lady Dorothy Nevill (1912). “My own times”

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• Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Example, Forget

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• The self is every person's true enemy.

  Ding Ling

  Enemy, Persons

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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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• Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Thinking, Government, Play

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.13, Crux Publishing Ltd

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• I believe that the matter is automatically self-regulating; that those women who prefer the home and have an ability for it will eventually return to it; that others, like myself, will compromise; and that still others, temperamentally unfitted for it, will remain in the world to add to its productivity.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Women, Believe, Home

  Mary Roberts Rinehart (1931). “My story”, Farrar & Rinehart

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• The journey toward self-discovery is life's greatest adventure.

  Arianna Huffington

  Adventure, Journey, Discovery

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• The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves . . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Sacrifice, Shrines, Definitions

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• All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Practice, Agency, Conformity

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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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• But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation.

  Rosamond Lehmann

  Poetry, Important, Preservation

  Rosamond Lehmann (1975). “The ballad and the source”, Harvest Books

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• 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

  Mind, Acting, Actors

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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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• 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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• Intercourse is after all man's best teacher. "Know thyself" is an excellent maxim; but even self-knowledge cannot be perfected in closets and cloisters--nor amid lake scenery, and on the sunny side of the mountains. Men who seldom mix with their fellow-creatures are almost sure to be one-sided--the victims of fixed ideas, that sometimes lead to insanity.

  William Matthews

  Teacher, Men, Lakes

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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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• ... the mere thought of going near a man who is not mellowly pickled, and whose breath reeks of his native fleshy self, is squeamishly unpalatable to me.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Men, Breaths, Mere

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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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• 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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• Self-respect,--the corner-stone of all virtue.

  John Herschel

  Stones, Virtue, Corners

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• self-control, in every station and to every individual, is indispensable, if people would retain that equanimity of mind, which, depending on self-respect, is the essential of contentment and happiness.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  People, Mind, Contentment

  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1828). “Ladies' Magazine”, p.104

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• 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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