Self Quotes

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton, From Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

Jean - Paul Sartre, Upon refusing the Nobel Prize, Oct. 22, 1964

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

Cynthia Heimel

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time...

Charles Dickens

My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self - Defense.

Fred Allen

They say that time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself.

Andy Warhol

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.

Russell Bake

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

Henry Kissinge

Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream - A scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows - Is essentially poetry.

Jesse Louis Jackson

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Samuel Johnson

I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.

Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, December 2003

Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your own individuality.

Henri - Fr? d? ric Amiel

He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar.

Chuang - Tzu, The Great Supreme

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

Henry Ward Beeche

Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.

William Shakespeare

For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain.

Lyste

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

Anna Freud

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible.

Thomas a Kempis

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

George Herbert Walker Bush

Compassion for myself is the most powerful healer of them all.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.

Orison Swett Marden

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.

William James

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress but I repeat myself.

Mark Twain

Christmas - - That magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - - A day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

Augusta E. Rundell

Ful wys is he that can himselven knowe Very wise is he that can know himself.

Geoffrey Chauce

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands upon himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

W. H. Auden

The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.

Rita Mae Brown, Venus Envy

Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.

Annie Lennox

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.

Graham Greene, Heart of the Matter (1948)

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self - Respect.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

Saint Augustine

Let a man strive to purify his thoughts. What a man thinketh, that is he this is the eternal mystery. Dwelling within himself with thoughts serene, he will obtain imperishable happiness.

Maitri Upanishads

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Hunter S. Thompson

As the moon retaineth her nature, though darkness spread itself before her face as a curtain, so the Soul remaineth perfect even in the bosom of the fool.

Akhenaton