Self Quotes

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

Lord Tennyson

Blessed are they who heal you of self - Despisings. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious.

William Hale White

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

Samuel Johnson

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

Jessamyn West

The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself... The act of voting is in itself the defining moment.

Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Democracy in America, 1992

Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.

Thomas Jefferson

But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.

Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (on the death of Decoud)

Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself.

Ralph Waldo Trine

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self - Direction, and for self - Initiated learning.

Carl R. Rogers

We hold these truths to be self - Evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments a.

Thomas Jefferson

Self - Reverence, self knowledge, self - Control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

Lord Tennyson

I give myself, sometimes, admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Mary Montagu

Few people think more than two or three times a year I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

George Bernard Shaw

Increase your personal power through positive and powerful communication. Recognize and eliminate negative self talk.

Caterina Rando

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

John Ciardi

An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.

Publilius Syrus

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

Helena Rubinstein

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.

Auguste Rodin

None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

Muhammad

In the choice of a horse and a wife, a man must please himself, ignoring the opinion and advice of friends.

George John Whyte - Melville

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

You are the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency, your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely as a means.

Dag Hammarskjold

A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.

Seneca

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self - Criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

Charles Horton Cooley

Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind. You are as old as your doubt, your fear, your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self confidence young. Keep your hope young.

Luella F. Phean

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

Thomas Szasz, "The Second Sin".

Everything is connected... no one thing can change by itself.

Paul Hawken

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

Charles Dudley Warne

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Oscar Wilde

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, 1420

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

M. C. Esche

The world is full of fools and he who would not wish to see one, must not only shut himself up alone, but must also break his looking - Glass.

Nicolas Boileau

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitalitythe supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.

Sigmund Freud, his essay on war & death

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the insidiousness of self - Praise, and all the ill - Desert of falsehood.

Tyron Edwards

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil.

Dag Hammarskjld

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

Arnold Toynbee