Self Quotes

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Henry Ward Beeche

Self - Respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

H. L. Mencken

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self - Serving wealth.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self - Love.

Francois de Fenelon

When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy.

Anon.

If heaven is going to be full of people like Hardie, well, the Almighty can have them to himself.

Sir Winston Churchill

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Ja

It is by no means self - Evident that human beings are most real when most violently excited violent physical passions do not in themselves differentiate men from each other, but rather tend to reduce them to the same state.

Thomas Elliot

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in an clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 sea shore and diverting himself and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell that ordinary while the greater ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton

Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.

Lou Dorfsman

The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self - Reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.

Henry Louis Mencken

I have great faith in fools; self - Confidence, my friends call it.

Edgar Allan Poe

Nobody will believe in you unless you believe in yourself.

Liberace

Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.

Ecclesiastes

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

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self - Distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.

Amos Bronson Alcott

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 8

No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.

Pythagorus

One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903

A man can know nothing of mankind without knowing something of himself. Self - Knowledge is the property of that man whose passions have their full play, but who ponders over their results.

Benjamin Disraeli

No man ever listened himself out of a job.

Calvin Coolidge

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

Annie Lennox

The world itself is the will to power - And nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - And nothing else!

Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Will to Power".

Self - Trust is the essence of heroism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let him that hath no power of patience retire within himself, though even there he will have to put up with himself.

Baltasar Gracian

At sixteen I was stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. At twenty - Five I was wise, self - Confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty - Five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

Jules Feiffe

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

E. B. White

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

Stephen King

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

Richard Whately

Your mental attitude is someting you can control outright and you must use self - Discipline until you create a Positive Mental Attitude - - Your mental attitude attracts to you everything that makes you what you are.

Napolean Hill

Life itself is neither good nor evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Marcus Aelius Aurelius

To what purpose should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?

Anaximenes

First say to yourself what you would be and then do what you have to do.

Epictetus