Self Quotes

“Great people will always be mocked by those who feel smaller than them. A lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey.
A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker. Whenever you should doubt your self-worth, remember the lotus flower. Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud,
it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“How many yous have you been?
How many,
Lined up inside,
Each killing the last?”
― Kate Tempest, Hold Your Own

“I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“If love becomes too painful, then it's time to let that love go and save yourself. You have to keep this in mind because you'll be able to find another love but not another self.”
― Robert Tew

“Why, isabel? Why are you doing this to yourself? To your body?'
And why are you doing this to me? is the awful, selfish thought that is left unsaid.
'Because I can,' she answers, and I shiver as she unconsciously echoes chastity-ruth.
'But-'
'Because it's my body,' she cuts in. 'Isn't it?”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“When an individual appreciates that he alone is responsible for the content and coherence of his person, an influx like eros becomes a concrete personal threat. So in the lyric poets, love is something that assaults or invades the body of the lover to wrest control of it from him, a personal struggle of will and physique between the god and his victim. The poets describe this struggle from within a consciousness – perhaps new in the world – of the body as a unity of limbs, senses and self, amazed at its own vulnerability.”
― Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

“Death changes nothing but the masks that cover our faces.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet

“I see myself through others eyes and I am made anew.”
― Molly Moore

“But it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was deep and allowed my mind to relax entirely; then it would let go of the map of the place where I had fallen asleep and, when I woke in the middle of the night, since I did not know where I was, I did not even understand in the first moment who I was; all I had, in its original simplicity, was the sense of existence as it may quiver in the depths of an animal; I was more bereft than a caveman; but then the memory - not yet of the place where I was, but of several of those where I had lived and where I might have been - would come to me like help from on high to pull me out of the void from which I could not have got out on my own; I passed over centuries of civilization in one second, and the image confusedly glimpsed of oil lamps, then of wing-collar shirts, gradually recomposed my self's original features.”
― Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann

“You may discover your purpose, but if you take it for granted, you will abuse yourself.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Watchwords

“Cowardice is when you hide away from your real self, and wear another self in pretense. Be yourself; that is bravery. If yourself is not better for you to be, change yourself and live in that changed self!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Watchwords

“Now, what if Others were encapsulated in Things, in a way that Being towards Things were not ontologically severable, in Heidegger's terms, from Being towards Others? What if the mode of Dasein of Others were to dwell in Things, and so forth? In the same light, then, what if the Thing were a Dublette of the Self, and not what is called the Other? Or more radically still, what if the Self were in some fundamental way becoming a Xerox copy, a duplicate, of the Thing in its assumed essence?”
― Avital Ronell

“See the Divinity in others and you will find it within yourself.”
― KA Chinery, Perceptions From the Photon Frequency: the ascended version

“This is the starting point, Daisy had said. It's the symbol for self. Its essence is water. Your relationship with yourself is primary, like water you must be willing to change. The Rune means to me that I must strive to live the ordinary life in a non-ordinary way. This is what it says in The Book of Runes. Take heart, in the spirit you are always beginning.”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella

“It occurred to Rosie that she couldn't hide either, even though the truth had been hidden from her. Now she was out from the shadows, out in the open for the first time in her life, standing in the harsh light.”
― Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella

“We are inscrutable even to ourselves, I suppose.”
― Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes

“Without unreservedly surrendering myself to God, whatever place I might raise myself to remains nothing more than a step or possibly two off the hard basement floor of life, for of myself I can be utterly assured that I will never step out of the basement.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough, Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Profound Living

“Self-discovery is the greatest asset.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“Maybe that was one of the problems with these men who lived forever, they'd built up an immunity or resistance to affection. Perhaps because when everyone they knew and loved continued to die, they realized the value of distance, of not losing one's self completely to love.”
― Caroline Hanson, Love Is Mortal

“When You Are Just You,
People Will Always Bring Themselves.”
― Yaganesh Derasari

“Often when she liked a picture she found that she was liking some part of herself, some part of her that was in accord with the picture”
― Jeanette Winterson

“I became aware of a voice inside my head. [...] It was only later that I realized that this voice was my own thinking, that this moment of anguish was my first inkling that I was a ceaseless monologue trapped within myself.”
― Yann Martel

“It is in community where we find our very selves.”
― Chris Matakas, My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

“We are free to live the life we have imagined, not the life imagined for us.”
― Chris Matakas, My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

“Creating Identity”
― Mohit Manke

“When I stopped loving, I lost purpose; When I stopped loving myself, I lost myself.”
― Pavitraa Parthasarathy

“We know ourselves very little. We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe; far out on a distant edge, hearing a little of what is transpiring.”
― David Eaglemann

“I keep on dreaming, but to find freedom, one must first search inwards.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year: Fennel's Journal No. 2

“Time alone helps us to remember who we are.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year: Fennel's Journal No. 2

“We strive toward the middle, and we run from ourselves.”
― Chris Matakas, My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu