Self quotes
12.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside self — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."
"Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization."
"Action is the music of our life. Like music, it starts from a pause of leisure, a silence of activity which our initiative attacks; then it develops according to its inner logic, passes its climax, seeks its cadence, ends, and restores silence, leisure again. Action and leisure are thus interdependent; echoing and recalling each other, so that action enlivens leisure with its memories and anticipations, and leisure expands and raises action beyond its mere immediate self and gives it a permanent meaning."
"You've never had a hamburger before?" asks Christine, her eyes wide. "No," I say. "Is that what it's called?" "Stiffs eat plain food," Four says, nodding at Christina. "Why?" she asks. I shrug. "Extravagance is considered self-indulgent and unnecessary." She smirks. "No wonder you left." "Yeah," I say,rolling my eyes. "It was just because of the food." The corner of Four's mouth twitches."
"In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants."
"Strong and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the nurse of self-respect; misfortune is a good breast for great souls."
"And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream, All is here begun, and finished elsewhere."
"I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense."
"Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand."
"Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will."
"Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment."
"The never-ending task of self improvement."
"And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim."
"And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance."
"It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views."
"We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person."
"A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule."
"Let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear."
"The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action."
"The basis of good manners is self-reliance."
