"I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished."
Read quote
6 likes
Self quotes
Self
12.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Self
Browse quotes that often appear alongside self — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Self quotes (page 114 of 626)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Instant enlightenment. A quintessential modernism, culture and religion accommodated to the age of fast food and bumper stickers. But psyche and spirit are not so exempt from the natural domain that they can simply produce self-change instantaneously, on demand. Wisdom precipitates through a notoriously slow apparatus of retorts and flasks, and it has to find receptive ground only in a properly seasoned mind."
Read quote
6 likes
"The concert is a polite form of self induced torture."
Read quote
6 likes
"The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts."
Read quote
6 likes
"On any Tuesday morning, if asked, a good working scientist will tell you with some self-satisfaction that the affairs of his field are nicely in order, that things are finally looking clear and making sense, and all is well. But come back again on another Tuesday, and the roof may have just fallen in on his life's work."
Read quote
6 likes
"There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual"
Read quote
6 likes
"To be infatuated with the power of one's own intellect is an accident which seldom happens but to those who are remarkable for the want of intellectual power. Whenever Nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit."
Read quote
6 likes
"The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm, and self-possessed."
Read quote
6 likes
"Truly, this world can go on without us, if we would but think so."
Read quote
6 likes
"While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe."
Read quote
6 likes
"If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion"
Read quote
6 likes
"The inclination to self-depreciation, to freely accepting being robbed, being duped, and being swindled, could be the modesty of a god among men."
Read quote
6 likes
"Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances."
Read quote
6 likes
"Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)"
Read quote
6 likes
"There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration."
Read quote
6 likes
"Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt."
Read quote
6 likes
"As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."
Read quote
6 likes
"The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not."
Read quote
6 likes
"When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains need to wake up. I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it."
Read quote
6 likes
"Seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. For self is a sea boundless and measureless."
Read quote
6 likes