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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"one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others"
"The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be"
"The mind turned inwards is the Self; turned outwards, it becomes the ego and all the world. Cotton made into various clothes we call by various names. Gold made into various ornaments, we call by various names. But all the clothes are cotton and all the ornaments gold. The one is real, the many are mere names and forms."
"When you lose all sense of self the bonds of a thousands chains will vanish. Lose yourself completely, return to the root of the root of your own soul."
"For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions."
"Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty."
"Focus your mind on 'I Am', which is pure and simple being. You are Here and Now only. Contemplate what it is to be fully 'Here' and fully 'Now'. For this you must leave all else. Stay only as here-now Conscious presence. This is Heart. This is Self."
"Finding your passion isn't just about careers and money. It's about finding your authentic self. The one you've buried beneath other people's needs."
"Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."
"The higher nature in man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This is man's dharma, man's religion, and man's self is the vessel."
"Humankind is never what he is but the self he seeks."
"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny."
"One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up."
"A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute."
"I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructiv e but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world."
"The martial arts are ultimately self-knowledge. A punch or a kick is not to knock the hell out of the guy in front, but to knock the hell out of your ego, your fear, or your hang-ups."
"Humility is the displacement of self by the enthronement of God."
"Be happy when you are blamed and accused wrongly, for then you have the chance to see all the bitter, hostile or self-pitying responses that your sinful soul wants to spew out - as if these puny things could in any way defend you! Watch and see if any of these poisons come out of you when your spirit is pricked by an accusation. Only then can you see yourself as you are, and confess thy sin that is within you and forsake yourself again into the Lord's care."
"Discipline for me is about respect. It's not even about self-respect; it's about respect for life and all it offers."
"India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma."
