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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"Sports constantly make demands on the participant for top performance, and they develop integrity, self-reliance and initiative. They teach you a lot about working in groups, without being unduly submerged in the group."
"The individual may be understood as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of the self, or of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call it."
"It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment."
"Rapture's self is three parts sorrow."
"Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes."
"What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self."
"Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty."
"Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique - these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation ."
"I respect everything in change and the solemn beauty of life and death... and therefore, while man is amidst the immense beauty of objective bodies, he must possess the capacity of self-perfection and must observe and represent his world with full confidence."
"For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Dædalus or the tripods of Hephæstus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves."
"A life of wealth and many belongings is only a means to happiness. Honor, power, and success cannot be happiness because they depend on the whims of others, and happiness should be self-contained, complete in itself."
"Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking. Instead, force yourself to exist in the instant, then take it- and give it- as it comes."
"Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others."
"Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it."
"It is the Fourth Instinct (the spirit - RJ) that urges us to exceed ourselves ... by awakening our intuitive selves, and striving to be all that we were intended to be. It takes us beyond self-centeredness and enables us to resist the combined forces of indifference and meaninglessness. It awakens us to a sense of responsibility for those most in need of our society as well as for that world that future generations will inherit."
"So great becomes the fear of losing what we have that many of us rush back to hide under the temporary shelter of convention rather than follow the path of self-discovery wherever it might lead. Given adequate time and sufficient fear, we may hide so long that we hardly notice we're slowly suffocating."
"I'd go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn't know who I was. And things just get really dark."
"In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid."
"I'm the kind of woman that likes to enjoy herselves in peace."
"Until one learns to lose one's self he cannot find himself."
