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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"All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections."
"Seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level."
"In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constitute d; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed."
"I can't tell my self that I'm a serious actor. But I'm serious person."
"My self-image it still isn't that alright. No matter how famous I am, no matter how many people go to see my movies, I still have the idea that I'm that pale no-hoper that I used to be. A pale no-hoper that happens to be a little lucky now. Tomorrow it'll be all over, then I'll have to go back to selling pens again."
"I was totally taken in and totally taken by that myth starting in 1999, rather carelessly writing about this archive and starting to read [Buckminster Fuller] self-representation, misrepresentation, whatever you want to call it."
"Note to self: It's hard to attain a state of no-mind when you're incredibly pumped up on tea and sugar and have to urinate every three and a half minutes."
"Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth but I daren't."
"I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality"
"I think that one of the challenges for a parent and myself as a parent is that we live in a very electronic media age. That's obvious to everyone. And I'm not opposed to time on computers or time with television or time with any other electronic media but I think that quiet, thoughtful interaction between one's self, your mind and words is an irreplacable thing."
"Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?"
"My self is all to me. I don't have any need of you."
"The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother."
"Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?"
"Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision."
"Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident."
"Of course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)"
"Throughout the play everything possible was done to show the virtue, innocence and helplessness of the poor, and the abandoned cruelty, the heartless self-indulgence of the rich."
"Self Pity is the most miserable party to go to, because, in case you haven't noticed, you're the only one who is there."
"The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered."
