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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"The capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of self-earned private property: in other words, the expropriation of the labourer."
"All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness."
"Just be your self. Everybody else is already taken."
"If we can look upon our work not for self-benefit,but as a means to benefit society,we will be practicing appreciation and patience in our daily lives."
"I would like to write you so simply, so simply, so simply. Without having anything ever catch the eye, excepting yours alone, ... so that above all the language remains self-evidently secret, as if it were being invented at every step, and as if it were burning immediately"
"What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self."
"Life is not an orderly progression, self-contained like a musical scale or a quadratic equation... If one is to record one's life truthfully, one must aim at getting into the record of it something of the disorderly discontinuity which makes it so absurd, unpredictable, bearable."
"It's all about self-expression; you know, if you feel like a troll then you should look like a troll. It doesn't matter what you look like. I mean, if you have a hunchback just throw a little glitter on it, honey, and go dancing!"
"But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect."
"The man of Self-realization knows a bliss that cannot be compared to anything in this world. His joy is independent of any object or sensory experience. It is an incomparable happiness that cannot be described in words. Such joy is known as sattvik-ananda."
"Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make."
"A faith that can only exist in the light of victory and certainty is one which really affirms the self while pretending to affirm Christ, for it only follows Jesus in the belief that Jesus has conquered death. Yet a faith that can look at the horror of the cross and still say ‘yes’ is one that says ‘no’ to the self in saying ‘yes’ to Christ."
"Like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming."
""We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz. In what became known as "Hume's Fork" the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition."
"Yoga stimulates different nerves in your body, especially the Vagus nerve that carries information from the brain to most of the body's major organs, slows everything down and allows self-regulation. It's the nerve that is associated with the parasympathetic system and emotions like love, joy and compassion."
"I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning."
"When you see a worthy person, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy person, then examine your inner self."
"Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine."
"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."
"Unsolicited advice is always self-serving."
