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 world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end."
"When I am dancing, it feels like my prayer. It's like an offering. I offer my head back to the dance, I offer my shoulders back to the dance, my elbows, my hands, my spine, my knees, my feet, my whole self, my bones, my blood, my experience, my suffering... I offer it all back to the dance and I say: take it, do whatever you want with me. Release me."
"A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies."
"Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing."
"When people are right with God, they are apt to be hard on themselves and easy on other people. But when they are not right with God, they are easy on themselves and hard on others."
"The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss.""
"Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation."
"You have to self-reflect. If you forget who you actually are, then what's the use of even looking in the mirror."
"Very often we don’t go elsewhere because we are looking for another person. We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self. It isn’t so much that we want to leave the person we are with as we want to leave the person we have become."
"Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all."
"The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals."
"I see what you mean. It must be a huge relief, and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us. (…) we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.” (p. 257)."
"Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled ; and by doing brave acts, we become brave."
"It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness."
"I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"
"Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner 'I', you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought centre and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective."
"The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues."
"One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of his life."
"An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens."
"Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread."
