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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"As William Penn put it: "Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." Remember... that those tyrants are often self-imposed roadblocks of your lower self at work."
"Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't."
"A peevish self-willed harlotry it is. *She’s a stubborn little brat.*"
"See, I will always have this penchant for what I call kamikaze women. I call them kamikazes because they, you know they crash their plane, they're self-destructive. But they crash into you, and you die along with them."
"Work not of enthusiasm but of love, conscious of duty-which means self-denial."
"I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself."
"My friends tease me about the fact that if someone seems bad or shady or like they have a secret, I find them incredibly interesting. That's just a phase I've been in lately. I don't think this should be how i proceed in life. It's important to be self-aware about these things because you don't want to end up with that guy."
"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."
"Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow."
"That is the ego which rises and sinks periodically. But you exist always. That which lies beyond the ego is consciousness - the Self."
"The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self."
"In the Heart's cavity, the sole Brahman as an ever-persisting 'I' shines direct in the form of the Self. Into the Heart enter thyself, with mind in search or in deeper plunge. Or by restraint of life-movement be firmly poised in the Self."
"Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene, the bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation."
"All that one gives to others one gives to one's self. If this truth is understood, who will not give to others?"
"Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as these stories concern us at all, we are never less than heroic."
"Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness. It is the great confessional; things are said, truths are blurted out which health conceals."
"Our lives can be considered a sacred quest. It is a quest which may have begun in this lifetime or many lifetimes before. It is a quest to find ourselves: who and what we really are. To do this we must first cease to pretend to be what we are not. We must cast away our Persona or mask. We must be prepared to confront the Shadow, that which we are and rather were not. Only then can we unify our conscious and unconscious minds and so give birth to the hidden Sun - the Self."
"Self-contemplation is infallibly the symptom of disease."
"I consider myself something of a self-taught anthropologist."
"If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions."
