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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"Following your bliss is not self-indulgent, but vital; your whole physical system knows that this is the way to be alive in this world and the way to give to the world the very best that you have to offer. There IS a track just waiting for each of us and once on it, doors will open that were not open before and would not open for anyone else."
"Here’s one of my favorite statements: We are never going to enjoy stability, we are never going to enjoy spiritual maturity until we learn how to do what’s right when it feels wrong, and every time you do what’s right by a decision of your will using discipline and self control to go beyond how you feel, the more painful it is in your flesh, the more you’re growing spiritually at that particular moment."
"If gender is eradicated, so too is an important domain of pleasure for many people. And others have a strong sense of self bound up with their genders, so to get rid of gender would be to shatter their self-hood."
"For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state."
"The enemies of Christ ... could not bear his independence; his "Give the emperor that which is the emperor's" showed a contempt for the affairs of state and its politics for the moral order that their self-respect would not let them tolerate."
"In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact."
"If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves."
"So, the gods don't hand out all their gifts at once, not build and brains and flowing speech to all. One man may fail to impress us with his looks but a god can crown his words with beauty, charm, and men look on with delight when he speaks out. Never faltering, filled with winning self-control, he shines forth at assembly grounds and people gaze at him like a god when he walks through the streets. Another man may look like a deathless one on high but there's not a bit of grace to crown his words. Just like you, my fine, handsome friend."
"In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action."
"Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, Always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed"
"That is an incredible period I think when you have a near-death experience. You are really understanding that there is a greater self than the physical body, and the cosmic anatomy as I call it is suspended and physical, is almost attached to it but not quite, and you're living in that in-between sphere of apparent reality around you and then the real reality of the infiniteness of it all."
"The big Wall Street firms, seemingly so shrewd and self-interested, had somehow become the dumb money. The people who ran them did not understand their own businesses, and their regulators obviously knew even less."
"The Self is the one thing you can discover, not by travelling miles, but by being very still inside your own being and saying to the Supreme, Yes, absorb me."
"The hunger [to success] is the same, no matter what it is that you're doing. It's like an unquenchable thirst to learn more, or to feel like you could have done more, and to be brutally honest and self critical, which is very hard to do. It's easy, and human nature is to just blame somebody else. It's very, very hard to self assess."
"I've worked so hard to just be my full self and God has just validated me in so many ways."
"There can be no place for self entirely"
"But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear."
"Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him."
"For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being."
"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good."
