Self Quotes - Page 161

Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years.

Economic disaster begins with a philosophy of doing less and wanting more.

Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the “I,” with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.

I’m a big believer in accepting yourself the way you are and not really worrying about it.

The true, or higher part of the self is always seeking the state that mystics talk about, the state in which we are filled with a universal love and a peaceful euphoria.

Four innate sentiments dispose people to a universal moral sense. These are sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty.

Every day you reinvent yourself. You’re always in motion. But you decide every day: forward or backward.

If I live for self, I can only live for one; if I live for others, I can live for 3,000,000,000.

There are ministers who never speak of repentance or self-denial. Naturally they are popular, but they are false prophets.

Beware of self-righteousness in every possible shape and form. Some people get as much harm from their "virtues" as others do from their sins.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

One of the great underlying principles governing our life is service. Most of us have to work, but do we serve? Do we work in a spirit of service? Do we work for Life and our fellows? Or do we merely work for self, in order to make a living?

Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life.

Religion is a belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. It therefore has no reality check. And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality… and extreme, grotesque immorality.

You don't suffer, kill yourself and take the risks I take just for money. I love bike racing.

. . . black women . . . are trained from childhood to become workers, and expect to be financially self-supporting for most of their lives. They know they will have to work, whether they are married or single; work to them, unlike to white women, is not a liberating goal, but rather an imposed lifelong necessity.

We are betrayed by what is false within

When we die to something, something comes alive within us. If we die to self, charity comes alive; if we die to pride, service comes alive; if we die to lust, reverence for personality comes alive; if we die to anger, love comes alive.

I am a complete, mature, self-sufficient being.

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole... Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon mother earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you.

We're always too skinny, or too fat. Too tall, or too short. We're shaming each other, and we're shaming ourselves, and it sucks.

Hush little baby, Dont you cry, Dont cut your arms, Dont say goodbye. Put down that razor, Put down that light, It maybe hard but, You'll win this fight.

One must be truthful with oneself about one's own motives, especially if one is to survive in the world. It takes rigor, and it takes courage.

The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.