Self Quotes - Page 195

It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.

Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things. If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive. If our experience is destroyed, we have lost our own selves.

The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe .

Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.

Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It is the thing that gives you juice. The thing that you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself.

If it is love that makes the world go round, it is self-induction that makes electromagnetic waves go round the world.

Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy.

The questionnaire is a simple first step toward becoming more self-aware.

The way must be in you; the destination also must be in you and not somewhere else in space or time. If that kind of self-transformation is being realized in you, you will arrive.

There is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is.

By nice women . . . you probably mean selfish women who have no more thought for the underprivileged, overworked women than a pussycat in a sunny window for the starving kitten in the street. Now in that sense I am not a nice woman, for I do care.

Self-deception is a defining part of our human nature. By recognizing its various forms in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able to disarm them and even, in some cases, to employ and enjoy them. This self-knowledge opens up a whole new world before us, rich in beauty and subtlety, and frees us not only to take the best out of it, but also to give it back the best of ourselves, and, in so doing, to fulfil our potential as human beings. I don't really think it's a choice.

If we do have realistic confidence in our mind and value, if we feel secure within ourselves, we tend to experience the world as open to us and to respond appropriately to challenges and opportunities.

If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self- interest, you can have practically anything you go after.

The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

Sexual self-restraint was only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.

The simplest aspect of self-enquiry is to just hold onto the sense I AM, the sense of Being. Keep the sense of "I" or "I AM" by itself. Everyone can do this exercise - it brings immediate results.

Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.

Contrary to popular thinking, being worthy isn't something you earn, it's something you recognize.

Most souls labor under a self imposed curse of desiring but never truly giving themselves over to love.

The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact…moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work. We choose who we will be in the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form in our material selves.

I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life.

There’s no better guarantee of failure than convincing yourself that success is impossible, and therefore never even trying.