Self Quotes - Page 230

As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self.

I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own emergence. And so I lift up my head, and I bear my own witness, with affection and tenderness and respect. And in so doing, I sanctify myself with my own grace.

One thing I'm recognizing more and more in myself - and looking to change - is going down more of a self-destructive path when I feel pain. I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible. That is an impulse, when I feel out of control.

I think skateboarding is hugely challenging - it teaches you self-confidence, it teaches you self-motivation, and it can be something that helps you throughout your life.

A sick body with a good heart is more beneficial to future lives than a fit, healthy body that is used for self-cherishing.

Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.

One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness toward others made the sins of capitalism pale.

God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably.... We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend. We must find him in the pagan or we will lose him in our own selves, substituting for his living presence an empty abstraction.

Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.

Love . . . [is] a lack of personal selfishness.

To the extent that we honor all aspects of ourselves, we remove revulsion, self-hate, horror, and terror from our lives. As whole human beings we are the creatures of the greatest complexity on this planet. Respect for this complexity includes our insisting on acceptance of the inconsistent and incongruous.

Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.

Don't be curious of matters that don't concern you; never speak of them, and don't ask about them.

Perhaps one of the main antidotes to depression, lack of self-esteem, loneliness and so forth is the recognition that we really do have Buddha nature. All the other problems like anger, jealousy, ambitions, are merely habitual patterns that we've learned, but aren't inherent to who we are.

I never want to end up being a self-centered, vain human being.

We need to elect leaders who understand that leadership is about loving and serving people, not about self-advancement.

In many parts of the Islamic world, secular forces, where they exist, tend to be so unsure of themselves, so lacking in self-confidence, that in many cases they line themselves up fairly squarely behind the imperial project and that then creates a big vacuum in which the Islamists become the dominant power because they are the only ones then who are seen as resisting.

My father started with nothing and is a self-made man. No matter what I do with my life, I can never match his accomplishments.

Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfill your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender.

In the middle of a conversation, she'll frequently say something like, "Young people are heartless, they don't have any respect anymore." I nod agreement in hopes that she'll stop right there, but secretly I'm convinced that the heart is the same as it's always been; there's simply less hypocrisy, that's all. Young people aren't naturally selfish, any more than old folks are naturally wise. Your age doesn't have anything to do with whether you're sensitive or shallow; it's a question of the path your life takes.

But not forgiving yourself often becomes the root of severe self-loathing extreme self hatred and intense inhibitions. It will be next to impossible to truly start over when you feel unforgivable.

When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Perhaps the most important vision of all is develop a sense of self, a sense of your own destiny, a sense of unique mission and role in life.

You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself.