Self Quotes - Page 317

In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway.

You've got to go down in order to feel better about yourself when you come up.

You hope that your teenage self would like and forgive your 50-year-old self.

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.

Where's your sense of adventure? It died under mysterious circumstances. My sense of self-preservation found the body, but assures me it has an airtight alibi. -Captain Tagon & Captain Andreyasn

Up, then, with speed, and work; Fling ease and self away-- This is no time for thee to sleep-- Up, watch, and work, and pray!

In all unbelief there are these two things: a good opinion of one's self, and a bad opinion of God.

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.

The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine - the special pleading of selfish interests.

The first (lesson) which we meet again and again in history, is that once the dole or similar relief programs are introduced, they seem almost inevitably - unless surrounded by the most rigid restrictions - to get out of hand. The second lesson is that once this happens the poor become more numerous and worse off than they were before, not only because they have lost self-reliance, but because the sources of wealth and production on which they depend for either doles or jobs are diminished or destroyed.

I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.

The Buddha's message was simple but profound. Neither a life of self-indulgence nor one of self-mortification can bring happiness. Only a middle path, avoiding these two extremes, leads to peace of mind, wisdom, & complete liberation from the dissatisfactions of life.

No one ever came up to me and said: "You need to reshape your body, to lose weight, or to be more outgoing, or less outgoing". We were just allowed to be us, and I think at the end of the day, isn't that the whole point of being a human being? To be allowed to be yourself, to be accepted the way you are?

One must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.

My friend Kurt Maix once described this diffidence as Fear's friendly sister, the right and necessary counterweight to that courage that urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction.

It's odd to look out there and see a bunch of Mini-Mes," says Williams. "You're wondering what possessed them to do such a thing . . . It sort of does a reverse psychology on you. You'd think you'd be like `Hey, all these people want to look like me. I feel pretty cool.' But actually it makes you feel more self aware and I'm not really fond of that.

It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.

The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself.