Self Quotes - Page 367

Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat.

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.

One of the things that characterizes good intellectual work is a certain self-importance

What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.

One gains by losing self for others and not by hoarding for oneself.

My life is quite physical anyway. When you are three-foot-six you kind of have to climb stuff now and again, and you find yourself in quite precarious situations just to manage in what is quite a big world.

If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.

Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.

To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

People who are tremendously concerned about their identification, their individuality, their self-expression, or their sense of humor, always seem to be missing the very things they pursue.

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

My dream is to make families a place where adults with high self esteem can develop. I think we have reached a point where if we don't get busy on dreams of this sort, our end is in sight. We need a world that is as good for human beings as it is for technology.

If you're honest with yourself, you're going to find out whether you truly love America, or whether your primary allegiance is to the Republican party.

I think we all have a bunch of different people inside of us, and then for a particular role you bring a certain side of that self of yourself forward to sort of play, but it's always really dimensionalised.

Mental toughness is Spartanism, with all its qualities of self-denial, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, and love.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.

I played Lucifer once, which is sort of a difficult character to research. I thought to myself, "We all have the potential to be selfish, to be cruel - at least to think evil thoughts, even if we don't ever act out on them. Even if we don't ever think we behave badly, we probably do more than we realize."

Self-esteem is the result of recognizing our personal power; awe and wonder come from recognizing our lack of it. Both are true, and in an exceptional life there is no conflict between them.

There exists a special self which takes every event as if it were the very thing you wanted to happen. That self is the Supermind, which is never upset by anything. Your goal is to nourish it into greater strength. Then, every step is sunlit.

Find yourself for courage and confidence are as easy as breathing to the person who really knows who he is.