Self Quotes - Page 377

Imitation is very easy, and the whole culture and society depends on imitation. Everybody is telling you how to behave, and whatsoever they are teaching you is nothing but imitation. Religious people - the so-called religious people, the priests, the theologians - they are also teaching you, `Be like Jesus, be like Buddha, be like Krishna.` Nobody ever tells you, `Just be yourself` - nobody. Everybody is against you, it seems. Nobody allows you to be yourself, nobody gives you any freedom. You can be in this world, but you must imitate somebody.

The characteristic of the first sort of religion is imitation. It insists on imitation: imitate Buddha, imitate Christ, imitate Mahavir, but imitate. Imitate somebody. Don`t be yourself, be somebody else. And if you are very stubborn you can force yourself to be somebody else. You will never be somebody else. Deep down you cannot be. You will remain yourself, but you can force so much that you almost start looking like somebody else.

The first step is: accept yourself as you are; drop all shoulds. Don`t carry any ought on your heart! You are not to be somebody else; you are not expected to do something which doesn`t belong to you - you are just to be yourself. Relax! and just be yourself. Be respectful to your individuality. and have the courage to sign your own signature. Don`t go on copying others signatures.

This has to be your first lesson in sannyas: accept yourself, love yourself, drop all guilt, don`t divide yourself. There is nothing higher, nothing lower; all of you is divine. The lowest is as divine as the highest.

Bikram Yoga is the first time you start loving yourself because it is the first time you start seeing yourself.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves...At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer.

If I didn't love the hourglass, I wouldn't love myself.

A taste of righteousness can be easily perverted into an overweening sense of self-righteousness and judgmentalism.

A crucified Savior is not well served by self-pleasing, self-indulging people.

We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.

I approach the film business the way I feel about self-esteem. It's something that has to be maintained. That's kind of how I feel about positive roles in Hollywood. They have to be maintained. You have to purposefully, intentionally try to make the right type of films. And the more people that do that, the more things will continue to improve.

I am always going to be true to myself.

Live according to the ethics of excellence, and you can always stand proud. Pride - not vanity, but dignity and self-respect - should carry a lot of weight in helping you make decisions. Let pride help you decide.

In these times of self-directed teams, empowered employees, and "boundaryless" organizations, your worth as an individual employee will also get measured by your work group's collective results.

Giving primacy to God means having the courage to say ‘no’ to evil, ‘no’ to violence, ‘no’ to oppression, to live a life in service of others and which fosters lawfulness and the common good. When a person discovers God, the true treasure, he abandons a selfish lifestyle and seeks to share with others the charity which comes from God. He who becomes a friend of God, loves his brothers and sisters, commits himself to safeguarding their life and their health, and also to respecting the environment and nature.

When evangelizers rise from prayer, their hearts are more open; freed of self-absorption, they are desirous of doing good and sharing their lives with others.

Moderation, which consists in indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.

One of the great unresolved psychological enigmas of the modern western world is the question of what or who has persuaded us to accept as virtually axiomatic a self-view and a world-view that demand we reject out of hand the wisdom and vision of our major philosophers and poets in order to imprison our thought and our very selves in the materialist, mechanical and dogmatic torture-chamber devised by purely quantitative and third-rate scientific minds.

Well, I think everyone struggles with self-love.

Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.

We worried about competitors, but it was an unreasonable fear. As a friend once pointed out, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted.

And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

Mapping out dozens of deeply focused trips around the world has convinced me that preparation no more spoils the chance for spontaneity and serendipity than discipline ruins the opportunity for genuine self-expression in sports, acting, or the tea ceremony.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.