Self Quotes - Page 397

If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas.

He who does most to cure woman of her weakness, her frivolity, and her servility will likewise at the same stroke do most to cure man of his brutality, his selfishness and his sensuality.

A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A "community" is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That's just self-righteousness - incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic.

There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.

In the final analysis our greatest problem with holiness is not that our concepts of holiness are feeble, but that our hearts are rebellious. We are selfish , that's our problem. And the fact that we often won't admit our selfishness shows how deep the pride goes.

Too many people want the fruit of Paul's ministry without paying the price that Paul paid. He died. He died to everything. He died daily He was crucified with Christ ... I challenge you to pray this prayer: 'Lord, be ruthless with me in revealing my selfish ambition and my lack of willingness to die to myself.' I guarantee that He will answer your prayer - and quickly.

All the research shows that being married, with all its ups and downs, is by far the most effective way of making young men law-abiding and giving them a sense of purpose and self-worth.

The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.

Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. 'How everything affects me' is the center of all that matters-self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.

... the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.

There is just so much excess in terms of the market for self-remodeling. I think most women are perfectly gorgeous and beautiful the way they are.

A Lincolnesque leader is confident enough to be humble - to not feel the need to bluster or dominate, but to be sufficiently sure of one's own judgment and self-worth to really listen and not be threatened by contrary advice.

You increase your self-respect when you feel you've done everything you ought to have done, and if there is nothing else to enjoy, there remains that chief of pleasures, the feeling of being pleased with oneself. A man gets an immense amount of satisfaction from the knowledge of having done good work and of having made the best use of his day, and when I am in this state I find that I thoroughly enjoy my rest and even the mildest forms of recreation.

Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.

It would not become physical science to see in its self created, changeable, economical tools, molecules and atoms, realities behind phenomena... The atom must remain a tool for representing phenomena.

I have finally mastered what to do with the second tennis ball. Having small hands, I was becoming terribly self-conscious about keeping it in a can in the car while I served the first one. I noted some women tucked the second ball just inside the elastic leg of their tennis panties. I tried, but found the space already occupied by a leg. Now, I simply drop the second ball down my cleavage, giving me a chest that often stuns my opponent throughout an entire set.

I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

Gnostic politics is self-defeating in so far as its disregard for the structure of reality leads to continuous warfare.

An artist's fine goal is to manifest a well-nigh heroic self-discipline, carefully attending to all that concerns him.

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

Self-portraits are a way of revealing something about oneself.

when you're honest with yourself, often times you betray someone else!

We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience... The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending -- for making a show -- and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.