Quotes on Self

the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.

17. The self ended and the world began. They were of equal size, commensurate, one mirrored the other. 18. The riddle was: why couldn't we live in the mind. The answer was: the barrier of the earth intervened.

True self is the part of us that does not change when circumstances do.

I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.

Our whole social order could self-destruct over the obsession with freedom disconnected from responsibility; where choice is imagined to be somehow independent of consequences.

So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.

All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.

A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.

D’Artagnan: Why is Athos sitting by himself? Aramis: He takes his drinking very seriously. Not to worry, he’ll be his usual charming self by morning.

Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you.

The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on.

Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.

Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.

Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.