Being Self Centered Quotes

We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall. ~ Joko Beck

Every type of evil we've got in us is the result of that one true illness of the human mind - that is, of being self-centered. ~ Wojciech Kurtyka

If you run for mayor, people say you're being egotistical. If you decide you won't run for mayor, people say you're being self-centered and egotistical. ~ Matt Gonzalez

Confidence is not about being self-centered. It's about being emotionally centered, so you can better see other people. ~ Karen C. Eddington

Self esteem is not the same as being self centered, self absorbed or selfish. Self esteem is also not complacency or overconfidence, both of which and set us up for failure. Self esteem is a strong motivator to work hard. Self esteem is related to mental health and happiness. ~ Glenn R. Schiraldi

Gandhi is an example of a man who grew from being self-centered as he was learning to become a lawyer in England, to becoming more family- and social oriented in South-Africa, where he led a reformation of Indian rights, to becoming determined in helping his nation recover from British rule at which he succeeded in the end with the help of a great many people. At the end of his life Gandhi was increasingly focused on a larger picture, encasing the whole world in his vision of a peaceful future. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

It is in a way a mystery that, instead of demanding that their governments give primary attention to their own needs and aspirations, most of the citizens of big counties-those, that is, that have the status of being "powers" in the world-far from being self-centered or materialistic as they are commonly credited with being, the ordinary citizen and his elected representative all too often turn out to be romantics, ready and eager to sacrifice programs of health, education and welfare for the power and pride of the nation ... ~ J. William Fulbright

I made myself an "I Love Jennifer" jacket out of my old "I Love Jenn" jacket. Two girls, one continuous love. The I Love Jennifer is a little off-center, but then so am I. Better than being self-centered, as my clone would probably say. ~ Jarod Kintz

He didn't know if her desperate efforts to be understanding and considerate were a good or bad thing. Perhaps it was all down to him being self-centered and irresponsible. But right now he found his wife's patience and desire to do the right thing stifling, which made him still more inclined to see it as a flaw in her character. ~ Han Kang

Dating from a place of co-dependency, like a lot of us do, is immediately feeling as though the guy you went on a few dates with (who keeps ghosting you) is suddenly the one - just because he ticks a few of your boxes, texts you back sometimes and happens to be cute. But no, he's not being mysterious for intermittently disappearing on you. He's actually keeping you at a distance and playing on your need for validation, so that when he's done with his other options, he can return to you with minimal effort, knowing that you've been waiting for him all this time. ~ Chidera Eggerue

How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one, or to some other who remains someone. It's perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret? ~ Jacques Derrida

One can never call me a quitter
I take something right and see it
through till it's wrong
Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder
Going once, going twice
Gone
Sold to the man for the price of disdain
Some are sold for a song
I don't rate a refrain
I guess it was all going just a little too well
If I wasn't careful I'd be happy pretty soon
Heaven's no place for one who thrives on hell,
One who prefers the bit to the silver spoon.
Then just when I'd almost resigned myself to winning
When it seemed my bright future would never dim
When my luck looked as though it was only beginning
I met him.
Sullen and scornful; a real Marlboro man
The type who pours out the beer and eats the can
A tall guy with a cultivated leer
One you can count on to diaprove or disappear
I knew right away that he was a find
Given this, he was the kindest man I'd ever met
Back came my sense of worthlessness
And my long lost pangs of regret
I was my old self again, lost and confused
Reunited with that old feeling
Of being misunderstood and misused.

Sold to the man for the price of disdain
All of this would be interesting
If it weren't so mundane ~ Carrie Fisher

Not to be attached to something is to be aware of its absolute value. Everything you do should be based on such an awareness, and not on material or self-centered ideas of value. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

You know, a government should be a good thing. The Anglo-Saxons and the Germans rejoice in the phenomenon of government. They think that the recipe for human happiness is that you should make your desires and actions concordant with those of the government. So a German and an American will try to make the government work for him, protect him, and he will be more than happy to murder to preserve that wonderful symbiosis. And if he has some money to invest, he will invest it in the government, buying government bonds. He does this regardless of whether his government happens to be trillions of dollars in debt - that is, practically bankrupt. Despite his rhetoric of private enterprise, a Westerner will invest in his government. And we, Eastern and Central Europeans, and particularly Slavs, we all consider our governments to be absolutely the worst in the world. We are ashamed of our governments, and, as a rule, our government is ashamed of us, trying to improve us statistically, to say that we work more and drink less than we do. We think that there's no greater obstacle to human happiness than the government. So even if we have an institution pregnant with democratic potential, such as workers' self-management, we never even bother to attend a meeting unless absolutely forced. And as for voting, we circle any name without looking at whose it is, out of spite. To a Slav, there is nothing more disgusting than voting. We have an aversion to investing trust in any human being. So h ~ Josip Novakovich

In many inner cities, there are issues of less economic stability, poorer education, community centers being stripped away, arts being removed from the school system leaving many children imbalanced, isolated from their most powerful self ... the independent thinker, the creator, the dreamer often leaving children more susceptible to other harmful things out of boredom or feelings of rejection. ~ Mya

I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others ... Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The kingdom of God is that invisible collection of committed Christians that transcends cultures, ideologies ... and creeds- all bound by the golden commitment to say nothing and do nothing that would attack the self-esteem, the self-respect, and the dignity of any other human being, whether or not they are committed members of the kingdom of God. The dignity of the person then is the irreducible cell of true Christianity. ~ Robert H. Schuller

Selfishness is like a disease that suffocates our capacity to love. While love asks us to deny ourselves for the sake of another, selfishness demands we put ourselves first at their expense. When we choose to be self-centered, we become less kind and content - more needy, sensitive, and demanding. More unsatisfiable. Moodiness and impatience, laziness and irresponsibility, are only selfishness in disguise. ~ Stephen Kendrick

Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends - and if it never ends, at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indifference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics. The constant - and very real - fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of "mere" humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of the conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and to cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate. ~ Toni Morrison

I honor those who try to rid themselves of any lying, who empty the self and have only clear being there. ~ Rumi

It is discovered an extraordinary similarity between Nietzsche and the Hindu-Aryan Rishi, visionary poets of the Vedas.

They also thought the ideas from outside to inside: they 'appeared' to them. Rishi means 'he who sees'. See an Idea, express it, or try to express it. The job of the Rishis has been fulfilled for millennia and the vision of the Vedas was revised, elaborated, in subsequent visions, in scholastics, in doctrinal buildings and sophisticated verifications, through centuries.

In any case, he, who preached not to subtract anything that life offers as Will of Power, as possession, increasing its power, lived chaste, like a yoga, always looking for the highest tensions of the soul, climbing always, more and more lonely, to be able to open up to that style of thinking, where the Ideas could possess him as the most authentic expression of life, as his 'pulse', hitting him in the center of the personal being, or of the existence there accumulated, and that he called, long before Jung and any other psychologist, the Self, to differentiate it from the conscious and limited self, from the rational self.

Let's clarify, then. What Nietzsche called thinking is something else, Nietzsche did not think with his head (because 'synchronistically' hurt) but with the Self, with all of life and, especially, 'with the feet'. 'I think with my feet,' he said, 'because I think walking, climbing. ~ Miguel Serrano

When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment. ~ Sara Blakely

How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer", he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an ~ George Orwell

The next Post brought a reply from the starets, who wrote to him that the cause of all his trouble lay in his pride. His Wrathful Outburst, the starets explained, had come about because it was not for God that he had humbled himself, rejecting honours and advancement in the church - not for God, but to satisfy his own pride, to be able to tell himself how virtuous he was, seeking nothing for self. That was why he had not been able to endure the Superior's conduct. Because he felt that he had given up everything for God, and now he was being put on display, like some strange beast.
If it were for God you had given up advancement, you would have let it pass.
worldly pride is still alive in you. ~ Leo Tolstoy

To B-major or B-minor: that is the question. Consider that the major and minor chords are separated by the smallest tonal step which is one half-step carrying in its pitch the gravity of all humanity which needs the major to recognize its relative, inherent tragedy which once given expression seeks the resurrection that only the major can procreate which self-expression gives beauty to the harmony of the major which then confirms the whole truth of the tragic minor saga which overcomes the hidden hand of destiny in the great ellipse of being and the greater cosmic void of nothingness which passage of time has sadly destined to be replayed in the same octave of the ineluctable modality of the audible which ellipse with such a simple twist resonates as infinity which is both meaningless beyond all human capacity for understanding but which holds within it the ubiquitous mystic beauty and truth of the pulsing human heart. ~ David B. Lentz

A woman in her thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could sense the pain behind her polite and superficial smile. She started telling me her story, and within one second her smile changed into a grimace of pain. Then, she began to sob uncontrollably. She said she felt lonely and unfulfilled.

There was much anger and sadness. As a child she had been abused by a physically violent father. I saw quickly that her pain was not caused by her present life circumstances but by an extraordinarily heavy pain-body. Her pain-body had become the filter through which she viewed her life situation.

She was not yet able to see the link between the emotional pain and her thoughts, being completely identified with both. She could not yet see that she was feeding the pain-body with her thoughts. In other words, she lived with the burden of a deeply unhappy self. At some level, however, she must have realized that her pain originated within herself, that she was a burden to herself. She was ready to awaken, and this is why she had come.

I directed the focus of her attention to what she was feeling inside her body and asked her to sense the emotion directly, instead of through the filter of her unhappy thoughts, her unhappy story. She said she had come expecting me to show her the way out of her unhappiness, not into it.

Reluctantly, however, she did what I asked her to do. Tears were rolling down her face, her whole body was shaking. "At t ~ Eckhart Tolle

Most girls, however much they resent their mothers, do become very much like them. Rebellion can rarely survive the aversion therapy that passes for being brought up female. Male violence acts directly on the girl through her father or brother or uncle or any number of male professionals or strangers, as it did and does on her mother, and she too is forced to learn to conform in order to survive. A girl may, as she enters adulthood, repudiate the particular set of males with whom her mother is allied, run with a different pack as it were, but she will replicate her mother's patterns in acquiescing to male authority within her own chosen set. Using both force and threat, men in all camps demand that women accept abuse in silence and shame, tie themselves to hearth and home with rope made of self-blame, unspoken rage, grief, and resentment. ~ Andrea Dworkin

Chester nods all the way through this, but does not rudely interrupt Randy as a younger nerd would. Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an ssertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more
self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances. ~ Neal Stephenson

For, as has been indicated from the innate experience as well as from the longings within, a home - home - with all its deeper, inner meanings, is a portion of the entity's desire; to know, to experience, to have the "feel" of, to have the surroundings of that implied by the word home! Is it any wonder then that in all of thy meditation, Ohm-O-h-m-mmmmm has ever been, is ever a portion of that which raises self to the highest influence and the highest vibrations throughout its whole being that may be experienced by the entity? ~ Edgar Cayce

People lose their powers (siddhi) by nagging; therefore know 'as it is'. Know all these relations as being worldly (laukik, of the non-Self), and do not believe them to be beyond-worldly relations (alaukik, of the Self). Discover that something whereby you experience peace amidst the puzzle. This discovery is indeed within you. ~ Dada Bhagwan

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Falling in love is when your emotional, physical and spiritual well-being is wrapped up in another person and identity of self is lost. EL ~ Evinda Lepins

Someone asked me the other day - 'could you tell me, what is right human living' - I put my hand on his shoulder and asked him to sit beside me, with a gentle smile on my face, then uttered softly, 'I don't know your religious belief or disbelief, I don't know your professional background, I don't know your economic or social status, all I need to know is that you are a human being, a reflection of my own self, so I treat you with kindness and acceptance, same as I treat myself'. The world is flooded with judgments and opinions - for once my friend, take a step beyond that flood, and you shall see a beautiful world, where being human is a beautiful thing - in that world being human is all that matters. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Within our working lives, and perhaps even amongst friends, we see deceptions played out before our eyes: people who pretend to be happy when they are aching with sadness, or to like each other when they feel nothing but contempt. Perhaps these are actions of self-preservation, driven by a will to hide our pain from a wider audience. Within a relationship, though, pretence is indeed both unreasonable and illogical. Admit to being the person you really are. Never play that deadly game of charades. ~ Rachel Abbott

In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one's own self. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

But there is some connection between critically distancing oneself from prevailing popular opinion and a level of moral conscientiousness that comes to more than obeying the voice of "the Anyone." Crucial to genuine moral conscience is the refusal to lose oneself in the anonymity of what "the Anyone" dictates, a willingness to take one's stand aqainst what is fashionable, to criticize public opinion for the sake of the community, to judge what is right beyond the horizon of the taken-for-granted. That one think for oneself, of course, is no guarantee that one's judgement will be wise. If not thinking can lead to great evil, it does not follow that thinking can prevent it. But at least the habit of critical reflection puts an obstacle in the way of banal evil, for the thoughtful individual may have afterthoughts about saying or doing what he cannot account for. Moral conscience, Arendt contends, is a 'side-effect' of the thinking ego, of the self who would, like Socrates, prefer that 'the multitudes disagree with me than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with and contradict myself. ~ Lawrence Vogel

Being giving is a big quality. Being too giving is a big mistake! ~ Rossana Condoleo

Authenticity is fundamental, more fundamental than spiritual enlightenment. Without authenticity, no genuine spiritual enlightenment is possible. Authenticity is the state of being committed to truth. Truth is simple. And no matter how simply a truth is stated, only those who have walked the path of understanding and evolution on their own can know and understand it authentically. The path of truth is the path least traveled. Authenticity is the clarity of being in which there is no self-deceit. ~ Yasuhiko Kimura

We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being. ~ William Boyd

I think the right to read, is one of our inherent rights, and I think that people in America today are intelligent enough to decide for themselves what they want to read. Without being told, by self-appointed people, you must not read this, or you cannot read this. ~ Bennett Cerf

As Kelly Rae so beautifully demonstrated, boundaries are simply our lists of what's okay and what's not okay. In fact, this is the working definition I use for boundaries today. It's so straightforward and it makes sense for all ages in all situations. When we combine the courage to make clear what works for us and what doesn't with the compassion to assume people are doing their best, our lives change. Yes, there will be people who violate our boundaries, and this will require that we continue to hold those people accountable. But when we're living in our integrity, we're strengthened by the self-respect that comes from the honoring of our boundaries, rather than being flattened by disappointment and resentment. ~ Brene Brown

What is a shadow? It is the self without a face or a name, all outline and no feature, the self on the verge of being erased. It is the incidental child of matter and light. Look how it spreads itself on the ground, weary but weightless, unable to leave a trace. ~ Conchitina Cruz