Being Your Own Enemy Quotes

If you expect the battle to be insurmountable,
you've met the enemy.
It's you. ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Your imagination is the single most important asset you possess. Your imagination is your power to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. Your imagination is what you use to shape your future. And so in your own way, you are a prophet. You generate countless predictions every day. Your imagination is the source,tirelessly churning out mental pictures of what you'll be doing in the future. ~ Rob Brezsny

My ambitions for you are slowly being realised, and, even though you are unhappy, console yourself with the thought that it was part of my plan for you to be unhappy for a while. The fact that you associate intimately with girls who do not care for the things you do should strengthen your own artistic integrity and fortify you against the world; remember, Natalie, your enemies will always come from the same place your friends do. ~ Shirley Jackson

In Polmont, everyone was acting the hard man and giving it the large. I had to fight or cosh or do something to be accepted. I can tell you, it was better to be in a gang than being on your own, and I'd do anything in Polmont, no questions asked! ~ Stephen Richards

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are. ~ Ariana Grande

Everybody was always trying to ship me with somebody. Thalia. Jason. Gwen. Even Frank. Oh, you'd be perfect together! That's who you need! But I was never really sure if I wanted that, or if I just felt like I was supposed to want it. People, well-meaning, would be like, Oh, you poor thing. You deserve somebody in your life. Date him. Date her. Date whoever. Find your soul mate.'
She looked at me to see if I was following. Her words came out hot and fast, as if she'd been holding them in for a long time. 'And that meeting with Venus. That really messed me up. No demigod will heal your heart. What was that supposed to mean? Then finally you came along.'
'Do we have to review that part again? I am quite embarrassed enough.'
'But you showed me. When you proposed dating . . .' She took a deep breath, her body shaking with silent giggles. 'Oh, gods. I saw how ridiculous I'd been. How ridiculous the whole situation was. That's what healed my heart - being able to laugh at myself again, at my stupid idea about destiny. That allowed me to break free - just like Frank broke free of his firewood. I don't need another person to heal my heart. I don't need a partner . . . at least, not until and unless I'm ready on my own terms. I don't need to be force-shipped with anyone or to wear anybody else's label. For the first time in a long time, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. So thank you. ~ Rick Riordan

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being. ~ Marina Abramovic

No one wants to go through life alone, fighting battles single-handedly their whole life. Not even the hardiest of heroes. That's just a miserable existence. Everyone needs someone in their corner, right? ... Even if you could," I wrinkled my brow, "would you really want to? By all accounts, it gets lonely being your own hero. ~ J.M. Richards

Imagine that you do not have any control over most things, which by the way describes toddlers' daily experiences. Something makes you feel frustrated and angry but you cannot control your own emotions. On top of that, you are told that your feelings are wrong ("It's no big deal. No need to be upset."), your attempt to heal hurts is met with disapproval ("Don't cry."), and you are scolded for something you cannot help ("Stop being a baby.") Wouldn't you want to throw an explosive fit, too? ~ Pamela Li

Being in charge of your work life doesn't mean you always move with assurance and sublime self-confidence; it means you keep moving, continuing on your own path, even when you feel shaky and uncertain. ~ Charlotte Beers

Surround yourself with the right people, and realize your own worth. Honestly, there are enough bad people out there in the world - you don't need to be your own worst enemy. ~ Lucy Hale

Stress and worry is a residual of relying on yourself and being your own god, in control of everything. Worship allows us to rely on God's power to steer us through life. ~ T.D. Jakes

Say no when you want to say no, and yes when you want to say yes. You have the right to be you. You can only be you when you do your best. When you don't do your best you are denying yourself the right to be you. That's a seed that you should really nurture in your mind. You don't need knowledge or great philosophical concepts. You don't need the acceptance of others. You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others. It is an expression of God to say, Hey, I love you. ~ Miguel Ruiz

People do not actually appreciate what another person does with their lives. What people actually do, is appreciate parts of themselves that they see in another person. People will encourage another person on a path, if it is the same path as their own. Take a path all your own, choose a direction all your own, and you will see that nobody around you will appreciate you for it. Not until you join THEIR path will they do so. People are born with a herd mentality. In all things, really. I think that's too easy. I want to appreciate people for being on paths completely different from my own, or even opposite of my own. Because if everyone were the same as me, then I would never learn anything, I would never go anywhere, I would never grow. ~ C. JoyBell C.

When you conform to the monoculture's version of who you are and what the world is like, you lose your freedom along with your ability to be truly innovative in terms of your own life. Being able to draw on many different stories, not just the economic one, allows you to creatively and authentically meet the challenges that face you in your life. The monoculture, determinedly single-minded, insists that economic values and assumptions can be used to solve your problems, whether those problems are spiritual, political, intellectual, or relational. ~ F.S. Michaels

In some ways the operation of the feminine stereotype is so obvious and for many women entirely unattainable, that it can be easily reacted against. It takes a great deal of courage and independence to decide to design your own image instead of the one that society rewards, but it gets easier as you go along. Of course, a woman who goes her own way will find her conditioning is ineradicable, but she at least can recognize its operation and choose to counteract it, whereas a man might find that he was being more subtly deluded. ~ Germaine Greer

She shifted gears as they left Worth Avenue, hurtling them along the beach at just sublight speed. "Jesus, Addison, you are so blind," she finally exploded. "She comes in playing the damsel in distress, and you buy all of it."
"She did n - "
"'Oh, Richard, I need your help,'" she mimicked, doing a startlingly good impression of Patricia's soft, cultured Brit - especially since the two women had barely spoken a total of five words to one another. "'I've left Peter, and I so badly want to make a new start, but I just don't know how to do it on my own. You're so big and strong and successful, can't you see it in your heart to help me?'" Samantha canted her eyes at him. "Did it go a little like that?"
Christ. "Maybe," he hedged. "But - "
"See? She wants you back."
"Well, she can't have me. I'm taken. But she asked for my help, and I'm partially the reason she's in this position."
"No, she put herself on her back and then you put her in the next position."
"Even so - "
"You can't resist putting on your shining armor, can you?" she said more calmly, blowing out her breath. "And if I know it, then she knows it, too."

"Honestly, Samantha, I think it's more a matter of Patricia actually being helpless than her acting that way to gain my assistance. I doubt she could find a grocery store on her own, much less the toothpaste aisle."
"But she's not after toothpaste."

As they stopped at a light, Richard leaned over and gra ~ Suzanne Enoch

Never say, "O Lord, I am a miserable sinner." Who will help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? What can prevail over you? You are the God of the universe; where can you seek for help? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself. In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself unknowingly. The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that someone was sending help to you. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm, you have built a cocoon around yourself. Who will save you? Burst your own cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Let me tell you the truth about the world to which you so desperately want to return. It is a place of pain and suffering and grief. When you left it, cities were being attacked. Women and children were being blasted to pieces or burned alive by bombs dropped from planes flown by men with wives and children of their own. People were being dragged from their homes and shot in the street. Your world is tearing itself apart, and the most amusing thing of all is that it was little better before the war started. War merely gives people an excuse to indulge themselves further, to murder with impunity. There were wars before it, and there will be wars after it, and in between people will fight one another and hurt one another and maim one another and betray one another, because that is what they have always done.

And even if you avoid warfare and violent death, little boy, what else do you think life has in store for you? You have already seen what it is capable of doing. It took your mother from you, drained her of health and beauty, and then cast her aside like the withered, rotten husk of a fruit. It will take others from you too, mark me. Those whom you care about--lovers, children--will fall by the wayside, and your love will not be enough to save them. Your health will fail you. You will become old and sick. Your limbs will ache, your eyesight will fade, and your skin will grow lined and aged. There will be pains deep within that no doctor will be able to cure. Dise ~ John Connolly

The intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth – who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I've had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads "Don't think!" You must never think at the typewriter – you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. … The worst thing you do when you think is lie - you can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did, and what you're trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself - find out who you really are, and try not to lie, try to tell the truth all the time. And the only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional, and get it out of yourself - making things that you hate and things that you love, you write about these then, intensely. ~ Ray Bradbury

Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable [ ... ]. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on a such footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? ~ Jane Austen

What is a human being? A magnetic field, that's all he is. What kind of magnetic field is it? It vibrates on its own nucleus and in proportion with its existence with the entire universe. And there are many magnetic fields, millions of them. Without your talking with somebody, you communicate. A ~ Yogi Bhajan

should therefore make the most of every half-hour in which she can command his attention. When she is secure of him, there will be more leisure for falling in love as much as she chooses." "Your plan is a good one," replied Elizabeth, "where nothing is in question but the desire of being well married, and if I were determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. But these are not Jane's feelings; she is not acting by design. As yet, she cannot even be certain of the degree of her own regard nor of its reasonableness. She has known him only a fortnight. She ~ Jane Austen

Learning

After some time, you learn the subtle difference between
holding a hand
and imprisoning a soul;
You learn that love does not equal sex,
and that company does not equal security,
and you start to learn….
That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promises,
and you start to accept defeat with the head up high
and open eyes,
and you learn to build all roads on today,
because the terrain of tomorrow is too insecure for plans…
and the future has its own way of falling apart in half.

And you learn that if it's too much
even the warmth of the sun can burn.

So you plant your own garden and embellish your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring flowers to you.

And you learn that you can actually bear hardship,
that you are actually strong,
and you are actually worthy,
and you learn and learn…and so every day.

Over time you learn that being with someone
because they offer you a good future,
means that sooner or later you'll want to return to your past.

Over time you comprehend that only who is capable
of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing you
can bring you all happiness.

Over time you learn that if you are with a person
only to accompany your own solitude,
irremediably you'll end up wishing not to see them again.

Over time you learn that rea ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Life happens at its own pace and in its own time. It has a mind of its own. Your rushing through it only increases your stress levels and makes you anxious. You can do nothing to Life. At all times, in all contexts, you are never in control – Life is! And all you can and must do is to learn to live fully with what is. This does not mean inaction – trusting the process of Life is a lot of action; of keeping the faith and being patient. So, sit quietly doing whatever you can in a given context. And whatever must happen alone will happen; whatever is due to you alone will flow to you…on its own. When you are calm, you are non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering and only when you are in this state will you see how perfect your Life really is! ~ AVIS Viswanathan

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Yes, I'm very close to my family. And being that close to your family, I think you also struggle with how to become your own person. ~ Linda Cardellini

As you you deeply into your own awareness, and relax the self-contraction, and dissolve into the empty ground of your own primordial experience, the simply feeling of Being-right now, right here-is it not obvious at once? ~ Ken Wilber

We may need to consider a little abstinence from our automatic, reflexive responses of being helpful to others. For some of us, doing this may feel very threatening; to identify our addictions of helpfulness is to challenge the ways we habitually express love – it comes close to challenging our love itself.

. . . Let us go back for a moment and look at that tiny, perhaps almost nonexistent space between feeling a person's pain and doing something in response to it. It is not easy to just be with the pain of another, to feel it as your own. No wonder we are likely to jump into our habitual responses so quickly. As soon as we start doing something for or to the suffering person, we can minimize the bare agony of feeling that person's pain. It is like that everywhere; our addicted doings act as minor anaesthesia.

. . . Sometimes, perhaps often, taking the space will feel like an absence of response. We may fear the person will think we don't care because we are not immediately hopping like popcorn to do something helpful. And sometimes the response that is authentically invited will never appear overtly helpful. Perhaps we are just invited to pray, silently in the background, or just to be present without saying a word or offering even a touch. Sometimes love even invites us to leave a person alone. Such responses are not too good for our egos; the suffering person is unlikely to come and thank us for our lack of involvement. But love does not ask for credi ~ Gerald G. May

Once you're more aware of people's needs, you can create action plans for others to follow. That way, you're responsible for your own well-being, too. ~ Deepak Chopra

Some find it hard to write emotively. I've had some people say to me that they simply cannot. There are two ways to try and achieve it, to either draw upon your own lives experiences or pushing your imagination into those circumstances and feeling how your heart reacts.
When I write emotively much of it comes from my own experiences and thoughts. But for some things it is not because I have experienced every emotion in my short life time already. It means I am able to imagine in my mind a given situation and feel how my heart reacts to those thoughts. Forcing myself deep into the moment of fantasy and not fearing how I feel. Some writers rely on this skill, not picturing it in their mind they are feeling it as though with their own heart even though the situation is not one they have found themselves to have been in. I believe I struggle with this, I challenge myself in some of my stories and writing that I do but I find myself favouring writing about what I know, what I have felt in my own life, love being most favoured but also excitement, worry, fear and of course sorrow. Many people will be happy to write about joy and happiness but would never write of their fears and weaknesses, feeling that for others to see you so exposed in a raw state of emotion adds to the agony of the original event you are writing about. Especially those who want to be seen as strong all the time, they worry that so show any emotion other than strength of positivity is weakness. This façade ~ Raven Lockwood

WHAT 28 FEELS LIKE

Every year of your 20s is subject to a very specific set of emotions, at least that's what I think. 21 is great for obvious, surface-level reasons. 22 is a train wreck if you graduated in four years, and are then thrust into real life. 25 is when pretty much everything changes – from your priorities to your body. And, then, there's 28. I don't know what it is about this age in particular, but I've deemed it "The Crisis Year" and here's why.

1. The realization that you're now officially in your "late 20s" is enough to send you straight into the climax of a full-blown panic attack. You don't even get to start at the beginning of the said attack, no. You wake up on your 28th birthday, screaming and dry heaving. It's an instinctual reaction to knowing that, for the next 365 days of your life, you will be teetering on the fine line between actual adulthood and clutching on desperately to your youth.

2. Because you're now in your late 20s, your parents start to treat you more like an GULP adult. Even if you've been paying your own way since forever, maybe you both secretly knew deep down that, in case of a huge emergency, asking them for help wasn't off-limits. But, when 28 hits, it's no longer an option.

3. You just feel old(er). There's something about the curvy lines of the number "8" that cast a darker and much more serious shadow over things. You'll still go out to popular nightlife establishments, but you will be ~ Joseph Ejiro

It's the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is FREE. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what to the religions do with this? They say, "Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us." The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the fact of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him. ~ Robert Sheckley

As I stood in contemplation of the garden of the wonders of space," Milosz writes, "I had the feeling that I was looking into the ultimate depths, the most secret regions of my own being; and I smiled, because it had never occurred to me that I could be so pure, so great, so fair! My heart burst into singing with the song of grace of the universe. All these constellations are yours, they exist in you; outside your love they have no reality! How terrible the world seems to those who do not know themselves! When you felt so alone and abandoned in the presence of the sea, imagine what solitude the waters must have felt in the night, or the night's own solitude in a universe without end!" And the poet continues this love duet between dreamer and world, making man and the world into two wedded creatures that are paradoxically united in the dialogue of their solitude. ~ Gaston Bachelard

It was safe, with all the lights off and no one around to point and stare. In the night it's easy to indulge. It was just the two of us - we didn't have to think about who we were or what this meant or where it was going. It was like an escape. It's easy to forget at this moment billions of people exist and far-off galaxies are being born and stars collide. Kissing is its own kind of collision, it produces its own planetarium of lights inside your head. For me, it was like seeing colors for the first time after living in a black-and-white world. A single person can be just as wide and vast and spellbinding as any sky full of stars. They can make you think the world stops and night can last forever., ~ Katie Kacvinsky

[...] what else motivated him to spend hour after hour with me, telling all the details of his story? I quote at length his answer.

"I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realize that if I can make it,they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was also physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you. If one depressed person avoids committing suicide then the book is a success.

Be strong. Think positive. If you start to think to the contrary, you are headed to failure. Your mind has to be relaxed as you think about survival. Don't think about death. If you think you are going to die, you will die. You have to survive and think about the future of your life, that life is beautiful! How can you imagine taking your own life? There are challenges and punishment in life but you have to fight! ~ Jonathan Franklin

Comedy is hard. In many ways, it's like singing: If you have perfect pitch, it's much easier. But you can still go a long way toward mastering the rudiments if you must trust your voice. Most of the mistakes I've seen people make in trying to write funny is that they don't trust their own senses of humor. They don't think they're funny, and they set out to write funny the way they've read other people being funny with a grim determination that pretty much precludes any chance that anybody is going to have fun. Relax, listen to your characters, exploit their fears and flaws, and mine their situations for places in which they can use their own brands of humor. ~ Jennifer Crusie

You are now 18
standing on the precipice,
trembling before your own greatness.

This is your call to leap.

There will always being those
who say you are too young and delicate
to make anything happen for yourself.
They don't see the part of you that smolders.
Don't let their doubting drown out
the sound of your own heartbeat.

You are the first drop of a hurricane.

Your bravery builds beyond you
You are needed by all the little girls
still living in secret, writing oceans
made of monsters and
throwing like lightening.

You don't need to grow up to find greatness.

You are stronger than the world
has ever believed you to be.
The world is waiting for you to set it on fire
Trust in yourself
and burn. ~ Clementine Von Radics

I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.

Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.

You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn't react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.

If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds - in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.

When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read. ~ Philip Pullman

On the late afternoon streets, everyone hurries along, going about their own business.
Who is the person walking in front of you on the rain-drenched sidewalk?
He is covered with an umbrella, and all you can see is a dark coat and the shoes striking the puddles.
And yet this person is the hero of his own life story.
He is the love of someone's life.
And what he can do may change the world.
Imagine being him for a moment.
And then continue on your own way. ~ Vera Nazarian

You only said you loved me to hold on to me. All I did was fight with you day in and out. I wasn't ever your enemy. You were your own worst enemy, you just happened to keep me in your shadow."
~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

And if I am comfortable with it, why do I still call it loneliness? Because
and I think somehow she would understand this
you can have and recognize a sadness in your alienation and in other people's alienation and still not long to be around anyone. I think that if you wonder about other people's loneliness, or contemplate it at all, you've got a real leg up on being comfortable on your own. ~ Dana Spiotta