Giving Oneself Quotes

True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one's service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

Is great beauty in the simplicity of giving oneself to another in trust, and allowing them to hold you up. ~ Raine Miller

All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling – I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself - that is to say, risking oneself.If one cannot risk oneself, then one is spimply incapable of giving ~ James Baldwin

Nate hated, really hated, being told he thought too much. Jason wasn't the only one who said it: hippie-dippie types who romanticize the natural and the "intuitive" also prefer feeling to thought. But not thinking was a way of giving oneself license to be a dick. ~ Adelle Waldman

In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself. ~ William Wycherley

Still, a person who cannot express love is stopping the flow of life, is censoring where censorship is a form of self-indulgence, the fear of giving oneself away. ~ May Sarton

There is nothing more vulnerable than caring for someone; it means not only giving your energy to that which is not you but also caring for that which is beyond or outside your control. Caring is anxious - to be full of care, to be careful, is to take care of things by becoming anxious about their future, where the future is embodied in the fragility of an object whose persistence matters. Becoming caring is not about becoming good or nice: people who have "being caring" as their ego ideal often act in quite uncaring ways in order to protect their good image of themselves. To care is not about letting an object go but holding on to an object by letting oneself go, giving oneself over to something that is not one's own. ~ Sara Ahmed

Life in God should be a daring adventure of love - a continuous journey of putting aside our securities to enter more profoundly into the uncharted depths of God. Too often, however, we settle for mediocrity. We follow the rules and practices of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally to God. To settle on the plain of mediocrity is really to settle for something less than God that leaves the heart restless and unfulfilled. A story from the desert fathers reminds us that giving oneself wholly to God can make a difference: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."15 ~ Ilia Delio

There is no treasure like the human heart. ~ Jocelyn Murray

Doing one thing at a time and giving oneself wholly to doing it is the most efficient way one can possibly live, because there's no blockage in the organism whatsoever. When we live and work in that way, we are extremely efficient without being rushed. Life is very smooth. ~ Charlotte Joko Beck

Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. There must be other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world, or to an idea of the world ... But there are other people to do these things - the animal welfare thing, the social rehabilitation thing, even the Byron thing. He saves the honour of corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it. ~ J.M. Coetzee

One of the greatest things you can do to help others is not just to share and give what you have, but to help them discover what they have within themselves to help themselves. ~ Rita Zahara

The acceleration of contemporary life also plays a role in this lack of being. The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints. Ultimately, the dialectic of master and slave does not yield a society where everyone is free and capable of leisure, too. Rather, it leads to a society of work in which the master himself has become a laboring slave. In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside. This labor camp is defined by the fact that one is simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator. One exploits oneself. It means that exploitation is possible even without domination. ~ Byung-Chul Han

Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal? ~ Gustave Flaubert

Conversion is an offering of self, of love, and of loyalty we give to God in gratitude for the gift of testimony. ~ David A. Bednar

When men don't fear God, they give themselves to evil. ~ Ray Comfort

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself. ~ Pablo Picasso

Sometimes men and women prefer the darkness to the light because they are attached to their sins. Nevertheless it is only by opening oneself to the light and only by sincerely confessing one's sins to God that one finds true peace and true joy. It is therefore important to receive the Sacrament of Penance regularly, especially during Lent, in order to receive the Lord's forgiveness and to intensify our process of conversion. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change. ~ Solon

To immerse oneself in popular culture for any length of time is to wallow in an almost unbearable shallowness. ~ Douglas Murray

Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy - "
"Find my what?"
" - and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!"
"What's a Wheezy?"
"Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy - Wheezy who is giving Dobby his jumper!"
Bobby plucked at the shrunken maroon sweater he was now wearing over his shorts.
"What?" Harry gasped. "They've got... they've got Ron?"
"The thing Harry Potter will miss the most, sir!" squeaked Dobby. ~ J.K. Rowling

To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action of concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue [ ... ] ~ George Eliot

Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. This alone I know, that without you all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but penury, if it is not my God. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Each of us will eventually give away all our earthly possessions. How we choose to do so, however, is a reflection of our commitment to the kingdom of God. ~ Charles Stanley

DO NOT WASTE YOUR PRECIOUS TIME GIVING ONE SINGLE CRAP ABOUT WHAT ANYBODY ELSE THINKS OF YOU. ~ Anonymous

I'm completely against [feminism]. I have no desire to give up my privileges. ~ Hannah Arendt

My agency tells me I am rare because I sing, do movie trailers, and do cartoons too. I like that because it gives me variety in jobs. I don't just sit and do movie trailers, and I don't just do cartoons either. I can do both, and I feel very fortunate for that. ~ Jim Cummings

It often happens that those who spend their time giving light to others, remain in darkness themselves. ~ Mother Teresa

The King and Queen did the best they could. They hired the most superior tutors and governesses to teach Cimorene all the things a princess ought to know - dancing, embroidery, drawing, and etiquette. There was a great deal of etiquette, from the proper way to curtsy before a visiting prince to how loudly it was permissible to scream when being carried off by a giant. (...)

Cimorene found it all very dull, but she pressed her lips together and learned it anyway. When she couldn't stand it any longer, she would go down to the castle armory and bully the armsmaster into giving her a fencing lesson. As she got older, she found her regular lessons more and more boring. Consequently, the fencing lessons became more and more frequent.

When she was twelve, her father found out.

"Fencing is not proper behavior for a princess," he told her in the gentle-but-firm tone recommended by the court philosopher.

Cimorene tilted her head to one side. "Why not?"

"It's ... well, it's simply not done."

Cimorene considered. "Aren't I a princess?"

"Yes, of course you are, my dear," said her father with relief. He had been bracing himself for a storm of tears, which was the way his other daughters reacted to reprimands.

"Well, I fence," Cimorene said with the air of one delivering an unshakable argument. "So it is too done by a princess. ~ Patricia C. Wrede

Make sure that you let God's grace work in your souls by accepting whatever He gives you, and giving Him whatever He takes from you. True holiness consists in doing God's work with a smile. ~ Mother Teresa

I wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish. ~ Jennifer Weiner

You look furious," Pritkin said, watching me.
"I just - I can't understand not fighting for your life - for what you want. Just giving up - "
A corner of his mouth quirked. "No. You would not understand that. You never stop trying, do you?"
"What else is there?"
"Despair. Hopelessness. Anger. Depression."
"But those don't get you anywhere."
He huffed out something that might have been a laugh, only it didn't sound happy. "No. They don't. ~ Karen Chance

Although we will hate and fight the machines, we will be supplanted anyway, and rightly so, for the intelligent machines to which we will give birth may, better than we, carry on the striving toward the goal of understanding and using the Universe, climbing to heights we ourselves could never aspire to. ~ Isaac Asimov

He that gives all before hee dies provides to suffer. ~ George Herbert

You know give me choices that are truly different from one another, otherwise they don't regard them as meaningful choices. ~ Sheena Iyengar

Never give up on anyone. And that includes not giving up on yourself. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person ... ~ Josh McDowell

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. And really, if you think about it from the point of view of the customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of good quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience. ~ Sam Walton

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality ~ Michel De Montaigne

Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. Nor is it an uncommon occurrence that in the most unexpected fashion, and in the most retired of retreats, one will suddenly come face to face with a man whose burning periods will lead one to forget oneself and the tracklessness of the route and the discomfort of one's nightly halting-places, and the futility of crazes and the falseness of tricks by which one human being deceives another. And at once there will become engraven upon one's memory - vividly, and for all time - the evening thus spent. And of that evening one's remembrance will hold true, both as to who was present, and where each such person sat, and what he or she was wearing, and what the walls and the stove and other trifling features of the room looked like. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Now you can't even carry a nail clipper on a plane. Are they afraid you're going to go ... "All right! Give me the plane or the b*tch loses her cuticle." ? ~ Robin Williams

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom. ~ Rumer Godden

Never give up hope. Know that you are loved. ~ Deepak Chopra

Livia wiped her cheeks and eyes, then tucked the tissue into her bouquet instead of giving it back to her sister.
Years later, a little girl would pull that tissue out and ask her mother about it. "The Sobbing Bride" would become one of the girl's favorite tales She would request it from her mother's point of view, then run to have her father tell his version. ~ Debra Anastasia