Losing Oneself Quotes

This is where we can find the greatest relief and joy everyday: falling under thought, anxiety, worry and all forms of me, into stillness; losing oneself in compelling engagements that transcend ambition, strategy, self-gain and self-consciousness. ~ Darrell Calkins

Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce" on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves - this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together. ~ Gaston Bachelard

Dwelling among shipwrecked dreams and losing oneself in wishful thinking cannot be a solution to tribulations. Identifying cracks and apprehending the defaults in one's life is essential to find a way to get out of a ghetto and to start a search for a new haven. ("The world was somewhere else" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

The only difference between realizing a dream and losing oneself in fantasy [is] backbreaking work. ~ Mark Frost

An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off one's individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation. ~ Eric Hoffer

That passion is better than stoicism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I used to play a game where I imagined that someone had abandoned me in a strange place & I had to find my way back home-I thought I could do it blind, the same way a lost dog might trek a thousand miles to return to its owner, relying on some mysterious instinct that drew the heart back to where it belonged. ~ Laura McHugh

I can't recognize myself
lately;
I'm someone I used to know.
I think you took me with you
and I was hoping you could
just leave me somewhere else,
because I've been waiting
for myself,
waiting for all the pieces
to come home. ~ Robert M. Drake

I sometimes astonish my patients by telling them that it is far more important that they should be able to lose themselves than that they should be able to find themselves. For it is only in losing oneself that one does find oneself. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

One gains by losing self for others and not by hoarding for oneself. ~ Watchman Nee

A marriage only works if one opens to exactly that which one would never ask for otherwise. Only through rubbing oneself sore and losing oneself is one able to learn about oneself, God, and the world. Like every soteriological pathway, that of marriage is hard and painful. ~ Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

The feeling of losing oneself in somebody's arms, yet at the same time finding oneself there, is irreplaceable. Nothing compares to the intensity of that feeling. ~ Katarina Witt

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. Sure, there's the talent, but there also has to be the will. Give me human will and the intense desire to win and it will trump talent every day of the week. ~ Larry Ellison

I think that people always say when people pass away that time heals all wounds. And that's probably the biggest lie. It's not true. I think we all need to remember that it is always still tough, and it's like losing a piece of your heart. ~ Bindi Irwin

I believe that the very act of believing in something causes us to distance ourselves from that thing, thus a duality is created: oneself and the thing in which one believes. Now since we all know that in order to fully understand a thing one must be that thing -- walk a mile in its shoes so to speak -- it seems obvious that the state of believing in something inevitably causes us to not truly understand that thing in which we believe. This noncomprehension leads to all sorts of difficulties. "I believe in love" has a better than even chance of leading to divorce, while "I believe in God" seems to end in variations on the Spanish Inquisition. But -- and it's a big but -- if one were love, one couldn't help but be affectionate and caring towards oneself and others. If one were God, one would act toward all beings and all things as if they were one's own creations. And that, my friends, is the secret of life in a two-second vanity card. Of course, the secret could also be "Sit, Ubu, sit." We have to keep an open mind ~ Chuck Lorre

every human who says: 'I AM this or that or whatever' - which, as Meister Eckhart points out, only God can really, really say - is a unique and quite indispensable aspect of His infinite variety. Shankara, the great Hindu sage and philosopher, tells us, 'This being-the-Self-of-all is the highest state of consciousness of the Self, His supreme natural state. But when, before this, one feels oneself to be other than the Self of all, even by a hair's breadth, that state is delusion.' D.E. Harding ~ Richard Lang

Humanity is moving in a circle. The progress in mechanical things of the past hundred years has proceeded at the cost of losing many other things which perhaps were much more important for it. ~ G.I. Gurdjieff

Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself. ~ John Berger

Ego is borne of the need to 'prove' oneself instead of making the choice to 'be' oneself. And so maybe we need to begin curbing the birthrate. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

This, then, is the foundation of sanctification in Reformed theology. It is rooted, not in humanity and their achievement of holiness or sanctification, but in what God has done in Christ, and for us in union with him. Rather than view Christians first and foremost in the microcosmic context of their own progress, the Reformed doctrine first of all sets them in the macrocosm of God's activity in redemptive history. It is seeing oneself in this context that enables the individual Christian to grow in true holiness. ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

One can watch hours and hours of TV without actually losing interest, but, as with Chinese food, one is rarely left with much residue of nourishment. ~ Frederic Raphael

There are men who gain from their wealth only the fear of losing it. ~ Antoine Rivarol

I have no fear of losing u, for you aren't an object of my property, or anyone else's. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine. ~ Anthony De Mello

The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own. ~ Bill Bradley

I no longer fear battles and storms that come in the path but afraid of losing someone that is dear to my heart, to whom without winning battles and passing through storms means nothing to me. ~ Irfa Rahat

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it. ~ Kathleen Norris

Serious rational criticism is so rare that it should be encouraged. Being too ready to defend oneself is more dangerous than being too ready to admit a mistake. ~ Karl Popper

I'd love to be in a 1910s film - the era between the corsets and losing the corsets. ~ Vanessa Paradis

Love him," she whispered. "Love him, and don't ever stop - not even for a second. Because trust me - losing him feels much worse than standing outside this door right now. ~ Ella Frank

It's only now that I realize that voicing out your alternative goals isn't really a sound idea. Don't get me wrong here - I'm not saying one mustn't dream for oneself. I'm just saying that one mustn't give it voice, at least until it has been acted upon. If they don't know your dreams, then they can't shoot them down. ~ Anirudh Arun

One of the things that evangelicals do really, really well is to make giving a joyous, social enterprise. Too often, the world sees giving as a burden, a sacrifice, when in fact it's more like an opportunity to help others and oneself at the same time. ~ Nicholas Kristof

I don't know what will happen with us," he said softly. "I can't predict the future. If things don't work out between us, yeah, there's a chance you'll hate my guts. To me, losing you as a friend is a pretty big risk. Do you think I'd take that big a risk for a few nights of sex?" He shook his head. "I was having freakin' nightmares about you with those other guys. What you were doing." He buried his face in her hair. "Kerri, I don't want you to see other guys. Just me. ~ Kelly Jamieson

It was almost as if he had become, in his inveterate goodness, a little bit of a simpleton as is bound to happen, I think, if and when one gives oneself absolutely to God. ~ Anne Rice

The lover readily imagines that he and his mistress are one. He feels he has love enough for both and that his loving will can swathe the two of them together like twin nuts in a shell. But what one loves is, after all, another human being, a person with other interests, other pains, in whose world one is oneself an object among others. ~ Iris Murdoch

Since I was young, the artistic expression that fashion embodies has inspired me. It's a way to communicate oneself. ~ Maria Sharapova

He believed that the secret of happiness was to concentrate on things outside oneself. Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, and ~ James Runcie

Life doesn't stop after losing someone, but it goes on without them differently. ~ Nizar Qabbani

The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love's primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain. ~ Maggie Nelson

In his view love ended only when it was possible to return to oneself without fear or disgust, ~ Elena Ferrante

Compassion directed to oneself is humility. ~ Simone Weil

More than one-third of congressional staffers turn to a career in lobbying after leaving Capitol Hill. It's clear the staffer-turned-lobbyist's value to special interests depends on the robustness of his or her network on Capitol Hill. According to an August 2010 study, when a lobbyist's former boss on Capitol Hill left office, the lobbyist's salary declined by an average of 50 percent in the six months following the departure.27 Moving from Capitol Hill to K Street isn't limited to staffers: In 2010, 37 percent of the newly out-of-office members of Congress went to work for lobbying firms or clients. After losing his run for Senate in 2006, Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford Jr. moved to New York to take a job with Merrill Lynch with a guaranteed annual compensation of $2 million. At the time he had no experience in finance. What he was paid for were his networks: ~ Christopher L. Hayes

Insecurity creates ditches for others and oneself as well. ~ Kushiro Shoko

One of the side effects of losing intimacy with God is that at some point we stop doing ministry out of imagination and we begin doing it out of memory. ~ Bill Johnson

The sole purpose of existence is to open oneself to sensation and to satisfy all appetites as they arise. ~ Dean Koontz

When a worker is injured at an IBP plant in Texas, he or she is immediately presented with a waiver. Signing the waiver means forever surrendering the right to sue IBP on any grounds. Workers who sign the waiver may receive medical care under IBP's Workplace Injury Settlement Program. Or they may not. Once workers sign, IBP and its company-approved doctors have control over the job-related medical treatment - for life. Under the program's terms, seeking treatment from an independent physician can be grounds for losing all medical benefits. Workers who refuse to sign the IBP waiver not only risk getting no medical care from the company, but also risk being fired on the spot...Injured workers almost always sign the waiver. The pressure to do so is immense. An IBP medical case manager will literally bring the waiver to a hospital emergency room in order to obtain an injured worker's signature. When Lonita Leal's right hand was mangled by a hamburger grinder at the IBP plant in Amarillo, a case manager talked her into signing the waiver with her left hand as she waited in the hospital for surgery. When Duane Mullin had both hands crushed in a hammer mill at the same plant, an IBP representative persuaded him to sign the waiver with a pen held in his mouth. ~ Eric Schlosser

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~ Henri Bergson

Let's try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents
the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly
clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of
your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your
grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That's why
you hold on.
But there's another possibility: You can let go and yet keep
REFLECTION AND CHANGE 35
hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand
over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin
still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still
yours, even with all this space around it.
So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence
and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.
Let us now think of what frequently happens in relationships.
So often it is only when people suddenly feel they are
losing their partner that they realize that they love them. Then
they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more
the other person escapes them, and the more fragile their relationship
becomes.
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue
it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow.
Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something
that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: How
can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it? How
ofte ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

The uncompromising example of Jesus Christ places upon every Christian minister the responsibility to withstand the temptation to align oneself with the secular ruling powers. It is true that it is part of every minister's calling to be a pastor to his or her parishioners, to be a spiritual leader and teacher and a comforter of the sick at heart and those afflicted in mind, soul, spirit, or body. Ministers of the Gospel must comfort the afflicted, but they also have the prophet's duty to afflict the comfortable. ~ Obery M. Hendricks Jr.

But she is right, at least in this: Looking to promote oneself at the expense of other women, setting oneself up as a creature unlike any other, is paltry device, and one that has kept us women 'in our place' for as much of time as history can recall. ~ Sinead Murphy

Call it a hunch," Charlie murmured. "But I think you and I are going to have a really good time losing sleep together. ~ Kimberly Kincaid

For one brief, never-ending second, an entirely different path expanded behind the lids of my tear-wet eyes. As if I were looking through the filter of Jacob's thoughts, I could see exactly what I was going to give up, exactly what this new self-knowledge would not save me from losing. I could see Charlie and Renée mixed into a strange collage with Billy and Sam and La Push. I could see years passing, and meaning something as they passed, changing me. I could see the enormous red-brown wolf that I loved, always standing as protector if I needed him. For the tiniest fragment of a second, I saw the bobbing heads of two small, black-haired children, running away from me into the familiar forest. When they disappeared, they took the rest of the vision with them. ~ Stephenie Meyer

We all live far away and anonymous; disguised, we suffer as unknowns. For some, however, this distance between oneself and one's self is never revealed; for others it is occasionally enlightened, to their horror or grief, by a flash without limits; but for still others this is the painful daily reality of life. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Comme des Garcons is a gift to oneself, not something to appeal or to attract the opposite sex ~ Rei Kawakubo

I did not believe in stalemates. I believed in resolutions, one way or another, and if I found myself on the losing end, so be it. Losing meant quiet, and forgetting quickly, and giving up nothing of any real worth to me. I did not debate restaurant bills, politics, wrongly delivered mail, divorces. These things were officiously loud, and silence was always best. ~ Soren Narnia

A new study found that Americans are exercising more than ever but still not losing much weight. Not good in fact, it's all I could think about on my jog to Dunkin' Donuts. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Grom greets him with a smile full of nausea. "I'm not ready for this, little brother," he confesses.
"Sure you are," Galen laughs, slapping his brother's back.
Grom shakes his head. "It feels like...like I'm betraying her. Nalia."
Galen stiffens. Oh. He doesn't feel qualified to talk Grom out of this kind of mood. "I'm sure she would understand," he offers.
Grom studies him thoughtfully. "I'd like to think she would. But you didn't know Nalia. She had an amazing temper."
He chuckles. "I keep looking over my shoulder, expecting to see her ready to bludgeon me with something for mating with someone else."
Galen frowns, unsure of what to say.
Grom chuckles. "I'm joking, of course." Then he shrugs. "Well, half joking, anyway. I swear I've been sensing her lately, Galen. It feels so real. It takes all I've got not to follow the pulse. Do you think I'm losing my mind?"
Galen shakes his head out of obligation. Secretly though, he thinks he might be. "I'm sure you're just feeling guilty. Er...not that you have a reason to feel guilty. Uh, it's just natural that you feel that way before your mating ceremony. Nerves and all." Galen runs a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. I'm not very good at this sort of thing."
"What sort of thing? Being mature?" Grom smirks.
"Funny."
"Maybe you should spend some more time on land, then come back and talk to me. Being on land ages you, you know. Might do you some good."
Galen snorts. Now yo ~ Anna Banks

I only see what I want to see. Winners see winning, Losers see losing. You are what you think you are. ~ Moe Norman

As a child I had dealt with a lot of loss and grief. I was constantly losing my parents, losing my home, constantly moving around, living with this stranger, that stepfather, or whatever. ~ Erin Gray

The classics constitute an almost infallible process for awakening the soul to its full stature. In coming to know a classic, one has made a friend for life. It can be recalled to the mind and 'read' all over again in the imagination. And actually perusing the text anew provides a joy that increases with time. These marvelous works stand many rereadings without losing their force. In fact, they almost demand rereading, as a Beethoven symphony demands replaying. We never say of a music masterpiece, 'Oh I've heard that!' Instead, we hunger to hear it again to take in once more, with new feeling and insight, its long-familiar strains. ~ Louise Cowan

I don't worry about losing all my fans. Whatever true fans you've got will stick by you, so that's nothing to worry about ~ B.J. Penn

Upon discovering truth, the natural love one has for oneself expands until it encompasses the whole world. This Love removes the ego. ~ Mooji