Oneself Quotes

One never perishes through anybody but oneself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To remember oneself and to relax the body is something we have to do constantly. ~ Samael Aun Weor

When one is young, he thought, one thinks that one will never know oneself. But the knowledge comes later; if not all, then some. An important amount. ~ Amanda Coplin

T hey were both restless in the night. In a day or two Dick would try to banish the ghost of Rosemary before it became walled up with them, but for the moment he had no force to do it. Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Travel was once a means of being elsewhere, or of being nowhere. Today it is the only way we have of feeling that we are somewhere. At home, surrounded by information, by screens, I am no longer anywhere, but rather everywhere in the world at once, in the midst of a universal banality - a banality that is the same in every country. To arrive in a new city, or in a new language, is suddenly to find oneself here and nowhere else. The body rediscovers how to look. Delivered from images, it rediscovers the imagination. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Herein lay the rub. The Americans, like all Western armies, defined "winning" as killing the enemy and securing control over the battlefield. Their opponents in previous conflicts had generally accepted the same definition. Not so the Moros. What was important to them was the struggle and how one conducted oneself, personally and as a people, not necessarily a measurable outcome. They knew from the beginning they were no match for American firepower. It was a one-sided contest, what today is termed "asymmetric warfare," but so what? Their measure was how well one did against the odds, the more overwhelmingly they were against one, the greater the glory. And being that life is transitory anyway, what mattered most was how much courage was shown and how well did one die. The Americans and the Moros were using different score cards for the same game. To the Moros, it was they who had "won. ~ Robert A. Fulton

Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one over the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of Nis, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream-doom into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The most amazing journey on earth is the journey of oneself. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Sociological Explanations

Sociologists theorize that people can live together in peace because of the development of a social hierarchy that ranges from dominant to submissive. Everyone in a group takes his or her place in the hierarchy. A certain degree of anxiety around others allows people to assess the level of threat that they pose, and helps maintain the balance between aggression and inhibition.
However, people with social anxiety tend to misinterpret others' behavior as more aggressive or powerful than it really is. As a result, a socially anxious person often will become overly submissive--blushing, not making eye contact, freezing, or withdrawing.
Sociologists believe this response may be the result of a fundamental fear of rejection. In monkeys, apes, and humans, being left to fend for oneself usually is a threat to survival. In social anxiety, people may see being judged as a threat to their position in the group. To them, rejection means failure.

Kyoto went through her day at school constantly apologizing to everyone. Whenever she walked down the hall, opened her locker, sat down in an empty seat, or got in line in the cafeteria, she always said "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry." Most of the time, she didn't know why she was apologizing. She always wanted to please others.
Kyoto's mother took her to see a psychologist because of Kyoto's anxiety. The psychologist helped Kyoto see that she misinterpreted others' behavior as being more ~ Heather Moehn

Communication is a major key to building any strong relationship, whether it is the relationship one has with oneself or with others. Sinful communication weakens yourself, weakens those you care about, and thus weakens your team. ~ Shay Dawkins

Understanding others is knowledge, Understanding oneself is enlightenment; Conquering others is power, Conquering oneself is strength. ~ Laozi

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring. ~ Oscar Wilde

Anything done for another is done for oneself. ~ Pope Boniface VIII

Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

There are moments when the future looks so black that one is afraid to let one's thoughts dwell on it, refuses to let one's mind function and tries to convince oneself that the future will not be, and the past has not been. At such moments, when the will is not governed or modified by reflection and the only incentives that remain in life are our physical instincts, I can understand how a child, being particularly prone owing to lack of experience to fall into such a state, may without the least hesitation or fear, with a smile of curiosity deliberately set fire to his own house - and then fan the flames where is brothers, his father an his mother, all of who he loves dearly, are sleeping. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of personality with perfection which forms the real distinction between the classical and romantic movement in life, but the very basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the artist - an intense and flamelike imagination. He realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich. Someone wrote to me in trouble, 'When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.' How remote was the writer from what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.' Either would have taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever happens to oneself happens to another. ~ Oscar Wilde

It isn't the words we speak that make us who we are. Or even the deeds we do. It is the secrets buried in our hearts. ~ Thrity Umrigar

There is in the nature of human communication no way of making another person a participant in information or perception available exclusively to oneself. ~ Paul Watzlawick

Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Three aspects of the self betrayer's conduct always go together: accusing others, excusing oneself, and displaying oneself as a victim. ~ C. Terry Warner

How does one get rid of fear? Ramana: What is fear? It is only a thought. If there is anything besides the Self there is reason to fear. Who sees things separate from the Self? First the ego arises and sees objects as external. If the ego does not rise, the Self alone exists and there is nothing external. For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within. Seeking it there will eliminate doubt and fear. Not only fear, all other thoughts centred round the ego will disappear along with it. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent. ~ Virginia Woolf

My own view is simply that there are some very basic rules; very simple rules that apply to all writing in a way, which is: don't lie; if you're wrong, correct; do not misrepresent; and try and keep oneself intellectually honest - which means, as a writer, the very difficult task in public of admitting you were wrong. ~ Andrew Sullivan

To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault. ~ Robert Conquest

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Whatever you may say, genuine emotions are aroused by people. The first smile of a newborn, love confession, hang-loose chatting with friends, weekly meetings with dears, and a lot more other things initiated by two or several individuals trigger the feeling of happiness. There are more specific emotions native to females and males. Whereas the first ones are pleased at hearing sweet words. We live and work in the tradition of love and not hatred. As for us, it is the unconditional acceptance of all people, the scale of our love for them. Let's treat every person as a person in his uniqueness at eye level.
Love is one of the strongest feelings one can ever have. It comes over you all of a sudden and totally absorbs before you manage to realize the fact. Emotions which arise with the feeling require some way of expression. Furtive glances, sweet words, touching, and romantic dates are a usual manifestation of affection. Still, there is a more inventive way to expose oneself – dedicating a special beautiful love quote to your beloved. ~ Oscar Auliq-Ice

One does not want to tear oneself away from this anguish. ~ Nadezhka Von Meck

The best way to educate oneself is to become part of the revolution. ~ Abbie Hoffman

True power is not in trying to gain power; true power is in becoming power. But how to become power? It requires an attempt to make a definite change in oneself, and that change is a kind of struggle with one's false self. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

One has to do sadhana for the total manifestation of the Divine in oneself. ~ Sri Aurobindo

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance that no one could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. - Goethe, by attribution ~ Gregory Maguire

Free your mind, become who you are.. the mind is the biggest drug.. and everyone is addicted. ~ Jonathan Bailey

To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile? ~ Albert Camus

People often think faith consists of forcing oneself to accept something that one does not and cannot understand. Often we call people believers if they just accept what others tell them. Some seek faith by denying reason and forcing themselves into something that has not yet become a personal experience. God requires a different faith, though. He is content if you believe what you can experience. Be faithful and hold on to what you have, not to what you do not have. ~ Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

A child should be allowed to take as long as she needs for knowing everything about herself, which is the same as learning to be herself. Even twenty-five years if necessary, or even forever. And it wouldn't matter if doing things got delayed, because nothing is really important but being oneself. ~ Laura Riding

Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Out of the decisions that we make in life, our Self emerges. What we choose in life is not the thing chosen out there, but oneself. ~ Luis Enrique Cavazos

Well, well, well. The mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht comes with mercy, and offers peace. These are strange times we live in, eh, Tulkis? Have the Gurkish learned to love their enemies? Or simply fear them?'
'One need not love one's enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.'
'Is that so?'
'It is. I lost two sons in the wars between our peoples. One at Ulrioch in the last war. He was a priest, and burned in the temple there. The other died not long ago, at the siege of Dagoska. He led the charge when the first breach was made.'
Glokta frowned and stretched out his neck. A hail of flatbow bolts. Tiny figures, falling in the rubble. 'That was a brave charge.'
'War is harshest on the brave. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Your power is in your story and all the wisdom it has brought you. ~ Angela Mayah Solstice

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings. ~ Immanuel Kant

Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth. ~ Criss Jami

To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Only by taking responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one ever be free, and only a free person can make responsible choices - between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking. ~ Paul Ryan

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself. ~ Lao-Tzu

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal. ~ Gertrude Stein

Q. Surely it is easier to be objective about other people than about oneself?
A. No, it is more difficult. If you become objective to yourself you can see other people objectively, but not before, because before that it will all be coloured by your own views, attitudes, tastes, by what you like and what you dislike. To be objective you must be free from it all. You can become objective to yourself in the state of self-consciousness: this is the first experience of coming into contact with the real object. ~ P.D. Ouspensky

Politics, as he occasionally said, required three unchanging talents and
no virtues. More politicians, he claimed, had been destroyed by virtue than by any other cause; and the talents he enumerated in this fashion. The first talent was the ability to choose the winning side. Failing that, the second talent was the ability to extricate oneself from the losing side. And the third talent was never to make an enemy. ~ Howard Fast

One can give up many things for love, but one should not give up oneself. ~ Cassandra Clare

Good fortune almost always makes some change in a man's behavior - in his manner of speaking and acting. It is a great weakness to want to bedeck oneself in qualities which are not his own. If he esteemed virtue above all other things, neither the favors of fortune nor the advantages of position would change a man's face or heart. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. ~ Aldous Huxley

Everyone wants to help the world, but first and foremost everyone wants to help oneself. ~ Maria Karvouni

Love can sometimes rise up like a desperate cry from a neglected part of oneself which takes a long view but which is submerged by the presence of strident wants. ~ John Armstrong

Taunting Death ... means pitting oneself against a wily enemy who cannot lose. ~ J.K. Rowling

One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it. ~ Donald Johanson

It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect - a process which occurs in every dialectical victory - you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one's own advantage. - Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as "Death before dishonour," and so on. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

There is an instinct for realism, a powerful drive to reproduce oneself. The fascination of photorealistic paintings lies partly in their apparent replication of life, but these are not merely replications. These paintings are often out of life scale, varying from over life-size to under life-size, from brilliant, heightened color to pale, undertone hues. ~ Audrey Flack

Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others. It is therefore two things. It is my attitude towards myself, and it is an expression of that in my relationship to others. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

To find out what living is as well as to find out what dying is, one must come into contact with death, that is, one must end every day everything one has known. One must end the image that one has built up about oneself, about one's family, about one's relationship, the image that one has built through pleasure, through one's relationship to society, everything. That is what is going to take place when death occurs. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It was one of those things that one knows but cannot even tell oneself - so dreadful and shameful it would be to be mistaken. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Meekness implies a spirit of gratitude as opposed to an attitude of self-sufficiency, an acknowledgement of a greater power beyond oneself, a recognition of God, and an acceptance of his commandments. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Retracing the various episodes of one's life, one is disconcerted to discover that one was not as noble as one thought oneself at the time. ~ Phyllis Bentley

The chief requirement of the good life', said Michael, 'is that one should have some conception of one's capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has ... One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles. ~ Iris Murdoch

Even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him. ~ Criss Jami

It is not wrong to strive to be better than a fellow human being. Nor is it wrong to desire to be better or even to feel like oneself is better than a fellow human being. What is wrong is to gloat in one's own virtue. Therefore, gloating in one's own virtue is not virtuous. ~ Christopher Jones

To live is to express oneself freely ~ Bruce Lee

Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others. ~ Erich Fromm

To me, 'The End of the Jews' - both the title and the novel itself - is about the end of pat, uncritical ways of understanding oneself in the world. ~ Adam Mansbach

Not in the least," I said. "I understand everything you've said. But - oh, Simon, I feel so resentful! Why should father make things so difficult? Why can't he say what he means plainly?" "Because there's so much that just can't be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is - plainly - and you'll see what I mean." Then he said that art could state very little - that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments - such as father's - all art would stagnate. "That's why one ought not to let oneself resent them - though I believe it's a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don't understand. ~ Dodie Smith

While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best. ~ C.S. Lewis

If one wanted models of good behaviour, one must be a model of good behaviour oneself. ~ Shelley Adina

Unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are walleyed. ~ D.H. Lawrence

We no longer live addicted to speech; having lost our senses, now we are going to lose language, too. We will be addicted to data, naturally. Not data that comes from the world, or from language, but encoded data. To know is to inform oneself. Information is becoming our primary and universal addiction. ~ Michel Serres

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

The more indifferent people are to politics, to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. The individualism of our time.

Not being able to fall asleep and not allowing oneself to move: the marital bed.

If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought… You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.

In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.

How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when you neither share their suffering nor their joys? When you know that you don't belong among them?... our century refuses to acknowledge anyone's right to disagree with the world…All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, the dream of a cloister…

Humor can only exist when people are still capable of recognizing some border between the important and the unimportant. And nowadays this border ha ~ Milan Kundera

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. ~ Flannery O'Connor

In those hours I began to realize that izzat, honor, was an aesthetic idea more than a moral idea. It was a way of carrying yourself, the bluster of claiming to go to any length for your relatives, to love and be loved more than others loved and were loved. But while it purported to be fundamentally about others, it was really about oneself: about one's own marvelous virtue and the elaborate public demonstration of it. The same person who honored you by preparing meat, or inviting you to sleep in his house, had little conception of what it meant to make a promise to you, to keep his word, to empathize. ~ Anand Giridharadas

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party - an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. ~ George Orwell

Hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief - all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man ... that it's better to hang oneself. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation. ~ Henri Bergson

To tell you the truth, though, I still haven't made up my mind whether I shall publish at all. Tastes differ so widely, and some people are so humourless, so uncharitable, and so absurdly wrong-headed, that one would probably do far better to relax and enjoy life than worry oneself to death trying to instruct or entertain a public which will only despise one's efforts, or at least feel no gratitude for them. ~ Thomas More

It's always hard to turn a mirror on oneself, and harder still to understand how one's immediate present interacts with the near-future. ~ Sebastian Marshall

In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

We can be walking around in this world, with bits and pieces of our souls scattered in different time loops and space cracks. You feel like you are always looking for yourself, because you actually are always looking for yourself! You're always looking for those bits and pieces of you. You've got to sit down and remember where you left them at. You've got to quiet the noise and go back to those loops in time and cracks in space that you forgot about and you need to understand yourself in those moments, and embrace yourself. And maybe even embrace those who were around you, with you. That's how you get those pieces back, that's how you sew them back into you. ~ C. JoyBell C.

It is surely absurd to seek God in terms of a preconceived idea of what God is. To seek thus is only to find what we know already, which is why it is so easy to deceove oneself into all manner of "supernatural" experiences and visions. To believe in God and to look for the God you believe in is simply to seek confirmation of an opinion. ~ Alan W. Watts

Art is fueled by rebellion: the need, in some amounting to obsessions, to resist what is, to defy one's elders, even to the point of ostracism; to define oneself, and by extension one's generation, as new, novel, ungovernable. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Evidence that [feminine aesthetic preferences and ways of expressing oneself] may be hardwired comes from the fact that they typically appear early in childhood and often in contradiction to one's socialization. [ ... ] This indicates that some aspects of feminine verbal and aesthetic expression precede and/or supersede gender socialization. ~ Julia Serano

The neighbors ... hadn't, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbor who'd kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they'd visited on other people.) ~ Paul Cornell

The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism. ~ Henning Von Tresckow

Dialogue is the fundamental unfolding of a gift of oneself to another. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

To think at its best is to find oneself carried down the current of necessity. ~ Brand Blanshard

If an artist wants to use his mind for creative work, cutting oneself off from society is a necessary thing ~ Glenn Gould

Just because I understand does not mean I agree. ~ Carlos Wallace

When one takes into account also His reiterated assertions about His Divinity - such as asking us to love Him above parents, to believe in Him even in the face of persecution, to be ready to sacrifice our bodies in order to save our souls in union with Him - to call Him just a good man ignores the facts. No man is good unless he is humble; and humility is a recognition of truth concerning oneself. A man who thinks he is greater than he actually is is not humble, but a vain and boastful fool. How can any man claim prerogatives over conscience, and over history, and over society and the world and still claim he is 'meek and humble of heart'? But if He is God as well as man, His language falls into place and everything that He says is intelligible. But if He is not what He claimed to be, then some of His most precious sayings are nothing but bombastic outburts of self-adulation that breathe rather the spirit of Lucifer than the spirit of a good man. What avails Him to proclam the law of self-renouncement, if He Himself renounces truth to call Himself God? Even His sacrifice on the Cross becomes a suspect and dated thing, when it goes hand in hand with delusions of grandeur and infernal conceit. He could not be called even a sincere teacher, for no sincere teacher would allow anyone to construe his claims to share the rank and the name of the Great God in heaven. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

But if you are alive - live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison with eternity? ~ Leo Tolstoy

I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

What we did yesterday, Can be changed today to make tomorrow different.. PAST / PRESENT / FUTURE
Precious Present Moments Light Our Path ~ Jonathan Bailey

To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved. ~ Pablo Picasso