Self Importance Quotes

Because we have viewed other animals through the myopic lens of our self-importance, we have misperceived who and what they are. Because we have repeated our ignorance, one to the other, we have mistaken it for knowledge. ~ Tom Regan

We are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship - provided it is great enough - flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. A man likes not to be ignored even by a railway accident. A man with a grievance is always happy. ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

all of us lost souls allow ourselves to live in worry and anger and self-importance and pettiness when life with God is all around us: ~ John Ortberg

Shedding an independent, individualistic sense of self, is an apt place to start when remaking oneself. The task of divesting my egoistic coat-of-arms requires that I first understand how I came into being, ascertain how a person forges a baseline personality, and discover how I can modify my template for self-construal. I need to surrender an arrogant sense of self-importance, acknowledge towering ignorance, and learn how to live humbly. I hope to parlay personal humiliation and self-hatred into a transformative act by invoking a spiritual death of my egotistical being that results in a resurrection of a more astute and kinder human being. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Norman Mailer records in his recent essays and public appearances his perfecting of himself as a virile instrument of letters; he is perpetually in training, getting ready to launch himself from his own missile pad into a high, beautiful orbit; even his failures may yet be turned to successes. ~ Susan Sontag

No true Dharma Master behaves with rage, hate, ranting, self- importance. These are signs of mental instability, a character flaw. Never follow such a one as that. ~ Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

How're we getting to King's Cross tomorrow, Dad?" asked Fred as they dug into a sumptuous pudding.
"The Ministry's providing a couple of cars," said Mr. Weasley.
Everyone looked up at him.
"Why?" said Percy curiously.
"It's because of you, Perce," said George seriously. "And there'll be little flags on the hoods, with HB on them-"
"-for Humongous Bighead," said Fred. ~ J.K. Rowling

But enough of me. Lets talk about you. What do you think of me? ~ Ed Koch

Love doesn't die a natural death. Love has to be killed, either by neglect or narcissism. Those guilty of these two crimes of the heart always hide behind excuses convenient; too ashamed, lacking in integrity and courage to face the truth. To them, it is always something other than their own actions, desires and self-importance that dictate circumstances. For these people, so blind to truth, true love can never be fully experienced for they have never really given of themselves all that they are. ~ Frank Salvato

He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I was returning with myself whole and unbroken - limbs, mind, and spirit. I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance ~ Amy Tan

This was the thing about religious types she hated so much. They never missed a chance to proselytize. No tragedy was sacred, no setback off-limits. They would solemnly enter your private space, regal and pompous as crows, full is righteous self-importance. Then, when she was at her weakest, they would tell her why the unacceptable was acceptable, why it was okay that she'd lost the love of her life
because an invisible man in the sly (and it was always a man, wasn't it?) had willed it. ~ Myke Cole

Self-regulation stands in relation to regulation the way self-importance stands in relation to importance. ~ Willem Buiter

Men astonish themselves far more than they astonish their friends. ~ Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

Annie, just once could you not give me a hard time?"
"Maybe someday, but not today."
"Annie, you're making Theo sad." Neither of them realized Livia had been paying attention to them. She peered around Theo's legs. "I think you should tell him your free secret."
"I don't!" She gave Livia a death glare. "And you'd better not, either."
Livia peered up at Theo. "Then you better tell your free secret."
He stiffened. "Annie doesn't want to hear my free secret."
"You have a free secret?" Annie asked.
"Yes, he does." Livia puffed up with four-year-old self-importance. "And I know it."
Now Theo was the one giving Livia the death glare. "Find some pinecones. A lot of them." He jabbed his hand toward the trees behind the gazebo. "Over there."
Annie could only stand so much. "Later," she said. "We need to get back to the cottage and see if mom's awake."
Livia's face turned into a thundercloud. "I don't want to go!"
"Don't give Annie a hard time," he said. "I'll finish the fairy house. You can see it later."
The fire had disrupted Livia's world. She hadn't had enough sleep, and she was as cranky as only an overstimulated four-your-old could be. "I'm not going!" she cried. "And if you don't let me stay, I'll tell your free secrets!"
Annie grabbed her arm. "You can't tell a free secret!"
"You absolutely can't!" Theo exclaimed.
"I can!" Livia retorted. "If they're both the same! ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie. ~ John Irving

Humility does not mean believing oneself to be inferior, but to be freed from self-importance. It is a state of natural simplicity which is in harmony with our true nature and allows us to taste the freshness of the present moment. ~ Matthieu Ricard

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. ~ Virginia Woolf

experienced a bout of atheism. With adolescent self-importance, I wondered why God would allow all this to happen to a fourteen-year-old girl. When ~ Padma Lakshmi

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it; for, however absurd it may be thought to boast an honour by an act which shows that it was conferred without merit, yet most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of virtue than of importance. ~ Samuel Johnson

How, then, did it happen that this same France forty years later came to be crushed on the battlefield by a nation it outnumbered fivefold? Why should its noblemen be split up into factions, its bourgeoisie in revolt, its people overwhelmed by excessive taxation, its provinces lawless and plagued by roving gangs engaged in pillaging and crime, all authority flouted, the currency weakened, trade at a standstill, and poverty and violence rife everywhere? Why this collapse? What caused this reversal of fortune? It was mediocrity. The mediocrity of just a few kings, their vanity and self-importance, their frivolousness in the conduct of their affairs, their inability to attract talented advisors, their nonchalance, their presumptuousness, their failure to draw up grand designs or even to follow those already conceived. ~ Maurice Druon

As long as a sense of self-importance rules your being, you will never know lasting peace. ~ Matthieu Ricard

Good leadership is pervasive, persuasive, and persistent. Bad leadership is poisoned with pedanticism, posturing, self-importance. ~ Marcia Whicker

I came from Yale, where you get an extracurricular degree in self-importance because you went there. When AIDS happened, I was treated like an outcast. And I don't like that feeling. ~ Larry Kramer

Of course, I strongly sympathized with Habermas and the philosophers representing the Frankfurt school, but I also saw the lack of conceptual clarity, and perceived the not-so-revolutionary self-importance in the epigones of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas. ~ Thomas Metzinger

Working up these mountains is as good as it gets, at least as long as you are not freezing or sodden (though even then you feel alive in ways that I don't in modern life behind glass). There is a thrill in the timelessness up there. I have always liked the feeling of carrying on something bigger than me, something that stretches back through other hands and other eyes into the depths of time. To work there is a humbling thing, the opposite of conquering a mountain, if you like; it liberates you from any illusion of self-importance. ~ James Rebanks

Often Satan injects pride into the believer's spirit, evoking in him an attitude of self-importance and of self-conceit. He causes him to esteem himself a very outstanding person, one who is indispensable in God's work. Such a spirit constitutes one of the major reasons for the fall of believers. ~ Watchman Nee

What is this all about,' asked Sai, but her mouth couldn't address her ear in the tumult; her mind couldn't talk to her heart. 'Shame on myself,' she said ... Who was she ... she with her self-importance, her demand for happiness, yelling it at fate, at the deaf heavens, screaming for her joy to be brought forth..?
How dare ... How dare you not ...
Why shouldn't I have ... How dare ... I deserve ... Her small greedy soul ... Her tantrums and fits ... Her mean tears ... Her crying, enough for all the sadness in the world, was only for herself. Life wasn't single in its purpose ... or even its direction ... The simplicity of what she'd been taught wouldn't hold. Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it. ~ Kiran Desai

In Christ, man who made himself God encounters God who made himself man. Unrivaled self-importance and pride encounters unrivaled self-emptying and humility. ~ Christopher West

Adam and Eve each denied their own responsibility when confronted by God because they saw themselves as too important to be wrong, to be weak, to be vulnerable to the shrewdness of a mere serpent. The dramatic increase in self-importance over the turn of the millennium, occurring alongside a steady increase in divorce, white-collar crime, morbid obesity, and high-profile falls from grace, smacks of a similar stink. We're too important for silly rules. We can't be expected to keep promises we made after circumstances change. Give us enough time, and we'll figure out who's really to blame for the trouble we find ourselves in. Jake ~ David A. Zimmerman

The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around ... The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch

I find it sad that too many do not understand themselves, or their potential. They don't even take the time to get to know their unconsciousness. You can truly learn so much, by simply getting to know the "you" that is behind the reality of yourself. ~ Lionel Suggs

At its finest moments climbing allows me to step out of ordinary existence into something extraordinary, stripping me of my sense of self-importance. ~ Doug Scott

Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels. ~ W. H. Auden

No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority. ~ Paulo Freire

Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance. ~ J. Donald Walters

You are the only person who is in charge of how you feel about yourself. Nobody else can possibly do that. You get to decide if you believe you are beautiful or not, and nobody can take it away from you. If someone suggests that you aren't beautiful, you can consider how sad it is that they have such a limited view of beauty. You can consider how unfortunate it is that they have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that they think you should care about what they think. You can also choose to realize that it has nothing at all to do with your beauty and everything to do with their limitations. ~ Ragen Chastain

Before feminism was, Paglia was! ~ Camille Paglia

Three days a week she helped at the Manor Nursing Home, where people proved their keenness by reciting received analyses of current events. All the Manor residents watched television day and night, informed to the eyeballs like everyone else and rushed for time, toward what end no one asked. Their cupidity and self-love were no worse than anyone else's, but their many experiences' having taught them so little irked Lou. One hated tourists, another southerners; another despised immigrants. Even dying, they still held themselves in highest regard. Lou would have to watch herself. For this way of thinking began to look like human nature
as if each person of two or three billion would spend his last vital drop to sustain his self-importance. ~ Annie Dillard

Pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy ... , indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance ... 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love 3. Believes that he or she is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people ... 4. Requires excessive admiration 5. Has a sense of entitlement ... 6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends 7. Lacks empathy 8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her 9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes ~ Jon Krakauer

Don't follow after the object of hatred, look at the angry mind. Anger liberated by itself as it arises is mirrorlike wisdom.

Don't chase after the object of pride, look at the grasping mind. Self-importance liberated as it arises is the wisdom of equanimity.

Don't hanker after the object of desire, look at the craving mind. ~ Dilgo Khyentse

Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician. ~ Christopher Guest

Many people have the idea that game shows are easy to come up with. And nothing could be further from the truth. ~ Bob Barker

Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic. ~ Anton Chekhov

When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird. ~ Ethan Hawke

Where there's self importance, there's only a very little bit of you and that little bit is distorted. It's in a holding pattern that is false to what it knows. That holding pattern forbids you, in that little bit of you, from being the rest of you. ~ John De Ruiter

When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be. ~ Benjamin Hoff

Excessive preoccupation with psyche and evil - either from supportive or antagonistic standpoints - fosters a degree of self-consciousness and self-importance that is very likely to eclipse the ever-present mystery of God's truth. Discernments are essential, but it is not at all necessary or helpful to become attached to making them. If possible, it is best to see psychological phenomena such as dreams, fantasies, images, and thoughts as manifestations of God's potential in the same way that nature, art, relationships, and all other phenomena are. Gazing into an empty, blue sky, kneeling in prayer in a cathedral, and recalling memories associated with a dream can all be worthwhile spiritual explorations. The can also all be distractions from spiritual exploration. The beauty of the sky or the cathedral can create an absorption with sensate experience, just as dream analysis can create ego-absorption. ~ Gerald G. May

Self-importance requires spending most of one's life offended by something or someone. ~ Carlos Castaneda

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the best things you can do in life is to embrace who you are. Once you do that NOTHING can stop you. You have found the greatest gift that has been given. The gift of self importance. ~ Auliq Ice

The essence of the teachings is to lose self importance and to care more for the welfare of others and the magical world around us, than we do for ourselves and our own self images. ~ Frederick Lenz

I was in Sarasota, Florida, on a spring-break trip with my friends Bruce and Karen Moore. Bruce and I were waiting on the beach for the rest of our crew when and a man and his grown kids came strolling up the sand. They looked at me for a minute, sort of hesitating, and then asked, "Would you mind taking a picture?" "Sure," I said, and quickly arranged all of us in a line, putting myself in the middle and motioning to Bruce to come snap the photo. Right about that time, the father said, "Actually, we were wondering if you could take a picture just of us." An understandable mistake on my part, but really embarrassing. Bruce has had a field day reminding me of that one ever since.

Lesson learned: Never assume anything about your own importance. It's a great big world, and all of us are busy living our lives. None of us knows all the time and effort that another person puts into his or her passion. ~ Amy Grant

I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence; if that could ever be adopted I shall despair of this country being ever preserved from a state of inferiority and consequently falling into a very low class among the European States. ~ George III

I must play my role, great or small - that is humility, without self-importance, without self-indulgence. ~ Frederick Lenz

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage. ~ Noam Chomsky

And the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility. ~ Jane Austen

It was his [Gen. Douglas MacArthur's] relationship with the administration In Washington which became poisoned by his egomania. Link upon link the bond between events on the battlefield and his own ruin was forged, and, as is essential in genuine tragedy, the gods used the victim himself to forge the links. ~ William Manchester

And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it - it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? ~ Upton Sinclair

Thus it takes the imminence of an infinite calamity to redeem the human adventure. On this level our age testifies to a narcissism of malediction that rips it out of its insignificance and reaffirms its centrality: by designating itself as damned, it merely emphasizes its singularity while apparently depreciating itself: 'Our period is not accidentally ephemeral; ephemerality is its essence. It cannot pass into another period but only collapse' (Anders, La Menace nucleaire, pag. 100).
What a relief to know that we are not living in a little province of time but in the historic moment when time itself is going to be engulfed! What presumption, and what naivite, to believe that we are the pinnacle of history! This self-abasement is a form of vainglory. If we can't be the best, we can still be the worst. Behind their lamentations, the catastrophists are bursting with self-importance. ~ Pascal Bruckner

I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you're just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and so on, on this tiny little rock orbiting this not particularly important sun in one of just 400m galaxies, and whatever other levels of reality there might be via something like brane-theory [of multiple dimensions] … really, it's not about you. It's what religion does with this drive for acknowledgement of self-importance that really gets up my nose. 'Yeah, yeah, your individual consciousness is so important to the universe that it must be preserved at all costs' – oh, please. Do try to get a grip of something other than your self-obsession. How Californian. The idea that at all costs, no matter what, it always has to be all about you. Well, I think not. ~ Iain M. Banks

Fear is being used by the political class as an excuse to accumulate more power and self-importance - and collect a lot more taxes to support their agenda. ~ Doug Casey

Affectation is fond of making a greater show than reality ... Nature and truth have never learned to blow the trumpet, and never will. ~ Lydia M. Child

The world is your catwalk, so just remember this when you're out there. ~ RuPaul

Egolessness means that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem. Self-importance is like a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our likes and dislikes. ~ Pema Chodron

Self importance is man's greatest enemy. ~ Carlos Castaneda

lawyer by training, Kajevic had the same talent as Hitler, making his gargantuan self-importance a proxy for his country's and his rantings the voice of his people's long-suppressed rage. ~ Scott Turow

Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser. ~ Donald J. Trump

That is what happens when the heart door opens- you become less yourself than part of everything.' Many are the sentinels who guard that door: our fears, our self-importance, our meanness, our greed, our bitterness, and others. ~ Roger Housden

Humour breaks down boundaries, it topples our self-importance, it connects people, and because it engages and entertains, it ultimately enlightens. ~ John Agard

All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them. ~ Harriet Martineau

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. ~ Thomas Szasz

What man would have courage enough to believe he could win you? Bosque laughed. You exude power. Men are small creatures, easily cowed by those who challenge their sense of self-importance. ~ Andrea Cremer

The streets were full of hurrying people who walked as though they had been wound up and were directed by some unseen control. Many of the men carried dispatch cases and brief cases and I gripped mine with a sense of importance. And here and there I saw Negroes who hurried along with leather pouches strapped to their wrists. They reminded me fleetingly of prisoners carrying their leg irons as they escaped from a chain gang. Yet they seemed aware of some self-importance, and I wished to stop one and ask him why he was chained to his pouch. Maybe they got paid well for this, maybe they were chained to money. Perhaps the man with rundown heels ahead of me was chained to a million dollars! ~ Ralph Ellison

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lo ~ Carl Sagan

I mean, the human race, we are a tribe, let's face it, and let's stop all this religious bullshit. I think everybody, or at least a lot of my friends, are just so exhausted with this whole self-importance of religious people. Just drop it. We're all fucking animals, so let's just make some universal tribal beat. We're pagan. Let's just march. ~ Bjork

I think because I did become a well-known face in my thirties and not in my twenties, I was pretty settled in my boots and I knew who I was. And I think there's a sort of Scottish thing, too, where you don't take yourself too seriously, and you don't get carried away with your own sense of self-importance. ~ Ashley Jensen

Oh Lord, give us a sense of humor with courage to manifest it forth, so that we may laugh to shame the pomps, the vanities, the sense of self-importance of the Big Fellows that the world sometimes sends among us, and who try to take our peace away. ~ Sean O'Casey

First - if you are in love - that's a good thing - that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second - There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had. ~ John Steinbeck

I consider myself more exportant than important. ~ Vanna Bonta

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. ~ Carl Sagan

Man is the weak being who, in spite of all his self-importance and pride of wealth and capital, is vanquished by the smallest microbe. ~ Muhammad Atta-ullah Faizani

The world is too big for love to be real. There are too many people in the world to ever know, beyond everything, that you are with the right person. That your heart is as swollen as it can be. Think of all the people in China. It is unlikely anyone will ever meet all of them. How can we know for certain, that trapped inside a foreign language and thumping in a foreign heart there isn't a love that is meant for us. The infinite possibility of existence, its limitless potential, is the proof that we need that love is nothing more than an imagination, a human folly, friendship swollen with self-importance, a final retreat from the storm of possibility. The love of our life could so easily have been someone else. It is random and accidental, haphazard and unsystematic. That which we feel for one person, clinging on to the delusion of destiny, could so easily be felt for a million people should the timing and the meetings and the mutual readiness have coalesced at some other time in some other place. Should someone else have accepted us or rejected us then everything would have been different. And once we know this, we know that all love is a lie. Not honesty but deception. Not heroism but cowardice. An unspoken agreement of mutual consolidation and compromise, a shield from possibility and a bed in which to sleep, nothing more than that. But I do still miss her. ~ Daniel Kitson

We have our self-importance. We also have our inadequacy. The former is a desperate invention of the latter. ~ Don DeLillo

We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment. ~ C.S. Lewis

Throughout my college years, I'd watch my sister squeal every Christmas as she unwrapped another 'Buffy' DVD set. I didn't know much about the series, but I was filled with that obnoxious self-importance that comes from having decided to be an Academic Who Reads Serious Things. ~ Marie Rutkoski

It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensible to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, 'How will the work go on without me?' As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, 'How will the mails be carried without me?' Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord's work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God's work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There are two ways of confronting the country's problems.One is through a management style based on adventurism, instability, play-acting, exaggerations, wrongdoing, being secretive, self-importance, superficiality and ignoring the law. The second way is based on realism, respect, openness, collective wisdom and avoiding extremism. ~ Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved
that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim. ~ John Irving

Lord, save me from the sins of my tongue and the flaws of character that fuel them. Make my words honest (by taking away my fear), few (by taking away my self-importance), wise (by taking away my thoughtlessness), and kind (by taking away my indifference and irritability). Amen. ~ Timothy Keller

One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe ... Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. ~ Upton Sinclair

Self-importance is a trap, because the moment we start to think that we actually matter is the moment when things start to go wrong. The truth is that you are supremely unimportant and nothing matters. All of man's striving is for nothing; all effort is wasted. To realize that everything is meaningless is tremendously liberating, since it then leaves us completely free to create our own lives and ignore the plans that others have for us. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

Actors think they're far more important than they are, and that can only lead to hurt. People with colossal self-importance have very far to fall. ~ Julia Sawalha

A depressed Mormon kid kills himself after having gay sex?" Chris sighs. "Jensen, I hate to break your bubble of self-importance but you and your dick, however magical I'm sure it is, did not do that. He could have had sex with Johnny-next-door and it would have done the same thing. Believe me. So please, no more 'I kill people with my dick' guilt, ok? ~ Felisblanco

To matter, to mind ... What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy ... Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind? ~ Rebecca Goldstein

Being famous gives you a lot of illusions of false self, of self-importance, a grandiosity, it becomes difficult to stay humble and real. You see so many people who don't succeed. ~ Lili Taylor

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. ~ Oscar Wilde

Inspiration? - a hoax fabricated by poets for their self-importance. ~ Jean Anouilh

Nobody is a good judge in his own cause! ~ Therese Of Lisieux

Oh, the self-importance of fading stars. Never mind, they will be black holes one day. ~ Jeffrey Bernard