Self famous quotes
05-15-2025
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We must surrender ourselves so utterly that we can never own ourselves again. We must hand over self and all its rights in an eternal covenant, and give God the absolute right to own us, control us and possess us forever.
-- A. B. Simpson -
One bright and thankful look at the cross is worth a thousand morbid, self-condemning reflections.
-- A. B. Simpson -
Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth.
-- A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada -
I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories.
-- A. E. van Vogt -
The key to making healthy decisions is to respect your future self. Honor him or her. Treat him or her like you would treat a friend or a loved one.
-- A. J. Jacobs -
I'm addicted to self-improvement. The thing is, there's so damn much about myself to improve.
-- A. J. Jacobs -
If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they'd get along OK, but they'd both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “That guy is kinda delusional.â€
-- A. J. Jacobs -
I was once naïve enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked the town of Eastbourne. He replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it.
-- A. N. Wilson -
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
-- A. R. Ammons -
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.
-- A. R. Ammons -
I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.
-- A. S. Byatt -
The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
-- A.J. Ayer -
Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.
-- A.L. Kennedy -
Happiness is attained, not through self-interest, but through unconditional fidelity in endless love of eternal light.
-- Aaron Cohen -
Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
-- Aaron Copland -
Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession's phlegm, and needs no ancestors.
-- Aaron Hill -
The guys who stick around are the smartest guys and the guys who are the most self-driven. You have to have drive. The coaches can only take you so far. You have to want to learn and work.
-- Aaron Rodgers -
When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).
-- Aaron Siskind -
American ladies are known abroad for two distinguishing traits (besides, possibly, their beauty and self-reliance), and these are their ill-health and their extravagant devotion to dress.
-- Abba Louisa Goold Woolson -
Luckily, I's learned at an early age that self-preservation was the only way to survive with your soul intact.
-- Abbi Glines -
What I would like you always to do is what I try humbly to do myself, that is, never to say or to do anything which would wound the feelings or the self-respect of any human being, and to give special consideration to all who are in any way repressed.
-- Abby Aldrich Rockefeller -
When time and space and change converge, we find place. We arrive in Place when we resolve things. Place is peace of mind and understanding. Place is knowledge of self. Place is resolution.
-- Abdullah Ibrahim -
I used to be someone who would not even tread on an ant. But this is a war for honor and self-defense. A 100 percent elimination policy (by Ankara of the Kurds) has forced me to defense and it has become a glorious defense of a people.
-- Abdullah Ocalan -
For a justice of this ultimate tribunal [the U.S. Supreme Court], the opportunity for self-discovery and the occasion for self-revelation is great.
-- Abe Fortas -
Dishonoring what we feel is an epidemic that has us self-medicating as a culture and trying to numb ourselves.
-- Abiola Abrams -
There is a self-love solution for every challenge.
-- Abiola Abrams -
True love is humble, thereby is it known; Girded for service, seeking not its own; Vaunts not itself, but speaks in self-dispraise.
-- Abraham Coles -
Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning's gentle wine! Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; 'Tis fill'd wherever thou dost tread, Nature's self's thy Ganymede.
-- Abraham Cowley -
We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.
-- Abraham Flexner -
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
Wise criticism always begins with self-criticism.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization.
-- Abraham Maslow -
The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent.
-- Abraham Maslow -
Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.
-- Abraham Maslow -
One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of his life.
-- Abraham Maslow -
Whereas the average individuals "often have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, of what their own opinions are," self-actualizing individuals have "superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general."
-- Abraham Maslow -
Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.
-- Abraham Maslow -
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualizat ion.
-- Abraham Maslow -
Self-actualizing people are those who have come to a high level of maturation, health and self-fulfillment... the values that self-actualizers appreciate include truth, creativity, beauty, goodness, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, justice, simplicity, and self-sufficiency.
-- Abraham Maslow -
Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.
-- Abraham Maslow -
Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.
-- Abraham Maslow -
As one studies these preconditions, one becomes saddened by the ease with which human potentiality can be destroyed or repressed, so that a fully-human person can seem like a miracle, so improbable a happening as to be awe-inspiring. And simultaneously one is heartened by the fact that self-actualizing persons do in fact exist, that they are therefore possible, that the gauntlet of dangers can be run, that the finish line can be crossed.
-- Abraham Maslow -
To fight against the infidels is Jihad; but to fight against your evil self is greater Jihad.
-- Abu Bakr -
I've always believed in self, I've always believed that as long as I believe, nothing else matters. I just put that type of motivation and that type of energy into my music, and I've always had confidence in my music as well.
-- Ace Hood -
Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. ... ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure; it supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
True self-discovery begins where your comfort zone ends.
-- Adam Braun -
We communicate happiness to others not often by great acts of devotion and self-sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and censure, by being ready to sympathize with their notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sympathize with ours.
-- Adam Clarke -
Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.
-- Adam Gopnik -
The relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios - the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about - was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.
-- Adam Gopnik -
I'm a self-taught guitarist, but I have a classical music background.
-- Adam Jones -
Due to the oath I swore to the constitution when I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, by virtue of the universal human right to self defense, in accordance with the Supreme Court case, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the statutes under which I am being charged are unconstitutional and thus null and void, and on behalf of all freedom loving Americans, I plead not guilty.
-- Adam Kokesh -
I have a high self-opinion - I don't need to hide that. I don't need to be self-deprecating.
-- Adam Levine -
I think death has a right to its own courage and dignity and self-respect.
-- Adela Rogers St. Johns -
Most perfect self-understanding is the capability to directly (immediately) transcend dilemma, all problems, all seeking.
-- Adi Da -
Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.
-- Adi Shankara -
To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self. By that alone you will become full of joy, recognising Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
-- Adi Shankara -
Even after the Truth has been realised, there remains that strong, obstinate impression that one is still an ego - the agent and experiencer. This has to be carefully removed by living in a state of constant identification with the supreme non-dual Self. Full Awakening is the eventual ceasing of all the mental impressions of being an ego.
-- Adi Shankara -
Knowing that I am different from the body, I need not neglect the body. It is a vehicle that I use to transact with the world. It is the temple which houses the Pure Self within.
-- Adi Shankara -
Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?
-- Adi Shankara -
Do not look at anybody in terms of friend or foe, brother or cousin; do not fritter away your mental energies in thoughts of friendship or enemity. Seeking the Self everywhere, be amiable and equal-minded towards all, treating all alike.
-- Adi Shankara -
What is enquiry into the Truth? It is the firm conviction that the Self is real, and all, other than That, is unreal.
-- Adi Shankara -
The witness of the three states of consciousness [waking, dream and deep sleep] and of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is the Self
-- Adi Shankara -
There is sorrow in finitude. The Self is beyond time, space and objects. It is infinite and hence of the nature of absolute happiness.
-- Adi Shankara -
Painting is self-discovery. You arrive at the image through the act of painting.
-- Adolph Gottlieb -
CEOs of top companies could probably use a dose of not-asking-for-raise behavior and less self-entitlement, rather than us trying to change girls in order to fit into the common mold of what we think a CEO looks like.
-- Adora Svitak -
Gaiety is forgetfulness of the self, melancholy is memory of the self: in that state the soul feels all the power of its roots, nothing distracts it from its profound homeland and the look that it casts upon the outer world is gently dismayed.
-- Adrienne Monnier -
The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.
-- Adrienne Rich -
An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
-- Adrienne Rich -
To become a token woman--whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters--is to become something less than a mansince men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.
-- Adrienne Rich -
If we would only see that all limitations are self imposed and chosen out of fear, we would leap at once.
-- Adyashanti -
Can you imagine if you really let it in that you are not a problem to be solved in any way? Imagine you knew that anything that would tell you otherwise is just a movement of thought in the mind that says "Whatever is, isn't the way it is supposed to be." So the biggest act of compassion starts within. And when the self is no longer seen as a problem, this is called "the peace that passes all understanding."
-- Adyashanti -
Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it.
-- Adyashanti -
Self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It's not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.
-- Adyashanti -
We realize--often quite suddenly--that our sense of self, which has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs and images, is not really who we are. It doesn't define us, it has no center.
-- Adyashanti -
When you let go of the egoic self what you're getting in exchange is the whole universe.
-- Adyashanti -
When someone says, 'I love you,' he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, 'I hate you,' she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.
-- Adyashanti -
Men spend their life down here in the worship of petty (or mean) interests and the search of perishable things, and with that ("et avec cela", Fr.) they pretend to perpetuate for all eternity their self ("moi", Fr.) so hardly worthy ("digne", Fr.) of it.
-- African Spir -
If man do not find in himself the required (or wished, or wanted, - "voulue", Fr.) force to accomplish his moral aspirations, he can try to purt himself in the conditions suitable to assist (or promote, or further, -"favoriser", Fr.) his self-control.
-- African Spir -
The supreme blossoming of character lies (or reside) in renounciation (or renuncement) and abnegation of self ("abnégation de soi", Fr.
-- African Spir -
There is a fundamental difference between the Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will.
-- Aga Khan III -
Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
-- Agnes de Mille -
I'm mostly self-taught. I didn't learn much in school.
-- Agnes Denes -
The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective.
-- Agnes Martin -
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
-- Agnes Repplier -
Mr. McVicker instilled self-respect in those of us who were his students, because he respected us regardless of our background,
-- Ahmad Jamal -
Unless we learn the lesson of self-appreciation and practice it, we shall spend our lives imitating other people and deprecating ourselves.
-- Aida Overton Walker -
Self pity is a disease which does not kill but corrodes.
-- Aidan Chambers -
I find still photographs make me quite self-conscious,
-- Aidan Gillen -
Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer -
For the Christian, humility is absolutely indispensable. Without it there can be no self-knowledge, no repentance, no faith and no salvation.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer -
Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer -
Breezy, self-confident Christians tell us how wonderful it is to accept Christ and then have a good time all the rest of your life; the Lord won't demand anything of you. Yes, He will, my friend! The Lord will demand everything of you. And when you give it all up to Him, He may bless it and hand it back, but on the other hand He may not....
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer
