Self Quotes

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

Jessamyn West

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self - Conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Epictetus, Discourses

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

Welsh Prove

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

Robert Anson Heinlein

Look well into thyself there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

E. B. White

But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.

Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (on the death of Decoud)

Life has. taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors. She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself, but to leave the result to God.

Alan Stewart Paton

To make mistakes is human to stumble is commonplace to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

William Arthur Ward

Friendship without self - Interest is one of the rare and beautiful things of life.

James F. Byrnes

Be rich to yourself and poor to your friends.

Juvenal

A crisis does not always appear to a policymaker as a series of dramatic events. Usually it imposes itself as an exhausting agenda of petty chores demanding both concentration and endurance.

Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval

The wise should surrender speech in mind, mind in the knowing self, the knowing self in the Spirit of the universe, and the Spirit of the universe in the Spirit of peace.

Maitri Upanishads

Nothing happens by itself... it all will come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your way, by your own exertions.

Ben Stein

The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others, and no one thinks about reforming himself.

Peter Alcantara

Any effort that has self - Glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.

Robert M. Pirsig

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself, And know that everything in this life has purpose. There are no mistakes, No coincidences, All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

Elizabeth Kubler - Ross

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

Agnes Repplie

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.

Kahlil Gibran

All the blessings which you pray to obtain hereafter could be yours today, if you did not deny them to yourself.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations? Book Twelve

Think to yourself that every day is your last the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

Horace

Do pleasant things yourself, but unpleasant things through others.

Baltasar Gracian

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Albert Einstein

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self - Gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Kelle

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Paul Valery

The teacher is like the candle which lights others in consuming itself.

Giovanni Ruffini

Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self - Confidence and your self - Doubt.

Kahlil Gibran

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

Norman Vincent Peale

The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself.

Blaine Lee

An ambassador is a man of virtue sent to lie abroad for his country; a news - writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for himself.

Sir Henry Wotton, "Reliquae Wottonianae".

The good devout man first makes inner preparation for the actions he has later to perform. His outward actions do not draw him into lust and vice; rather it is he who bends them into the shape of reason and right judgement. Who has a stiffer battle to fight than the man who is striving to conquer himself.

Thomas a Kempis

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

Quintilian

The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.

Publilius Syrus

Educate your children to self - Control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

Daniel Webste