Self Quotes

Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself.

John Jay Chapman

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Johann von Goethe

There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, and the third is useless.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain.

Lyste

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.

Epictetus

He who carries out one good deed acquires one advocate in his own behalf, and he who commits one transgression acquires one accuser against himself. Repentance and good works are like a shield against calamity.

The Talmud

When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer - Say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep - It is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.

Felix Adle

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.

Bernard M. Baruch

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

Napolean Hill

Nature is wont to hide herself.

Heraclitus, On the Universe

One of the self - Authenticating truths which we come at last to acknowledge is this strange fact that we know that for the evil in our lives we ourselves are responsible, but for the good God alone deserves the praise.

John L. Casteel

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

Freedom, then, lies only in our innate human capacity to choose between different sorts of bondage, bondage to desire or self esteem, or bondage to the light that lightens all our lives.

Sri Madhava

If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there first, to meet some I had not thought to see there second, to miss some I had expected to see there and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.

John Newton

Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.

Elie Wiesel, Chicago Sun - Times, November 5, 2001

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

George Washington Allston

Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary.

Marshal Tito

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton, From Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.

Wystan Hugh Auden

Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others for thou has many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou are not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will.

Thomas a Kempis

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

Samuel Johnson

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

Richard Bach

My business is not to remake myself, but to make the absolute best of what God made.

Robert Browning

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea - Shore, and diverting myself in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean lay all undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton, Epitaph

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self - Activity.

Thomas Carlyle

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Samuel Johnson

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 Aelius Aurelius

Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Albert Camus

I have great faith in fools - - Self confidence my friends call it.

Edgar Allan Poe

Each painting has its own way of evolving... When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

Judge thyself with the judgment of sincerity, and thou will judge others with the judgment of charity.

John Mitchell Mason

He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the least so.

C. C. Colton

To die is to go into the Collective Unconscious, to lose oneself in order to be transformed into form, pure form.

Hermann Hesse

If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.

Alexandre Dumas, fils