Self Quotes

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from the bow of a ship without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D. H. Lawerence

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - - Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1933

The greatist thing in the world is for a man to know how to be himself.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Nature is wont to hide herself.

Heraclitus, On the Universe

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Albert Schweitze

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Samuel Johnson

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

Will Rogers

I am a poet. I lock myself in my room with a type writer so I can talk in terms of the world that has put me here.

Eric Pio

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Ben Franklin

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not a poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

Rainer Maria Rilke

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self - Addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Ring Lardner, "How to Write Short Stories".

Before every action ask yourself. Will this bring more monkeys on my back. Will the result of my action be a blessing or a heavy burden?

Alfred A. Montapert

People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - Are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a have type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a have not type of self.

Eric Hoffe

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

George Bernard Shaw

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.

John Updike

There is always someone worse off than yourself.

Aesop

Christ will remain a priest and king though He was never consecrated by any papist bishop or greased by any of those shavelings but he was ordained and consecrated by God Himself, and by Him anointed.

Martin Luthe

If I am not for myself, who is for me But if I am for my own self only, what am I, and if not now, when.

Rabbi Hillel

I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After - Life spell, And by and by my Soul returned to me, And answered I Myself am Heaven and Hell.

Omar Khayym

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil aphorism 78

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

Niels Boh

Once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath - Breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Thamas De Quincey

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

George Bernard Shaw

Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some definite work dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your own individuality.

Henri Frdric Amiel

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

W. S. Maugham, Of Human Bondage

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself lying to others is relatively an exception.

Hietzsche

If you seek yourself,... you rob the lens of its transparency.... You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency, your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely as a means.

Dag Hammarskjld

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

Thomas Carlyle

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)

Working with children with autism has provided me with an opportunity to see the world in a different way. I see them strive to overcome obstacles and persevere, and learn to persevere myself. They are my inspiration.

Clay Aiken

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.

Ralph Nade

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

Stephen King

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.

Thomas a Kempis

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.

Edith Hamilton