Oneself Quotes - Page 23

• One must not permit oneself excesses, except with persons whom one wishes soon to leave.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Wish, Excess, Permit

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• I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

  May Sarton

  Light, Sloth, Important

  May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.70, Open Road Media

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• Desire is the key to motivation. It is the key to develop a healthy personality and a positive attitude towards oneself and others.

  Amit Abraham

  Inspirational, Motivation, Attitude

  New Dawn Press, Incorporated, Amit Abraham (2004). “Personality Development Through Positive Thinking”, p.9, Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd

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• Better to lose oneself in action than to wither in despair.

  Kate Morton

  Despair, Action, Loses

  Kate Morton (2010). “The Kate Morton Collection: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden”, p.367, Simon and Schuster

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• Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself.

  Patrick McGoohan

  Answers, Prison, Burden

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• One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.

  George Orwell

  Lonely, Being Sad, Atheism

  George Orwell, Peter Davison (2013). “George Orwell: A Life in Letters”, p.448, W. W. Norton & Company

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• To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Doe, World, Seems

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• Lovers and mystics are familiar with this sense of grandeur, this taste of joy - in abandoning oneself to the will of others.

  Anne Desclos

  Joy, Kinky, Taste

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• True victory is victory over oneself.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Art, Victory, True Victory

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• To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phoney things. Blinded by it. Or I can show some really fancy movement. But to experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that is very hard to do.

  Bruce Lee

  Art, Lying, Cocky

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• To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit.

  Saint Augustine

  Lying, Order, Modesty

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• Those who seek liberation for themselves alone cannot become fully enlightened. Though it may be said that one who is not already liberated cannot liberate others, the very process of forgetting oneself to help others is in itself liberating

  Muso Soseki

  Helping Others, May, Awakening

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• My doctrine means that I must identify myself with life, with everything that lives, that I must share the majesty of life in the presence of God. The sum-total of this life is God. .. Man is not at peace with himself until he has become like unto God. The endeavor to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realisation. This self-realisation is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures... to be a real devotee is to realise oneself. Self-realisation is not something apart.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Real, Ambition, Mean

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• The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny himself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God.

  Innocent of Alaska

  Christian, Jesus, Giving Up

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• The first beneficiary of compassion is always oneself. When compassion, or warmheartedness, arises in us and our focus shifts away from our own narrow self-interest, it is as if we open an inner door. It reduces fear, boosts confidence and brings us inner strength. By reducing distrust, it opens us to others and brings us a sense of connection to others, and sense of purpose and meaning in life.

  Dalai Lama

  Strength, Confidence, Buddhist

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• Meditation is enjoying oneself, just sitting silently doing nothing: happy, joyous without any reason, because all reasons come from outside. You meet a beautiful woman and you are happy, or you meet a beautiful man and you are happy - but the meditator is simply happy. His happiness has no reason from the outside world; his happiness wells up within himself.

  Rajneesh

  Happiness, Beautiful, Men

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• What is a memory? Not a storehouse, not a trunk in the attic, but an instrument that constantly refines the past into a narrative, accessible and acceptable to oneself.

  Stanley Kauffmann

  Memories, Past, Narrative

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• A thing that many young fellows don't seem to realism at first is that success depends on oneself and not on a kindly fate, nor on the interest of powerful friends.

  Robert Baden-Powell

  Friendship, Success, Powerful

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• Understanding others is knowledge, Understanding oneself is enlightenment; Conquering others is power, Conquering oneself is strength.

  Laozi

  Strength, Knowledge, Understanding

  Laozi (1990). “Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way”, Bantam

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• Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.

  Edsger Dijkstra

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• One may always attempt as much insight, love, freedom of thought and expression, justice and tolerance as possible for oneself and the very few people who share one's truest life. To be a 'free lord' in secret is better than being a public slave, a willing accomplice of repression and injustice.

  Hakim Bey

  Expression, People, Justice

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• Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.

  Herbert Read

  Real, Goal, Simplicity

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• What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Kindness, Mean, Compassion

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• Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.

  Lauren Willig

  Morning, Brother, Believe

  Lauren Willig (2010). “The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas”, p.65, Penguin

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• Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Art, Perfect, Effort

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