Oneself Quotes - Page 33

• If to talk to oneself when alone is folly, it must be doubly unwise to listen to oneself in the presence of others.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Conversation, Folly, Ifs

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.80, Shambhala Publications

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• In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Humanity, Abstract, Humanitarianism

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• One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Judging, Seeing

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky's Collections”, p.32, 谷月社

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• Your discovery, as best as I can determine, is that there is an alternative which no one has hit upon. It is that one finding oneself in one of life's critical situations need not after all respond in one of the traditional ways. No. One may simply default. Pass. Do as one pleases, shrug, turn on one's heel and leave. Exit. Why after all need one act humanly?

  Walker Percy

  Discovery, May, Way

  Walker Percy (1988). “The moviegoer”

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• The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.

  Walker Percy

  Time, Lying, Past

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lancelot”, p.46, Open Road Media

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• How to live simply? It is a big question. Let the answer come into the empty space that one must create in oneself. Trying to live simply is not the way - we don't know how. Trying to fix it is filling the space with activity, when what is needed is to empty oneself and allow an answer to appear.

  Michel de Salzmann

  Space, Trying, Answers

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• Most traditional methods of working on oneself are mostly pain centered. People get to repeat over and over their painful emotions without knowing how to use the body's own inherently positive direction and force.

  Eugene Gendlin

  Inspirational, Positive, Pain

  "Secrets Your Body May Not be Sharing" by Marilyn Harding, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 10, 2017.

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• To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, Men, Self

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Fashion, Ambition, Wish

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The essays of Montaigne”

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• The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

  Andre Maurois

  Spring, Real, Writing

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• After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

  Marcel Proust

  Age, Certain, Obvious

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• Every duty is a charge, but the charge of oneself is the root of all others.

  Mencius

  Responsibility, Roots, Duty

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• Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Pride, Self, Reason

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• To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one s own conscience is to abandon mankind.

  Arthur Koestler

  Pieces, Honest, Silver

  Arthur Koestler (1955). “Darkness at noon”

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• Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs.

  Gore Vidal

  Sarcasm, Laughing, Way

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• To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

  Erica Jong

  Husband, Names, Wife

  FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Oct 16, 2012

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• The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself.

  Maurice Chevalier

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• Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared — this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hate, Miscellaneous, Maxims

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.52, Penguin

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• A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.

  Cyril Connolly

  Mistake, Reality, Interesting

  The Unquiet Grave Pt II

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• One has to see oneself through one's actions, works, and mind. Knowing the Self by the self is not as easy as writing that line. A #‎ yogi sees things in every movement he makes, maybe when practicing, maybe when teaching, or maybe when talking to people. You should have courage in your convictions and pursue what is dear to you all these years.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Teaching, Writing, Self

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• The essence of politics is to direct oneself to the group which wields power

  Steven Biko

  Essence, Groups, Direct

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• Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Hypocrisy, Evil

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• Most often it happens that one attributes to others only the feelings of which one is capable oneself.

  Andre Gide

  Feelings, Emotion, Attributes

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• To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.

  Andre Gide

  Truth, Saddened, Refuse

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• The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.

  May Sarton

  People, Culture, Looks

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.43, Open Road Media

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