Oneself Quotes - Page 34

• Better not be a hero than work oneself up into heroism by shouting lies.

  George Santayana

  Lying, Hero, Shouting

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion”

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• Learning to forgive is much more useful than merely picking up a stone and throwing it at the object of one's anger, the more so when the provocation is extreme. For it is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.

  Dalai Lama

  Forgiveness, Adversity, Forgiving

  His Holiness The Dalai Lama (1998). “Path To Tranquility”, p.17, Penguin Books India

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• ... but one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: "I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved.

  Alfred de Musset

  Love, Looks, Sometimes

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• To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.

  Edwin Markham

  Literature, Sides, Things To Do

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• Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.

  Albert Camus

  Freedom, Thinking, Belief

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.57, Vintage

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• The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.

  John Fowles

  Optimistic, Simple, Republic

  John Fowles (1977). “Daniel Martin”, Jonathan Cape

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• One didn't really believe till one saw it demonstrated that giving oneself up completely to art, to emotion, to enjoyment, without planning for the future or counting the cost, produced dreadful disabilities and bankruptcies later.

  Edmund Wilson

  Art, Believe, Giving

  Edmund Wilson (1997). “The Edmund Wilson Reader”

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• It was not really possible to understand oneself, let alone another human being.

  Arthur Miller

  Self, Humans, Human Beings

  Arthur Miller (2013). “Timebends: A Life”, p.345, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery --even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness --is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.

  Andre Breton

  Betrayal, Mean, Justice

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• In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?

  Ruth Benedict

  Baby, Children, Book

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.126, Transaction Publishers

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• Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time.

  Arnold Bennett

  Memories, Casting Off, Use

  Arnold Bennett (2000). “The Old Wives' Tale”, p.577, Chicago Review Press

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• To be a gentleman is to be oneself, all of a seam, on camera and off.

  Murray Kempton

  Gentleman, Cameras, And Off

  Murray Kempton (1972). “America comes of middle age: columns, 1950-1962”

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• One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fire, Earth, May

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1994). “Essential Turgenev”, p.162, Northwestern University Press

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• Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

  Walter Benjamin

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Walter Benjamin (1996). “Selected Writings: 1927-1934”, p.488, Harvard University Press

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• Most people believe that the Christian commandments, e.g. to love one's neighbor as oneself, are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Christian, Morning, Believe

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• An unforgiving nature reflects in your face. Holding negative energy drags down the facial muscles, puckers one's frown and causes lines around the mouth. Working daily on forgiveness (forgiving oneself as well as one's enemies) is the cheapest, most effective facelift in the whole wide world. All it requires is love and discipline.

  Sarah Miles

  Discipline, Forgiving, Enemy

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• For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child immediately sees through and deeply abhors. What it does mean is to be as entirely and simply taken up with the child as the child himself is absorbed by his life.

  Ellen Key

  Baby, Children, Taken

  Ellen Key (2016). “The century of the child”, p.54, Ellen Key

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• If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do is to study the words of those who were.

  Aldous Huxley

  Learning, Saint, Sage

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• Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer. . .

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Prayer, Thinking, Sometimes

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1992). “The Astonishing World: Essays”, Houghton Mifflin

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• To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Phones, Encounters, Events

  Nathaniel Branden (1998). “Nathaniel Brandens Self-Esteem Every Day: Reflections on Self-Esteem and Spirituality”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Wise, Journey, Hiking

  Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005). “Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness”, p.100, Hachette UK

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• ...a carefree letting go of oneself, not a caution, but a wise blindness.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Letting Go, Wise, Carefree

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• It is by extending oneself, by exercising some capacity previously unused that you come to a better knowledge of your own potential.

  Harold Bloom

  Exercise, Self, Capacity

  Harold Bloom (2001). “Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• One who has self-esteem esteems oneself because one knows the value of one's being as a singular yet universal expression of the highest value in the Kosmos-the Universal Self, also known as God, Kami, or Brahma, or by many other names.

  Yasuhiko Kimura

  Self Esteem, Expression, Names

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• Studying the Buddha way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is to shed the body-mind of oneself, and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.

  Dogen

  Self, Mind, Enlightenment

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