Oneself Quotes - Page 8

• Yes, of course, the whole idea is utterly inane, but to let its predictable inanities blind you to its truly fabulous and breathtaking aspects is to do both oneself and the genre a disservice.

  Alan Moore

  Ideas, Fabulous, Breathtaking

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• Be a light unto oneself

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Light

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2017). “Commentaries On Living: Third Series”, p.208, Krishnamurti Foundation America

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• the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up....moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable reactions to what life has dealt....even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Giving Up, Believe

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• Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

  Simone Weil

  Humility, Compassion, True Humility

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• It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.

  Ayn Rand

  Running, Kindness, Eye

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.781, Penguin

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• When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Age, Able, Should

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• ...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Hands, Personality, Might

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• I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes... in a total misapprehension of character at some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.

  Jane Austen

  Mistake, Stupid, Character

  Jane Austen (2015). “Sense and Sensibility: Ignatius Critical Editions”, p.92, Ignatius Press

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• There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.

  P.D. Ouspensky

  Dream, Remember, Possibility

  P. D. Ouspensky (2012). “A New Model of the Universe”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent.

  Cornel West

  Beautiful, Self Worth, Views

  FaceBook post by Dr. Cornel West from Jun 16, 2011

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• Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared

  Ian Fleming

  Love, Appreciation, Mistake

  Ian Fleming (1953). “Casino Royale”

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• To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.

  Henrik Ibsen

  War, Writing, Heart

  " Richard Eyre: In the spirit of Ibsen" by Richard Eyre, www.theguardian.com. September 20, 2013.

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• The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the other than it is to drive too hard and crash.

  Garth Stein

  Race, Long, Crash

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• How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. . . . Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. (158-159)

  Michael Shermer

  Spiritual, Thinking, Doe

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• I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Mistake, Dignity, Made

  Remains of the Day (1989)

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• True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one's service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them.

  J. Oswald Sanders

  Greatness, Men, Giving

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• The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Patience, Healing, Would Be

  Hazrat Inayat Khan (1963). “The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: The Sufi Teachings”, p.93, Library of Alexandria

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• Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Wrestling, Careers, Mind

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• For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

  Zadie Smith

  Salt, Lost, Boiling

  Zadie Smith (2003). “White Teeth”, p.37, Vintage

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• I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom.

  Douglas Coupland

  Lying, Believe, Emotional

  Douglas Coupland (2012). “Life After God”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

  Billy Collins

  Writing, Voice, Style

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• For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.

  Steven Pressfield

  Selfish, Victory, Skins

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• I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.

  Nicole Krauss

  Mother, Use, Madness

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.257, W. W. Norton & Company

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• For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

  Virginia Woolf

  Difficulty, Communicate, Supreme

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2279, Delphi Classics

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• It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.

  Francis Crick

  Fog, Ideas, Feelings

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