Self Inflicted Quotes

• Troubles hurt the most when they prove self-inflicted.

  Sophocles

  Hurt, Self, Trouble

  Sophocles (2012). “Oedipus the King”, p.65, University of Chicago Press

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• I have these accidents, these mistakes, these self-inflicted wounds, and then I tear my head to shreds about it for days.

  John Mayer

  Mistake, Self, Tears

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• Courage is a self-inflicted quality that gains momentum every time you try it.

  Jeffrey Gitomer

  Self, Quality, Trying

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• All pressure is self-inflicted. It's what you make of it or how you let it rub off on you.

  Sebastian Coe

  Motivational, Self, Track

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• All honor's wounds are self-inflicted.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Inspirational, Character, Self

  Andrew Carnegie (1933). “Miscellaneous Writings of Andrew Carnegie”

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• Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds.

  Thomas Keating

  Names, Self, Childhood

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• It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

  Arthur Helps

  Spiritual, Loss, Self

  Sir Arthur Helps (1857). “Companions of My Solitude”, p.28

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• Ultimately though, we are not responsible for another's happiness. The unhappy person almost always suffers from self-inflicted pain.

  James Dillehay

  Pain, Self, Unhappy Person

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• Self-inflicted misery smirks under its crown of thorns.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Smirk, Crowns

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• We worried about competitors, but it was an unreasonable fear. As a friend once pointed out, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted.

  Philip Greenspun

  Self, Worried, Gunshots

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• If you allow your mind to carp at all and sundry, it will turn against itself: the majority of our sorrows are self-inflicted.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Inspirational, Life, Self

  Rabindranath Tagore, Krishna Dutta, Andrew Robinson (1997). “Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore”, p.47, Cambridge University Press

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• You're the only one that can put pressure on yourself... No one else can put pressure on you. It's self-inflicted. For me, I just want to go out and play football.

  Maurice Jones-Drew

  Football, Self, Play

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• The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

  Henry Louis Gates

  Children, Reading, School

  Henry Louis Gates Jr. (2012). “The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader”, p.546, Basic Books

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• The nerves of the skin send pain signals to the brain to warn us of the danger from and impending injury. In the case of self-inflicted wounding, this pain acts as the body's own defense mechanism to stop one from proceeding in the effort at physical injury. If a person proceeds despite the pain, that means that he or she is motivated by something stronger than the pain, something that makes him or her capable of ignoring or enduring it.

  Steven Levenkron

  Pain, Mean, Self

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• Humanity as a whole has already gone through unimaginable suffering, mostly self-inflicted, the culmination of which was the 20th century with its unspeakable horrors. This collective suffering has brought upon a readiness in many human beings for the evolutionary leap that is spiritual awakening.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Self, Humanity

  Source: www.qiwithoutborders.org

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• Control cannot be called conscience until we are able to take it inside us and make it our own, until--in spite of the fact that the wrongs we have done or imagined will never be punished or known--we nonetheless feel that the clutch in the stomach, that chill upon the soul, that self-inflicted misery called guilt.

  Judith Viorst

  Self, Soul, Guilt

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.131, Simon and Schuster

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• And what of regrets? I shall live with them. I shall accept my regrets as part of my life, to be numbered among my self-inflicted wounds. But I will not endlessly gaze at them. I shall allow the memories to prod me into doing better with those still living. And I shall allow them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope for that Great Day coming when we can all throw ourselves into each other's arms and say, "I'm sorry."

  Nicholas Wolterstorff

  Sorry, Memories, Regret

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• I love to read. My education is self-inflicted

  Groucho Marx

  Self, Love To Read

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• The main cause of poverty is self-inflicted fear and ignorance.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Ignorance, Self, Poverty

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• Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastated our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us. An institutionalized counterculture condemns individuality as archaic and depreciates intellectual values, even in the universities. (The Anatomy of Influence)

  Harold Bloom

  Dark, Past, Counter Culture

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• The heartbreak of runaway corruption, abuse of power and indefensible criminality by our government and media should, must inspire all good we-the-people Americans to wake the hell up from the embarrassing self-inflicted curse of apathy and start demanding Constitutional accountability from our elected employees.

  Ted Nugent

  Heart, Self, Media

  "Ted Nugent on GOP: 'I pray to God they finally rediscover their scrotum'". Interview with Jared Boyd, www.al.com. July 20, 2016.

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• Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing

  Jay McInerney

  Suicide, Self Harm, Arms

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• Taken as a whole, Europe's share of world output is projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades. This is the competitiveness challenge - and much of our weakness in meeting it is self-inflicted. Complex rules restricting our labour markets are not some naturally occurring phenomenon.

  David Cameron

  Fall, Taken, Self

  "David Cameron's EU speech - full text". www.theguardian.com. January 23, 2013.

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• I believe that mediocrity is self-inflicted and that genius is self-bestowed.

  Walter Russell

  Believe, Self, Secret

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• It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball's wounds are self-inflicted.

  Bill Veeck

  Baseball, Attitude, Self

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