Self Quotes - Page 17

• A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily procession of love and duty.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Morning, Sacrifice, Night

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• Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Courage, Strong, Revenge

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• When can our brain's innate objectivity begin to flourish? Only when our inappropriate Self-centered subjectivity begins to dissolve.

  James H. Austin

  Objectivity, Brain, Subjectivity

  James H. Austin (2011). “Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen”, p.12, MIT Press

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• Anger doesn't demand action. When you act in anger, you lose self-control.

  Joe Hyams

  Anger, Demand, Action

  Joe Hyams (2010). “Zen in the Martial Arts”, p.70, Bantam

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• Your true self is beyond either relying on others or avoiding them in order to know who you are.

  Kosho Uchiyama

  Order, Avoiding, Knows

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• To look for total satisfaction in oneself is a futile endeavor. Since everything changes from moment to moment, where can self and where can satisfaction be found? Everybody is unhappy simply because of unfilled desire. Everybody is looking for something that isn't available.

  Ayya Khema

  Unhappy, Desire, Looks

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• within that ageing outer shell we remain very much the same as we did in our late teens and early twenties.

  M.M. Kaye

  Age, Twenties, Teens

  M. M. Kaye (2015). “The Sun in the Morning”, p.19, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Do any of us understand ourselves? all the different selves that each of us is?

  Mary Louisa Molesworth

  Different

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• What I would like you always to do is what I try humbly to do myself, that is, never to say or to do anything which would wound the feelings or the self-respect of any human being, and to give special consideration to all who are in any way repressed.

  Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

  Giving, Feelings, Trying

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• Gaiety is forgetfulness of the self, melancholy is memory of the self: in that state the soul feels all the power of its roots, nothing distracts it from its profound homeland and the look that it casts upon the outer world is gently dismayed.

  Adrienne Monnier

  Memories, Roots, Profound

  Adrienne Monnier (1976). “The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier”, p.245, U of Nebraska Press

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• Once you've started down that road to self-discovery, no matter how treacherous the path before you, you can't turn back. The universe doesn't allow it.

  Lisa Unger

  Discovery, Matter, Path

  Lisa Unger (2010). “Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger: Beautiful Lies, Sliver of Truth, Black Out, Die for You”, p.332, Crown

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• Self-love knows no impediment.

  Lynda Obst

  Knows, Impediments, Self Love

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• Writing is the perfect balance between self-confidence and self-doubt, with a bit of self-delusion thrown in.

  Judith Kelman

  Writing, Self Confidence, Perfect

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• Oh! mothers aren't fair - I mean it's not fair of nature to weigh us down with them and yet expect us to be our own true selves. The handicap's too great. All those months, when the same blood's running through two sets of veins - there's no getting away from that, ever after. Take yours. As I say, does she need to open her mouth? Not she! She's only got to let it hang at the corners, and you reek, you drip with guilt.

  Henry Handel Richardson

  Mother, Running, Mean

  Henry Handel Richardson (pseud.) (1934). “The End of a Childhood”

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• self-possession is the ability to face without fear life in all its contradictions.

  Vivian Gornick

  Confidence, Faces, Contradiction

  Vivian Gornick (1978). “Essays in feminism”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• for me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform.

  Vivian Gornick

  Political, Feminism, Social Reform

  Vivian Gornick (1978). “Essays in feminism”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue. ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room.

  Vivian Gornick

  Loneliness, Writing, Empty Rooms

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• The idea that money brings power and independence is an illusion. What money usually brings is the need for more money - and there is a shabby and pathetic powerlessness that comes with that need. The inability to risk new lives, new work, new styles of thought and experience, is more often than not tied to the bourgeois fear of reducing one's material standard of living. That is, indeed, to be owned by possessions, to be governed by a sense of property rather than by a sense of self.

  Vivian Gornick

  Money, Ideas, Risk

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• Awareness of the self is more acutely at the heart of things than it has ever been before. On the foundation of self-awareness alone rest all our hopes for a new politics, a new society, a revitalized life. If we do not genuinely know ourselves, the void will now, at last, surely rise up to meet us.

  Vivian Gornick

  Heart, Foundation, Lasts

  Vivian Gornick (1978). “Essays in feminism”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• In a lifestyle where there are no boundaries, it becomes a challenge to find one's true self. If everything comes easily, there is no way to establish worth. And if nothing has real value, then there is no way to gauge satisfaction or accomplishment or contentment.

  Tami Hoag

  Real, Accomplishment, Challenges

  Tami Hoag (2007). “The Alibi Man”, p.265, Bantam

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• The most degrading of human passions is the fear of death. It tears away the restraints and the conventions which alone make social life possible to man; it reveals the brute in him which underlies them all. In the desperate hand-to-hand struggle for life there is no element of nobility. He who is engaged upon it throws aside honor, he throws aside self-respect, he throws aside all that would make victory worth having - he asks for nothing but bare life.

  Gertrude Bell

  Death, Struggle, Passion

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• The worst things weren't outside of you.

  Cynthia Voigt

  Worst, Worst Things

  Cynthia Voigt (2008). “Tree By Leaf”, p.229, Simon and Schuster

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• The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.

  Matilda Joslyn Gage

  Taken, Exercise, Opportunity

  Matilda Joslyn Gage (1998). “Woman, church and state: a historical account of the status of woman through the Christian ages, with reminiscences of the matriarchate”, Sky Carrier Pr

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• Woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself.

  Matilda Joslyn Gage

  Sacrifice, Development, May

  Matilda Joslyn Gage “Women, Church and State”, Library of Alexandria

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• I claim that every woman in this century and in our culture sphere who has ventured into male-dominated institutions - 'literature' and 'aesthetics' are such institutions - must have experienced the desire for self-destruction.

  Christa Wolf

  Desire, Males, Culture

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