A Quote by James Baldwin

The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

James Baldwin

Quote Topics

Actually Always Appears Between Distance Extremely Hard Maintain Mocking Oneself Play Role Tends Trap Watchful World

Quote Author

James Baldwin
American - Writer
August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987

To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.

Simone de Beauvoir

What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web.

David Abram

The world somehow is always the same. The only thing that can improve is the individual life. One can live a good life. One can give life a meaning. Either by drinking oneself to death or by painting oneself to death or by loving oneself to death.

Odd Nerdrum

The soul's true greatness is in loving God and in humbling oneself in His presence, completely forgetting oneself and believing oneself to be nothing; because the Lord is great, but He is well-pleased only with the humble; He always opposes the proud.

Mary Faustina Kowalska

It occurs to me that at the beginning one works passionately to learn photography. This takes years, and the craft is usually formed during this period. Then as time passes one finds oneself more in the role of serving the medium... Then, as in the example of several masters that I have been privileged to know personally, it appears that by having devoted oneself totally to the medium, one becomes photography.

Ralph Gibson

Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human.

Andre Comte-Sponville

In any triangle, who is the betrayer, who the unseen rival, and who the humiliated lover? Oneself, oneself, and no one but oneself!

Erica Jong

Religion promotes the divine discontent within oneself, so that one tries to make oneself a better person and draw oneself closer to God.

Cyril Cusack

To begin with oneself but not to end with onself. To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself.

Martin Buber

To be rich is to give; to give nothing is to be poor; to live is to love; to love nothing is to be dead; to be happy is to devote oneself; to exist only for oneself is to damn oneself, and to exile oneself to hell.

Eliphas Levi

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.

Laozi

It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.

Sydney J. Harris

It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky..but to express oneself honestly not lying to oneself, now that my friend is very hard to do

Bruce Lee

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.