Top 1200 Self-Made Quotes & Sayings - Page 18

I'm not motivated by money or power or fame. In the end, it doesn't bring much happiness. The only thing that is driving me is self-satisfaction, self-validation.

Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

The most unhappy people in the world are the ones who live only for themselves. All that they do, they do only for their own sake. For these self- centered individuals, the most precious things in the world is their ‘self.’ Like a cancer that eats and destroys its own cells, the self-centered individual is slowly dying inwardly.

Self-management and self-control are the keys to advanced knowledge, and both are difficult to learn without a sense of your own cultural identity.

Most comedians want to be the architect of their own embarrassment. They have horrible self-esteem issues. I would rather push myself into the mud. I don't want to be pushed into the mud. I think that is probably true. I think most people struggle with self-acceptance. But comedians get a chance to self externalize.

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.

Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.

[Maigret] is terribly self-contained, not that I would ever wish him to be any more comic, particularly, but in the second film we've made you see he's a little more ironic from time to time. But as I say, that's just work in progress.

We're trying to give a young man life lessons - sacrifice, commitment, teamwork, self-confidence, self-esteem. That's what this sport does for kids.

To be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image - from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust.

Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.

In her presence, I was reminded again of why I was an anoretic: fear. Of my needs, for food, for sleep, for touch, for simple conversation, for human contact, for love. I was an anoretic because I was afraid of being human. Implicit in human contact is the exposure of the self, the interaction of the selves. The self I'd had, once upon a time, was too much. Now there was no self at all. I was a blank.

The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.

Self-government means self support.

I'm a Larry David fan, right? And it seems to me that Jewish history from the Talmud on has been a self-deprecating, self-critical kind of humor.

Any kind of self-concern, including a self-concern that leads one to shut down and give up (as, for example, a fear to fail) is itself a kind of pride. Feeling depressed that I am worse than others is as much an act of pride as feeling myself better. Both are acts of self-concern.

Being in a band is not about reality - it's a bit of a fantasy. I can't go on stage as my ordinary self and just play - I've got to become my 'superhuman self.'

Understand this if nothing else: spiritual freedom and oneness with the Tao are not randomly bestowed gifts, but the rewards of conscious self-transformation and self-evolution.

Self worship is different from self love.

Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought.

I lack self-confidence. I don't know whether I shall ever get it. Perhaps it is better to be unsure of your self, as I am. But it is very tiring.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication in the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.

This covenant energy holds and mirrors the pact that we have made of self-fulfillment for ourselves in this lifetime, and that covenant energy holds the full reflection of our promise within its framework.

Habits start out as off-hand remarks, magazine advertisements, friendly hints, experiments - like flimsy cobwebs with little substance. They grow with practice, layer by layer - thought on thought - fused with imagination and emotion until they become like steel cables - unbreakable. Habits are attitudes which grow from cobwebs into cables that control your everyday life. Self-discipline alone can make or break a habit. Self discipline alone can effect a permanent change in your self image and in you. Self-discipline achieves goals. Self discipline is not 'doing without,' it is 'doing within.'

Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances.

The rewards are profound. Shadow-work enables us to alter our self-sabotaging behavior so that we can achieve a more self-directed life.

The self-esteem of western women is founded on physical being (body mass index, youth, beauty). This creates a tricky emphasis on image, but the internalized locus of self-worth saves lives. Western men are very different. In externalizing the source of their self-esteem, they surrender all emotional independence. (Conquest requires two parties, after all.) A man cannot feel like a man without a partner, corporation, team. Manhood is a game played on the terrain of opposites. It thus follows that male sense of self disintegrates when the Other is absent.

It is a pity to make a mystery out of what should most easily be understood. There is nothing occult about the thought that all things maybe made well or made ill. A work of art is a well-made thing - that is all. It may be a well-made statue of a well-made chair or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself that is good. Most simply and generally, Art may be thought of as "The Well Doing of What Needs Doing."

Self-forgiveness is essential to self-healing.

Marxism teaches that exploitation and degradation somehow produce resistance and revolution. It's been hard to say why. What I've learned from women's experience with sexuality is that exploitation and degradation produce grateful complicity in exchange for survival. They produce self-loathing to the point of extinction of self, and it is respect for self that makes resistance conceivable.

I got a bike - a fixed-gear with bright blue wheels, custom-made to my specifications. I am a San Francisco techno-hipster, so this selection was a bit of a self-caricature. But sometimes the predictable thing turns out to be the best thing, too, and you can't let that stop you.

Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another.

... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.

God did not create a human family made up of segregated, dissociated, mutually independent members. No; he would have them all united by the bond of total love of Him and consequent self-dedication to assisting each other to maintain that bond intact.

Self-doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is implicit in the self that the self will automatically evolve if you can dissolve it. It re-patterns itself after archetypal formations that exist deep within the mind.

What would it be like to communicate from a part of your own self that is absolutely free from self-consciousness, that is fearless, uncorrupted, and passionately interested in the truth?.

Homeschoolers are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers. They are self-motivated and self-directed, independent-minded and creative. They are not content to turn their education of their children over to the government.

The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.

Self care isn't selfish. It's self esteem.

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?

Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.

Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.

Those who have chosen the path of least resistance in life, who cannot bear to bring themselves to make a stern value-judgment in criticism of their own most intimate feelings, achieve what they deserve: not self-understanding but radical self-superficialization, not a discovered but a self-ascribed identity that explains nothing, reveals nothing, means nothing, and ultimately accomplishes nothing culturally or intellectually.

Once you accept and rejoice in your authenticity, you begin to see things as YOU are. You begin to see the authentic self is the Soul made visible. Godspeed on your journey to wholeness.

What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.

Major theme of the book ["Hotels of North America"], from my point of view: what is persona, what is self, in the digital sphere, and/or what is the effect of it on self in a prolonged interaction.

He who made thee is made in thee. He is made in thee through whom you were made.... Give milk, O mother, to him who is our food; give milk to the bread that comes down from heaven.

You are the Self, that perfect immutable Self. Nothing else exists. Nothing else ever existed. Nothing else will ever exist. There is only one Self and you are That. Rejoice!

There's a lot to be said for being in a room with a casting agent or a director. There are things you can't really replicate when you're self-taping and there's the bonus of having someone to direct you, which is extremely helpful. The benefit of self-taping is, I suppose, being on your own clock. It's certainly more relaxing to self-tape than to audition with someone in the flesh but I don't know if it's necessarily better.

Perhaps we shall learn, as we pass through this age, that the 'other self" is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look into a mirror.

The integration of the Negro into American society is one of the most exciting challenges to self-development and self-mastery that any nation of people ever faced.

"You are pure and perfect, and what you call sin does not belong to you". Sins are low degrees of Self-manifestation; manifest your Self in a high degree.

Translate all self-judgments into self-empathy.

It's supposed to be fun. You should come to work every day and not have insecurities and not be self-conscious; just be your wonderful, perfect self.

I" cannot reach fulfillment without "thou." The self cannot be self without other selves. Self-concern without other-concern is like a tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean.

Fear comes from personal self-acceptance and not the self.

God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.