more quotations and passages on self

Everything that irritates us about
others can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves.

Carl Jung

Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving
irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone
else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and
is not up to you, what is and is not your responsibility.

Nathaniel Branden

There must be a place where hopes and dreams are nurtured, and that
place is only within ourselves. A place to clean the grime of life, a place
that waits for us to stay and look inside that we might see the truth.

Cliff Robertson

Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable.
You stick your head into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die.
Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you look outside the stable
to lift your head and be your own creature.

Frank Herbert

Most of us do not like to look inside ourselves for the same
reason we don't like to open a letter that has bad news.

Fulton J. Sheen

So many brilliant and gifted people squander their gifts because they lack
the humility of self-understanding. When we think we know it all, we miss
the point. When we think we know everything about ourselves, we show our
ignorance and our arrogance. The wonder of human beings is that we are constructed in such a way that we can spend our entire lives exploring our
inner universe and its connection to the universe as a whole and still barely
scratch the surface.
We are a wonder for us to behold.

Anne Wilson Schaef

Many people's misery is a result of the way that they see themselves,
the way that other people have told them they are for so long. What
they don't seem to realize is that the other people have a very limited
view, a limited way of seeing the world, and when they tell anyone
anything about themselves, they're bound to have
very incomplete information.

tom walsh

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul,
a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice. . . .
Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power.
It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is radiant.

T.R. Kelly

People go forth to wonder at the height of mountains, the huge waves of the sea,
the broad flow of the rivers, the extent of the ocean, the course of the stars--
and forget to wonder at themselves.

St. Augustine

You have choice. You can select
joy over despair. You can select
happiness over tears. You can select
action over apathy. You can select
growth over stagnation. You can select
you. And you can select life. And it's
time that people tell you you're not
at the mercy of forces greater than
yourself. You are, indeed,
the greatest force for you.

Leo Buscaglia

People often say that this or that person has not yet found him or herself.
But the self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.

Thomas Szasz

I often hear people say "I have to find myself."
What they really mean is "I have to make myself."
Life is an endlessly creative experience, and we are
making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.

Kent Nerburn

Deep in the soul, below pain, below all the distraction of life, is a silence
vast and grand--an infinite ocean of calm, which nothing can disturb;
nature's own exceeding peace, which "passes understanding." That
which we seek with passionate longing, here and there, upward
and outward; we find at last within ourselves.

C.M.C.

You owe no one as much as you owe yourself. You owe to yourself the action that opens for you the doors to the goodness, the variety, and the excitement of effort and success, of battle and victory. Making payment on this debt to yourself is the exact opposite of selfishness. You can best pay your debt to society, that has made you what you are, by being just yourself with all your might and as a matter of course. . . . You fulfill the promise that lies latent within you by keeping your promises to yourself.

David Harold Fink

How can you develop a self-concept linked to your untapped potential?
First, you can decide on the kind of life you would like to lead in ten
or fifteen years. This will give you a standard for making decisions
about current activities and will reduce the inclination to compare yourself
unfavorably to others. Learn to ask, "How would I handle this situation
were I the person I hope to become?" And then take action in line with your vision.

Ari Kiev

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen
to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

Rollo May

When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.

Shunryu Suzuki

Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.

Rebecca West

Our opinion of people depends less upon what
we see in them than upon what they make
us see in ourselves.

Sarah Grand

People shy away from nothing as from a rendezvous with themselves --which makes the entertainment industry what it is.

Fritz Muliar

When mind soars in pursuit of things conceived in space, it pursues emptiness.
But when we dive deep within ourselves, we experience the fullness of existence.

Meher Baba

People of understanding have lost nothing, if they have--if they own--themselves.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be--to belong to--oneself.

Michel de Montaigne

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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual;
and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true vigor and strength.
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects,
but help from within invariably invigorates.

Samuel Smiles

Every person is the architect of his or her own fortune.

Appius Claudius

Make it thy business to know thyself,
which is the most difficult lesson in the world.

Miguel de Cervantes

The most important of all our perceptions is the way we perceive ourselves. There is a story in American Indian folklore that illustrates this truth very clearly. According to the legend, an Indian brave came upon an eagle's egg which had somehow fallen unbroken from an eagle's nest. Unable to find the nest, the brave put the egg in the nest of a prairie chicken, where it was hatched by a brooding mother hen. The fledgling eagle, with its proverbial strong eyes, saw the world for the first time. Looking at the other prairie chickens, he did what they did. He crawled and scratched at the earth, pecked here and there for stray grains and husks, now and then rising in a flutter a few feet and then descending again. He accepted and imitated the daily routine of the earthbound prairie chickens. And he spent most of his life this way.

Then, as the story continues, one day an eagle flew over the brood of prairie chickens. The now-aging eagle, who still thought he was a prairie chicken, looked up in awed admiration as the great bird soared through the skies. "What is that?" he gasped in astonishment. One of the older prairie chickens replied, "I have seen that one before. That is the eagle, the proudest, strongest, and most magnificent of all the birds. But don't you ever dream that you could be like that. You're like the rest of us and we are prairie chickens." And so, shackled by this belief, the eagle lived and died thinking he was a prairie chicken.

Our lives are shaped by the way we perceive ourselves. The all-important attitudes by which we perceive and evaluate ourselves tell us who we are and describe the appropriate behavior for such a person. We live and die according to our self-perception.

John Powell

You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it,
not just develop a bag of tricks. Always be yourself.

Jimmy Stewart

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness
of your intuition. . . what you'll discover will be wonderful.
What you'll discover will be yourself.

Alan Alda

You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what
nature gave you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing
only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your
experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better
or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse,
you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

Dale Carnegie

Nobody is so miserable as the person who longs to be somebody and
something other than the person he or she is in body and mind.

Angelo Patri

This self should never be lost sight of. It is the one thing of supreme importance,
the greatest factor even in the life of the greatest service. Being always and
necessarily precedes doing; having always and necessarily precedes giving. But
this law also holds: That when there is the being, it is all the more increased
by the doing; when there is the having, it is all the more increased by the giving.
Keeping to oneself dwarfs and stultifies. Hoarding brings loss: using brings even
greater gain. In brief, the more we are, the more we can do; the more we have,
the more we can give. The most truly successful, the most powerful and valuable life,
then, is the life that is first founded upon this great, immutable law of love and
service, and that then becomes supremely self-centred--supremely self-centred
that it may become all the more supremely unself-centred; in other words, the life
that looks well to self, that there may be the ever greater self,
in order that there may be the ever greater service.

Ralph Waldo Trine

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self;
of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

Friedrich Nietzsche

You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You've
got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get
interesting. Your problem is you're afraid to acknowledge your own
beauty. You're too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You'd
rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more
with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and
I look and I see your beauty, even if you don't.

Ram Dass

Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other
persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself.

Carl Jung

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