quotations and passages about self

Compassion for others begins
with kindness to ourselves.

Pema Chödrön

The older I get, the more I realize the importance of exercising
the various dimensions of my body, soul, mind, and heart. Taken together,
these aspects give me a sense of wholeness. I want to be a whole human being
rather than one who limps on one leg because I don't know how to use
all of my parts. Intellectual, emotional, and physical activity are not
separate entities. Rather, they are dimensions of the same human being.

Robert Fulghum

It is healthy to accept myself as I am, to like myself, and to love myself. It is okay for me to accept a compliment or praise. Because I am just as deserving and worthy as anyone else, I may treat myself as well as I treat others, live my own life, and enjoy my life. There is a difference between being unselfish and being a martyr or a victim. There is a time for putting myself first so that I may take care of myself and my needs.

Jill Wolf

You have to be true to yourself,
but you have to be true to your best self,
not to the self that secretly thinks
you are better than other people.

Stephen Gaskin

One day, a woman found herself standing at Heaven's gate.
The angels' only question to her was, "Zusai, why weren't
you Zusai?" Within that simple question lies the heart of all
our soul work. If you are David, why aren't you fully David?
If you are Susan, why aren't you completely Susan? We are
here on Earth to become who we are meant to be.

Angeles Arrien

It looks like Angeles was a bit liberal with her use of
someone else's words, as the following passage indicates:

The Hasidic rabbi, Zuscha, was asked on his deathbed what he thought
the kingdom of God would be like. He replied, "I don't know.
But one thing I do know. When I get there I am not going
to be asked, 'Why weren't you Moses? Why weren't you
David?' I am only going to be asked, 'Why weren't
you Zuscha? Why weren't you fully you?'"

Alan Loy McGinnis

Resolve to be thyself; and know that those
Who find themselves, lose their misery.

Matthew Arnold

Each heart is a world.--
You find all within yourself that you find without.--
To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement
of these that ever loved or hated you.

Johann Kasper Lavater

Thomas a Kempis

Endeavor to be patient in bearing the defects and infirmities
of others, of what sort soever they be; for thou thyself also
hast many failings which must be borne with by others.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve
for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder,
because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty
better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion;
it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who
in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness
the independence of solitude.

When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do,
so long as what they want to do isn't dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsocial,
or obviously impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed;
doing what they don't want to do, they won't.

James Gould Cozzens

When you reread a classic you do
not see more in the book than you
did before; you see more in you
than there was before.

Clifton Fadiman

I was always looking outside
myself for strength and
confidence, but it comes from
within. It is there all the time.

Anna Freud

Andre Gide

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it.
What another would have said as well as you, do not say it;
written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that
which exists nowhere but in yourself--and there make yourself indispensable.

We all have choices to make about the quality of our presence and
how we will affect those around us. The quality of our presence is
dependent not on what we can or cannot “do” but on the essence
of who we are and how we relate to others. Becoming the presence
we would like to be is an intentional work. It grows while
we make peace with ourselves and with life.

Sallirae Henderson

Remember always that you have not only
the right to be an individual;
you have an obligation to be one.
You cannot make any useful contribution in life
unless you do this.

Eleanor
Roosevelt

All of us have to seek in our own way to make our own selves
more noble and to realize our own true worth.

Albert Schweitzer

People grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in.
But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope,
virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In solitude all great things are born.

Moses Harvey

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There's only one corner of the universe
you can be certain of improving,
and that's your own self.

Aldous Huxley

We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves strong.
The amount of work is the same.

Carlos Castaneda

The person who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon him or herself,
and not upon other people, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.

Plato

Be yourself and think for yourself;
and while your conclusions may not be infallible,
they will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you.

Elbert Hubbard

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves.
For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are,
by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to chance.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Being bored is an insult to oneself.

Jules Renard

You and I can profit by asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through
the lens of my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a friend?
Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly beautiful
and unique person that I am? Or do I play the destructive "comparison game"?
What verdict does the juror of my mind pass on me:
"good at heart" or "guilty on all counts"?

John Powell, S.J.

Don't compromise yourself.
You are all you've got.

Janis Joplin

You've got to believe deep inside yourself that you're destined
to do great things.

Joe Paterno

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

Jimmy Stewart

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

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

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

Miguel de Cervantes

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

Appius Claudius

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

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

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

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

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

Fritz Muliar

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

Carl Jung

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

Sarah Grand

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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