self
2
- self 3
- self 4
- self 5
|
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
|
|
|
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.
Thomas
a Kempis
|
|
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.
Andre
Gide
|
|
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.
|
|
|
Resolve
to be thyself; and know that those
Who find themselves, lose their misery.
Matthew Arnold |
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
|
|
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 |
|
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
And
another version of the same story:
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
|
|
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.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson |
|
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
|
|
I
was always looking outside
myself for strength and
confidence,
but it comes from
within. It is there all the time.
Anna
Freud |
|
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 |
|
|
self
2
- self 3
- self 4
- self 5
|
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
|
|
We
either make ourselves miserable,
or we make
ourselves
strong. The amount of work is the same.
Carlos Castaneda |
|
We are more than
we imagine ourselves to be. It's what we tell our children,
our parents, our friends. But how often do we tell it to
ourselves? And if we
do, how often do we prove it? How often doe we challenge
ourselves
to do something new?
Veronica Chambers. |
|
To
have a “self” means we are self-centered. Being
self-centered—and
therefore opposing ourselves to external things—we are anxious and
worried about ourselves. We bristle quickly when the external
environment
opposes us; we are easily upset. And being self-centered, we are
often
confused. This is how most of us experience our lives.
Although we are not acquainted with the opposite of a self (no-self),
let’s
try to think what the life of no-self might be. No-self doesn’t
mean
disappearing off the planet or not existing. It is neither being
self-centered
nor other-centered, but just centered. A life of no-self is
centered on no
particular thing, but on all things—that is, it is nonattached—so
the
characteristics of a self cannot appear. We are not anxious, we
are not
worried, we do not bristle easily, we are not easily upset, and, most
of all,
our lives do not have a basic tenor of confusion. And thus to be
no-self is
joy. Not only that; no-self, because it opposes nothing,
Charlotte Joko Beck
Everyday
Zen: Love and Work |
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
|
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
|
|
|
self
2
- self 3
- self 4
- self 5
|
The most
comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving
for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be
emotionally sincere,
to be able to put the whole of oneself into one's
feelings, one's work, one's beliefs.
Karen Horney
|
|
Don't
compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
Janis
Joplin
|
|
Some people feel they cannot
survive without the support, approval, or love
of another person. They decide who that person is and then live
for him or
her. Sometimes we choose a parent, but it can also be a spouse,
a friend,
or a child.
You choose dependence because it seems safer. When
children were not
protected by their parents, they seek protection as adults. They
want to be
treated like children. You are taught to be dependent by parents
or spouses
who prefer control to equality.
You may feel worthless, so you use others to remind you
of your value. You
allow them to be the measure of your worth.
See if you are choosing to let someone else live your
life. Then think about
what you really want to do. What you want is at least as
important as what
someone else wants for you, and it's much more likely to bring you
happiness.
Jennifer James
Success Is the Quality of Your Journey
|
|
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
|
|
Self-acceptance
begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents
and
siblings and other important people. Your own level of
self-acceptance
is determined largely by how well you feel you
are accepted by the
important people in your life. Your attitude
toward yourself is determined
largely by the attitudes that you
think other people have toward you.
When you believe that other
people think highly of you, your level of
self-acceptance and
self-esteem goes straight up. The best way
to
build a healthy personality involves understanding
yourself and
your feelings.
Brian Tracy
|
|
Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our
life is
not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success,
popularity,
and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive
quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger
temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the
voices
that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and
power
are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however,
is
self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as
soon
as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking,
"Well,
that proves once again that I am a nobody." . . . [My dark side
says,] I am
no good. . . I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and
abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life
because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the
"Beloved." Being
the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.
Henri J.M. Nouwen |
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
A lot of my clients
say they don't deserve to mope about their sad little
memories while children are starving in India. I say that just
because
your broken arm isn't as serious as someone else's gut wound, that
doesn't mean your injury isn't excruciating or doesn't require
attention.
If you want to help the Indian children, or make the world a better
place
in any other way, you have to start by becoming whole yourself.
Martha Beck
Finding
Your Own North Star |
|
The feeling that "I am
enough" does not mean that I have nothing to learn,
nothing further to achieve, and nowhere to grow to. It means
that I accept
myself, that I am not on trial in my own eyes, that I value and
respect
myself. This is not an act of indulgence but of courage.
Nathaniel
Branden
Self-Esteem
Every Day |
|
Being bored is an insult to
oneself.
Jules Renard |
|
I
would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the
encumbrances I acquire each day. . . . The most difficult thing to
let go is my self, that self which, coddled and cozened,
becomes
smaller as it becomes heavier. I don't understand how and why
I come to be only as I lose myself, but I know
from long experience that this is so.
Madeline L'Engle |
|
We
experiment with different personalities as children
and
adolescents to see how our audience responds,
but then we
tend to stop changing and settle into
the safety of one being,
one person. The
personality we end up with is, for most of us,
not
one we have freely chosen but one that has been
imposed
on us. We chose it out of necessity,
as a survival mechanism.
If you want to be
happier and have a more fulfilling, authentic
life,
you must be willing to begin experimenting
again. You
cannot change your life and remain
the same person. Remember
the warning,
"Those who seek to save their lives will lose
them,
and those who are willing to lose their lives
will save them."
You
have to be willing to lose your untrue self in order
to change
and become your true self. Most
people do plan to make some
changes--later.
They say, "When I retire. . .," "When
I have the
money. . .," "When this or
that. . . ." When people tell me what
they are going to do in the future, I respond,
"Why don't you
start rehearsing and practicing
now?"
Bernie
Siegel
Prescriptions
for Living
|
|
Myself
Edgar Guest
I have to live with myself and so
I want to be fit for myself to know.
I want to be able as days go by,
always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don’t want to stand with the setting sun
and hate myself for the things I have done.
I don’t want to keep on a closet shelf
a lot of secrets about myself
and fool myself as I come and go
into thinking no one else will ever know
the kind of person I really am,
I don’t want to dress up myself in sham.
I want to go out with my head erect
I want to deserve all people’s respect;
but here in the struggle for fame and wealth
I want to be able to like myself.
I don’t want to look at myself and know
I am bluster and bluff and empty show.
I never can hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see;
I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself and so,
whatever happens I want to be
self respecting and conscience free.
|
|
|
|
|
|