Quotes About Self-worth

man is but an ugly caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you?—do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?" Villefort's

When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast to so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness.

There is no Indian so wretched as not to retain under his hut of bark a lofty idea of his personal worth;

While the natural instincts of democracy persuade the people to remove distinguished men from power, the latter are guided by no less an instinct to distance themselves from a political career, where it is so difficult for them to retain their complete autonomy or to make any progress without cheapening themselves.

When we set children against one another in contests—from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science "fairs" (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honor rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read—we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others.

We tell them how good they are and they light up, eager to please, and try to please us some more. These are the children we should really worry about.

To be human means to feel inferior.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

Other people's judgments were meaningless unless you allowed them to mean something.

It wasn't right to have someone charge into you your world without even asking, acting as if you were nothing more than an egg to be flipped and flopped, sunny-side up or scrambled, depending on the whims on whoever ran your life..._

To hell with them," Fanny remarked. Had her sister learned nothing at the Starling School? Other people's judgments were meaningless unless you allowed them to mean something.

She could even forget that she had once been considered the girl most likely to become somebody, when she'd turned out to be nobody in particular.

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure. As soon as you let go of it, pride shrinks to the size of a fly, but one that has no head, and no tail, and no wings with which to lift itself off the ground.

She never told anyone what he did to her on a nightly basis because she was afraid of him, but also because she was worth nothing to herself.

In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place.

Her father was outraged. "Now you sell your stories, how soon before you will sell yourself?

I have only had one better name than Santa Claus. And it was not Ziggy. It was not Joe Ziggy, it was not Stanley or Livingstone, Brother, Son, Nephew, Friend, or Mr. Johnson. I have loved all those names. My best name is Daddy.

I was trying to prove to them and to myself that I was still who I had always been. I was beautiful, if fat. I was smart, if loud. I was good, if ruined.

They were all things she would not give away in New York, where she watched others tell their drunken bar stories, prostituting their families and their trauma for popularity and booze. These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors.

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

Too much respect for people who are not respectful to you is a sure sign of insecurity.

You a low down dog is what's wrong. It's time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.