Quotes About Self-worth

No man wants to feel that he's there because of his woman's biological clock or because he's filling a job opening for husband or significant other.

I've heard it said that I'm silencing the critics so many times but it's not that: I don't have to prove myself to anyone.

Don't let anyone keep you down for silly reasons such as who you are.

I thought I was a god. I was more important than you, because I could do this thing where I played a silly sport that made me a better human being, in my eyes.

The greatest lesson I have learned in life is that I am enough simply because I have been given life. Growing up, I constantly found myself trying to please others because I wanted to be included and validated. I expended myself completely.

The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation. The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him. He is imprisoned by what he believes he ought to think, how he ought to look, what he ought to do, and who he ought to be.

Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can't take this. No one can.

Maybe it's less threatening to believe that our beloved spouse is worthy to live out his or her unlived life, while we are not.

I was too ashamed of myself, of being a bad husband, a failure as a provider, of bailing out on my would-be novel after almost two years of being supported by my loving wife, that I could no longer stand her seeing me the way I was.

While a necessary lesson, it was always a disappointment to discover he wasn't the fastest or smartest or best at everything.

God sees us—someone worth dying for. God loves us, but we too often see ourselves as unloved. God sees us as chosen and accepted, but we may see ourselves as rejected. God sees us from the perspective of who He created us to be, but we too often see ourselves from our limitations instead of our possibilities.

Rejection brings out the worst in people. Love and acceptance bring out the best.

Most men complimented my sexual vigor, thinking I owed it to them. All of them credited themselves afterwards, but the dour clown just lay there. For a moment, I thought I loved him.

You don't have to justify yourself to me. You did what you did.

Infidelity reduces and diminishes, leaving nothing where you once had a sense of self-worth.

Being fired is the pits, ranking right up there with infidelity in its brutalizing effect. The ego recoils and one's self-image is punctured like a tire by a nail. In the weeks since I'd been terminated, I'd gone through all the stages one suffers at the diagnosis of a soon-to-be-fatal disease: anger, denial, bargaining, drunkenness, foul language, head colds, rude hand gestures, anxiety, and eating disorders of sudden onset.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself Beloved on the Earth." —Raymond Carver

Maybe there is something deeply wrong with me," Carol tells me. "It's just like my mom used to say, I am too difficult to love.

He'd taught her something tonight. Taught her almost painlessly. Almost. She'd thought she was memorable. How clear it was that she was not. It wasn't a quality you possessed, she thought now. It was a quality other people endowed you with. She felt small, and foolish, exposed.

When mauma saw my raw eyes, she said, "Ain't nobody can write down in a book what you worth.

You are my everlasting home. Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough.

T. Ray said 'Who do you think you are? Julias Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival.

Whenever I opened one, T. Ray said, "Who do you think you are, Julius Shakespeare?" The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival.

When we adopt this particular ego mask, we invest ourselves in the notion that those who shine the brightest are loved the most. This comes from the distorted idea that meaning and acceptance come from what we do, not who we are. We buy into the widespread notion that "light" emanates from our achievements, not from the divine fire within our soul.