Quotes About Self-worth

If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you what you are. That determines your character. That is the most significant thing about you.

If you had as much sense as a half-witted hummingbird, you would realize that I am interested in how big I am—not how big you are. All this talk about your enormous success makes me feel small and unimportant.]

Don't give up so easily. Stay the course. Despite what you've been told, you matter and you can accomplish something great.

O desejo de se sentir importante é uma das principais características que distinguem os homens dos animais.

But there is one longing—almost as deep, almost as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep—which is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls 'the desire to be great.' It is what Dewey calls the 'desire to be important.

John Dewey, one of America's most profound philosophers, phrased it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that the deepest urge in human nature is "the desire to be important." Remember that phrase: "the desire to be important." It is significant. You are going to hear a lot about it in this book.

Some authorities declare that people may actually go insane in order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling of importance that has been denied them in the harsh world of reality.

Ahora estoy convencida de que no puede lograrse nada bueno, y sí puede hacerse mucho daño, si uno le dice directamente a una persona que está equivocada. Sólo se consigue despojar a esa persona de su autodignidad, y uno queda como un entrometido.

No tengo derecho a decir o hacer nada que disminuya a un hombre ante sí mismo. Lo que importa no es lo que yo pienso de él, sino lo que él piensa de sí mismo. Herir a un hombre en su dignidad es un crimen

People sometimes became invalids in order to win sympathy and attention, and get a feeling of importance

But he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality. Then he told me this story:

If I were to try to read, much less to answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals.

Must one not wonder about people willing to wear a commercial trademark on the outside of their shirts or caps or shoes to let others know who they are? And just think of a world in which little children sing, "I wish I were a [certain kind of] wiener. That is what I really want to be. For if I were [that certain kind of] wiener. Everyone would be in love with me.

It is the experience of having God look you right in the eye and saying, "I love you! I approve of you!" that is the unshakable ground of our self-worth.

Their desire for such honor was keeping them from believing, because you cannot hold the esteem of others to that degree of importance and at the same time believe that God is who he is. It is not possible. As long as people are hung up on honor from other people—reputation, appearing well—they cannot truly believe and trust God.

Dying to self does not exclude having a proper sense of self-worth, including the need to feel recognized and valued. Recognition from others is a good and proper thing. But it must not be what controls our lives. It must not become the goal of our existence. If we find that our need for recognition is consuming our thoughts and determining our behavior, then we need to move to a higher source for our sense of our personal worth. That source is, of course, God's love for us.

It is not presumptuous to ask, 'What is it that you see in me that brings you delight?

Never forget you are a miracle

Your sense of worth or deservedness shapes your life by creating tendencies. If you feel worthy and deserving, you tend to make productive choices. ("The world is my oyster.") If you feel unworthy and undeserving, you tend to make destructive or limiting choices. ("Beggars can't be choosers.")

My intellect was my greatest vanity.

Trouble creeps in when that pride builds on a desperate grasp for glory rather than on real accomplishment.

I'm nothing, not a single thing. The only particle I had, the only tiny thing raising me up, is that I was Ed Slaterton's girlfriend, loved by you for like ten secs, and who cares, so what, and not anymore so how embarrassing for me.

I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I'm good for a Haydn quintet.