Quotes About Self-worth

Vanity takes no more obnoxious form than the everlasting desire for approval.

I have tried hard - but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds out that one only fits into one hole? One must go back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap - and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap!

It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed until we drop.

it is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

I had written short stories that were thought worthy of preservation! Was it the same insignificant I that I had always known? Any one walking along the streets might go into any bookshop, and say: 'Please give me Edith Wharton's book'; and the clerk, without bursting into incredulous laughter, would produce it, and be paid for it, and the purchaser would walk home with it and read it, and talk of it, and pass it on to other people to read!

What did it matter where she came from, or whose child she was, when love was dancing in her veins?

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity, and the sense of being of importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the gratifying consciousness of power.

No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him.

Now, whatever, either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph, that is extremely grateful to the human mind.

Workaholism is an addictive disorder in which work is the only thing that gives you a sense of inner fulfillment and self-worth.

I knew I was worthless and at the same time I was convinced somebody would find me worthy, would worship me for this sexual allure so foreign to my understanding yet so central to my being.

What I had instead was the ache of waiting and the fear I wasn't worthy.

So," he said. "What's the difference between me and a whore?" He swallowed. "Am I a whore?" "No more than every married woman.

I'm not much to look at, replied Elizabeth, but I'm beautiful inside.

We define ourselves by the best that is in us, not the worst that has been done to us.

Shame is not a mirage. It is very real. A sexually violated woman feels contaminated by what has been done to her, and she really is contaminated. A person who has lived with rejection can't neutralize it with happy thoughts. Shame is like dirt. No matter how it happened, you are a mess and something has to be done about it. When you are dirty, there is no feel-as-if about it.

The character of God is the basis for our connection to him, not our intrinsic worth. Self-worth, or anything we think would make us acceptable to God, would suit our pride but it has the disturbing side-effect of making the cross of Jesus Christ less valuable. If we have worth in ourselves, there is no reason to connect to the infinite worth of Jesus and receive what he has done for us.

The language of shame is extreme. Hear it enough and you believe it. You are told you are disgusting and unclean, and eventually you believe you are.

All it takes is a tradition of demeaning, critical words from the right person. All it takes is nothing from the right person. No interest in you, no words spoken to you, no love. If you are treated as if you do not exist, you will feel shame.

Think about the nature of depression. Life is turned inward. You already have a sense that, for all practical purposes, God is not present. Add to that your relentless condemnation and pervasive self-criticism, which have persuaded you that God doesn't love you. You couldn't be a more obvious spiritual target if you painted a bull's-eye on your chest.

a lingering sense that something was very wrong with him. That sense is called shame.

If you feel ugly you will experience shame. The two are bound together.

Shame can be removed, and you can still be you. Despite your feeling that your destiny and shame's destiny are identical—that if shame no longer exists, you won't either—the reality is that you will be more you without shame.