Quotes About Insecurity

You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that.

fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.

But suppose my eyes aren't blue enough? Blue enough for what? Blue enough for…I don't know. Blue enough for something. Blue enough…for you!

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I say myself as somebody I'd seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong.

In a way she was jealous of death.

Men who knew their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge that without gunshot fox would laugh at them.

The sad thing was that Pauline did not really care for clothes and makeup. She merely wanted other women to cast favorable glances her way.

The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.

He wondered if there was anyone in the world who liked him. Liked him for himself alone.

Pauline felt uncomfortable with the few black women she met. They were amused by her because she did not straighten her hair. When she tried to make up her face as they did, it came off rather badly. Their goading glances and private snickers at her way of talking (saying "chil'ren") and dressing developed in her a desire for new clothes.

More awful than the fear of danger was the fear of looking foolish—of being excited when others were laid back—of being somehow manipulated

Scary things not always outside. Most scary things is inside.

she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap.

She slept in the bed with us. Frieda on the outside because she is brave—it never occurs to her that if in her sleep her hand hangs over the edge of the bed "something" will crawl out from under it and bite her fingers off. I sleep near the wall because that thought has occurred to me. Pecola, therefore, had to sleep in the middle.

You think you so cute!" I swung at her and missed, hitting Pecola in the face. Furious at my clumsiness, I threw my notebook at her, but it caught her in the small of her velvet back, for she had turned and was flying across the street against traffic. Safe on the other side, she screamed at us, "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!

And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.

She could not get his love. . .so she settled for his fear.

The death of self-esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has "legs," so to speak.

Craignez les anxieux, le jour où ils n'auront plus peur, ils seront les maîtres du monde.

We have entered an age of insecurity—economic insecurity, physical insecurity, political insecurity.

Insecurity breeds fear. And fear—fear of change, fear of

They convey neither conviction nor authority.