Quotes About Self-possession

The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.

The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. I was turning into a hawk.

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.

He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man across from him...came to hate him for that look. The young man lit a cigarette from his, tried talking to him, and even jostled him, to let him feel that he was not a thing but a human being, but Vronsky went on looking at him as at a lampost, and the young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the pressure of this non-recognition of himself as a human being...

If you own yourself, you own the world.

You can't lose your identity unless you give it up. No one can take it from you

Conviction, as Michelstaedter wrote, is the present possession of one's own life and one's own person, the ability to live each moment to the full, not goading oneself madly into burning it up fast and using it with a view to an all too imminent future, thus destroying it in the hope that life -- the whole of life -- may pass swiftly.

Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.

No one had ever said such things to her before. People were intimidated by her self-possession and no-nonsense demeanor. No man would ever dream of calling her adorable, sweet, darling... and certainly no one had ever made her feel that way.

My version of Dolly was mine, and it shouldn't be anyone else's.

No one was dancing, least of all us, because I don't dance in public. My body's a private thing; it doesn't belong to the world at large.

My body is my own, to be shared or withheld as I choose.

What I am is my own business.' 'Not any more.' He let his voice sink down meaningfully on the words. 'You are now my business — mine to control just as I fancy.

Bring your own body.

It's in giving yourself that you possess yourself

The image of a cleanly, self-possessed man exploiting his solitude was not easy to come by, but then he had not expected that it would be.

Knowing when to walk away, is wisdom. Being able to, is courage. Walking away with your head held high, is dignity.

He was the product of what his father had taught him to be, who in turn was the product of what his father had taught him to be and she wondered how far back in sheer misogyny and greed the Cleeks actually went.  She had married blind into this, impressed by his self-possession as a teenager, even more impressed by him in bed — or in fact for the first year or so, in the back seat of his father's Caddy.  Her first and only lover.

What will you tell them?' 'I will tell them nothing.' The answer came with no hesitation, clear and crisp. 'It is not for them to say what I will do.

No matter what happens to our bodies in our lifetimes..., they remain ours.

The Berkeley psychologist had called Dev "self-possessed" and at the time, he hadn't been exactly sure what that meant, but as he played chess with Clare, the word suddenly made perfect sense. The same way Teo and Cornelia belonged to Clare, Clare belonged to herself. Clare liked being Clare, the same way that Dev had always (even when he was friendless and invisible) liked being Dev.

If you are wise, you will never forget that your heart is yours alone. It can be the greatest gift, but never can it be commanded.

My power is my property. My power gives me property. My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.

Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property