Quotes About Self

Stenditi al sole. Abdica, e sii il re di te stesso.

To love is to be tired of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)

L'abîme est ma clôture, être moi n'a pas de mesure

In sexual love we seek our own pleasure through the intermediary of another's body. In non-sexual love, we seek our own pleasure through the intermediary of an idea we have. The onanist may be an abject creature but in truth he is the logical expression of the lover. He is the only one who neither diguises nor deludes himself.

the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page

The root of narcissism lies in anxiety, and the fear of fragmentation, which may be assuaged by the sight of the reflection.

He could not bear to part with his paintings because they were an aspect of his being.

By the way they looked at me, by their perception of me, they would make me into the creature they perceived. I would feel myself becoming a lesser thing. It is the power of men.

He smelled meat burning and realized that it was him.

On Betrayal , by Harold Pinter] …the sleight of hand that Harold has performed is that, while dealing with a triangular relationship, he's talking about something else ...If you start with self-betrayal, it gradually infects everything like a dreadful, destructive virus.

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself," according to Anaïs Nin (herself the author of several abortions). But what if it's not a lie? And what if the someone is you?

There are only two persons you can never, ever escape, not for one moment, either in time or in eternity: God and yourself.

So nothing can be ours by right, by nature, or by necessity. But one thing is mine by my free choice: the self I give away in love. This is the thing even God cannot do for me. It really is my choice. God can love, but He cannot compel my free love. If it is compelled, it is not free. If it is free, it is not compelled.

Of course we should use all our powers, of mind and will and imagination, but not trust in them, for that is trusting in ourselves.

Pascal would not have needed to read this book. He wrote: "Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life, or our death, of God or of ourselves.

Cicero famously said, you have no choice between having a philosophy and not having one, only between having a good one and having a bad one. And not to admit that you have a philosophy at all is to have a bad one. For it is one that does not know itself. So how could it know anything else, especially us?

This is one reason why modern people are so unprepared for death: death is the one thing society can't do for you, the one thing that forces you to confront your trans-social self. We live as "the lonely crowd", but we die one at a time.

No man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence about how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.

each one needs something outside itself to actualize its potentiality for change.

You're…normal." "That's the first time anyone's called me that in my life

Why are you so unhappy? Because ninety-nine percent of what you think, And everything you do, Is for your self, And there isn't one.

It is difficult to adjust because I do not know who is adjusting; I am no longer that old person and not yet the new.

The Zen expression "Kill the Buddha!" means to kill any concept of the Buddha as something apart from oneself. To kill the Buddha is to be the Buddha.

You can keep on assigning blame here, there and everywhere, but when it comes right down to it, we're responsible for what we do ourselves.