Quotes About Self

Mariah says, "I have Indian blood in me," and underneath everything I could swear she says it as if she were announcing her possession of a trophy. How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?

Prayers aren't for the deity...They're for you, to recommit yourself to what you believe.

I naturally think that my desire is mine, is of me, that I am it's subject and I know what I want. But so to think is not to see that desire is making me. The me is a highly mutable construct, radically dependent on the desires of others. The failure to recognize is not a mistake about something of which the 'me' might be conscious, but is a failure to rest peaceably on what made it possible for there to be a conscious "me" at all.

it is not the "I" that has desires, it is desire that forms and sustains the "I".

Self is ingenious, crooked, and, governed by subtle and snaky desire, admits of endless turnings and qualifications, and the deluded worshippers of self vainly imagine that they can gratify every worldly desire, and at the same time possess the Truth

This life of supreme blessedness is an end, and the pilgrim who is striving towards it, the prodigal returning to it, must travel thither, and employ means to get there. He must pass through the country of his animal desires, disentangling himself from their intricacies, simplifying them, overcoming them; this is the way, and he has no enemies but what spring within himself.

What you need to do is build the house you will live in. You build that house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

To defend one's self against fear is simply to ensure that one will, one day, be conquered by it fears must be faced.

It was Heraclitus, of course, who came up with the formulation that we are never able to step into the same river twice. ... The obverse of Heraclitus's maxim may be that one is never able to step out of the river the same, twice. A neuron in the brain is altered with every experience. The self, if it exists, must be a constantly evolving thing. Those coming to the banks of the Ganges or Jordan to immerse themselves do not expect to leave the same as they arrive.

Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind. You are as old as your doubt, your fear, your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self confidence young. Keep your hope young.

It is the religious sense – a "radical engagement of the self with life" – that alone enables us to fulfil the promise of the scripture that we might have life and might have it more abundantly. How sad it is that our quest for self-mastery and a widespread sense of emptiness and loss-of-meaning go hand-in-hand, yet we often fail to see the connection.

Il cuore dell'uomo, autocoscienza del tutto

la fede c'entra con la realtà quando cambia l'io nella sua mossa dentro la realtà; e in questo senso la fede si chiama memoria.

Each of us—on the outside, in front of others—dresses in dignity, but inside himself he is well aware of these unconfessable things that pass through the secrecy of his heart.

Do you recognize perhaps, also you, now, that a minute ago you were another?

No es el amor quien muere, Somos nosotros mismos.

Because fear called her by her name. (Her own name, not fear's name. Fear doesn't have a name; it's just the steady beat underneath a smile.)

One desire, my friends, one: to kill yourself. You must desire this. You must feel that a voyage of discovery is more important than all the little trips which the normal consumer self wants to buy.

Every man's personal proverb about himself is: "Whatever is, is right, in the best of all possible people." The

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self.

You cannot trust 25 guys in a locker room to have the same respect and training as I do with a weapon. That I do understand. I've carried a gun for 10 years. I've carried them in the locker room, and nobody really knows about it. I know how to handle myself.

The things about yourself you fear are the most personal are also the most universal." Trust

If we are called to attention by God's Life and Holy Spirit, then the 'spiritual life' is not a pleasant option we might like to pursue when we have space and time; it is that which is now creating its own space and time within us, and to neglect it is to lose ourselves.

I have never associated myself with such an unexpected part of the body as the thyroid, so it feels as though my body is suddenly strange to me, or I am strange to myself.