Quotes About Self

We know we are very special," Davis writes in "Special": "Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?" (from James Wood's review of the FSG "Collected Stories of Lydia Davis")

I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distored figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy.

The need to document my insanity is an affliction I have not yet cured myself of...

Via agora que jamais poderia se libertar das suas antigas faces, impossível negá-las porque tinha qualquer coisa de comum que permanecia no fundo de cada uma delas, qualquer coisa que era como uma misteriosa unidade ligando umas às outras, sucessivamente, até chegar à face atual.

The power that is to redeem him must be a power working within, not without.

The thing I call 'my mind' seems to be kind of like a landlord that doesn't really know its tenants.

What is it that remains essentially you?

Learn to trust yourself and you will create a meaningful life.

Trust your inner voice.

Joy doesn't exist out in the world somewhere. Joy is an inside job.

It's too easy to believe in our own importance when we're surrounded by our own creations all day.

Happiness is something that comes from our own hearts, not from other people.

If you truly understood the holiness of God, you would have a proper attitude about yourself.

I learned in high school, if I hold up an effigy, a mask, or a lie, that mask will get all the love, not me.

The Dalai Lama teaches that the self lies somewhere beyond our bodies and our minds. He preaches that human nature is essentially good. Only the affection of a mother allows a child to survive. Only the baby's affection for his mother drives him to feed from her breast. This shows, the Dalai Lama explains, that we are born into compassion and sustained by it. So our essential nature is compassionate.

Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.

Yet when we do manage to create ourselves anew, isn't there always a suspicion that the new identity fits over the old like a second skin, at times itchy or uncomfortably tight, not quite covering the most vulnerable patches?

My identity must be anchored to the truth of who God is and who He is to me. Only then can I find a stability beyond what my feelings will ever allow. The closer I align my truth with His truth, the more closely I identify with God—and the more my identity really is in Him.

If I'm trusting myself, I will stare at all the possible ways I could fail. If I'm trusting God, I will stare at all the possible ways He'll use this whether I fail or succeed.

Proverbs 23:7 reminds us, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he" (NLV). We

You're giving yourself too much credit, the only reason you have any grace (to give or receive) is through Christ.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before.

We live in a day and time when our rights sometimes take precedence over our pursuit of righteousness, when we get caught in the rush of seeking self rather than seeking God.

The Management of money is, in much, the management of self. If heaven allotted to each man seven guardian angels, five of them, at least, would be found night and day hovering over his pockets.