Quotes About Self

Rosie had to keep her room neat enough so James would not freak out, but not so neat that they could figure it all out, break the code, of who you truly were, what you were up to, your values, your truest parts. ... you were layer upon layer of ideas and erasures and new ideas and soul and images. [p. 68]

We contain all the ages we have ever been.

Take care of yourselves; take care of one another.

It's all here, everything we seek and need, inside us.

And if there was something to be grokked—a vibrational core in us, a consciousness, an essential self, that was not our charm and successes—then didn't it mean there was some kind of capital-T Truth to seek?

What is a man, said Athos, who has no landscape? Nothing but mirrors and tides.

It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

I want to be pure in heart -- but I like to wear my purple dress.

I believe that what a woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly. What we fear is not so much that our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be going down the drain.

I didn't want to talk about my past, and I didn't care about his. For any of us, it's who you are today that matters.

What have you? Have you anything at all that matters? Is that what comfort has given you-that you are dead at heart of self-satisfaction?

When Christ commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves, the 'self' part was just as important. We forget that at a terrible price.

Es terrible traicionar a tu país. Me cuesta imaginar algo peor, salvo quizá traicionarte a ti mismo. El

I was good and bad, but never wicked.

I am in love with you', I responded. He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh. 'Of course you are,' he replied. 'I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control.' It was my turn to laugh.

Wisdom is strength. Collect yourself, whatever you are, into something with a purpose.' 

You can sow the seeds of distrust everywhere, and lose yourself in an overgrown field.

I'm too much the slave of my own obsessions and fascination.

The only power that exists is inside ourselves…

But what creature in the world doesn't want to be loved for itself?

You long to be seen and approached and understood and to get into mischief, to stir everything up and see if it won't boil over and if God won't come down and grab you by the hair. Well, there is no God. You might as well be God.

Use the power inside you. Don't abhor it anymore. Use that power! And when they see you in the streets above, use that power to make your face a mask and think as you gaze on them as on anyone: beware.

Everything that is conscious, aware of itself, has a soul.

none of us really changes over time; we only become more fully what we are.