Quotes About Self

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested so much within oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

Folks can change their ways much as they want to. But I don't care how many times you change your ways, what's in you is in you, and it's got to come out.

One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself - that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced...Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self...

But our humanity is our burden, our life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is infinitely more difficult—that is, accept it.

Perhaps it now occurs to him that in this need to establish himself in his relation to his past [the African American] is most American, that this depthless alienation from oneself and one's people is, in sum, the American experience.

One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself—that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.

Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself.

Folks,' said Florence, 'can change their ways much as they want to. But I don't care how many times you change your ways, what's in you is in you, and it's got to come out.

in fleeing from his body, I confirmed and perpetuated his body's power over me.

Se você ficar se protegendo o tempo todo", acrescentou, mudando o tom de voz, "vai acabar preso dentro do seu próprio corpo sujo, pra sempre, pra todo o sempre — como eu.

One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself—that is to say, risking oneself.

I am what time, circumstance, and history have made of me, certainly, but i am also much more than that. So are we all.

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him - he may be forced to - but nothing will efface his origins, the mark of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station.

And the passion with which we loved the Lord was a measure of how deeply we feared and distrusted and, in the end, hated almost all strangers, always, and avoided and despised ourselves.

The moral of the story (and the hope of the world) lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

We know, in the case of the person, that whoever cannot tell himself the truth about his past is trapped in it, is immobilized in the prison of his undiscovered self. This is also true of nations. We know how a person, in such a paralysis, is unable to assess either his weaknesses or his strengths, and how frequently indeed he mistakes one for the other.