Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others.
- Francis Bacon
Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made.
- Jacques Barzun
A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die.
- Bernard Berenson,
Sketch for a Self-portrait
He who knows himself best esteems himself least.
- Henry G. Bohn
The authentic self is the soul made visible.
- Sarah Ban Breathnach
And though all cry down self, none means
His own self in a literal sense.
- Samuel Butler (1)
For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
- Dale Carnegie
Explore the dark recesses of the mind,
In the soul's honest volume read mankind,
And own, in wise and simple, great and small,
The same grand leading principle in all;
* * * * *
For parent and for child, for wife and friend,
Our first great mover, and our last great end
Is one; and by whatever name we call
The ruling tyrant, Self, is all in all.
- Charles Churchill
Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.
- Confucius
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
- Albert Einstein
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
- Albert Einstein
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
- Epictetus
Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
- Gene Fowler
Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.
- Judy Garland
I am I plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter I do not preserve myself.
[Sp., Yo soy yo y mi circumstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.]
- Jose Ortega y Gasset,
Meditaciones del Quijote
If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People seldom improve when they have no model but themselves to copy after.
- Oliver Goldsmith
A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation.
- Frank Herbert
Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.
- Hermann Hesse
The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
- Eric Hoffer
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
- Charles Evans Hughes
In the castle of my skin.
- George Lamming, title of a novel
Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.
- Toni Morrison
Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.
~Henry Van Dyke, The Prison and the Angel
We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.
~Jean Guitton
We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
~Robert Louis Stevenson
Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.
~D.H. Lawrence, Pornography and Obscenity
To wash one's hair, make one's toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.
~Sei Shonagon
Man is never alone. Acknowledged or unacknowledged, that which dreams through him is always there to support him from within.
~Laurence van der Post
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
~Jane Austen
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894
I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.
~Katherine Anne Porter
And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
~Confucius
There are at least two kinds of cowards. One kind always lives with himself, afraid to face the world. The other kind lives with the world, afraid to face himself.
~Roscoe Snowden
The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.
~Eckhart
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that's walked,
A song that's spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke,
When I think about myself.
~Maya Angelou
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables, 1822
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
~Agnes Repplier
I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.
~Sylvia Plath
In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be the gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
~Robert Louis Stevenson
A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings. ~Christina G. Rossetti
People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, 1841
You have the Answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it.
~Pat Obuchowski
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely to You.
~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1892
You are your own judge. The verdict is up to you.
~Astrid Alauda
It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.
~Marcel Proust
A wise man never loses anything if he have himself.
~Michel de Montaigne, translated
Sometimes at night I light a lamp so as not to see.
~Antonio Porchia
The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.
~Michel de Montaigne, Of Solitude
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
~W.B. Yeats
Present yourself always
As who you would be,
And that is the person
The world will see.
~Robert Brault
Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's curtain?
~Rainer Maria Rilke
What we do flows from who we are.
~Paul Vitale
We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
~Mark Twain
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
~Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
The bright shining
only reflects back to myself,
my own light blinding me.
I can't see the world and they can't see me.
~Anna Chrisrest, "Orion's Under the Clouds"
The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course. ~Michelangelo
Do what you must,
And your friends will adjust.
~Robert Brault
Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.
~H.F. Hedge
My heart beat, beats me senselessly,
Why's everything gotta be so intense with me...
~Katy Perry, Glen Ballard, and Matt Thiessen, "Long Shot"
Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again. ~Chinese inscription cited by Thoreau in Walden
Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror. ~Antonio Porchia
My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys.
~Doug Horton
When I look for my existence I do not look for it in myself.
~Antonio Porchia
The power inside you is energy amplified.
~Claire Todae
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1892
It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?
~Richard Bach
Misfortunes one can endure - they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults - ah! there is the sting of life.
~Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892
One's only real life is the life one never leads.
~Oscar Wilde
A criminal becomes a popular figure because he unburdens in no small degree the consciences of his fellow man, for now they know once more where evil is to be found.
~Carl G. Jung
When the fight begins within himself, a man's worth something.
~Robert Browning
Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's emancipator.
~Friedrich Nietzsche
The man that shows off, to that one who wants to convince of his value is to himself.
~Doménico Cieri Estrada
Some things become so completely our own that we forget them.
~Antonio Porchia
It is not impossibilities which fill us with the deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize.
~Robert Mallett, Apostilles, 1972
Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, "This I am today; that I will be tomorrow."
~Louis L'Amour
There is luxury in self-reproach.... When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
~Oscar Wilde
If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.
~André Maurois
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. ~Michel de Montaigne
If we cannot be happy and powerful and prey on others, we invent conscience and prey on ourselves.
-Elbert Hubbard
Unjust. How many times I've used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don't have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice.
-Lillian Hellman
I say me, knowing all the while it's not me.
-Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, 1953
Everything that I bear within me bound, is to be found somewhere else free.
-Antonio Porchia
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh, at yourself.
-Ethel Barrymore
I am my own heaven and hell!
-J.C.F. von Schiller
Falling, falling, falling, falling down.
Look yourself in the eye before you drown.
-Emily Saliers, "Center Stage," Indigo Girls, 1989
We must be our own before we can be another's.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
