Quotes by theme

self

Quotes including the word “self”.

272 results
Chinua Achebe

I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.

Chinua Achebe

Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.

Aeschylus

Search well and be wise, nor believe that self-willed pride will ever be better than good counsel.

Aeschylus

God loves to help him who strives to help himself.

Aeshop

Self-conceit may lead to self destruction.

Akhmatova

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

Akhmatova

Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams.

Pinto Andrade

I want to surround myself with people who can touch the hearts of others

Maya Angelou

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

Maya Angelou

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

Aristotles

It is natural to love oneself,  and only the egoism must be condemned.  That is not only to love yourself,  but to love him more than is needed.

Isaac Asimov

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Isaac Asimov

Above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

Marcus Aurelius

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Sathya Baba

Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve the silence.

Sathya Baba

Love is selflessness, Self is lovelessness.

Bach

There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Francis Bacon

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.

Francis Bacon

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Mikhail Bakunin

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Balzac

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

Matsuo Basho

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Matsuo Basho

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

de Simone Beauvoir

"Weakness" is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes

de Simone Beauvoir

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.

de Simone Beauvoir

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.

de Simone Beauvoir

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

Beethoven

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Brendan Behan

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.

Graham Bell

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.

Graham Bell

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.

Henri Bergson

Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized... we' ll have war.

Henri Bergson

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Henri Bergson

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating yourself endlessly.

Karen Blixen

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

Boccaccio

A kissed mouth doesn't lose its freshness, for like the moon it always renews itself.

Andre Breton

There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.

Andre Breton

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.

Giordano Bruno

There is one simple Divinity found in all things, one fecund Nature, preserving mother of the universe insofar as she diversely communicates herself, casts her light into diverse subjects, and assumes various names.

Giordano Bruno

The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.

Pearl Buck

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Buddha

If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.

Buddha

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Buddha

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Buddha

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

Charles Bukowski

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

W. Burroughs

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

Chanel

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

Chateaubriand

Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it.

Cicero

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Leonard Cohen

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

Confucius

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

Salvador Dali

Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.

Darwin

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

Delacroix

Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.

Demosthenes

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what every man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Dickens

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

Diogenes

No man is hurt but by himself.

Diogenes

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

Walt Disney

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

Dostoevsky

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Eisenstein

Even in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.

Eisenstein

Even in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.

Epicurus

If evil is spoken of you and it is true, correct yourself, if it is a lie, laugh at it.

Exupery

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Exupery

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.

Exupery

Give yourself; you will receive more than you give.

Feuerbach

To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity or unhappiness.”

Flaubert

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Flaubert

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Anne Frank

I've found that there is always some beauty left, in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.

Benjamin Franklin

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Paulo Freire

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.

Sigmund Freud

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Erich Fromm

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

Erich Fromm

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

Erich Fromm

Man’s main task is to give birth to himself.

Robert Frost

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

Galileo Galilei

“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”

Gandhi

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Gauguin

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

Gauguin

The self-esteem one acquires and a well-earned feeling of one's strength are the only consolation in this world. Income, after all, most brutes have that.

Khalil Gibran

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself, Love possesses not nor would it be possessed: For love is sufficient unto love.

Khalil Gibran

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Goethe

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

Goethe

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Goethe

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Nadine Gordimer

Recognize yourself in others“

Nadine Gordimer

Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self.

Nadine Gordimer

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

Maxim Gorky

“Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.”

Gracian

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.

Hawthorne

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Martin Heidegger

“Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.”

Martin Heidegger

“To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky.”

Martin Heidegger

Man is not something fixed or completed, but a being constantly shaped through choices, possibilities, and awareness of life itself.”

Hemingway

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Hemingway

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

Hemingway

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

Hemingway

you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

Heraclitus

This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.

Hermann Hesse

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to

Hermann Hesse

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.

Hermann Hesse

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Hippocrates

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the Gods, lend yourself a hand.

Hobbes

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Hobbes

The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.

Horace

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

Max Horkheimer

The self, entirely encompassed by civilization, is dissolved in an element composed of the very inhumanity which civilization has sought from the first to escape.

Langston Hughes

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

Hypatia

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

Isokratis

Never got big idea for yourself but never despise yourself.

Isokratis

Our Democracy destroys itself because it has abused the right to freedom and equality, because has learned the citizens to consider the insolence as right, illegality as freedom, the impudence of speech as equality and anarchy as bliss.

Jesus

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Jesus

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

Samuel Johnson

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Samuel Johnson

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”

James Joyce

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

James Joyce

Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.

Franz Kafka

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

Franz Kafka

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

Frida Kahlo

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Frida Kahlo

Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.

Kazantzakis

If you don't embrace yourself first, do not expect from others to do so. Love the person because it's you.

Omar Khayyam

As far as you can avoid it, do not give grief to anyone. Never inflict your rage on another. If you hope for eternal rest, feel the pain yourself; but don’t hurt others.

Omar Khayyam

Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same door as in I went.

Kierkegaard

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”

Kierkegaard

Don't forget to love yourself.

Kipling

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbors.

Gustav Klimt

I can paint and draw. I believe this myself and a few other people say that they believe this too. But I'm not certain of whether it's true.

Krishnamurti

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

Kunanbaev

He who works only for himself is like cattle that care only for their bellies.

Lamartine

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Laozi

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Lautreamont

Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy.

Lawrence

Nobody knows you. You don't know yourself. And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with? My own imaginings?

Eino Leino

He who a single one loves is blessed – beloved of everybody. Whoever self-interest forgets the best will blessèd dreams embody.

Lenin

Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.

Vinci da Leonardo

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

Levi-Strauss

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

Jack London

One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

Lorca

I've often lost myself, in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake.

Rosa Luxemburg

What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset.

Sekara Mahagame

Find yourself, not me, in my verses.

Nelson Mandela

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.

Nelson Mandela

The first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.”

Herbert Marcuse

Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be.

Bob Marley

Man is a universe within himself.

Jose Martí

The first duty of a man is to think for himself”

Karl Marx

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Maupassant

The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.

Herman Melville

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Herman Melville

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

Michelangelo

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.

Henry Miller

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

John Milton

Nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on what is just and right.

John Milton

The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

John Milton

He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.

Mitropoulos

I only live for the moments I am in the podium and in order to live those moments, I spend my life preparing myself with discipline, doubts and humility.

A. Modigliani

With one eye you are looking at the outside world, while with the other you are looking within yourself.

Moliere

I become quite melancholy and deeply grieved to see men behave to each other as they do. Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice , self-interest, deceit and roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I'm furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.”

Moliere

“The more we love someone, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that true love shows itself.

Montaigne

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

Montaigne

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”

Montaigne

“If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.”

Montaigne

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

Montaigne

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

Montaigne

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

Montaigne

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Montesquieu

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Montessori

It is necessary that the child teach himself, and then the success is great.

Montessori

The child who has never learned to work by himself, to set goals for his own acts, or to be the master of his own force of will is recognizable in the adult who lets others guide his will and feels a constant need for approval of others.

Jim Morrison

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

Jim Morrison

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Jim Morrison

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.

Guru Nanak

He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.

Guru Nanak

There is but One God, His name is Truth, He is the Creator, He fears none, he is without hate, He never dies, He is beyond the cycle of births and death, He is self illuminated, He is realized by the kindness of the True Guru. He was True in the beginning, He was True when the ages commenced and has ever been True, He is also True now.

Isaac Newton

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

George Orwell

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

George Orwell

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

George Orwell

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Amos Oz

I now believe that all journeys are ridiculous: the only journey from which you don't always come back empty-handed is the journey inside yourself.

Pavarotti

The rivalry is with ourself. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.

Octavio Paz

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone

Petrarca

To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

Petrarca

I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.

Petrarca

Man has no greater enemy than himself.

Plato

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is the most shameful and vile of all things.

Plotinus

When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.”

Plotinus

Self-knowledge reveals to the soul that its natural motion is not, if uninterrupted, in a straight line, but circular, as around some inner object, about a center, the point to which it owes its origin.”

Plotinus

“I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.”

Plutarch

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.

Antonio Porchia

He who has seem everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.

Elvis Presley

When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.

Pushkin

Empty is the one who tries to be full only with himself.

Pythagoras

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.

Pythagoras

Above all things, reverence yourself.

Renoir

“If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.”

Renoir

The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.”

Richelieu

I was excellent. Everybody loved me. I love myself, and i like bums.

Rilke

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

Rilke

Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

Jose Rizal

One only dies once, and if one does not die well, a good opportunity is lost and will not present itself again.

Jose Rizal

Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.

Carl Rogers

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner." I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.

Carl Rogers

The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.

Carl Rogers

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

Rolland

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

Rolland

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

Henri Rousseau

“When I go out into the countryside and see the sun and the green and everything flowering, I say to myself "Yes indeed, all that belongs to me!"

Gabrielle Roy

My great hope would be that Quebec would realize itself fully as a distinct part of Canada, and stay Canadian, bringing to Canada a part of its richness.

Jalaluddin Rumi

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself

Jalaluddin Rumi

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Saadawi

If you do not love yourself, well, you cannot do anything well.

Saadi

Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.

Carl Sandburg

Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence. Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?”

Carl Sandburg

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.

Sartre

Every existing being is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

Sartre

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Schopenhauer

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Schubert

I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion.

Schweitzer

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

Robert Scott

The attitude of the men is equally worthy of admiration...there is a rush to be first when work is to be done, and the same desire to sacrifice selfish consideration to the success of the expedition...Fortune would be in a hard mood indeed if it allowed such a combination of knowledge, experience, ability, and enthusiasm to achieve nothing.

Seneca

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

Leopold Senghor

Today, our Negritude no longer expresses itself as opposition to European values, but as a complement to them.

Shakespeare

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

Bernard Shaw

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Bernard Shaw

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Percy Shelley

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Adam Smith

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.

Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so you can gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

If you want to shake the world, shake yourself first.

Spinoza

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Stendhal

Our true passions are selfish.

Strindberg

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.

Tagore

Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.

Tennyson

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.

Tennyson

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Thales

It's easy to give advice to othersIt's difficult to know yourself .

Dylan Thomas

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

Leo Tolstoy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leon Trotsky

“Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain - at least in a poor country like Russia - and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

Leon Trotsky

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.

Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Fyodor Tyutchev

All the wonders you seek are within yourself. We should seek to discover our own special light. Know how to live within yourself;

Unamuno

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.

Unamuno

If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.

John Updike

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership.

Voltaire

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

Vonnegut

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Derek Walcott

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

Simone Weil

He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.

Walt Whitman

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes.

Oscar Wilde

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Tennessee Williams

can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

Tennessee Williams

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

Tennessee Williams

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

Tennessee Williams

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

L. Wittgenstein

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

L. Wittgenstein

It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.

L. Wittgenstein

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

L. Wittgenstein

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

Virginia Woolf

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Virginia Woolf

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

Xenophon

Men often fail to understand their own weaknesses, and their lack of self-knowledge can bring terrible disasters down on their own heads.

Yourcenar

“He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.

Yourcenar

The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.

Stefan Zweig

In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

Stefan Zweig

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.