Quotes About Self

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
― May Sarton

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.”
― Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever.
That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“You are who you are when nobody's watching.”
― Stephen Fry

“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens”
― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within

“I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Devilin Fey

“We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.”
― David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“Don't think about making life better for other people who don't even deserve you, rather, focus on making your life the best, for yourself and those who love you.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“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.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

“My past is everything I failed to be.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“You are -- your life, and nothing else.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.”
― Jess C. Scott, Tongue-Tied

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
― Mary Anne Radmacher

“My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.”
― Drew Barrymore

“I stop fighting my inner demons. We're on the same side now. T-shirt”
― Darynda Jones, Second Grave on the Left

“Love After Love

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,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”
― Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948-1984

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“When I lay my head on the pillow at night I can say I was a decent person today. That's when I feel beautiful.”
― Drew Barrymore

“Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.”
― John Berger