Self Loathing Quotes

“When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

“I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”
― D.D. Barant, Dying Bites

“I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.”
― Alain de Botton

“If you had a person in your life treating you the way you treat yourself, you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago...”
― Cheri Huber, There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate

“Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.”
― Rob Liano

“[T]hou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.”
― Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

“The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“The way you think about yourself determines your reality. You are not being hurt by the way people think about you. Many of those people are a reflection of how you think about yourself.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“I won't sleep
if that's what it takes
to not wake up
as myself”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Hold Me Under: Poems to Drown to

“I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“My ideal date would involve painful silence. My ideal date wouldn't involve me.”
― Sam Pink, I am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It

“<> Why are you lying awake, thinking that you’re a terrible person?
<> To keep my mind occupied when I can’t sleep. Some people count sheep. I self-loathe.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“You don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think 'about' you, or 'for your benefit', not 'with' you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“He wished he could be anywhere else and anyone else but Here and Him.”
― James R. Silvestri, Hawthorn Road

“If you're capable of despising your own behavior, you might just love yourself.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent ?”
― Anne Rice, Merrick

“How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“I hate the thought that I'm just some kind of Russian nesting doll with the big outside and inevitably, rattling around under all the layers, a crude little peg with a face is the truth of me.”
― Wendy McClure, I'm Not the New Me

“Well it’s good to have a car like that, once in a while somebody’ll say, ‘why don’t you come over for dinner?’ and I can just say, ‘Car won’t make it.’ I don’t have to tell them that time is scarcer than young pussy around here, and I don’t mean time to write POETRY. I mean time to lay in bed, alone, and stare up at the ceiling and not think at all, not at all, not at all…”
― Charles Bukowski, Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970

“As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad . . .”
― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“I am the One, and I see all.
But the blind man in Apartment 1-A is blind in many ways, as are all human beings, even those with functioning eyes. They are blind to their folly, to their ignorance, to their history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing.”
― Dean Koontz, 77 Shadow Street

“And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression.
And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“What unites us is our despair. Do other people wish to know that someone else walked this earth with a similar batch of questions and frustration? Am I alone trussed with a long suppressed scream lodged within my breast shouting out in the vacant darkness of night, “Who am I, where am I, and where shall I go with this dreaded case of hopelessness, self-doubt, and self-loathing that is weighing me down, making me crazy, and blindsiding any chance to discover personal happiness?” On many occasions, I felt like surrendering to life, no longer willing to endure the physical aches and devastating emotional blows that human life requires. Lost, exiled, and living in alienation from the entire world I searched for a reentry port to a meaningful life. I must work; honest toil is good for the body, mind, and spiritual health of human beings. I shall go to the grave utterly spent from living an authentic life of giving the better part of oneself to the world.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“No amount of driving her body into the earth would make her good. She knew it. Wondered if he did, too. Wondered if he thought he was trekking out here with her on a fool's errand.

Or maybe it was like one of the ancient stories she'd heard as a child: he a wicked queen's huntsman, leading her into the deep wild before caring out her heart.

She wished he would. Wished someone would cut out the damned thing from her chest. Wished someone would smother the voice that whispered of every horrible thing she had ever done, every awful thought she'd had, every person she'd failed.

She had been born wrong. Had been born with claws and fangs and had never been able to keep from using them, never been able to quell the part of her that roared at betrayal, that could hate and love more violently than anyone ever understood. Elain had been the only one who perhaps grasped it, but now her sister loathed her.

She didn't know how to fix it. How to make any of it right. How to stop being this way.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“She'd been suffering, and he'd had no idea how much it consumed every facet of her life. He'd seen her self-loathing and anger- but hadn't realised how much she had been aware of it. How much it had eaten her up. He couldn't stomach it. To know she'd hurt this much, for so long.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“Not in the sense of confessionals and shameful deeds, but in the sense of self-loathing translated into madness. The sin of a psyche revolting against its own free will, tagging every human interaction with scarring scabs of meanness while inwardly cowering from inadequacy and fear.

This sin has been imposed on him and he bought into it, which in itself is the most sinful fall from grace a human being can take.”
― Laurie Perez, The Look of Amie Martine