Quotes About Self

Narcissism is actually a clever guise adopted to mask its exact opposite, which is a deep well of self-loathing, a well of low self-esteem, rather than high self-esteem. This helps explain why narcissists are so sensitive to criticism, why narcissists tend to break into outrage if they're criticized, because their self-esteem is actually much more brittle than it seems, and once they're challenged, that mask falls apart.

Put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE. The thing that most retards and militates against women’s self development is self-sacrifice.

Therefore the Sage embraces Unity, and is a model for all under Heaven. He is free from self-display, therefore he shines forth; from self-assertion, therefore he is distinguished; from self-glorification, therefore he has merit; from self-exaltation, therefore he rises superior to all. Inasmuch as he does not strive, there is no one in the world who can strive with him.

Perhaps self-esteem is just the sum of self-love and self-confidence. People with high self-esteem know they deserve a good life and that they can get almost everything they focus on!

It isn't possible to kill part of your “self” unless you kill yourself first. If you ruin your conscious personality, the so-called ego-personality, you deprive the self of its real goal, namely to become real itself. The goal of life is the realization of the self. If you kill yourself you abolish that will of the self to become real, but it may arrest your personal development inasmuch it is not explained. You ought to realise that suicide is murder, since after suicide there remains a corpse exactly as with any ordinary murder. Only it is yourself that has been killed.

Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite—you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.” “I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.” “That’s the whole idea,” the girl said.

Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one's true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from straying outwards is called detachment (vairagya). Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice (sadhana). Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self.

The challenge life presents to each of us is to become truly ourselves--not the self we have imagined or fantasized about, not the self that our friends want us to be, not the self our ego would have us be, but the self God has ordained us to be from before we were in our mother's womb.

A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval, acceptance and recognition from others; but also upon actual accomplishments, achievements and success upon the realistic self confidence which ensues.

Yet each of us also carries another portrait with us, a picture far more important than any in our wallet. Psychologists have a name for it. They call that mental picture of ourselves, our self-image. ... there's always the person whose self-image is bent all out of shape, like a photo carried too long in a wallet.The good news of the tremendous worth we have in God's eyes can light up our inner self-portrait.

The Prayer of Examine produces within us the priceless grace of self-knowledge. I wish I could adequately explain to you how great a grace this truly is. Unfortunately, contemporary men and women simply do not value self-knowledge in the same way that all preceding generations have. For us technocratic knowledge reigns supreme. Even when we pursue self-knowledge, we all too often reduce it to a hedonistic search for personal peace and prosperity. How poor we are! Even the pagan philosophers were wiser than this generation. They knew that an unexamined life was not worth living.

The self is not so much linked to its ancestors, it is not so much the product, and merely the product, of all that, but rather, in the strictest sense of the word, the same thing as all that: the strict, direct continuation of it, just as the self aged fifty is the continuation of the self aged forty.

I will not be alone if I am my true self. Only by trading my true self for the companionship of another have I ever made myself alone. Because when I gave up my real self, I wound up resenting my "significant other" for "making me" do that-and it was this resentment that ate away at our relationship.

Parents who engage in this kind of [conscious] parenting understand the power of being present being mindful to take the time to build connection understanding that this foundation is the bedrock of all later self-worth, self-esteem and self-actualization.

The feeling of being valuable is a cornerstone of self-discipline because when you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself- including things like using your time well. In this way, self-discipline is self-caring.

Self-percepts foster actions that generate information, as well as serve as a filtering mechanism for self-referent information in the self-maintaining process

Self-care is not about self-indulgence , it is about self-preservati on.

In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.

What does God hate or punish except self-will? Let self-will cease, and there will be no hell. On what does that fire feed except on self-will?

Do not desire, for what you desire you get, and with it comes terrible bondage. It is nothing but bringing "noses on us," as in the case of the man who had three boons to ask. We never get freedom until we are self-contained. "Self is the Saviour of self, none else."

a mother's death also means the loss of the consistent, supportive family system that once supplied her with a secure home base, she then has to develop her self-confidence and self-esteem through alternate means. Without a mother or mother-figure to guide her, a daughter also has to piece together a female self-image of her own.

Bacon's portraits are an interrogation on the limits of the self. Up to what degree of distortion does an individual still remain himself? To what degree of distortion does a beloved person still remain a beloved person? For how long does a cherished face growing remote through illness, through madness, through hatred, through death still remain recognizable? Where is the border beyond which a self ceases to be a self?

Jesus regularly visualized the success of his efforts ... 'I always do what pleases God.' ... Was this conceit? Or was it enlightened creativity and self-knowledge? ...Jesus was full of self-knowledge and self-love. His 'I am' statements were what he became.

Strauss admits to being obsessed by his mother's rejection, and with the resultant rents in self-esteem. The Game echoes with disturbingly abusive comments leveled at his adolescent self, a self he feels was unacceptable. With bravado, he expresses regret that he didn't rack up more sexual conquests in his teens; in person, he expresses a truer regret that he was intimidated by life itself.

Time management requires self-discipline, self-mastery and self-control more than anything else.

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.

Most women in our culture, then, are disordered when it comes to issues of self-worth, self-entitlement, self-nourishment, and comfort with their own bodies; eating disorders, far from being 'bizarre' and anomalous, are utterly continuous with a dominant element of the experience of being female in this culture.

Know that what appears to be Love for an 'other' is really Love of Self because 'other' doesn't exist. So this innermost Love can be given to no 'other'. Love of friends is for the sake of Self, not for body to body. True love has no Lover or Beloved because all Love is Love of Self.

I think seriousness is a mask of self-importance and self-importance in turn is a mask for self-pity. So if you're really going to pursue a spiritual way of living in the world, you must be lighthearted and carefree, have humor, be able to tolerate ambiguity and embrace uncertainty, and be forgiving of yourself and everybody else.

Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one's Self is to be blissful always.

It's all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it's the same with, if you've got a weight problem. It's all about... finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you've got the discipline to do it, and knowing that other people maybe can't do it. And it's also, I think, really connected to the fact that you almost feel, like, silent, you have no voice, you're mute, there's just no, you've got no option. Even if you could express yourself nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you, there's no other way to get rid of them.

Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.

No one seriously doubts Socrates' maxim: The unexamined life isn't worth living. Self-assessment and attempts at self-improvement are essential aspects of "the good life." Yes, we should engage in ruthless self-reflection and harsh scrutiny, but we should simultaneously acknowledge that such introspection will, at best, only result in a partial view of our minds at work. Complete objectivity is not an option.

There's a lot to be said for being in a room with a casting agent or a director. There are things you can't really replicate when you're self-taping and there's the bonus of having someone to direct you, which is extremely helpful. The benefit of self-taping is, I suppose, being on your own clock. It's certainly more relaxing to self-tape than to audition with someone in the flesh but I don't know if it's necessarily better.

I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.

It is disgraceful to live at the cost of one's self-respect. Self-respect is the most vital factor in life. Without it, man is a cipher. To live worthily with self-respect, one has to overcome difficulties. It is out of hard and ceaseless struggle alone that one derives strength, confidence and recognition.

Sacrifice does not mean that, by giving, we lose something. We sacrifice our limited self to our highest and largest Self, and at that time we immediately become the largest and the highest Self.

Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image.

As Hubert Benoit said, it is not the identification with the ego that is the problem, but the exclusive nature of the identification. When our self-identity expands beyond the ego, into the deeper psychic, then even into the Unborn and One Taste, the ego is simply taken up and subsumed in a grander identity. But the ego itself remains as the functional self in the gross realm, and it might even appropriately be intensified and made more powerful, simply because it is now plugged into the entire Kosmos.

It’s in our interest to take care of others. Self-centrednes s is opposed to basic human nature. In our own interest as human beings we need to pay attention to our inner values. Sometimes people think compassion is only of help to others, while we get no benefit. This is a mistake. When you concern yourself with others, you naturally develop a sense of self-confidence . To help others takes courage and inner strength.

Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we’re thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don’t show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin’, no matter what.

If behind popular fascination with Freudian theory there was a nervous, often guilty preoccupation with the self as sexual, behind increasing interest in computational interpretations of mind is an equally nervous preoccupation with the self as machine.

Early in my career I was divided because I had the real self underneath: the lawbreaker, the anarchist, the person who swims against the tide, the outsider, the loner, all of that guy. He was my private self, and I had this other side that wanted to be liked in order to do all those things I dreamed of as a little boy. I didn't realize that those things didn't go together until later. And I'm quite sure that my use of acid and peyote helped me accept what was really going on inside of me instead of what I had imposed on myself.

Writing itself, if not misunderstood and abused, becomes a way of empowering the writing self. It converts anger and disappointment into deliberate and durable aggression, the writer's main source of energy. It converts sorrow and self-pity into empathy, the writer's main means of relating to otherness. Similarly, his wounded innocence turns into irony, his silliness into wit, his guilt into judgment, his oddness into originality, his perverseness into his stinger.

Self help books are pointless. Here's something for you... Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and self help books are from Uranus.

Self-help and self-control are the essence of the American tradition.

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.