Quotes & Sayings About Congratulating Yourself

Most of them would have nothing to do with a caterpillar, except watch it through its changes; but when at length it came from its retirement with wings, all would immediately address it as Sister Butterfly, congratulating it on its metamorphosis--for which they used a word that meant something like REPENTANCE--and evidently regarding it as something sacred. — George MacDonald

I believe that the mindset that allows you to spend your working life thanking and congratulating people rather than being unpleasant to them is the mainstay of good leadership. — Tim Waterstone

When he came to, the eels were still being removed from him and Anvar was congratulating one of the rivermen. The man had smashed open a barrel of eels and covered both dwarf and zombie with them. — Ian Livingstone

Lisa, please tell me you didn't say anything embarrassing?"
"Like what?" she said.
"Like the time I got stuck in the cubbyhouse window." I held my breath in hope.
"Told him."
"The tomato up my nose incident?"
"Told him."
"The fingers I superglued together?"
"Told him.
"Is there anything you didn't tell him?" I asked anxiously.
I could see Lisa almost congratulating herself on the other end of the phone. "Yes. I didn't tell him about the time you had an erection for two days straight and Dad had to take you to emergency about it. — Renae Kaye

I hated reunions. It made myself felt so little afterwards. When I was there, I couldn't help not knowing. But after I knew things, I couldn't stop comparing. I was congratulating people when they told me the good news, but deep inside I was wondering whether their good news was better than mine. Life wasn't supposed to be a competition, but it really felt like one. — Marcella Purnama

Your reactions, whether positive or negative, are creative of future circumstances. In your imagination, you can hear words congratulating you on getting a wonderful new job. That imaginal act now goes forward and you will encounter this pleasant experience in the future. — Neville Goddard

Author compares the impact of biases to his experience as an average swimmer who overcame a considerable fear of water. While the swimming was easy in one particular experience, he was internally congratulating himself on his acquired skill. But when he realized he was swimming with a current he would now have to fight against, he realized just how definite his limits were. — Shankar Vedantam

I heard a bird congratulating itself
all day for being a jay.
Nobody cared. But it was glad
all over again, and said so, again. — William Stafford

God, I thank thee, I am not as the rest of men, or even as this publican. It is in that which is just cause for thanksgiving, it is in the very thanksgiving which we render to God, it may be in the very confession that God has done it all, that self finds its cause of complacency. Yes, even when in the temple the language of penitence and trust in God's mercy alone is heard, the Pharisee may take up the note of praise, and in thanking God be congratulating himself. — Andrew Murray

It's been phenomenal, but everybody keeps congratulating me on my resurgence and my big comeback. I haven't been away, guys. I've been working steadily for the last 63 years. — Betty White

The two armies separated; and we are told that Pyrrhus said to one who was congratulating him on his victory, "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." 10 For he had lost a great part of the forces with which he came, and all his friends and generals except a few; moreover, he had no others whom he could summon from home, and he saw that his allies in Italy were becoming indifferent, while the army of the Romans, as if from a fountain gushing forth indoors, was easily and speedily filled up again, and they did not lose courage in defeat, nay, their wrath gave them all the more vigour and determination for the war. — Plutarch

I should have known better, of course. Whenever I'm feeling up to the mark and congratulating myself, some fearful fate trips me headlong, and I find myself haring for cover with my guts churning and Nemesis in full cry after me. — George MacDonald Fraser

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects. — William Hazlitt

We shouldn't have to go around congratulating each other for behaving with basic human dignity. — Josiah Bancroft

Are you congratulating me on my life, or on my death? — Ally Condie

He loved her so much when he made her unhappy, or else when she made him unhappy: at these moments he scarcely knew which was which. He would pat her, standing well back as with strange dogs, stretching out his hand, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And he was sorry, but there was more to it: he was also gloating, congratulating himself, because he'd managed to create such an effect. — Margaret Atwood

Initially, it (winning the 1967 American League Pennant) was what you would dream about in Little League. The winning pitcher, being on the mound to win the pennant, everyone congratulating me. But a few minutes later, you realize you're not going where you want to go. I was trying to get back in the dugout. Thank God for the Boston police, they were able to control the crowd. It was delirium. — Jim Lonborg

Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way. — Julie Burchill

This is a big fucking deal!" --Joe Biden, caught on an open mic congratulating President Barack Obama during the health care signing ceremony, Washington, D.C., March 23, 2010 — Joe Biden

I took everybody, including the dog, for a ride, and we went around the block four or five times, congratulating one another upon our new mobility. I discovered that my former casual attitude of timid acquiescence was not consistent with someone who could drive a car, so I fell gradually into a new personality, swashbuckling and brazen, with a cigarette usually hanging out of one corner of my mouth because I had to keep both hands on the wheel. — Shirley Jackson

He went into those little gardens beneath the over-hanging, brightly-lit masses of the Savoy Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down on a seat and became aware of the talk of the two people next to him. It was the talk of a young couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The man was congratulating himself on having regular employment at last; 'they like me,' he said, 'and I like the job. If I work up - in'r dozen years or so I ought to be gettin' somethin' pretty comfortable. That's the plain sense of it, Hetty. There ain't no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't get along very decently - very decently indeed. — H.G.Wells

I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent experience is any guide, I'll probably be lying in that hospital bed with my body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the handsome young doctor, wishing that I hadn't been such a coward. Wishing I'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing I'd lived when I had the chance. — Tom Perrotta

Forbes did a story on , when I seen it in Forbes I was just like, "This looks good!" and it felt good so I just went ahead and posted it. As soon as I posted it, people started calling and congratulating me and then it really started sinking in that it was a real accomplishment. — Ryan Montgomery

Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it nota real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with. — Henry David Thoreau

On the face of it he seemed to be congratulating himself on dealing with patients more humanely than Yealland, but then why the mood of self-accusation? In the dream he stood in Yealland's place. The dream seemed to be saying, in dream language, don't flatter yourself. There is no distinction. — Pat Barker

Your skin looks like margarine, and your pants are so tight I feel like congratulating the blood that can get to your ass. — Christopher Rice

I've been nothing but kind to you. I'm not some sort of monster."
"No, you're the man who sits idly by, congratulating yourself on your decency, while the monster eats his fill. At least a monster has teeth and a spine. — Leigh Bardugo

Being proud of your nationality is like congratulating yourself for inheriting money. — Dov Davidoff

I have to force a smile off my face as I sit limply in my seat ...
Then, just as I'm congratulating myself for such a stellar plan ... — Marie Lu

You can't cure people of their character,' she read.
After this he had crossed something out then gone on, 'You can't even change yourself. Experiments in that direction soon deteriorate into bitter, infuriated struggles. You haul yourself over the wall and glimpse new country. Good! You can never again be what you were! But even as you are congratulating yourself you discover tied to one leg the string of Christmas cards, gas bills, air letters and family snaps which will never allow you to be anyone else. A forty-year-old woman holds up a doll she has kept in a cardboard box under a bed since she was a child. She touches its clothes, which are falling to pieces; works tenderly its loose arm. The expression that trembles on the edge of realizing itself in the slackening muscles of her lips and jaw is indescribably sad. How are you to explain to her that she has lost nothing by living the intervening years of her life? How is she to explain that to you? — M. John Harrison

Lawyers are alright, I guess - but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't. — J.D. Salinger

That's a much better kiss than the one you gave her when you won the shooting match!"
"And a much better proposal of marriage than the one you gave her yesterday morning!" Minerva chimed in.
"Leave him be!" Celia chided as Jackson went red about the ears. "He saved my life twice, figured out who killed Mama and Papa, and taught Gran some humility. We can't all be good at everything, you know."
Amid the laughter, he kissed her again, but her family didn't let that go on for long. It was cold outside, after all. Gran herded them inside to the great hall, where the servants had brought out refreshments. There, everyone had to take turns congratulating them and clamoring for all the usual details of how it had started and when it had become true love. — Sabrina Jeffries

Everybody is slapping me on the back and cheering and congratulating me. But it doesn't seem real. There must be a mistake. How ... how could — Suzanne Collins

I'm not going to say I told you so" is pretty much the same thing as saying "I told you so." Except worse because you're saying "I told you so" and congratulating yourself for your restraint in not saying what you totally just said. — Jenny Lawson

Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more "natural" it will both seem and actually be. Spontaneity, left to itself, can begin by excusing bad behavior and end by congratulating vice. — N. T. Wright

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process. — Bruce Babbitt

Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society's own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender. — A.W. Tozer

The only thing worse than a bigot is an "ally" who can't stop congratulating themselves on their enlightenment. — Julio Alexi Genao

She was almost sixty and she had not been to London, or Paris, or Rome, and there was no going there now. Yes, she was balanced, as she had gotten into the habit of congratulating herself for being. But, she saw, she was balanced on a very narrow perch. — Jane Smiley