Hold On To Yourself Quotes & Sayings

Never allow yourself to dwell on your weaknesses, your failures, your unhappy condition. Hold firmly the ideal of your efficiency, your competency, your divinity, the conviction that you were made for health, success, and happiness, and struggle vigorously to attain that which will help you to realize this condition. — Orison Swett Marden

I told my daughter, the first time she fell in love, not to hold it too close. Think of yourself in a warm, summer pool, I told her, concentric circles rippling all around you. Golden beams of sunlight flooding your hair, striking your face. Inhale it. Breathe it. It will not leave you. If you place sunlight in your palms, it will turn to shadow. If you put fireflies in a jar, they will die. But if you love with wings on, you will always feel the exhilaration of being suspended in flight. — Alyson Richman

The universe on your skin is empty
from all the silence on your tongue.
Forgive yourself. Let your body heal
from all the wounds you did not inflict
on yourself. Drop the sword you carry
on your shoulder for self-defense.
Lower the armor you hold high up
for protection. Those who harmed you
are not going to come back. Those who
have left never intended to return. — Akif Kichloo

You must assume 100% responsibility for your financial life. If you're going to improve your situation, you have to put the full burden of doing so squarely on your own shoulders. First and foremost, you must hold yourself responsible. — Steve Pavlina

We believe and we hold our beliefs to be true and sacred until the day we discover that we were duped. The end of belief is a challenging moment. You feel lonely, unconnected, with nothing to hang on. Your life becomes empty and aimless. You curse the day doubt entered your mind but you cannot undo the damage. You need to find a new direction for your life, something new to hang your hope on to continue living. And most of the time that thing is you. At that junction in life you will need to believe in yourself to continue living. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a "U-turn," or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or . . . Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality. — Jamie Whyte

I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguishes his gaze. 'I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but - alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're caught! — Mikhail Bulgakov

Recondition your reactions to dominant people. Try to visualize yourself behaving in a firm manner, armed with well-prepared facts and evidence. Practice saying things like "Hold on a minute - I need to consider what you have just said." Also practice saying "I'm not sure about that. It's too important to make a snap decision now." Don't cave in for fear that someone might shout at you or have a tantrum. Have faith that your own abilities will work if you use them. Non-assertive people are often extremely strong in areas of process, detail, dependability, reliability, and working cooperatively with others. These capabilities all have the potential to undo a dominating personality who has no proper justification. Recognize your strengths and use them to defend and support your position. — Dale Carnegie

Main thought! The individual himself is a fallacy. Everything which happens in us is in itself something else which we do not know. 'The individual' is merely a sum of conscious feelings and judgments and misconceptions, a belief, a piece of the true life system or many pieces thought together and spun together, a 'unity', that doesn't hold together. We are buds on a single tree - what do we know about what can become of us from the interests of the tree! But we have a consciousness as though we would and should be everything, a phantasy of 'I' and all 'not I.' Stop feeling oneself as this phantastic ego! Learn gradually to discard the supposed individual! Discover the fallacies of the ego! Recognize egoism as fallacy! The opposite is not to be understood as altruism! This would be love of other supposed individuals! No! Get beyond 'myself' and 'yourself'! Experience cosmically! — Friedrich Nietzsche

You rely too much on yo rules, Hannah. You use them as a kind of crutch to hold yourself back from new experiences. You've let these rules control everything you do in your life. — Shana Norris

It's amazing. TV used to give Americans the reverse fantasy: What if you, normal person, suddenly became a millionaire? Now it's "Oh, who are we kidding? You consider yourself lucky to hold on to your job deep-frying chicken parts, but how'd you like to be briefly introduced to a millionaire? Would you like that? You can even touch his garments!" And people watch this shit and find it inspirational. — Bill Maher

You can either hold yourself up to the unrealistic standards of others, or ignore them and concentrate on being happy with yourself as you are. — Jeph Jacques

Sometimes all you need to do is just hold on to yourself! Look at the stars in the sky, listen to the sweet murmurings of the breeze, inhale the fragrance of the night, and you will feel fine! — Avijeet Das

You can find energizing moments in each aspect of your life, but to do so you must learn how to catch them, hold on to them, to feel the pull of their weight and allow yourself to follow where they lead. — Marcus Buckingham

She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see.

~pg 29, Susie's sister Lindsey dealing with grief. — Alice Sebold

If you hold back on the emotions
if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them
you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your heard even, you experience them fully and completely. — Mitch Albom

You lose yourself trying to hold on to someone who doesn't care about losing you — Tablo

Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. "But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment'. — Mitch Albom

Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past. Listen: those who hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go. — Rick Warren

Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly--out of bed, not just in it--commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, "I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars."
It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. — Karen Marie Moning

If i cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with *your* essence are valuable to me. — Max Stirner

We act, we behave, and we feel the vibration that we're in at the present time according to what we consider our self image to be. And we do not deviate from that pattern. The image you hold of yourself is a premise, a foundation (idea) on which your entire personality is built. This image, not only controls your behavior but your circumstances as well. — Maxwell Maltz

You can only hold on to something for so long and enjoy it just by yourself, what's the point? It's very selfish. For better or for worse, I feel like the point of all of this is to make someone feel something. — Frank Iero

It is she who has a hold on him. Doesn't she see how much he needs her? She has nothing to be afraid of, her conscience is clear. It is he who should be ashamed, and terrified of her giving him away. But that is just what she will never do. To do this she does not have the necessary ruthlessness
Komarovsky's chief asset in dealing with subordinates and weaklings. This is precisely the difference between them. And it is this that makes the whole of life so terrifying. Does it crush you by thunder and lightning? No, by oblique glances and whispered calumny. It is all treachery and ambiguity. Any single thread is as fragile as a cobweb, but just try to pull yourself out of the net, you only become more entangled. And the strong are dominated by the weak and ignoble. — Boris Pasternak

She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! — D.H. Lawrence

But if you could read my thoughts, you would be welcome to come in
and listen to the story of my life. At least, you could slip your arm through
the bars and touch me and I will hold out my forepaw to greet you, after
retracting my claws, of course. You are carried away by appearances - my
claws and fangs and the glowing eyes frighten you no doubt. I don't blame
you. I don't know why God has chosen to give us this fierce make-up, the
same God who has created the parrot, the peacock, and the deer, which
inspire poets and painters. I would not blame you for keeping your distance
- I myself shuddered at my own reflection on the still surface of a pond
while crouching for a drink of water, not when I was really a wild beast, but
after I came under the influence of my Master and learnt to question, 'Who
am I?' Don't laugh within yourself to hear me speak thus. I'll tell you about
my Master presently. — R.K. Narayan

I called them up, "Ya, I have ten boxes; can you come pick them up?" "We need to know the weight and the girth." "Okay, good-bye." So I called back. "We need the weight and the girth." "Okay, I don't know what the weight is, and um, I don't know what girth means ... So now what's the procedure?" So this guy talks to me like I'm four years old. "Well do you have a bathroom scale?" "Uh, ya but if I put the box on the scale it's gonna cover up the NUMBERS!" What, do I take it off really quick? Ah, zero: I'm not fast enough. What's he talking about? So then he gives me his Mister Wizard Formula, "How about if you stand on the scale and weigh yourself and get off the scale. Pick up the box, get back on, weigh you and the box together, and subtract your own weight." I'm going, "Slow down. Hold on professor." I know this guys never tried this, because I tried it and you still can't see the NUMBERS! Then I had to hang up in the middle of his girth formula. — Brian Regan

What you have to do is work on yourself. Make yourself attractive through the things you do, the principles you hold dear, and the goals you've set for yourself. Then you can try to get a woman. You can't expect her to love you just because you love her back. That only happens when the woman is weak. — Chuck Palahniuk

Meanwhile, genuine equality says: "What do I care if you are more talented than I, more clever, more handsome? I'm glad for it, rather, because I love you. But though I may be less important to you, I respect myself as a person; and you know this and respect me yourself, and I am happy with your respect. If you, through your abilities, can bring me and everyone else a hundredfold more benefit than I can bring you, then I bless you for it; I marvel at you and thank you, and in no way do I hold my awe for you as something shameful; on the contrary, I am happy that I am grateful to you, and if I work for you and for all in so far as my feeble abilities allow, then it is certainly not to try to balance my account with you, but because I love you all. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you wish to stand and progress as you ought, hold yourself an exile and a pilgrim on the earth. — Thomas A Kempis

When you really believe that you are worthy of the best, that you deserve the best & that there is enough of the best for you to have plenty, there will be no need for you to hold on to what you have. Allow yourself to imagine what your life would be like if your hands and heart were to receive something better than what you are holding onto right now. — Iyanla Vanzant

The Poet With His Face In His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.
So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything. — Mary Oliver

Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you. — Epictetus

Don't hold back because you're afraid of hurting someone else. If your best friend wants to be a cheerleader and you make the team but she doesn't, don't feel guilty. If you end up earning more than your sister, it's not a betrayal. Your success might be an inspiration for someone else, while limiting yourself to avoid upsetting the balance doesn't help anyone. Equally, rather than being paralysed by jealousy when someone else is coming out on top, use it to spur you on to greater things. Some of our best achievements will be triggered by envy at seeing someone else fulfilling our secret ambitions. — Rosie Blythe

Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness. — Eckhart Tolle

You are going through difficult moments of life. Times when you do not understand the ways of our world or the ways of our people. Hold on to yourself in these moments. These times will change. Calm will return to your being. Hold on to yourself. Please. — Avijeet Das

Charm is from the Latin carmen: to sing. By "charm," I mean sing well enough to hold the reader in thrall. Whatever people like about you in the world will manifest itself on the page. What drives them crazy will keep you humble. You'll need both sides of yourself - the beautiful and the beastly - to hold a reader's attention. — Mary Karr

To Do Start with a conversation - a "stay interview." Learn about your talented employees' goals and what they love (or don't love) about their work. Don't stop with one chat. Talk (and listen!) daily, weekly, monthly. Develop a true relationship with every single person you hope to keep on your team. Hold "Alas Clinics" - opportunities to talk with others about talented people who have left your team lately. Why did they go? What role (if any) did you play in their leaving? How can you prevent more unwanted turnover? Think about who might be "loose in the saddle" (about ready to leave you); talk with them soon, and collaborate with them to get more of what they want and need from you, from the team, from their jobs. Go big picture. Ask yourself, "What kind of work environment do I want to create?" Then figure out what you need to do in order to make that vision come alive. Then - go do it! — Beverly Kaye

Free yourself from the poisonous and laborious burden of holding a grudge. When you hold a grudge, you want someone else's sorrow to reflect your level of hurt, but the two rarely meet. Let go ... Sometimes, forgiveness is simply a reflection of loving yourself enough to move on. — Steve Maraboli

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you aren't afraid of dying, there is nothing you can't achieve. Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter's place. When you handle the master carpenter's tools, chances are that you'll cut yourself. — Lao-Tzu

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture ... Do not build up obstacles in your imagination. — Norman Vincent Peale

The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but actually it's the most natural way to approach any situation. When you hold some part of yourself in reserve you deny it exposure to life; you repress its energy and keep it form understanding what it needs to know. — Deepak Chopra

Never favour those who flatter you most, but hold rather to those who risk your displeasure for your own good. Never neglect business for pleasure, organise your life so that there is time in it for relaxation and entertainment. Give the business of government your full attention. Inform yourself as much as you can before taking any decision. Make every effort to get to know men of distinction, so that you may call on them when you need them. Be courteous to all, speak hurtfully to no man. — E.H. Gombrich

Become aware of yourself. Everything will come to you, Chinmay, when you are in that most wonderful place on earth, the centre of your being. If you learn just one thing from this book, let it be that once you are aware of yourself, depression cannot hold you back any more than a tiger can be trapped in a spider's web. — Indu Muralidharan

I'm sure everyone feels this way, but it's hard to have a proper opinion of yourself or how things are or how you expected them to be or how far removed they are from how you expect them to be. On the one hand, you're extraordinarily grateful and terribly excited, but on the other, I stop and go, "I wonder what the future does hold." — Dominic Cooper

You can't hold on, Zoe. Not to hate. Not even to love. You kill things that way. There's only one freedom. Forgiveness. And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to forgive yourself. — Pamela Todd

In scattering the seed, scattering your 'charity,' your kind deeds, you are giving away, in one form or antoher, part of your personality, and taking into yourself part of another; you are in mutual communion with one another, a little more attention and you will be rewarded with the knowledge of the most unexpected discoveries. You will come at last to look upon your work as a science; it will lay hold of all your life, and may fill up your whole life. On the other hand, all your thoughts, all the seeds scattered by you, perhaps forgotten by you, will grow up and take form. He who has received them from you will hand them on to another. And how can you tell what part you may have in the future determination of the destinies of humanity? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Hold on ... Hold on to yourself. This is going to hurt like hell. — Sarah McLachlan

People who are focused on the past will quickly become a weight that will hold you back. You must break free from those relationships and embrace those who will take you to your future. Link yourself up with those who are going somewhere. Seek out those who have a vision for their lives, and find your place at their table. These are the people who will open the door to your destiny. These types of individuals will not waste time, nor are they looking — Robb Thompson

If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stay on top and reach a helping hand down to him. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself out into the light. — Martin Buber

My mother passed away, my marriage ended, and I moved. Those are some pretty big things to let go of. But I find that if you hold on to something too tightly, you strangle it and yourself. If you don't let go, and let things go through you, it's toxic - physically. — Ingrid Michaelson

Self-forgiveness. It's more like a constant attitude. It's just being hopeful. It's refusing to hold your breath. It's loving yourself enough to offer yourself a million more tries. It's what we want our kids to do every day for their whole lives, right? We want them to embrace being human instead of fighting against it. We want them to offer themselves grace. Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can't offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep. — Glennon Doyle Melton

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself. — Swami Vivekananda

If u cant tell how u feel now and hold on to that than your left not knowing what could have happened. Dont wait and be too late let yourself out now. — Rose

If you are operating under the illusion that you can continue to hold on to people who you know are not good for you, and still create an extraordinary life filled with love and fulfillment, then you are fooling yourself. Toxic ties cost us and they cost us big time. If you are feeling stuck in your life, look to see who or what it is that you are stuck to. — Katherine Woodward Thomas

Jud threw down the turfs he had brought in. "If you learned her to hold 'er tongue," he said pettishly to his wife, "'twould be a sight betterer than learning 'er that. If you learned 'er manners, how to speak respectable to folk and answer respectable an' be respectable to her elders an' betters, 'twould be a sight betterer than that. Then ye could pat yourself on the 'ead and say, 'Thur, I'm doing a tidy job, learning her to be respectable.' But what are 'ee doing? Tedn't 'ard to answer. Tedn't 'ard to see. You're learning her to be sassy. — Winston Graham

Chamara. What is the word that comes closest to it? Soo-Ja wondered. To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? There is no other word for it, no way to translate it. It is not a word. It is a way to console yourself. He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she'll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too. — Samuel Park

All the tears in the world can't bring back the dead or wash away your fears and grief. I want you to put up your chin and tell yourself you are strong. And if you begin to weaken, hold on to me. That's what I am here for. — Cynthia Wright

You may not know what the outcome will be, but you have to try to give yourself a future, no matter how long it takes. You have to hold on to hope. — Peter W. Smorynski

To guard yourself against thieves who slash open suitcases, rifle through bags and smash open boxes, one should strap the bags and lock them. The world at large knows that this shows wisdom. However, when a master thief comes, he simply picks up the suitcase, lifts the bag, carries off the box and runs away with them, his only concern being whether the straps and locks will hold! In such an instance, what seemed like wisdom on the part of the owner surely turns out to have been of use only to the master thief! — Zhuangzi

I laugh at myself.
I don't take myself completely seriously.
I think that's another quality that people have to hold on to ... you have to laugh, especially at yourself. — Madonna

When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,
when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,
oh, then diet yourself well on biography,
the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

As long as you hold on to your anger for the wrong man of the past, he will forever have control over your ability to be happy in the future." A lot of you have moved on physically, but you still carry the pain and the anger that he caused you inside. Give yourself a fair chance to find true happiness. Now is the time to finally let him go. — Amari Soul

Stardust is
the hardest thing
to hold out for.
You must make of yourself
a perfect plane-
something still
upon which
something settles-
something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It's hard to explain.
Stardust — Kay Ryan

She made the choice she thought was best for her, even though it was the wrong one. But that's what you have to remember ... she made that choice. Not you. And you can't blame yourself for not knowing what she failed to tell you." I kiss him on the forehead, then bring my eyes back to his. "You have to let it go. You can hold on to the hate and the love and even the bitterness, but you have to let go of the blame. The blame is what's tearing you down. — Colleen Hoover

Do you ever get over loss? Or do you just find a box within yourself, big enough to hold it? Do you just stuff it in there, push it down, and snap the lid on it? Do you just work, every day, to keep the box shut? — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Is there a definition of a truly good person? ... Many say that "Nice guys finish last", that "kindness is weakness", and so on. To those of you who are told "Your too nice" or you tell yourself that. That is something to hold on to! So many people say "screw it" I can't be walked on or treated this way. So they become what they think is "tough" ,"smarter" or it's just easier. It's really not. Because even though you think you get "respect" you had to sacrifice the good part of who you are for it. — Monique Reza

Just as before, Cale moved swiftly into his next hold. His arm shot out like a whip, giving her no time to react. Powerful hands wrapped around her small throat, and he squeezed with a gentle pressure, enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to really hurt her. He meant to prove a point, but Analia knew this hold well, had been on the receiving end of it many times. This was a hold that could easily render her unconscious. She kept steady, oddly feeling safe even though her pulse spiked wildly.
'How should you counter?' Cale asked.
'I could kick you in your bollocks.'
He smiled at her candor. 'Aye, you could, but a man of any brains would expect a move like that in this position. A better move would be to raise your arm up and bring your elbow down across my arms. If you learn to do it right, you will break my hold, and will be able to get yourself in a more suitable position for a counterattack. Then you go for the bollocks.'"

-Cale & Analia — Kiersten Fay

Almighty God." So put your shoulders back and hold your head up high. You are extremely valuable. When those thoughts come telling you everything that you're not, remind yourself, "I have the fingerprints of God all over me - the way I look, the way I smile, my gifts, my personality. I know I am not average. I am a masterpiece." Those are the thoughts that should be playing in your mind all day long. Not I am slow. I am unattractive. I am just one of the seven billion people on Earth. No, God did not make anything average. If you have breath to breathe, you are a masterpiece. Now, — Joel Osteen

When a thing has served its purpose, it will go away. Sometimes it will break. At other times, it will simply die off. Then, there are those times when for no reason, it will simply fall apart. If you try to hold on to something that has already fulfilled its purpose in your life, you are going to hurt yourself. If holding on is disturbing your peace of mind, it makes sense to let it go. — Iyanla Vanzant

If someone has offended you, insulted you, or disappointed you, let it go! If you are remembering all the ways you have been hurt or forgotten, let it go! Ask yourself, what good does it do for me to hold on to this? — Iyanla Vanzant

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself. — George Bernard Shaw

Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength. — Ramana Maharshi

She had to get a hold of herself. She had to run. Did she have a chance of making it out alive? Something told her "no." Definitely no. The chamber exit, a narrow doorway, led to an even narrower passage that would dump her back into the dark jungle. She wouldn't make it two feet before he barreled down on her with those powerful thighs. Yes, powerful thighs. Ummm. She ground her palm into her forehead. Tramp! Get a hold of yourself. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

People dwell so much on the little things, but why should they hold you back when you have the big things to look forward to? By exuding positive energy when dealing with your problems, you will exude it in your being in general. Treat yourself with love and you will exude love to others. — Hayley Hasselhoff

A mother's body against a child's body makes a place. It says you are here. Without this body against your body there is no place. I envy people who miss their mother. Or miss a place or know something called home. The absence of a body against my body created a gap, a hole, a hunger. This hunger determined my life ... The absence of a body against my body made attachment abstract. Made my own body dislocated and unable to rest or settle. A body pressed against your body is the beginning of nest. I grew up not in a home but in a kind of free fall of anger and violence that led to a life of constant movement, of leaving and falling. It is why at one point I couldn't stop drinking and fucking. Why I needed people to touch me all the time. It had less to do with sex than location. When you press against me, or put yourself inside me. When you hold me down or lift me up, when you lie on top of me and I can feel your weight, I exist. I am here. — Eve Ensler

One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre - just into nothingness, as smoke. Don't get attached to anything. This attachment takes you away from your real being; you become focused on the thing to which you are attached. Your awareness gets lost in things, in money, in people, in power. And there are a thousand and one things, the whole thick jungle around you, to be lost in. Remember, non-attachment is the secret of finding yourself, then awareness can turn inwards because you don't have anything outside to catch hold of. It is free, and in this freedom you can know your self-nature. — Rajneesh

Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice. — Deb Caletti

Someone is going to tell you to get use to this. That feeling of being scared and sad. They're going to say it'll be better when you learn to ignore it. Don't listen to them. Hold on to it, remember it ... Don't let yourself forget it. It's too easy to lose.
-Carl Grimes — Robert Kirkman

We all need something to hold on to, belief, a strong and genuine one. Make it one you can trust. Make it yourself. Believe in yourself and hold on tight. — Aaron Millar

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.
Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness. — Lauren Oliver

Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind - its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about. — Rajneesh

Find yourself in the present. See the possibilities right in front of you and hold on tight to the ones tou want to keep. — Robin Bielman

Don't give up on yourself. It's incredibly cliche, but it's true. The worst is yet to come if you give up on yourself. Hold yourself in high regard, and know that, though the ride may be bumpy and uncomfortable, there is a silver lining. You have to be able to see the good things in all that happens to you. — Leigh Hershkovich

She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world. — Nicole Krauss

Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn. — Orson Scott Card

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life. — Katherine Mansfield

Don't let yourself drown. Don't run or swim away from the safety of the boat. The boat, that's your home, your family, your life. The preserver that keeps you afloat will always be your wife, your partner. Without a preserver you drown, a preserver without something to hold onto has no purpose, so you see, you need each other ... you need to rely on one another for everything. Never forget that if it's not worth fighting for, it's not worth having. — Rachel Van Dyken

Excited, on hearing your words o' man, as you shattered in yourself with pain,that occupied somewhere between your spirit and success.
I can bring out a reflection for you to keep - the inspiration that wanders to communicate my presence in your visible soul. It can hold you like a tendril to you only until the wake. — Nithin Purple

I'd simplified and objectified our relationship into one of lust and boundaries, and while both were necessary for a good relationship, it took a lot more than that to make it an epic one. Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly - out of bed, not just in it - commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars. It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. We — Karen Marie Moning

Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. "He doesn't say, 'You have to do this by Friday at two P.M.,'" Brogan said. "He says, 'I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it?' Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You're working hard for yourself. It's a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work." And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. The individual doesn't have to hold meetings, reach a consensus, or bring other people up to speed on a project. He just keeps working and working and working. The — Ashlee Vance

And maybe that was how it was supposed to be ... Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps,was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly ... — Kristin Hannah

The demons exist. If they don't find you, you create your own. Fear is there. It never fades. But know that you never have to be alone. Never doubt yourself, just because everyone else doesn't understand. There's an entire kingdom out there. Hold on to that image. Be — Michael J. Seidlinger

I wish I could take language And fold it like cool, moist rags. I would lay words on your forehead. I would wrap words on your wrists. 'There, there,' my words would say - Or something better. I would ask them to murmur, 'Hush' and 'Shh, shhh, it's all right.' I would ask them to hold you all night. I wish I could take language And daub and soothe and cool Where fever blisters and burns, Where fever turns yourself against you. I wish I could take language And heal the words that were the wounds You have no names for. — Julia Margaret Cameron

Anger is like the blade of a butcher knife - very difficult to hold on to for long without harming yourself. — Patti LaBelle

If you hold on, if you force yourself as hard as you can to find some kind of patience in the middle of all your impatience, things can change. — Meg Wolitzer

I'm bouncing up and down next to Beck, and his arm is around my waist because it's second nature to reach out and grab something during a race. To grab it and hold on, or shake it, or just feel that it's there and you can steady yourself against it to bring yourself back to earth when the race is done. — Mara Dabrishus

You are a fine and talented woman, whose potential is yet to be realized given the love and support and luck we all need. Where you lost the will to fight for what is yours, where you gave away control of your life, is the mystery you are now unraveling. When you get it all back, hold on to it. — Isabel Vincent

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment. — Will Self