Justify Myself Quotes & Sayings

Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge
that because she was injured, she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint ... — Jane Austen

A lie is my attempt to tamper with the truth so that I need not face the truth. Yet as shrewd as I think myself to be, I would be wise to understand that God designed truth as ultimately tamper-proof. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Ten times a day I am compelled to reflect on my past life ... and I can never justify to myself the spending of four years on dramatic criticism. I have sworn an oath to endure no more of it. Never again will I cross the threshold of a theatre. The subject is exhausted; and so am I.
I am off duty forever, and am going to sleep. — George Bernard Shaw

I feel more comfortable in my own skin now than I ever have ... I think there's something about loving Kai [her son] so much, in a way that I've never loved anyone, including myself. Also, I used to spend a lot of time alone, but he's this incredibly social kind of guy, so all of a sudden I'm always having people in and out of my house. It's changed the way I feel as a citizen of the world. And it's really important to me to feel good about what I'm working on, to justify the number of hours I'd have to be away from him. — Jennifer Connelly

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I'm benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day, because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other and to that extent I can accept myself. — James Nachtwey

I was shocked to have to admit to myself that not only had I accepted a complex theory somewhat uncritically, but that I had also actually noticed quite a bit of what was wrong, in the theory as well as in the practice of communism. But I had repressed this -partly out of loyalty to my friends, partly out of loyalty to "the cause", and partly because there is a mechanism of getting oneself more and more deeply involved: once one has sacrificed one's intellectual conscience over a minor point one doesn't wish to give in too easily; one wishes to justify the self-sacrifice by convincing oneself of the fundamental goodness of the cause, which is seen to outweigh any little moral or intellectual compromise that maybe required. With every such moral or intellectual sacrifice one gets more deeply involved. One becomes ready to back one's moral or intellectual investments in the cause with further investments. It's like being eager to throw good money after bad. — Karl R. Popper

I'm not trying to justify myself, or say I'm not sorry, or not contrite. — Lance Armstrong

I can't justify to myself working less, even if you get more out of it. Even though, in practice, it does seem it would be better for me personally. — Chael Sonnen

I envy you, that it's so easy for you to think of things in terms of black and white. I'd like to think I'm a good person, believe it or not. Everything I've done, I did because I thought it was right at the time. In hindsight, some of the ends didn't justify the means, and sometimes there were unforseen consequences." Like Dinah. "But I don't think of myself as a bad person. — Wildbow

The ends-"
"Justify the means. That's what she said. What is that, your family motto or something?"
Lara stilled, her knuckles white. "Would you like to know about my family, Sophie?"
Pressing myself back against my chair, I shook my head. "I think I know enough about your family, thanks."
"You don't know anything," Lara said, and then she flicked her fingers in my direction.
At first, nothing happened, and I wondered if all she'd done was give me the witch version of her middle finger. — Rachel Hawkins

I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you. — Uma Thurman

I refuse to turn to theology to justify the life or redeem it. There is a question always of the connection to the eternal. I say to myself above all, keep alive your conviction that there are sacred elements in the life in the practice of the life that must be respected. But the conviction in the existence of the sacred does not necessarily imply that you need to believe in a creator, because we are the ones that made the sacred. — Stanley Kunitz

I grew up completely overwhelmed by TV, and part of the reason why I have gone into television is as a way to justify to myself all those wasted hours of watching TV as a kid. I can now look back and say, 'Oh, that was research.' — Matt Groening

Forgiven? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and don't attempt to justify myself. It's not my husband but myself I have deceived. And not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time. — Anton Chekhov

The insights that freed Jud were similar to the ones that led to my own recovery from spiritual workaholism after being confronted by my boss years ago. I came to realize that God didn't love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God. I could stop working like a slave to justify myself; I just needed to recognize - and celebrate - my adoption as God's child. — Lee Strobel

Some people maybe try to justify their laziness. You take out what you put in and the more I go to church and the more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus, and to listening to his word and have him guide my hand I feel the pressure's off me. — Sylvester Stallone

Whatever defamation of character my enemies are spreading about me, I do not feel the need to justify myself toward them. While discretion obliges me to remain silent, my duty compels me to prevent them from doing any more harm. — Toussaint Louverture

I cannot convince myself that my mental capacities are important enough to justify either the good or the harm they started. — William Golding

This boy was so far out of my league it was embarrassing. I found myself staring at him, trying to find some minute flaw that might justify dragging him back to my level. Finding nothing, I decided that having a dimple on only one cheek was practically a deformity. — G.J. Walker-Smith

I tried to describe impossible things like the scent of creosote - bitter, slightly resinous, but still pleasant - the high, keening sound of the cicadas in July, the feathery barrenness of the trees, the very size of the sky, extending white-blue from horizon to horizon, barely interrupted by the low mountains covered with purple volcanic rock. The hardest thing to explain was why it was so beautiful to me - to justify a beauty that didn't depend on the sparse, spiny vegetation that often looked half dead, a beauty that had more to do with the exposed shape of the land, with the shallow bowls of valleys between the craggy hills, and the way they held on to the sun. I found myself using my hands as I tried to describe it to him. — Stephenie Meyer

Forget your religious superstitions built by cults and learn to love for the sake of humanity."-Stated after hearing a man use religion to justify and warrant hatred of people based on differences put forth by his spiritual beliefs. Oddly enough I happen to be very superstitious myself! — Rickey Russell

Every time I complete a major project I reward myself with two full days of just reading and coffee! I do justify that it is my work! — Delia J. Colvin

Poets to Come
POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! Arouse
for you must justify me
you must answer.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you. — Walt Whitman

I feel like I'm always having to justify why I haven't kept in touch with anyone from the old days in Stoke-on-Trent, but I'm like that with anybody. I don't let anybody in. I just rely on myself. — Robbie Williams

I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? — Jonathan Safran Foer

I am too sick to work and haven't money enough to last 2 months and pay income tax. I want to keep going but do not see quite how, and there is no alternative - rather than justify my mother's 25-year dread of my "coming back on her, sick", I must kill myself. If she has to pay funeral costs, at least she will cut them to the bone and I will not be here to endure her martyrdom and prolong it by living. — Rose Wilder Lane

Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any social failure-so I can say "No, I don't go out for many extracurricular activities, but I spend a lot of time writing." — Sylvia Plath

I struggled in my mind with all kinds of defenses. Should I be hurt? Surprised? Should I laugh it off? I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it's difficult with old friends; difficult because it's so easy. You know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about. I poured myself a drink and shrugged. 'Nothing's perfect. — Jeanette Winterson

But nothing will persuade me that the mere fact of being in a place is enough in itself to justify the effort of getting out of bed to become a tourist, or even a traveller. I don't have the slightest wish to be intrepid. I don't want to prove myself to myself or anyone else. I don't care if no one thinks me brave or hardy. I have no concern at all that I did not have whatever it is I should have had to take a dive out of a plane or off a building. None of that matters to me in the least. — Jenny Diski

You will say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public after all the tears and transports which I have myself confessed. But why is it contemptible? Can you imagine that I am ashamed of it all, and that it was stupider than anything in your life, gentlemen? And I can assure you that some of these fancies were by no means badly composed . . . . It did not all happen on the shores of Lake Como. And yet you are right - it really is vulgar and contemptible. And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify myself to you. And even more contemptible than that is my making this remark now. But that's enough, or there will be no end to it; each step will be more contemptible than the last . . . — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This compulsion to look back, to explain to myself, to others, why I did what I did - or, worse, to justify why I didn't do something else - is one of the most direct roads to depression we have. Our thoughts, emotions, and attitudes, according to Dr. Andrew Weil in his book Healthy Aging, are "key determinants of how we age." They can threaten the quality of time we bring to the present. — Joan D. Chittister

My stupidity gave its blessing to succouring nature, on her knees before God.
What I am (my drunken laughter and happiness) is nonetheless at stake, handed over to chance, thrown out into the night, chased away like a dog.
The wind of truth responded like a slap to piety's extended cheek.
The heart is human to the extent that it rebels (this means: to be a man is 'not to bow down before the law').
A poet doesn't justify - he doesn't accept - nature completely. True poetry is outside laws. But poetry ultimately accepts poetry.
When to accept poetry changes it into its opposite (it becomes the mediator of an acceptance!) I hold back the leap in which I would exceed the universe, I justify the given world, I content myself with it — Georges Bataille

But every time I told myself one lie, I had to tell another to justify the ones that came before it. — David Weber

I'm trying to understand how do we tell lies to ourselves to justify what we've done and what are the consequences of those lies? But actually maybe I also recognize that in turning empathy into a practice for many years, by turning, by forcing myself to separate at some level the humanity of a human being from his or her actions and recognizing that sometimes, even the moral aspects of a human being can contribute to immoral behavior. — Joshua Oppenheimer

If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned toward writing with a burning desire to confess, to understand, to justify myself in the eyes of others ... I wouldn't have been impelled to live in New York and choose the hard poverty of bohemia over the soft comfort of the business world. — Edmund White

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm. — Lord Chesterfield

It is not trivial to lie in a report ... At the time I wrote it I actually believed what I wrote to be true, fervently ... Yet, when I wrote it, I also knew it wasn't true. I call this the lie of two minds.
"I" convinced "myself." The I that did the convincing was the one who needed desperately to justify the entire experience, to make it sane and right and okay and approved. Myself was convinced as the moral self, the part of me I would want to be a judge in a legal system. This moral part of us, however, in these extreme situations, is vulnerable to the overwhelming force of that part of us that needs to justify our actions ... With this lie I'd lost myself. Perhaps this too adds to the shame. — Karl Marlantes

I wrote my histories and observations. I captured my thoughts and ideas and memories in words on vellum and paper. So much I stored, and thought it was mine. I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. Perhaps I sought to justify myself, not just all I had done, but who I had become. For years, I wrote faithfully nearly every evening, carefully explaining my world and my life to myself. — Robin Hobb