Quotes & Sayings About Looking After Yourself

You never think you're on the verge of disaster while you're looking over the edge yourself. It's your friends and family who are trying to get you to stop destroying yourself and after a while it kind of sank in and I just cleaned up my act. — Johnny Depp

Its a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me. — Evelyn Waugh

I did and do believe, after all that I've seen and done, that if you project yourself into the mass of things, if you look for things, if you search, you will, by the very act of searching, make something that would not otherwise have happened, you will find something, even something small, something that will certainly be more than if you hadn't gone looking in the first place, if you hadn't asked our grandfather anything at all...There are no miracles, no magical coincidences. There is only looking and finally seeing, what was always there. — Daniel Mendelsohn

This inability to just do nothing is a direct result of our habit of externalisation. As children we are never taught in schools, or in social settings, to look within ourselves for answers. Whether it is that our answers are found in some sort of religion, or another person, or in something else, we start to make this common practice. We are indecisive in life looking to friends, family, counsellors, teachers, and even strangers for advice. We are never taught or, better yet, shown how to look after our number one relationship in life, which is the relationship with one's self. — Evan Sutter

So they gave me love in form of poison and tiny little pills, programming my emotions, teaching me how to feel. To act correct and talk correct and answer without knowing the question, because that, my dear, is how you get love. Yes that, dear youth, is how you'll be loved. I tried to medicate my own fucked up little mind with chemicals and adrenaline, tasting sweeter every night, shaking louder every time. Sitting wide awake in bed until the world disappears, writing poetry to concentrate on something real while waiting for the love to arrive.
I've been looking for it night after night, waiting patiently for it to show up, maybe somewhere in between the state of awake and asleep, alive and not so alive, sober and not so sober.
(I lost track of the difference somewhere in between.) — Charlotte Eriksson

The trouble with good manners is that people are persuaded that you are all right, require no protection, are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. — Anita Brookner

At some level you remain an orphan for life; looking after children is one way of looking after yourself. — Ian McEwan

I had always planned when I started directing in 1970 that after a few years I'd get tired of looking at myself on the screen and say: "Hey, let's not do that any more." But then every once in a while something pops up. I'm not saying it won't happen again but probably the odds get less as you set yourself for roles that fit your age group. — Clint Eastwood

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! — Wilhelm Reich

I shun all activities and you have none. You have freed yourself from all duties which had been forced on you. And so you need not know what time of the day or what time of the week, or numbers, reckoning of before and after, when and how far; in short you don't have to know the business of counting, which habit has made us human beings miserable in many ways. We have lost the faculty of appreciating the present living moment. We are always looking forward or backward and waiting for one or sighing for the other, and lose the pleasure of awareness of the moment in which we actually exist. — R.K. Narayan

There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become.

Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. Most people cannot believe that just walking as though you have nowhere to go is enough. They think that striving and competing are normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes,and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Making an effort is polite, and getting ready and looking after yourself makes an event more fun. — Jude Law

You're lying to yourself. Voron made us into serial killers. We can be okay without violence for a few weeks, but after a couple of months, the hand starts itching for the sword. You start looking for that rush. You get irritable, life turns stale, and then one day some fool crosses your path, attacks, and as you cut him down, you feel that short moment of struggle when he leverages his life against yours. If you're lucky, he's very good and the fight lasts a few seconds. But even if it doesn't, that short moment of triumph is like getting an adrenaline shot. Suddenly color comes back into life, food tastes better, sleep is deeper, and sex is rapture.
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I lived it and I felt it. — Ilona Andrews

The gene contains a single 'word', repeated over and over again: CAG, CAG, CAG, CAG ... The repetition continues sometimes just six times, sometimes thirty, sometimes more than a hundred times. Your destiny, your sanity and your life hang by the thread of this repetition. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-five times or fewer, you will be fine.
Most of us have about ten to fifteen repeats. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-nine times or more, you will in mid-life slowly start to lose your balance, grow steadily more incapable of looking after yourself and die prematurely. — Matt Ridley

I see you have modified your interpretation of the rules of decorum in deference to the heat," the earl noted, helping himself to a glass of lemonade. "Good God!" He held the glass away from him after a single sip. "It isn't sweetened." "You helped yourself to my glass," Anna said, suppressing a smile. She passed him the second glass, from which he took a cautious swallow. She was left to drink from the same glass he'd first appropriated or go back to the kitchen to fetch herself a clean glass. Looking up, she saw the earl watching her with a kind of bemused curiosity, as if he understood her dilemma. She took a hefty swallow of lemonade - and it did have sugar in it, though just a dash - and set her glass on the blotter. — Grace Burrowes

I've seen people spend days, if not months, researching and gathering data, but only at the end did they finally figure out what they were really looking for; then they have to redo a lot of stuff. If after a day or so you force yourself to put together your tentative conclusions, then you'll have guidance for the rest of your research. — Robert Pozen

After all this time searching, i finally found what i was looking for; me. — Nikki Rowe

Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative. — Herb Caen

He grabbed a towel off the shelf. After dampening it, he tossed it to me. "Clean yourself up." He sent a devilish grin my way. "I can't have my little Apol yon-in-training looking like a mess."

My fingers clenched around the towel. "If you ever say something that stupid again, I wil smother you in your sleep."

His golden brows rose. "Little Alex, are you suggesting that we sleep together?"

Stunned by how he came to that conclusion, I lowered the towel. "What? No!"

"Then how could you smother me in my sleep unless you were in bed with me?" He gave a sly grin. "Think about it."

"Oh, shut up. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The New Testament is about loving other people as you love yourself. That means caring for them and looking after them and being kind to them. — Susan Hill

I'm not obsessed by how I look or with being reed thin, but I do think that as a woman in my 50s, I have 40 years ahead. Looking after yourself goes hand in hand with looking good. — Linda Evans

I thought I would prefer apathy over this," I confided to her. "Why?" she asked. "Are you saying you would rather be cold than comforted? He's looking at you and offering his hand in friendship and you're rudely looking away pretending not to notice. At least with him you wouldn't be so alone." I felt my eyes turn into colorless pools as I glared at her for stating the obvious. "Being numb to someone is better than feeling something," I explained. "Safer you mean," she interrupted. I sighed and continued, "When someone who was once significant in your life comes back after an extended absence, emotions you had finally freed yourself from are reawakened, and if that's not enough to contend with, dormant memories are summoned whether you want them to be or not." "And what is it that you want?" she posed triumphantly. I swallowed my anger and thought with defeat, "Nothing anyone can give me. — Donna Lynn Hope

When you're traveling you need to take care of yourself to get by, you have to keep an eye on yourself and your place in the world. It means concentrating on yourself, thinking about yourself and looking after yourself. So when you travel all you really encounter is yourself, as if that were the whole point of it. When you're at home you simply are, you don't have to struggle with anything or achieve anything. You don't have to worry about the railways connections, and timetables, you don't need to experience any thrills or disappointments. You can put yourself to one side - and that's when you see the most. — Olga Tokarczuk

See, you're walking really fast now, you don't need it at all," she called after me. I stopped and turned around. I could feel my cheeks burning. The bus station was full of people. "Nobody would pretend to be a cripple! Nobody would use a stick they didn't need! You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking that I would. If I could walk without it I'd break it in half across your back and run off singing. You have no right to talk to me like that, to talk to anyone like that. Who made you queen of the world when I wasn't looking? Why do you imagine I would go out with a stick I don't need - to try to steal your sympathy? I don't want your sympathy, that's the last thing I want. I just want to mind my own business, which is what you should be doing. — Jo Walton

On those occasions when he had killed in the dark, he later needed to see his victims' faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. "Deep down," the dream-victim had said, "You know that you're already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you've killed them than before. — Dean Koontz

I can't help noticing you appear to be traveling by yourself." "Yes, it's all the rage. Women looking after themselves. We'll be getting the vote any day, too, from what I hear. — James Robinson

I worry about you. Not just about your safety. I worry when you're stressed. I worry when you're unhappy."

His words leveled her world.

Her eyes snapped open and she saw him - saw him in a way that would stay with her forever.

"I fucking worry about you not eating breakfast. I worry about every damn little thing about you. I worry about you like I've never worried about anything in my life. Because I care. I fucking care, Charlize. I care so much it makes me scared. I don't think you're incapable of looking after yourself - I just can't help needing to make everything okay. — Amber A. Bardan

Being healthy is something I learned from a very young age. Looking after yourself on the inside helps with your energy, makes your skin glow, and changes your whole outlook on life. — Phoebe Tonkin

I believe that people would be happier sharing things and being much more of a collective rather than working from these neo-liberal ideas of just looking after yourself. I think people need each other. — Karin Dreijer Andersson

Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: "Who am I writing for?" It's a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience - every reader is a different person. Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new. Don't worry about whether the reader will "get it" if you indulge a sudden impulse for humor. If it amuses you in the act of writing, put it in. (It can always be taken out, but only you can put it in.) You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for. If you lose the dullards back in the dust, you don't want them anyway. This — William Zinsser

Be patient and gentle with yourself as you continue to learn new ways of eating and living. There is no need for hard-and-fast rules or white-knuckle determination. Keep leaning forward into the positive changes you are making, and then apply that same gentleness to your family and community. There is no need to promote your ideals, but rather attract interest by being informed and interesting, healthy and robust-looking, and most of all, kind. After all, if we want to create change in the world, we have to embody the quality and character we'd like to see more of! — Kathy Freston

Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself. — Ian McEwan

Try and travel alone, or - if you are married - with your spouse. It will be harder work, no one will be looking after you, but this is the only way of truly leaving your country. Group travel is just a disguised way of pretending to go abroad, where you speak your own language, obey the leader of the pack, and concern yourself more with the internal gossip of the group than with the place you are visiting. — Paulo Coelho

I twisted my body, suddenly unable to stand his hands on me. "Do you really think I give a damn what you are? That anything else matters to me more than you, yourself? I don't want you to stay because you think I need a protector, Daniel. I've been looking after myself for a very long time now, and I've done just fine. Dammit, have some faith in me."
"If I didn't have faith in you, Sarah, I wouldn't feel this way. — Angela B. Wade

I think if you look after yourself on a regular basis, and do the prep beforehand, you don't need to put lots of effort into looking good. It's about finding the right balance - if you have a good diet, drink lots of water, exercise regularly and sleep, you won't look bad on a regular basis. Then you can afford the occasional naughty slip up once in a while, going out and having a delicious glass of wine with friends, having a great laugh and chat then realizing its 2am isn't so bad - you've put in the hard work! — Cat Deeley

The secret to success: Don't stop to admire yourself too often. I only stopped to admire my work after I wrote eight books, before that, I never once admired myself for accomplishing anything in my profession. Don't stop to admire yourself too much, instead, admire people who have achieved more than you have, because that gives you something to keep on looking forward to. But when the time comes that you should take a look at the greatness you have done, make sure you take a really long and hard good look at it! Make sure you know your own greatness. — C. JoyBell C.