Quotes & Sayings About Looking At Yourself

Have you ever tried to use your eyes to tell someone that you want them, that because of them you're going to do the best you can to survive but that you're willing to die if that's the cost of putting yourself between them and anything that means them harm? That you don't care if they're playing you, or if what you have is really love, or if the two of you have a shot at lasting, that the very fact that they exist has made you come back to life in some way that's terrifying and exhilarating? A few seconds isn't long enough, especially when the person you're looking at is staring back as if she wants to pull you inside her and crush the two of you into one being. — Elliott James

Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you - call it heart, call it mind, call it soul - accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination. — Jim Carroll

Think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all? Answer: the so-called happy countries. It's the same phenomenon as in the Military Police and the Air Corps. If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don't feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?2 Caroline Sacks's decision to evaluate herself, then, by looking around her organic chemistry classroom was not some strange and irrational behavior. It is what human beings do. We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves, which means that students in an elite school - except, perhaps, — Malcolm Gladwell

You are looking at the world from your window, that's good, but there is something missing here, something very big: You must also look at your window from the world to see yourself! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Sadhana Start by paying attention to everything you think of as yourself just before you fall asleep: your thoughts, your emotions, your hair, your skin, your clothes, your makeup. Know that none of this is you. There is no need to make any conclusion about what "you" are or what "truth" is. Truth is not a conclusion. If you keep the false conclusions at bay, truth will dawn. It is like your experience of the night: the sun has not gone; it is just that the planet is looking the other way. You're thinking, reading, talking about the self, because you're too busy looking the other way! You haven't paid enough attention to know what the self really is. What is needed is not a conclusion, but a turnaround. If you manage to enter sleep with this awareness, it will be significant. Since there is no external interference in sleep, this will grow into a powerful experience. Over time, you will enter a dimension beyond all accumulations. — Sadhguru

He stopped at an intersection, panting, rubbing at the twinge in his hamstrings, looking around, though he knew no cars were coming in either direction.
Dropping forward at the waist Martin admitted that he was fucking himself up. Dr Leonowsky told him: hurting yourself is an articulation of self-disgust. It helps no one, prevents nothing. This wasn't a glorious loss of control, he was fooling himself, it was self-harm. — Denise Mina

You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter ... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person. — John Ruskin

If you fear looking at your true self, you'll find many ways to distract yourself from it. Busyness, drama, and addictions are ways of avoiding facing yourself. To find the peace you seek, stop running and just he. Get to know who you really are. Remember the wholeness you felt before you joined the rush to nowhere. Then you'll recognize yourself through the eyes of love, and everything will be different. — Alan Cohen

Forgiving is one of the most difficult things for a human being to do, but I think it means looking at some slight you feel, putting yourself in the position of the other person, and wiping away any sort of resentment and antagonism you feel toward them. Then let that other person know that everything is perfectly friendly and normal between you. — Jimmy Carter

With one eye you are looking at the outside world, while with the other you are looking within yourself. — Amedeo Modigliani

I don't consider what you're wearing when I design a shoe. I don't have a particular look in mind or make a shoe thinking, "This would look great with a blue pinstripe suit." I just let you dress yourself. I'm looking at the shoe itself, not as a component of an outfit. — Mark McNairy

If you'd just told me you wanted her for yourself, I wouldn't have opened my mouth. Asshole."
"He doesn't want me for himself," Melanie said. "He isn't looking for a relationship."
"It doesn't matter if he's looking," Richart grumbled. "He's found one. The two of you can't take your eyes off each other. And in the rare moments you do, you usually touch."
"What?" Bastien said the same time Melanie did.
Was she as appalled that her feelings were so transparent as he was?
"Don't worry." Richart drew out a handkerchief and wiped his crimson lips. "I doubt anyone else has noticed. Bastien is usually too busy pissing them all off."
"He doesn't piss you off?" Melanie asked.
"Other than just now" - Richart glared at Bastien - "no. I've spent enough time in his company that I've become immune to his bullshit. — Dianne Duvall

But in a way it's like looking at old photographs of yourself. There comes a point at which the record needs to be updated, because you've shed too many links with what you were. He doesn't quite know how it happened; all he knows is that he doesn't recognize himself in those stories any more, though he remembers the bursting feeling of writing them, something in himself massing and pushing irresistibly to be born. He hasn't had that feeling since; he almost thinks that to remain a writer he'd have to become one all over again, when he might just easily become an astronaut, or a farmer. It's as if he can't quite remember what drove him into words in the first place, all those years before, yet words are what he still deals in. I suppose it's a bit like marriage, he said. You build a whole structure on a period of intensity that's never repeated. It's the basis of your faith and sometimes you doubt it, but you never renounce it because too much of your life stands on that ground. — Rachel Cusk

You need to feel good about your life. Winning is a great idea, but you can get stuck in it too. It's just another way of looking at life, an idea. You need to renew yourself and your spirit. — Frederick Lenz

I am falling in love with you, Laney Keating."
"Don't say that."
"It's true."
"Don't say it," I said miserably, looking away.
"Why?"
Falling for someone is like pulling a loose thread. It happens stitch by stitch. You feel whole most of the time even while the seams pop, the knots loosen, everything that holds you together coming undone. It feels incredible, this opening of yourself to the world. Not like the unraveling it is. Only afterward do you glance down at the tangle of string around your feet that used to be a person who was whole and self-contained and realize that love is not a thing that we create. It's an undoing.
"Because you deserve better," I whispered. — Leah Raeder

Children are like a mirror. They help you see yourself and all the flaws that you and your partner might have avoided looking at earlier. — Virginia Clinton Kelley

It is hard to accept being different, hard to have people avoid looking at you, and still believe in yourself. — Patricia Briggs

Here though, there are no oppressors. No one's forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You're at a table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you're staring at a screen! Searching for strangers in ... Dubai! — Dave Eggers

If you look into someone's face long enough, eventually you're going to feel that you're looking at yourself. — Paul Auster

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

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

Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humour?' said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. 'The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.'
'With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellow pull you ... — George Eliot

Then the challenge is, once you left brain it and build it, then when you're on stage you have to know it so well that you can get lost in it. I don't want to be onstage looking like a robot, I want to be at the end of the day very emotional and what feels like someone being up there rather than reciting things. That's always the challenge, to analyze and then somehow lose yourself in something you absolutely know backwards and forwards. And nothing's going to surprise you, but you have to be surprised by it and let it surprise you. — Bo Burnham

By Annie Wilkes ...
If you can get into that chair all by yourself, Paul, she said at last, then I think you can fill in your f******* n's.
She then closed the door and locked it again. Paul sat looking at it for a long time, almost as if there was something to see. He was too flabberghasted to do anything else. — Stephen King

Don't you see yourself in every picture you love? You feel a radiance wash through you. It's something you can't analyze or speak about clearly. What are you doing at that moment? You're looking at a picture on a wall. That's all. But it makes you feel alive in the world. It tells you yes, you're here. And yes, you have a range of being that's deeper and sweeter than you knew. — Didi

Well. There was noting to be done for it. Things had happened as they did, time's arrow had yet to be reversed by humans, done was done. If a man spent his life looking over his shoulder at every possible branching of his path he could have taken, he would never accomplish anything. One must learn from history so as not to repeat it, but one must not waste one's energy or time worrying about what might have been. Sorry ... but people die every day and the galaxy continues on quite well without them. Consider yourself lucky you are one of those as yet unselected by the Fates. — Steve Perry

Looking at a pure heart is like looking in to a mirror. All you will see is your own reflection. If you are corrupt, you will see corruption. If you are pure, you will see purity. But don't blame the mirror, all you are seeing is yourself.
- Kambiz Mostofizadeh — Kambiz Mostofizadeh

When I talk about having good hearing, I don't mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don't mean just looking, but looking at yourself. — Zhuangzi

You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You're at a table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you're staring at a screen, — Dave Eggers

When you're spending that much time by yourself in your car looking at landscapes, it's desolate. Most of the other people around you are invisible in their own cars. You're driving past houses where maybe once in a while somebody is out, but that's about it. So I was interested in that aesthetic and I decided I wanted to write an apocalyptic narrative, but the more I thought of it, it seemed bizarre and untenable to me to pick one, so I just didn't. — Lucy Corin

Here's the amazing thing about sex: you get a whole person to yourself, for the first time since you were a baby. Someone who is looking at you - just you - and thinking about you, and wanting you, and you haven't even had to lie at the bottom of the stairs and pretend you're dead to get them to do it. — Caitlin Moran

Don't disguise your tears, don't hide your sadness, don't be afraid to find out who you really are. Because in those fleeting moments you'll summon such beauty and strength that, in no time at all, you'll fully grasp exactly why you're so gossiped about here in the unseen — Mike Dooley

No, no, it's not in books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into on garment for us. — Ray Bradbury

That's what reframing your role is all about: thinking about how your work affects others, looking at the larger purpose of your work and whom it benefits, and seeing yourself as a potential difference maker. — David Sturt

The only reason you feel pain is because you're so busy looking at yourself instead of looking at the wonderful patterns of light. If you become absorbed in the wonderful patterns of light, then there's no pain. — Frederick Lenz

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile. — John Green

You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides. — Jay Maisel

I know a little something about fear, honey. I know what a relief it feels like to give into it at first. It's not hard to persuade yourself that you're doing the right thing - that you're making the smart, safe decision. But fear is insidious. It takes anything you're willing to give it, the parts of your life you don't mind cutting out, but when you're not looking, it takes anything else it damn well pleases, too. — Andrea Lochen

I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, 'Yeah, I'm not cool enough for the West Village.' — Tina Fey

Your spirituality is simply the positive, loving side of yourself, the energy of joy and togetherness. It's the feeling you have when your dog bounds up wagging its tail, or the biggest laugh you have with your best friend. Or that feeling in a concert when sixty thousand people sing along in unison to a song you love, or the moment when you are looking into the eyes of someone you love, or when you feel at your most confident and happy, as if you can do anything. It is all the most positive aspects of our existence. In short, it is love. — Matthew Todd

At some point you need to stop looking out at others and start looking inward, at yourself, at your own accomplishments, at your own foibles, at your own successes and your own failures. It's only when you begin to look inward that you can begin to have an effect on those out there, the ones with the greedy eyes and outstretched hands. — Scott F. Falkner

May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, as it has come for me now, when the woods are black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I do, by looking up at the sky. — Marcel Proust

It was Gideon who finally broke the silence, which gave me a certain satisfaction. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" The way he asked, he sounded almost embarrassed.
"What?"
"It's what my mother always used to when I was little. If I was looking straight ahead and saying nothing, like you right at this moment."
"You have a mother?" Only when I'd said it did I realize what a silly question it was! Oh, for heaven's sake!
Gideon raised one eyebrow. "What did you expect?" he asked, amused. "You thought I was an android put together by Uncle Falk and Mr. George?"
"Well, it's not such an outlandish idea. Do you have photos of yourself as a baby?" Trying to imagine a baby Gideon with a round, soft plump-cheeked face and a bald head made me grin. — Kerstin Gier

I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn't mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don't believe me go out and do the measurements yourself. — James Lovelock

But cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page. There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what's left; there should be looking at meals' remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become. — Tamar Adler

Start a daily routine of looking at yourself in the mirror through a lens of unconditional love, appreciation, admiration and respect....Connect with the soul behind the image of you in the mirror. Look upon yourself with complete adoration, acceptance and non- judgement. — Miya Yamanouchi

If you're keeping yourself in the bubble and only looking at your own data or only watching the TV that fits your agenda then it gets boring. — Nate Silver

Give yourself a break from any holy book; and
start looking at others as you want to be looked at. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

In case you haven't already figured it out for yourself by now", continued Nelson, now looking pridefully at his open hands, "I eat bullies for breakfast — David Hunter

What are you looking for, little man? Is it yourself you're trying to identify?Are you looking at little things to avoid big things? — John Steinbeck

I'm looking at everything with a clear eye and an attitude of acceptance rather than skepticism. I realized, this isn't a career - this is my life. This is what I do. It doesn't matter what the size of the role is. It matter that you're enjoying yourself. And I'm loving it. — Jake Busey

With Instagram and Twitter, you're constantly looking at other people and comparing yourself to them, and it's just not beneficial. There is always going to be someone skinnier or prettier or with better skin, and that same girl you're looking at is comparing herself to someone else. — Brittany Snow

Jean grinned down at her, and she handed him something in a small silk bag.
'What's this?'
'Lock of my hair, ' she said. 'Meant to give it to you days ago, but we got busy with all the raiding. You know. Piracy. Hectic life. '
'Thank you, love, ' he said.
'Now, if you find yourself in trouble wherever you go, you can hold up that little bag to whoever's bothering you, and you can say, "You have no idea who you're fucking with. I'm under the protection of the lady who gave me this object of her favour. "'
'And that's supposed to make them stop?'
'Shit no, that's just to confuse them. Then you kill them while they're standing there looking at you funny. — Scott Lynch

Don't you know it's rude to stare?"
"I was not staring."
"You're looking at me like I'm your next meal. I believe I already wasted a glass of Pinot telling you to keep your hands to yourself, don't push me again. — Kerry Heavens

It's funny looking at yourself. You know how it is when you look back at old pictures? It's just funny looking back at yourself walking and talking at age 14. — Jennifer Connelly

I was really looking at computers as a way to understand the mind. But at M.I.T., my mind was blown by having a whole computer to yourself as long as you liked.I felt a surge of intellectual power through access to this computer, and I started thinking about what this could mean for kids and the way they learn. That's when we developed the computer programming language for kids, Logo. — Seymour Papert

His voice gentled and his touch became more like a caress. "I love you," he whispered.
"Romeo ... "
"I love your glasses, your clumsiness, your wild hair, even the way you snort when you laugh." He smiled. "I love you in spite of yourself, Rim. Can't you love me in spite of myself?"
I couldn't help it, I smiled.
"You do come with a lot of baggage." I sighed. "You're impossibly good-looking, terrible at math, and you like to drink that swill you call beer." I mock shuddered.
He smiled, but I saw the relief in his eyes.
"Me being good-looking is a bad thing?" he teased.
"You have a lot of options," I said seriously. "I'm not the best one."
"No." He agreed. "You're not."
Geez, he could have said it a little nicer.
"You're the only one."
Oh, well, that was much better.
- Romeo & Rimmel — Cambria Hebert

Before you ever get the person you really want in your life, you will be tested with every person that was wrong for you. You will be tempted with what was easy, what was familiar, what was only physical, what was safe and what was simply a friend to pull you out of a difficult situation because you didn't want to be alone. When you finally meet the person you were meant to be with you won't have to guess, decide or choose. You will be drawn to them. They will seem to fit who you are, but at the same time have the missing pieces that makes you want to become a better person. There is no need to be guarded because this soul is like your own and talking to them about the deepest things in life are effortless. They won't be like any other you have met and you will find yourself looking for parts of them in everyone you meet. — Shannon L. Alder

And style, by the way, is a very important thing. It is like your signature, your handwriting or it is something that you develop that is your way of presenting yourself and also your way of looking at what art - of how to make art. — Robert Barry

Take a good look at yourself before you criticise another, for what you see wrong in them, will also be a lesson for you. — Leon Brown

Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ask. Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ask. Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you cam feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it. — Alice Walker

You almost got yourself killed, she said, but her voice had softened a few shades. I noticed that she hadn't moved her hand from the other side of Billy's chest and he was looking up at her with an expectant expression. She fell silent, and they stared at one another for a minute. I saw her swallow.
Please help me. Young werewolves in love. — Jim Butcher

The spiritual path is one of falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, turning and looking sheepishly at God and then taking the next step. — Sri Aurobindo

There is only one problem: You do not trust your powers. There is no difference between you and God. Count your blessings. Be proud of yourself. Make your children, friends and neighbors proud of you. Let your touch be the Master's Touch. Serve the Age of Aquarius. Keep up and God will keep you up. Trust it. Stop looking down at yourself. Feel God within. There is no God outside of you. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

Somehow, I cannot see anyone describing me as gracious, loving, and happy." He frowned at his sandwich as if in puzzlement. "You are loving," Anna replied staunchly, though she hadn't exactly planned for those words to leave her mouth. "Now that is beyond surprising." The earl eyed her in the deepening shadows. "How do you conclude such a thing, Mrs. Seaton?" "You have endless patience with your family, my lord," she began. "You escort your sisters everywhere; you dance attendance on them and their hordes of friends at every proper function; you harry and hound the duke so his wild starts are not the ruination of his duchy. You force yourself to tend to mountains of business which you do not enjoy, so your family may be safe and secure all their days." "That is business," the earl said, looking nonplussed that his first sandwich had disappeared, until Anna handed him a second. — Grace Burrowes

I may not read tea leaves or palms, my lady, but it is easy enough to read faces. Yours is a questioning face, always looking for answers, always seeking the truth, for yourself and for others." I smiled at her. "I think that is a very polite way of saying I am curious as a cat. And we all know what happened to the cat - curiosity killed her." Rosalie took the last slice of cake onto her plate. "Yes, but you forget the most important thing about the little cat," she said, giving me a wise nod. "She had eight lives left to live. — Deanna Raybourn

Of course when you spend four hours in prosthetic makeup and you really are looking at yourself and you see how revolting you've become in a way, it obviously adds another strand and helps you ... a little bit more. — Gerard Butler

Just before you went into the ICU, I started to feel this ache in my hip." "No," I said. Panic rolled in, pulled me under. He nodded. "So I went in for a PET scan." He stopped. He yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and clenched his teeth. Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but A Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile. He flashed his crooked smile, then said, "I lit up like a Christmas tree, Hazel Grace. The lining of my chest, my left hip, my liver, everywhere. — John Green

Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life. — Lauren Bacall

A brother with small earnings may ask,'Should I also give? My earning are already so small that my family can barely make ends meet.' My reply is, 'Have you ever considered that the very reason your earnings remain so small may be because you spend everything on yourself? If God gave you more, you would only use it to increase your own comfort instead of looking to see who is sick or who has no work at all that you might help them. — George Muller

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.

When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself
that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83) — Geneen Roth

Learn that happiness comes through self-control and not being angry or jealous. The only one that you really torment is yourself. It is easier to let go and gain new ways of looking at life. — Frederick Lenz

Make yourself so happy, that by looking at you, other people become happy. — Yogi Bhajan

Don't try to change the world; just change yourself. Why? Because the whole world is only relative to the eyes that are looking at it. Your world actually only exists for as long as you exist and with the death of you, includes the death of your world. Therefore, if there is no peace in your heart; you will find no peace in this world, if there is no happiness in your life; you will find no happiness anywhere around you, if you have no love in your heart; you will not find love anywhere and if you do not fly around freely inside your own soul like a bird with perfectly formed wings; then there will never be any freedom for you regardless if you are on a mountaintop removed from all attachments to all of mankind! Even the mountaintop cannot give you freedom if it is not already flying around there inside your own soul! So I say, change yourself. Not the world. — C. JoyBell C.

Do you wake up in the morning and first thing, centre yourself by looking at your palms together? Thereby have a nice day. — Swami Veda Bharati

You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at. — Jane Austen

Today, if you're an American business, you actually get a benefit for going overseas. You get to defer your taxes. So if you're looking at a competitive world, you say to yourself, "Hey, I do better overseas than I do here in America." — John F. Kerry

Don't try to make yourself marketable, you'll be surprised to see yourself at the bottom. Stay incognito, and people will peruse the whole world looking for you, by that time, you'll be at the top. — Michael Bassey Johnson

And they got there in an instant. So basically, whenever you're looking for a solution, you are feeling positive emotion - and whenever you're looking at a problem, you're feeling negative emotion, which, as you know, never gets us anywhere. But once you take the focus off yourself and your wants, and instead turn it toward how getting what you want might also benefit someone else, well then, you can't help but succeed," she says, voice soft and sweet. "That's the key behind any success. — Alyson Noel

The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass ... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests. — Iain Banks

You get used to being naked, that's the first thing that Ivan discovered. Crashing through thick brush with branches snagging at your bare skin, you stop worrying about who's looking and and spend your time trying to keep yourself from being flayed alive. He got shy again when they entered the village, but once he decided simply to let the gawkers gawk, he found himself much more interested in what he was seeing than what they were. — Orson Scott Card

Beneatha: Love him? There is nothing left to love.
Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (Looking at her) Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. — Lorraine Hansberry

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. Unfortunately — Douglas Adams

Self-honesty is not putting yourself down or feeling sorry for yourself. Self-honesty is looking at things as they are and then being compelled to make changes. — Frederick Lenz

My hope is that the work is in some way counter-pinup. A pinup asks you to suspend interest in who the person is and occupy yourself entirely with looking at the body and fantasizing about what you could do with that body, completely ignoring how the person might feel about it. — Jock Sturges

every year 98% of your atoms are replaced with the air that you breathe, the foods that you eat and the liquid that you drink [79]. This might sound slightly scary or even a surprise to you but look at it as an opportunity. An opportunity that you can take to make a new slimmer healthier body for yourself by eating well and exercising smartly, and in a years time you'll literally be looking at an almost whole new you. — Sam Feltham

He's looking at me, torn and passionate, and I don't know how I thought I was truly alive before I met him. This is what love feels like. To no longer belong to yourself. To be pulled from what you know into what you feel. No wonder people live and die for this feeling. — Leisa Rayven

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it ... if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you. — Robert Penn Warren

I think-I need to ask an embarrassing question. Do you think I could borrow a pair of scrubs? I-uh-my pants-"
"Oh!" Cried the poor nurse. "Yes. Absolutely. I'll be right back."
[ ... ]
"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll just change here. He's not looking at anything at the moment." I gestured toward Sam, who was looking convincingly sedated.
The nurse vanished through the curtains. Sam eye's flashed open again, distinctly amused.
He whispered, "Did you just tell that man you went potty on yourself?"
"You.Shut.UP." I hissed back furiously. — Maggie Stiefvater

Looking beyond life's imperfections allows one to be able to find happiness. Life is not perfect, ever. For me, remembering that life is flawed, people are flawed, and therefore relationships are flawed, allows me to look at the flaws and imperfections as part of life itself. A perfect life includes all of the flaws associated with what and who you surround yourself with. My life and my means of living it are no exception. I was, as all people are, flawed. I accepted myself as being flawed no differently than I accepted others as being so. — Scott Hildreth

The main thing you can change is how you perceive yourself. Stop looking in the mirror and realize that you're living for yourself, not other people ... I have belly fat like everybody else, and I don't want to be airbrushed on the cover of a magazine. I don't want someone to swap out my stomach with a supermodel. I don't want dirty old men looking at me in my underwear. — Amanda Seyfried

Looking at yourself through the media is like looking at one of those rippled mirrors in an amusement park. — Edmund S. Muskie

What are you smiling about?" Benedict demanded.
She didn't bother to glance up as she replied, "I'm plotting your demise."
He grinned-not that she was looking at him, but it was one of those smiles she could hear in the way he breathed.
She hated that she as that sensitive to his every nuance. Especially since she had a sneaking suspicion that he was the same way about her.
"At least it sounds entertaining,"he said.
"What does?" she asked, finally moving her eyes from the lower hem of the curtain, which she'd been staring at for what seemed like hours.
"My demise," he said, his smile crooked and amused. "If you're going to kill me, you might as well enjoy yourself while you're at it, because Lord knows, I won't."
Her jaw dropped a good inch. "You're mad," she said. — Julia Quinn

Here is an old phrase I like: "The only way to the universal good is that we all become strangers to ourselves." You imagine looking at yourself with a foreign gaze, through foreign eyes. I think this is something that could be the greatest thing in humanity. You are never really limited just to your own perspective. I don't like the false identity politics of multiculturalism which says that "you are enclosed in your culture." No, we have all this amazing capacity to be surprised, not by others, but by ourselves seeing how what we are doing is strange. — Slavoj Zizek

I was 21 and had spent the last few years in Stanford University Engineering School at California. Many people advised me to take up a nice, cushy job rather than face the challenges of running a hydrogenated oil business. Looking back, I am glad I decided to take charge instead. Essentially leadership begins from within. It is a small voice that tells you where to go when you feel lost. If you believe in that voice, you believe in yourself. — Azim Premji

Here is the infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me. — Martin Buber

The way I see it, truth only looks good when you're looking at it from far away. It's kind of like that beautiful girl you see on the street when you're riding past in the bus ... there she is, this amazing girl walking by on the street, and you think if you could only get off this stupid bus and introduce yourself to her, your life would change.
The thing is, she's not as perfect as you think, and if you ever got off the bus to introduce yourself, you'd find out ... This girl is truth. She's not so pretty, not so nice. But then, once you get to know her, all that stuff doesn't seem to matter. — Neal Shusterman

But even work stops at some point. And you find yourself looking around, taking stock of your life, and you realize that you don't give a shit about where you worked, or what you did to bring in money, but you care about the lives you touched. The love you shared. The family you created. You care about who is standing beside you when the shit hits the fan. — J. Sterling

You are always looking for a different kind of read and a different kind of intention when you are by yourself in the booth. Occasionally you are playing off of people, but it is a bit of a different muscle that you have to flex. At the end of the day though, it really is all just great fun and play that we are lucky enough to get paid for. — David Koechner