Present For Myself Quotes & Sayings

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. — Kay Redfield Jamison

And besides (I told myself) wasn't it time to Move Forward, Let Go, turn from the garden that was locked to me? Live In The Present, Focus On The Now instead of grieving for what I could never have? — Donna Tartt

Oh, I see how it is. Baby finds her Johnny Castle, and all of a sudden, she forgets about the small matter of her BFF?"
There was only one person in the world who could deliver that line with a straight face. Until I'd heard his voice, I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed it.
"Devon!"
Chase stiffened as Dev's name left my lips, and Devon beamed at me, doing a good impression of someone who hadn't been bristling a moment before, when I'd buried myself in Chase's arms.
"In the flesh," Devon said. "When you call, Bronwyn, I answer. Always." It was a testament to the gravity of the moment that he didn't treat everyone present to an impromptu performance of "Ain't No Mountain." Lest Devon decide the situation did call for some tunes, I pushed on. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to 'Enjoy now'. If I can enjoy the present, I don't need to count on the happiness that is (or isn't) waiting for me in the future. — Gretchen Rubin

When I save, I lay something aside for future need. If I sense God's leading, I will give it away to meet greater needs. When I hoard, I'm unwilling to part with what I've saved to meet others' needs, because my possible future needs outweigh their actual present needs. I fail to love my neighbor as myself. — Randy Alcorn

What man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be
made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor will it be possible for me to conceive my present imperfections (and what I cannot conceive I cannot remember); so that you may just as well give me a new name and face the fact that I am a new person and that the old Bernard Shaw is as dead as mutton. Thus,oddly enough, the conventional belief in the matter comes to this: that if you wish to live for ever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned, since the saved are no longer what they were, and in hell alone do people retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality. And this sort of hell, however convenient as a means of intimidating persons who have practically no honor and no conscience, is not a fact. — George Bernard Shaw

When there is a huge crack in your relationship with someone, you wonder what others do in similar situations. I realize I'm trying as hard as I can to present myself as the most unthreatening being in the world, like a small animal. I hunch into myself, avoiding going back to the same places I frequented with him. Obviously I don't eat the kind of food we ate or made together. But I don't think I'm going to move to a new house, because I have the kitchen and the large fridge that I'd wanted for so long. People say you can't possibly like your lover every single second of your life. But that's not true. I liked and looked to my lover every single second we were together. And I still can't admit that he's gone. True sorrow is when one person desires but the other doesn't. I don't know any better words to describe it, and I can't yet express this feeling through any kind of food. The one thing we know about sorrow is that it's a very personal, individual feeling. — Kyung-ran Jo

The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with an outsize intensity. These were the things that had been solidified in my mind by reiteration, that recurred in dreams and daily thoughts: certain faces, certain conversations, which, taken as a group, represented a secure version of the past that I had been constructing since 1992. But there was another, irruptive, sense of things past. The sudden reencounter in the present, of something or someone long forgotten, some part of myself I had relegated to childhood and to Africa. — Teju Cole

If, for my sins, or by my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your pleasure'? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

You're always just trying to create opportunities and be ready when those opportunities present themselves. I can't look at anybody and think 'I want to be Damian Lewis' - I'd be setting myself up for failure. — Diego Klattenhoff

Preaching with his whole heart, Whitefield was fully engaged in all that he said. That is why on one occasion he told his listeners, "I shall return home with a heavy heart, unless some of you will arise and come to my Jesus; I desire to preach Him and not myself; rest not in hearing and following me."54 With that, he begged and pleaded with his listeners to believe upon Christ and be saved. It is this kind of passionate preaching that we need again in this present hour. We could certainly do with fewer stale, exegetical lectures in the pulpit. Save these for the classroom. We could do with fewer frivolous, lighthearted personalities in the pulpit. Instead, what is desperately needed in this day are more intensely urgent pleas and pressing appeals as exemplified by this gifted evangelist, George Whitefield. — Steven J. Lawson

The time arrives. 'It is a waltz, I think,' Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. 'Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey - ' But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don't know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it her, and say: 'I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.' 'Indeed! What is that?' returns Miss Larkins. 'A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.' 'You're a bold boy,' says Miss Larkins. 'There. — Charles Dickens

Sure, I told him to fuck himself and yes, I paid for it dearly (ruptured spleen). But after my recovery and given the time to reflect, I have a better understanding of who I am penning this for. Not just for the parole board. Not just for wronged Chinese people, not for racist whites, not for my prison therapy group, not for Manny or Jaynuss, not for Momma, not for my once-again estranged father, not even for Lene (though I hope and, in weaker moments, pray she will read this one day), but for others, like myself. Those who lack foresight. Those often overwhelmed by the present. Those ignorant of and indifferent to the past. Those whose worst qualities come to the surface when tested. Those who are fertile ground for dubious moral judgment. Those who feel, in some mysterious but common sense, unmoored. — Leland Cheuk

Literary history and the present are dark with silences ... I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences
what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)
that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot. — Tillie Olsen

My first Kickstarter project created a book called 'Clear and Present Thinking', a college-level textbook on logic and critical reasoning, which was made available to the world for free. As a professor myself, I observed that the price of textbooks was too high for some of my students. — Brendan Myers

The original plan had several phases, all of which adhered to the commonly accepted rituals of human courtship. I'd intended to keep the depth of my feelings to myself for as long as she needed to catch up, at which point she would say the words first, I would concur, we would become engaged, buy a stretch of land, Jethro would build a house as a wedding present, and I'd insist on raised garden beds for Jennifer's overall-wearing activities. — Penny Reid

Nature offers us a thousand simple pleasers- Plays of light and color, fragrance in the air, the sun's warmth on skin and muscle, the audible rhythm of life's stir and push- for the price of merely paying attention. What joy! But how unwilling or unable many of us are to pay this price in an age when manufactured sources of stimulation and pleasure are everywhere at hand. For me, enjoying nature's pleasures takes conscious choice, a choice to slow down to seed time or rock time, to still the clamoring ego, to set aside plans and busyness, and to simply to be present in my body, to offer myself up.
Respond to the above quote. Pay special attention to each of your five senses as you describe your surroundings. Also, you need to incorporate at least one metaphor and smile in your descriptions. — Lorraine Anderson

Mine was something along the lines of 'This is who I am, and this is the level at which I'm going to present myself, I feel fine, and if you don't like it then you're more than welcome to look away, thank you very much.' I decided, quite simply, not to care very much at all. As long as my rear-end and stomach were hidden from the public gaze, then I considered any outfit a roaring success.
People are either going to like the look of me, or they're not. And apart from remaining vaguely clean and healthy, there's not very much I can do to control that. Is an eye-lash tint, a facial and the right handbag really going to make all that much difference?
With this decision, I think I've spared myself a lot of misery. You may look at me and see a slightly frayed, wool-clad woman with an inexplicably hefty rucksack, but I look in the mirror and simply give thanks for all I've opted out of. — Miranda Hart

In a letter to Gouverneur Morris (February 27, 1802), he drops into the following gloomy forebodings: -

"Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the United States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself; and, contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know, from the very beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its foes for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me. — Charles A. Conant

I was asked to go to Cannes to present Amores Perros. And little did I know that this film would be huge. I saw it for the first time in Cannes, and it was the first time I'd seen myself on such a big screen. And it had a huge impact on me - it was the strangest feeling. — Gael Garcia Bernal

And for myself, I think for the present He is calling me to another land; but how long shall be my abode, or what employment He has for me there, I know not, for I cannot think He is taking me there to live and lurk only. — Donald Cargill

I shall hold myself particularly answerable to my constituents for my present conduct, and in general to all my fellow Citizens throughout these States, when properly questioned. — Henry Laurens

We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.
And then I open the door and go to the dining-room, where he is sitting waiting for me at a table, and I think how in that moment I have aged, and passed on, how I have advanced one step towards an unknown destiny.
We smile, we choose our lunch, we speak of this and that, but - I say to myself-I am not she who left him five minutes ago. She has stayed behind. I am another woman, older, more mature ... — Daphne Du Maurier

I do not see why the axiom of Prudence should not be questioned, when it conflicts with present inclination, on a ground similar to that on which Egoists refuse to admit the axiom of Rational Benevolence. If the Utilitarian has to answer the question, 'Why should I sacrifice my own happiness for the greater happiness of another?' it must surely be admissible to ask the Egoist 'Why should I sacrifice a present pleasure for a greater one in the future? Why should I concern myself about my own future feelings any more than about the feelings of other persons?' — Henry Sidgwick

For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell. — Josiah Royce

I felt tired, but I pitched the ball back at her. You want me to talk about myself, right? Let me tell you what 'self' means to me. The self, myself, the self as I see it, is composed mainly of selected memories from my history. I am not what I am doing now. I am what I have done, and the edited version of my past seems more real to me than what I am at this moment. I don't know who or what I really am. The present is fleeting and intangible. No one in China wants to talk about his past, because nobody wants to paint his face black. Our past is not a flattering picture, and no one wants to look at it for long. Yet what we were in fixed and final. It is the basis for predictions of what we will be in the future. To tell you truth, I identify with what no longer exists more than what actually is. We have lied about what we actually are, and that, unfortunately, will be your book. So would you still like me to talk about myself? — Anchee Min

I think my fans respect me for bein' as truthful and honest as you can be and still be Rap music and not be opinion music. It's still Rap, its still style, flavor, flair, and people just kind of like how I present myself and the things that I do. — Ice Cube

I cannot but be astonished that Sarsi should persist in trying to prove by means of witnesses something that I may see for myself at any time by means of experiment. Witnesses are examined in doutbful matters which are past and transient, not in those which are actual and present. A judge must seek by means of witnesses to determine whether Peter injured John last night, but not whether John was injured, since the judge can see that for himself. — Galileo Galilei

It's been a year and nine month since we broke up. It's almost the second spring since then. When I turn 20 in March, I'm going to buy myself a much deserved present. A one way ticket to Tokyo. As for luggage, all I need is my guitar and my smokes. - Nana — Ai Yazawa

For many of us prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one-sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that I soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: To whom am I really speaking, God or myself? — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes connot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog. Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality ... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. — C.S. Lewis

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learnings,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself ... I love you.
I love you ... I love myself. — Rumi

My first kiss I regret. My first date I regret. But I do not regret the choice to say I love you for the first time. Even though that was the melodramatic story. Even though that one ended badly. I don't regret it.

Because that time ... that night, I was myself. I found my feelings and honored them. I loved myself enough to trust what I felt and say what I needed to say. And I chose to be myself. I was present as I delivered my awkward speech and felt each pound of my beating heart. I had never been more of myself than in that moment. — Stephen Lovegrove

Elections are a kind of business. I have to present myself: 'I can do this and that for this area so please give me your vote'. People vote for the politicians who can best understand and contribute to their region or country. In a business you can choose your clients, and the message is targeted to them only. But politics is universal; no matter what age the audience, you have to send the same message to everyone. — Takafumi Horie

I don't see myself as I really am. The reason is because I have blind spots. My past is full of experiences that are influencing my present and my future. These past experiences have given birth to fear and insecurity, which create huge blind spots. The past has also given birth to a thousand hopes, dreams, and ambitions that I carry deep within me, and these also prevent me from seeing myself as I really am. At times I can be cynical because of something or someone I encountered in the past, and this cynicism is a blind spot. I can also be paranoid at times - another blind spot. And guess what - I like being liked, and nothing will blind us like our desire to be liked, accepted, loved. All of these blind spots make it hard for me to see situations and people (especially myself) as they really are. — Matthew Kelly

I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable
indescribable
my misery amazing. — Charles Dickens

God Almighty, having accepted your Son's sacrifice on my behalf, I in turn present myself to you as a living sacrifice. Thank you for deeming me holy and acceptable because of Christ's shed blood for me. I pray that you would help me to fight the good fight and finish the race. Use me as your vessel to rescue others who are perishing. Amen. — David Bereit

I entertain the idea that if my present life is the punishment for a former life, then I would never want to meet myself as the self of this former life. — Sam Pink

These are things I can't change. Not one of them. Can't fix, can't heal, can't put the broken pieces back together. But what I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That's all any of us can do. That's what we're here for. Not the battle lines, keeping people in and out. Not the "pro" and "anti" stances, but the presence, the listening, the praying with and for on the days when it all falls apart, when life shatters in our hands. — Shauna Niequist

From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. — Nikola Tesla

He seemed a man whose youthful promise had yielded nothing but the feelings of failure that come with the advance of age. It is this moment in life, when the bounty of the future becomes the drudgery of the present, that all men fear, myself included, and for that reason I immediately felt a sympathy for this man. — David Liss

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks ... Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can. — Silvanus P. Thompson

[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present. — Elizabeth I

With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story. For I took the place of the character who was most like myself, and his story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness of my present life, recognising the walls and roof around me, and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book. — George MacDonald

I've been asked if I'm a prophet and told more than once by highly spiritual friends that I'm an angel. In both cases I've kept myself quiet. The answer is not as important as the perception, and the perception made remains always extremely far from what I can say. There is no answer I can give to anyone. I've tried to offer it, but the most enlightened personalities I ever met are incapable of accepting it as well. This world is simply not ready for me. But I didn't came here to show myself to the world. I came here with a mission and I will leave it before anyone knows who I am. I have a human body, a normal lifestyle and a human identity, and that's all I want others to know. They can't and shouldn't see more than that. The truth would scare them, because most humans are so incredibly arrogant, that they can't conceive the idea that they are far more insignificant that they would ever imagine, That truth would devastate anyone at present time. — Robin Sacredfire

Lord, with love and mercy you protect us from the dangers of the world. When I spend too much time looking into my smartphone, paying little attention to the beautiful faces of the people around me, I know I am in danger of forgetting who I am. When I text and tweet all sorts of messages to people I hardly know, making no time to have a meaningful conversation with a stranger or even a loved one, I know I am in danger of losing sight of God in others. When I indulge myself by buying things instantly and mindlessly, I am in danger of becoming indifferent to the needs of others. Lord, save me from my selfish ways and addictive attachment to the things of this world. Fill me with love, mercy and inner peace, that I may long to truly be present to those who cry for help. Amen. Read — Fr. Warren J. Savage

Learn from the past.
Act in the present.
Live for the future. — Myself

Did you get Mom a birthday present?" Helen asked.
"Yes," Gansey replied. "Myself."
"The gift that keeps on giving."
"I don't think that minor children are required to get gifts for their parents. I'm a dependent. That's the definition of dependent, is it not?"
"You, a dependent!" his sister said, and laughed. "You haven't been a dependent since you were four. You went straight from kindergarten to old man with a studio apartment. — Maggie Stiefvater

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints. — Bobby McFerrin

I've always been and will always be very private about my personal life. If anything ever goes public, it is by default, because I happened to be in a place where I was being watched. But for the most part, I honestly don't care what people think. I never have. If I did, I'd probably present myself a little more carefully. — Michelle Rodriguez

I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure, in time, until I spent most of my hours searching for such books. Then I devised a plan of study for myself, tracing obscure sciences, one after another, from the dawn of knowledge to the present. Eventually I exhausted even that, and beginning at the great ebony case that stands in the center of the room we of the library have maintained for three hundred years against the return of the Autarch Sulpicius (and into which, in consequence, no one ever comes) I read outward for a period of fifteen years, often finishing two books in one day. — Gene Wolfe

I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement. — Jane Austen

I love my persona because it seems like I am weak; but, stirring up within me, I can present strength within my weakness.
I only know strength in my weakness. Because that is what I know throughout my life.
Knowing pain daily; but, also the ability to stand on my 2 feet to say it is enough knowing I will get into more trouble. Also knowing that I can handle the pain through standing for myself. — Temitope Owosela

The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process:When does this feeling occur in the present case?It is when I (for example) turn my attention in a particular way on to my own consciousness, and, astonished, say to myself: THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain!
as it were clutching my forehead. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

What keeps me going is that quest for just being able to be present and be myself. Not for people, but for me. — Janet Mock

Reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience, and penetration and not enough character. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity and immensity, to be free enough from the irreparable; practical life makes me afraid. I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I know myself. The ideal poisons for me all imperfect possession. And I abhor useless regrets and repentance. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Pride, oh pride - a friend from the past, a bodyguard of the present, and an enemy of the future. Books, oh books - a friend from the past, a soul mate of the present, and a protector of the future.
Slowly, softly, and surely through the pages of the past, I have found a new me. There were so many things to learn and so many things remaining to learn. I delight in the truth of why some books I will read, and other I will not. The truth is: I was not choosing.
In pleasing myself with books, I transform myself. And I've found sometimes the most amazing keys to unlocking a different part of me in the strangest of books. I go to libraries and there they are waiting for me. I love them, and they love me. — Mark Donnelly

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can't tell you how frustrating it was that they didn't get that. No joke - I'd leave meetings crying all the time. — Kanye West

I look forward serenely to the course of events, confident that the Fountain of supreme wisdom and virtue will provide for the happiness of his creatures ... Whenever the present storm subsides, I shall rush with eagerness into the bosom of private life, but while it continues, and while my country calls for the exertion of that little share of abilities, which it has pleased God to bestow on me, I hold it my indispensable duty to give myself to her. — Gouverneur Morris

As soon as he turns the key, a man with a heavy British accent starts talking about giants not being meant to live in groups.
"That's . . . Hagrid."
"Order of the Phoenix," Aaron says. "I got the full set as a Christmas present from Mom and Tay, since I'm in the car so much. I've read the books, of course, but . . . nice to listen to them, too."
And so we listen for the next ninety minutes. Well, Aaron and I listen. Taylor is asleep ten minutes in.
I close my eyes and try to lose myself in the story. The entire trip, I only check my phone twice. That's the closest I've been to relaxed all day.
Harry is just wondering whether Cho cried because of Cedric Diggory or because he's a rotten kisser when Molly speaks up. — Rysa Walker

When you love someone you tend to tell them so much about your past because you're trying to catch up to the present moment. You're trying to say, my past has been bloody. My past has been as painful and pounding as an ear ache, but I am still here. I survived it. You're trying to say, here I am before you. I can be brutal. I can be as harsh and unforgiving as sun burn, but this is how I got to this moment. This is who I am. I am not always kind and lovely, I am so often fierce and cutting and unforgiving. I have made some mistakes I'm still trying to forgive myself for. Please accept it. Please try to love me for it. Here is the muscle and bone of me. It's frightening. It's a roller coaster. Here is the meat of me, after I've shed my skin, after I've left the cicada shell behind. It's manic. It's a monster, but it will try to love you well. It will try to leave fingerprints all over you. — Jessica Therese

I definitely work pretty hard to stay present and focused. I've also tried to create a life for myself where I'm surrounded by honest, loyal, and funny people, because I like to laugh. — Rashida Jones

Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself. — G.K. Chesterton

You're watching your kids playing football, and you're not present. It's like the worst ... it's horrible. I despise myself for it. I think it's a particularly male thing. Being present and in the moment with your kids is something a lot of men struggle with. — Andy Serkis

In one thing you have not changed, dear friend," said Aragorn: "you still speak in riddles."
"What? In riddles?" said Gandalf. "No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying. — J.R.R. Tolkien

For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and interact with the band members. — Matisyahu

Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the
years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been
renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it,
even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only
evidence is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories. — George Orwell

Allow me to present myself, milady. I am Simon of Ravenswood, brother to the ogre, and your most fervent protector for this journey. (Simon)
Wonderful. And pray tell who will protect her from your drooling? Should I have my squire fetch rags now, or should I wait until she starts to drown? (Draven) — Kinley MacGregor

I play for the intense challenges that the game on the highest levels present. The whole team enjoys playng exciting soccer for the fans and my part in that makes me feel good about myself. The whole concept of teamwork is what keeps us all going. It's my role to create scoring chances, and to come through for my teammates is extremely satisfying. — Mia Hamm

May the Gods all preserve for me (until my present form ceases) this clear and sunlit view of external reality, the instinctive awareness of my unimportance, the cosiness of being small, and the solace of being able to imagine myself happy. — Fernando Pessoa

What is Truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the "voice within" tells you. All that I can in true humility present to you is that Truth is not to be found by anybody who has not got an abundant sense of humility. If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth you must reduce yourself to zero. — Mahatma Gandhi

Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain. — Daniel Keyes

Neither mine nor other people's prospects seem particularly pleasing just at the moment, and I have fantasies of going to Iceland, never to return. As it is, I tell myself not to remember the past, not to hope or fear for the future, and not to think in the present, a comprehensive program that will undoubtedly have very little success. — Edward Gorey

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you've learned about the grand themes of life. It's time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds ... Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life ... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. — Carl Safina

But when, through the open door of the cross and the name and power of Jesus Christ, I commend myself to the Father's heart, then God cancels all my past, accepts all my present, swears His holy name for my future and the love of God take me over. Then fear goes out of my heart, because love has come in. — A.W. Tozer

Rather than worrying about work, schedules, and deadlines, I felt at peace with God. He was in control. The world at large would not crumble because I turned off my iPhone. This is how it's supposed to be. For the first time in who knows how long, I felt like myself. Fully alive. Fully present. And fully aware of God's goodness. — Craig Groeschel

What became clear as I sat on my plastic chair and drank my instant coffee was that I had somehow found myself on the other side. I had crossed a bridge. Their struggle was no longer my struggle. It wasn't that I would ever stop grieving for Will, or loving him, or missing him, but that my life seemed to have somehow landed back in the present. — Jojo Moyes

Have I done anything for society? I have then done more for myself. Let that question and truth be always present to thy mind, and work without cessation. — William Gilmore Simms

In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant. Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? — Marcus Aurelius

Let me be content with myself to the degree that my capacity to serve others is present, yet discontent with myself to the degree that I may still like to grow in better service for others. — Criss Jami

One does not ask about one's true identity simply as a matter of course, but only in rather special circumstances. What this means, I believe, is that "who I really am" becomes an issue for me only when my system of values "breaks down," that is, only when I realize that the values according to which I have lived until now are insufficient to inform a life that I can recognize as satisfying. This realization can occur in variety of circumstances: when my beliefs about myself or the world undergo significant change; when I find that two of my values conflict in a fundamental way; or when, as in the present example, the relations among my previous commitments are insufficiently determinate to tell me what to do in the particular situation I face. — Frederick Neuhouser

In my work I have chosen the positive approach. I never think of myself as protesting against something, but rather as witnessing for harmonious living. Those who witness for, present solutions. Those who witness against, usually do not - they dwell on what is wrong, resorting to judgment and criticism and sometimes even name-calling. Naturally, the negative approach has a detrimental effect on the person who uses it, while the positive approach has a good effect — Peace Pilgrim

Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body ... Someone who accepts - as I myself do, taking it on trust - the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Is Abelone beautiful? I asked myself, surprised. Then I left home to go to the Academy for Young Noblemen; it was the start of a distasteful and harmful period. But there at Soro whenever I separated myself from the others and they let me stand in peace at the window I would look out in amongst the trees; and in such moments and at night the certainty grew in me that Abelone was beautiful. And I started writing her all those letters, lengthy ones and short, many of them secret letters in which I thought I was writing about Ulsgaard and about my present unhappiness . But, as I see it now, they may well have been love letters. — Rainer Maria Rilke

If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: "Nothing passes away." I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence. — Anton Chekhov

I was careful, then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which, when one comes to think about it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness - that's a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it. It — Viet Thanh Nguyen

I need not present my actions, my words, myself for somebody else's approval. And basing my decisions on somebody else's approval or making my own approval contingent on somebody else's only postpones what I really want. — Jan Denise

The US remains an object of fascination for me, and the subject of much study, but while many of my friends etc. are American and I have no plans at present to move elsewhere, I consider myself a permanent outsider. — Luc Sante

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.
I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. — Oscar Wilde

I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man's power for life only from a present capricious inclination. — Sarah Fielding

As for myself, however, today is the day, and I dare not wait for some slow cultural drift finally to pave the way that I might easily float into some nebulous social salvation. I cannot depend on 'them' 'out there' to order into coherency this small sphere of my only present now. — Joseph Chilton Pearce

We are ultimately unknowable to ourselves and others. Our past and future are mostly unknowable. God is unknowable. For the present the universe - its origins and its destiny - is unknowable, as is whether there are many universes. Infinity is unknowable. These are some of the fundamental reasons why I call myself an agnostic. — Michael Krasny

My fashion resolution for 2015 is to continue to be inspired by all of the great designers of the past and present while keeping true to my style and myself. — Bella Hadid

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me
and I long to mention it myself, I start subjects leading up to it, and then feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak of him again- and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it. — Dodie Smith

I understood that the attachment to myself and my image ... was actually taking me away from my self, away from this wonderful opportunity to just sit, just breathe, just feel the warm animal of my body, just feel the soft, sultry heat of June. The density of my attachment was making it impossible for me to have a truly satisfying experience of life in my body just as it was in the moment. When under the sway of this obsession, my mind's attention was always in the fantasized future, or the idealized or devalued past - never present to the reality of the moment. — Stephen Cope

As a progressive discipline [biochemistry] belongs to the present century. From the experimental physiologists of the last century it obtained a charter, and, from a few pioneers of its own, a promise of success; but for the furtherance of its essential aim that century left it but a small inheritance of facts and methods. By its essential or ultimate aim I myself mean an adequate and acceptable description of molecular dynamics in living cells and tissues. — Frederick Gowland Hopkins

By what judgment am I judged? What is the accusation against me? Am I to be accused of my own betrayal? Am I to blame because you are my enemies? Yours is the responsibility, the knowledge, the power. I trusted you, you played with me as a cat plays with a mouse, and now you accuse me. I had no weapon against you, not realizing that there was need for weapons until too late. This is your place; you are at home here. I came as a stranger, alone, without a gun in my hand, bringing only a present that I wanted to give you. Am I to blame because the gift was unwelcome? Am I accused of the untranslated indictment against myself? Is it my fault that a charge has been laid against me in a different language? Is my offense that I stood too long on your threshold, holding a present that was unsuitable? Am I accused because you, wanting a victim and not a friend, threw away the only thing which I had to give? — Anna Kavan

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming. — Jacques Lacan

I realized that for the time being I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world. — Joan Didion

My breasts are small," I said in a whisper, but immediately despised myself because it sounded as if I were making excuses, excuse me if I can't offer you big tits, I hope you enjoy yourself anyway, idiot that I was, if he liked little tits, good; if not, the worse for him, it was all free, a stroke of luck had fallen to this shit, the best birthday present he could hope for, at his age. — Elena Ferrante