Quotes & Sayings About Self Absorption

If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged; it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness. — Caitlin Thomas

They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing. — Ann Brashares

Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is most greatly experienced in the heart of those willing to surrender all self-sufficiency: self-promotion, self-reliance, self-protection, and self-absorption: it is a gift given. — Robin M. Bertram

It didn't occur to me then, though it certainly does now, that it was years since I'd roused myself from my stupor of misery and self-absorption; between anomie and trance, inertia and parenthesis and gnawing my own heart out, there were a lot of small, easy, everyday kindnesses I'd missed out on; and even the word 'kindness' was liking rising from unconsciousness into some hospital awareness of voices, and people, from a stream of digitized machines. — Donna Tartt

She kept her looks very well and continued, in a rather severe way, to pay attention to her dress. There were moments now when her laugh sounded a little hollow and brittle, the laughter of nerves not of mirth or good spirits. Occasionally in a conversation she seemed to lose track and fall into a self-absorption, to start up overwhelmed by embarrassment and unspoken remorse ... She was pushing thirty-five. But she could still be good company. — Robert Penn Warren

We all want to be stars. The idea of being revered and envied must be encoded somewhere deep in our DNA. So must the desire to revere and envy others we imagine to be better, more accepted, and more popular than we are. The only problem is that the most necessary qualities required to be a celebrity
self-absorption, egomania, shamelessness
are the least attractive in a friend. — Tonya Hurley

To be sick and helpless is a humiliating experience. Prolonged illness also carries the hazard of narcissistic self-absorption. — Richard Hofstadter

What is meditative absorption? What is leaving the body? What is fasting? What is holding the breath? These are a flight from the ego, a brief escape from the torment of being an ego, a short-term deadening of the pain and absurdity of life. This same escape, this same momentary deadening, is achieved by the ox driver in an inn when he drinks a bowl of rice wine or fermented coconut milk. Then he no longer feels his self, then he no longer feels the pains of life - he achieves momentary numbness. Falling asleep over his bowl of rice wine, he reaches the same result Siddhartha and Govinda reach when, through long practice sessions, they escape their bodies and dwell in nonego. That is the way it is, Govinda." Govinda — Hermann Hesse

The stories that I want to tell are completely, well, somewhat autobiographical. It's completely based on my own self-absorption issues and problems. — Nicole Holofcener

Selfishness and self-absorption are deadly charm-exterminators. — Loretta Young

Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature. — Adam Gopnik

Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object. — Sherry Turkle

It's like that, isn't it? Just as Raymond Chandler says, 'The first kiss is dynamite, the second is routine and then you take her clothes off,' It had been like that for Alan in his previous affairs, even the extended one he had had with Sybil while Naomi was pregnant. Sure, Alan went on enjoying sex with Sybil, but at a fundamental level his lust for her had died the very first time he felt the shock of her pubic bone against his, and knew that they were now truly welded into one another. Alan was a one-thrust man. Not that he'd ever been exactly promiscuous. Perhaps it would have been better for all concerned if he had been. Rather, his sentiment self-absorption had managed to gild each of these terminal thrusts with enough self-regarding burnish for him to sustain the 'relationships' that legitimised them for months; and in at least two instances, for years. — Will Self

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency ... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed. — Brennan Manning

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops. — George Pierce Baker

Leadership expert Michael Hyatt reflected on Karnazes's life and drew three conclusions about why we should embrace discomfort: 1. Comfort is overrated. It doesn't lead to happiness. It makes us lazy - and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent. 2. Discomfort can be a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt. 3. Discomfort is often a sign we're making progress. You've heard the expression, "no pain, no gain." It's true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort.2 — Samuel Chand

Rude wasn't so much a heel who happened to be attractive as he was a 100 percent pure concentrate of machismo and self-absorption, a Lothario for his own sake. He could have any woman he wanted, but his objective was never love or even lust; it was heterosexual avidity purely for show. And he seemed not so much to objectify women as to coolly demean them. The object of his affection was solely himself. It was hardcore pornography minus the sex.* — Anonymous

What gives journalism its authenticity and vitality is the tension between the subject's blind self absorption and the journalist's skepticism. Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists. — Janet Malcolm

Insanity is a state of profound self-absorption. — Siri Hustvedt

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy-indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction. — William Osler

Absorption in things other than self is the secret of a happy life. — James Cagney

But I often think we talk way too much in this society, that we consider verbalization a panacea that it very often is not, and that we turn a blind eye to the sort of morbid self-absorption that becomes a predictable by-product of it. — Dennis Lehane

What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression ... — Wendy Kaminer

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action. — Daniel Goleman

Invoking the letters of God's Name without presence of mind is invocation of the tongue; invoking with presence of mind is invocation of the heart; and invoking with an absence of self-awareness because of absorption in the Invoked is the invocation of the Self - this is the hidden invocation! — Ibn Ata Allah

Prayer gives us relief from the melancholy burden of self-absorption . — Timothy Keller

Conscience is the moralized form of self-absorption. — Mason Cooley

Many of those late nights, when he'd paced his apartment, his mind roaming the world he'd painstakingly created and could finally inhabit - moving within it from character to character, feverishly distilling into words thoughts not his own but theirs - had been ecstasies of absorption and self-forgetfulness. — Adelle Waldman

I wasn't involved in anything. I wasn't out - you know, I know I wasn't in ACT UP. I wasn't with Larry Kramer. I wasn't by his side. I wasn't saying what I should do, because, by all accounts, I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. And I was living in a complete bubble of self-absorption. — Elton John

The Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz once observed that a person cutting vegetables while preparing to cook food is full of daydreams and fantasies that nurture the life of the soul. Contemplation can be an absorption in work that is free of self-consciousness and yet rich with imagination. Serious — Thomas Moore

the great majority of people worldwide remain in the thrall of tribal organized religions, led by men who claim supernatural power in order to compete for the obedience and resources of the faithful. We are addicted to tribal conflict, which is harmless and entertaining if sublimated into team sports, but deadly when expressed as real-world ethnic, religious, and ideological struggles. There are other hereditary biases. Too paralyzed with self-absorption to protect the rest of life, we continue to tear down the natural environment, our species' irreplaceable and most precious heritage. And it is still taboo to bring up population policies aiming for an optimum people density, geographic distribution, and age distribution. — Edward O. Wilson

As long as we live, our self-absorption and our insecurity will walk together, holding hands and swinging them back and forth like two little girls on their way to a pretend playground they can never find. Human nature dictates that most often we will be as insecure as we are self-absorbed. The best possible way to keep from getting sucked into the superficial narcissistic mentality that money, possessions, and sensuality can satisfy and secure us is to deliberately give ourselves to something much greater ... [Christ] showed us that giving, rather than getting, is the means to receiving ... to find yourself, your true self, you must lose yourself in something larger. — Beth Moore

It's about time we stop mistaking self-knowledge for self-absorption - and realize that nobody has a monopoly on selfishness. — Meghan Daum

But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons. — Chuck Palahniuk

Self-absorption intensifies isolation, but permits it to go unnoticed. — Mason Cooley

Unencumbered by any concept of sin, the Master doesn't see evil as a force to resist, but simply as an opaqueness, a state of self-absorption which is in disharmony with the universal process, so that, as with a dirty window, the light can't shine through. This freedom from moral categories allows him his great compassion for the wicked and the selfish. — Lao-Tzu

The Beats, like their successors in the Sixties, have often been described as 'idealists'. But fantasies of total gratification are not the product of idealism. They arise from a narcissism that, finding the world unequal to its desires, retreats into a realm of heedless self-absorption. Modesty, convention, and self-restraint then appear as the enemies rather than as the allies of humanity. In this sense, the Beat generation marks a step away from civilization. — Roger Kimball

A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished-not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty - a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption that deaden our souls and poison our relationships. — Pope Benedict XVI

Bodybuilding is men on a stage in their underwear wearing brown paint showing other men their muscles. It is training for appearance only, and at the contest level requires a degree of vanity, narcissism, and self-absorption that I find distasteful and odd — Mark Rippetoe

My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me. — Mason Cooley

During adolescence imagination is boundless. The urge toward self-perfection is at its peak. And with all their self- absorption and personalized dreams of glory, youth are in pursuit of something larger than personal passions, some values or ideals to which they might attach their imaginations. — Louise J. Kaplan

The arrogance of belonging is not about egotism or self-absorption. In a strange way, it's the opposite; it is a divine force that will actually take you out of yourself and allow you to engage more fully with life. Because often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing sense of self-protection). The arrogance of belonging pulls you out of the darkest depths of self-hatred - not by saying "I am the greatest!" but merely by saying "I am here! — Elizabeth Gilbert

Particularly with middle-class people, self-absorption is a struggle. — Ben Lewin

God is love. But love can also be hated when it challenges us to transcend ourselves. It is not a romantic "good feeling." Redemption is not "wellness," it is not about basking in self-indulgence; on the contrary it is a liberation from imprisonment in self-absorption. This liberation comes at a price: the anguish of the Cross. The prophecy of light and that of the Cross belong together. — Pope Benedict XVI

The attendant opened the door, and the faint barking Nina had heard before became frantic and shrill. Nina stepped into the concrete cell block and stopped, blown out of her self-absorption by the row of gray metal cages where dogs barked to get her attention. She let her breath out, horrified. "Oh, God, this is awful." "Spay your pets." The attendant stopped in front of the next to last cage. "Here you go." She jerked her head again. "Perky." Nina — Jennifer Crusie

Forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of human rage, with these out hells and our heavens, so few inches apart, we must be awfully small, and not as strong as we think we are. — Rich Mullins

Why hope to live a long life if we're only going to fill it with self-absorption, body maintenance and image repair? When we die, do we want people to exclaim 'She looked ten years younger,' or do we want them to say 'She lived a great life'? — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

To summarize, then, it appears that Christian holiness is a number of things together. It has both outward and inward aspects. Holiness is a matter of both action and motivation, conduct and character, divine grace and human effort, obedience and creativity, submission and initiative, consecration to God and commitment to people, self-discipline and self-giving, righteousness and love. It is a matter of Spirit-led law-keeping, a walk, or course of life, in the Spirit that displays the fruit of the Spirit (Christlikeness of attitude and disposition). It is a matter of seeking to imitate Jesus' way of behaving, through depending on Jesus for deliverance from carnal self-absorption and for discernment of spiritual needs and possibilities. — J.I. Packer

Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Hopelessness sets in, when a man is bound up in his shame
living small, within that closed horizon of fantasy and self-absorption. — Andrew Comiskey

False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit. — Criss Jami

I wonder at times if we're not all blind. It just seems there are an abundance of books unread, paint strokes not admired, and performances unattended. So much attention painstakingly sought and not given. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Because often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing sense of self-protection). — Elizabeth Gilbert

Like all the girls back then I knew that being too clever was much worse than being too tall. Being five foot three, tongue-tied and blonde I mostly passed muster, except that I was so unskilled in small talk that I sometimes blurted big words (hypocrisy, or pretentiousness), which jumped out of my mouth like the toads of the fairy tale before I knew it. In any case, you could cultivate the wrong sort of silence - the sort that implied brooding self-absorption rather than attentiveness. — Lorna Sage

Czechoslovak government and the pro-Nazi leaders of the country's Sudeten German minority, Hitler demanded that the German population be given "self-determination," that is, autonomy within the Czechoslovak republic. The British and French governments feared that these demands, following close on the German annexation of Austria, would be a first step in Hitler's eventual dismembering of Czechoslovakia and its absorption into a greater Reich. — Debi Unger

Lonely people console themselves with self-absorption or curiosity. — Mason Cooley

Could be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years. — Jon Krakauer

I am talking about self absorbtion. If you think about it, the human race is pretty self absorbed. Racism might be the symptoms of a greater disease, What I mean is, as a human, I am flawed in that it is difficult for me to consider others before myself. It feels like I have a fight against this force, this current within me that more often than not wants to avoid serious issues and wants to please myself, buy things for myself, feed myself, entertain myself, and all that. All I am saying is that if we , as a species could fix our self absorption, we could end a lot of pain in the world. — Donald Miller

He knew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If Sally had been in an accident or come down with some overtly physical disease, I would not hesitate to tell him about it, confident that his sympathies would flow in my direction as a matter of course. But psychosis defies empathy; few people who have not experienced it up close buy the idea of a behavioral disease. It has the ring of an excuse, a license for self-absorption on the most extreme scale. It suggests that one chooses madness and not the other way around. (86) — Michael Greenberg

Salvakalpa samadhi is absorption in eternity to the point where there is no real concept of self but there's still a karmic chain. Nirvikalpa samadhi is absorption in nirvana; concepts of self and no-self go away completely. — Frederick Lenz

The humble woman is surprised by all the good that she sees around her rather than scandalized by what she cannot judge anyway. The humble woman is grateful for her successes but not disheartened by her failures. She enjoys her gifts and readily admits her mistakes. She maintains a sense of humor, whether the news from Wall Street is giddy or glum. She faces her character defects without getting discouraged. Her humble confidence in God's love and her enchantment with the kabod Yahweh shape a hedge of thorns against self-absorption and frees her for an unselfconscious presence to others. — Brennan Manning

Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow. Awareness of others is a healthy antidote to this self-focus. — Kevin Malarkey

Acting requires absorption, but not self-absorption and, in the actor's mind, the question must always be 'Why am I doing this?,' not 'How am I doing it? — Maureen Lipman

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly - the thought of the world's concern at her situation - was founded on illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought. — Thomas Hardy

There is a certain manner of self-absorption in speaking that always renders the speaker disagreeable. For it is as great a folly to listen only to ourselves while we are carrying on a conversation with others as it is to talk to ourselves while we are alone. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

I'd like to say I'm not self-absorbed compared to others, but that's hard to say since I'm far too self-absorbed to pry into others' self-absorption. — Anonymous

The consumption of drugs has the effect of reducing men's freedom by circumscribing the range of their interests. It impairs their ability to pursue more important human aims, such as raising a family and fulfilling civic obligations. Very often it impairs their ability to pursue gainful employment and promotes parasitism. Moreover, far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug-takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption. — Theodore Dalrymple

Never underestimate the power of self-absorption, including your parents' self-absorption. — Rita Mae Brown

At times ... one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people. — Gail Godwin

I admire self-awareness more than probably any other quality, and I think in terms of what qualities are "good" in a person, it's a mostly subjective opinion, so I can't see a reason to think that self-absorption is inherently a bad thing. — Marie Calloway

Consider to what extent an "antique" is prized because it is excellently made and beautiful and to what extent it is prized because it is an antique and as such is saturated with another time and another place and is therefore resistant to absorption by the self - — Walker Percy

In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention. — Jay Dratler

Suffering reminds us of our brokenness, our humanity. It disarms us of our self-absorption and magnifies our need for one another. — Marquita Burke-DeJesus

...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so. — Matthew Crawford

There's nothing that makes you more miserable (or less interesting) than self-absorption . — Timothy Keller

We can put it this way: the man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not even look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and rests on that alone. He has ceased to say, "Ah yes, I used to commit terrible sins but I have done this and that." He stops saying that. If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith. Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, "Yes I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin, yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ and God has put that to my account. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Mindfulness is a state wherein one is totally aware in any situation and so always able to respond appropriately. Yet one is aware of being aware. Mindlessness, on the other hand, or "no-mindness" as it has been called, is a condition of such complete absorption that there is not vestige of self-awareness. — Philip Kapleau

This is the study of the whole realm of Forms, working out in full detail all the relationships in which the various ones of them stand to one another. So the rise to full life, in our self-absorption into our intellectual origins and natures, is itself an exercise of philosophy, of philosophy at its essential core of active knowledge of Forms. — John M. Cooper

I have too much free time. Free time makes people think; thinking makes people morbidly self-absorbed; and unless you are watertight and flawless, excessive self-absorption leads to depression. — Steve Toltz

That her own self-deception and self-absorption, her own slavery to the society and family in which she had been brought up, had reduced this blameless man to a weeping wreck struck her as horrific. She saw more clearly than she had ever seen before that she must change, or keep hurting the people who truly loved her. — Shamim Sarif

Self absorption is anti-seductive; it is a sign of insecurity. — Robert Greene

Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption. — Paul Reiser

Take away the love and the laughter, narrate the stories as if the characters had acted with malice and self-absorption, and everybody was in a bleak independent film about alcoholism and schizophrenia and child abuse. — Nick Hornby

Babies and the old are permitted self-absorption. In between, it provokes resentment. — Mason Cooley

However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones — John Quincy Adams

While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best. — C.S. Lewis

The second trait of narcissism in which asceticism plays a role is blankness. "If only I could feel" - in this formula the self-denial and self-absorption reach a perverse fulfillment. Nothing is real if I cannot feel it, but I can feel nothing. The defense against there being something real outside the self is perfected, because, since I am blank, nothing outside me is alive. In therapy the patient reproaches himself for an inability to care, and yet this reproach, seemingly so laden with self-disgust, is really an accusation against the outside. For the real formula is, nothing suffices to make me feel. Under cover of blankness, there is the more childish plaint that nothing can make me feel if I don't want to, and hidden in the characters of those who truly suffer because they go blank faced with a person or activity they always thought they had desired, there is the secret, unrecognized conviction that other people, or other things as they are, will never be good enough. — Richard Sennett

She'll be an excellent novelist: a monster of self-absorption. — Lan Samantha Chang

Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to redeem them — Walter Benjamin

An inability to encourage someone else is usually rooted in an absorption
with self that is blind to the needs or gifts of others, or a pride that cannot bring itself to praise God's grace in them. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

Selfishness is self-absorption, self-seeking behaviour that either disregards the rights and needs of others or tramples them deliberately in favour of personal gain. — Adelyn Birch

Love created this world, & the lack of it can kill it. Selfishness, self-absorption , arrogance & indifference never built anything. — John Hope Bryant

Ethan looked at her with loathing. She was no longer the listless creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption, but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding. — Edith Wharton

It is easy to slip into self-absorption, and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Can you, in a million years, imagine another female senator - Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Claire McCaskill - reacting to being called 'ma'am' like Barbara Boxer did? This is the kind of sanctimonious self-absorption on the modern left that makes my teeth itch. — Mark Davis

You'll continue to be a bitch no matter what, but I'm glad you aren't a callous, self-absorbed one. — Genna Rulon

It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important. — William Manchester

To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus. — Tom Stoppard

One of the greatest theological challenges of our time is to move our worship beyond self-absorption. — Kelly M. Kapic