Self Destroy Quotes & Sayings

There's nothing, of course, more damaging and hurtful to the psyche than that - searching grimly for things to despise and revile in a person you once loved. You may destroy the beloved image but at the same time you destroy part of the basis of your self-respect, plus a whole vital chunk out of your past. Because, if he is hateful now, what aberration once caused you to waste so much love on him? — Lynne Reid Banks

But more important than the food I put into my body are thoughts I put into my mind. Thoughts of bitterness like, "I hate her!" Thoughts of despair like, "I'll never be happy again." Thoughts of fear like, "I could never do that!" And thoughts of worry, thoughts of greed and thoughts of self-loathing ... "I'm so stupid." A constant diet of these killer thoughts will destroy any of us long before heart burn or cholesterol. — Steve Goodier

We can use doubt to self analyze. A measure of doubt can help us to attain self-honesty. But, like too much water, too much doubt will also destroy us. — Ruben Papian

Just to set the record straight, a salary for a given on-screen performance does not include the right to invade anyone's privacy, to destroy someone's sense of self. — Jodie Foster

Learn to spot and avoid "writer groupies." The writer's self-sufficiency and our love for our work tend to attract insecure people who never can get enough love. They grow jealous of our work and come to regard it as a rival. These people can destroy you, so kick them out of your life or don't admit them in the first place. — Florence King

To demand of the loveless and the self-imprisioned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven ... Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves one creature in the dark outside. But watch the sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in the Manger the tyrant of the universe. — C.S. Lewis

Why does that kid think so highly of himself?"
"Kids that think they're so smart.They're everywhere! Destroy is self-esteem!"
"Yes ... I really do think highly of myself.People like me should get a taste of the ups and downs of life! Sorry I'm so envious.I will reflect upon this. Please don't be angry.
"Ah..um.."
"There, I said it now. Are you satisfied?"
...
"Bye bye!"
Beat him ... Beat him until he reaches heaven ... !!!
-random people and Hiro-chan
— Natsuki Takaya

Breaking this truth into fragments for our better understanding, it would seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me. — A.W. Tozer

True evil - conscious, calculating evil - does not seek to destroy life, but rather encourage it. True evil - malicious in every action - cheers life on. True evil - defiled in every pursuit - is not, as Max Andrews proposes, maximally selfish, rather full of restraint and accommodating in every way to the needs of men, mice, mushrooms, and microbes. True evil - debased in every motion - promotes, defends, and even admires life in its struggle to persist and self-adorn. True evil - known only to itself - urges life to grow more complex, more bold, more adventurous and more expressive, for only then is it at its most vulnerable, and when it is at its most vulnerable it is pregnant with possibility. Nothing, after all, can be truly lost or truly broken before it is first acquired, held to the bosom, adored, and cherished. — John Zande

The word Christ uses for "life" is the word psyche - the word for our soul, our inner self, our heart. He says that the things we do to save our psyche, our self, those plans to save and protect our inner life - those are the things that will actually destroy us. — John Eldredge

Arbitrary government operating by force, by terror, must destroy the best, the boldest dissenters in sheer self-defence; soon it finds itself destroying all who, on the one hand, do not actively assist it or, on the other, do not passively submit. — Edward Crankshaw

You are without needs. There is nothing that you need in order to be perfectly happy. You only think that there is. Your deepest, most perfect happiness will be found within, and once you find it, nothing exterior to your Self can match it, nor can anything destroy it. — Neale Donald Walsch

The task of the preacher, therefore, is to take the Bible and to do two things in every sermon: destroy self-righteousness and point hearers toward the alien, external righteousness of Christ. — Carl R. Trueman

Samsa looked down in dismay at his naked body. How ill-formed it was! Worse than ill-formed. It possessed no means of self-defense. Smooth white skin (covered by only a perfunctory amount of hair) with fragile blue blood vessels visible through it; a soft, unprotected belly; ludicrous, impossibly shaped genitals; gangly arms and legs (just two of each!); a scrawny, breakable neck; an enormous, misshapen head with a tangle of stiff hair on its crown; two absurd ears, jutting out like a pair of seashells. Was this thing really him? Could a body so preposterous, so easy to destroy (no shell for protection, no weapons for attack), survive in the world? — Haruki Murakami

It's ironic that the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain, because, as a group, they have no collective brain to speak of. There was no leadership, no chain of command, no communication or cooperation on any level. There was no president to assassinate, no HQ bunker to surgically strike. Each zombie is its own, self-contained, automated unit, and this last advantage is what truly encapsulates the entire conflict. — Max Brooks

Yes, the ugliness of humanity can destroy you, it can lead to your destruction, you can sabotage others unknowingly or self-sabotage yourself and in the end, you will learn to secretly despise yourself and despise others at the same time. People never talk about what comes with freedom. The price of freedom. The lives that were lost in the process of its beautiful acquisition. They do not seem to realise that in the wrong hands it was a commodity for generations. People were lynched for it. They were raped for it. Nasty things (instead people will say let us sign papers and treaties and draw up constitutions). The bits and pieces of history become the literally and figuratively the past. Change yourself and you will change the past's 'yolk of blood'. — Abigail George

Although I know very little of the Steppenwolf's life, I have all the same good reason to suppose that he was brought up by devoted but severe and very pious parents and teachers in accordance with that doctrine that makes the breaking of the will the corner-stone of education and upbringing. But in this case the attempt to destroy the personality and to break the will did not succeed. He was much too strong and hardy, too proud and spirited. Instead of destroying his personality they succeeded only in teaching him to hate himself. It was against himself that, innocent and noble as he was, he directed during his whole life the whole wealth of his fancy, the whole of his thought; and in so far as he let loose upon himself every barbed criticism, every anger and hate he could command, he was, in spite of all, a real Christian and a real martyr. — Hermann Hesse

The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). — Stephen Jay Gould

You can kill me, you mean. You can destroy my sense of self and replace it with one you approve of. — Ann Leckie

I know what it is to want something that could destroy you. — Nenia Campbell

I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage
self destructive, destroy the world rage
and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness. — Sidney Poitier

My inner wolf seeks to destroy the one I love for reasons of self-preservation. For the only cure to free my soul is to be killed, in an act of true love, by the one who loves me most.. — Bree Despain

It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself. — Leo Tolstoy

This is a frame. I think Mason Verger is trying to capture Dr. Lecter himself for purposes of personal revenge. I think he just missed him in Florence. I think Mr. Krendler may be in collusion with Verger and wants the FBI's effort against Dr. Lecter to work for Verger. I think Paul Krendler of the Department of Justice is making money out of this and I think he is willing to destroy me to do it. Mr. Krendler has behaved toward me before in an inappropriate manner and is acting now out of spite as well as financial self-interest. Only this week he called me a 'cornpone country pussy.' I would challenge Mr. Krendler before this body to take a lie detector test with me on these matters. I'm at your convenience. We could do it now. — Thomas Harris

My adoptive mother tirelessly worked most of her life to build up my self-esteem. So what happened was finding her started to shed light and destroy my mythos. So for the first year of knowing [biological mother], my mom kind of actually literally visited me in Detroit and kind of gave me a tour of my life - where I was conceived, where I was born, where she found out she was pregnant. It was amazing and very emotional. — Keegan-Michael Key

To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way. — Henry Miller

I was my own Peeping Tom. Because of the absence of people I could do anything, and if it wasn't good I could destroy it without damaging myself in the presence of others. In that sense I was my own clay. I formulated myself, I mated with myself, and I gave birth to myself. And my real self was the product - the polaroids. — Lucas Samaras

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
(Casual Chance, 1964) — Colette

So if all what I've said is the definition of insanity then the next thing is how do you define an evil bastard? People can mix evil and insanity up, thinking both to be the one and self same thing ... wrong! Let me tell you about evil, first you smell it, secondly you feel it, thirdly you taste it and finally you need to destroy it. — Stephen Richards

It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable self-government. — Mahatma Gandhi

There are life events that can destroy the personality, which is a lot more fragile than most people imagine, constructed as it is from bits provided by others in the most haphazard way. People can be torn down to the core, "shattered," as the expression goes, and then they seek sleep. And dreams, which provide the ground for the construction of a new and more integrated self. Providing there's a core, and providing they're willing to do the work. — Michael Gruber

When what one does, reps, or 'spits', repetitively, is foul or beastly - one summons spiritual undertakers to dine on fleshly parasites. In various forms, nature's law purges all that becomes wasteful. Change your game, or the game will change you. — T.F. Hodge

Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury - sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal - drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover. The Furies pursue us; Shiva dances his furious dance to create and also to destroy. But never mind about gods! Sara ranting at him represented the human spirit in its purest, least socialized form. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise - the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untramelled lord of creation. — Salman Rushdie

The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying. — Francois Fenelon

Self destroyer, wreck your health, destroy friends, destroy yourself. The time device of self destruction, lies, confusion, start eruption. — Ray Davies

Be strong-be strong in the discipline of self. How many otherwise good men squander their strength and dissipate their will and literally destroy their lives because they have not the power of self-discipline. — Gordon B. Hinckley

When you put loving thoughts and behavior into the world, you plant seeds of self-respect. When you put unloving thoughts and behavior into the world, you destroy seeds of self-respect. — Susan Jeffers

Love. Help with no expectations. Destroy selfishness, self ... At the end of our lives, I believe the soul will be asked, "What did you do for your fellow man?" — Misty Upham

...it is the most militant, most radical intervention anyone can make to not only speak of love, but to engage in the practice of love. For love as the foundation of all social movements for self-determination is the only way we create a world that domination and dominator thinking cannot destroy. Anytime we do the work of love we are doing the work of ending domination. — Bell Hooks

Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!"
" But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity ... — Kenzaburo Oe

When we humans attempt to humble others, we tend to do harm in the process. We humiliate in ways that either tear down and destroy a person or propel a person in self-defense toward greater expressions of pride or self-exaltation. Only God has the capacity to cause the precise internal and external circumstances that will bring a person to appropriate humility. Only — Hugh Ross

A wound does not destroy us. It activates our self-healing powers. The point is not to "put it behind you" but to keep benefiting from the strength it has awakened. — David Richo

Leading isn't about being perfect, but learning from mistake one made by you or others. It's showing by example and, if you do make a mistake, you own it and rise above it. You don't hang your head down, but lift it up and say, "Fuck. I guess I won't do that again!". The one thing you can't do is let it destroy your self-confidence . If you do, the mistake wins. If you rise above it and tuck the lesson in your bag of tricks, you win. -- Jack Walker (A New World: Conspiracy) — John O'Brien

Life never was intended to be easy. Rather, it is a period of proving and growth. It is interwoven with difficulties, challenges, and burdens. We are immersed in a sea of persistent, worldly pressures that could destroy our happiness. Yet these very forces, if squarely faced, provide opportunity for tremendous personal growth and development. The conquering of adversity produces strength of character, forges self-confidence, engenders self-respect, and assures success in righteous endeavor. — Richard G. Scott

Judas does not love. He does not love and that is why he betrays. He does not love, and that is why, having cast aside treason because it horrifies him, he ends by detesting himself without repenting. Self-hatred is salutary only when associated with the love of God. Alone it is homicidal; it has the power to destroy everything and it has no power at all to repair. — Antonin Sertillanges

Poor L.
We are sorry that you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid into a naughty prank. That sort of game will never again be played with you, firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers ans membranes of beauty make artists and morons loose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous air ships and coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP [Bird of Paradise]. We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours,
A & V (in alphabetic order). — Vladimir Nabokov

Next comes the temptation to destroy ourselves for love of the other. The only value is love of the other. Self-sacrifice is an absolute value in itself. And the desire of the other is also absolute in itself. No matter what the lover desires, we will give up our life or even our soul to please him. This is the asceticism of Eros, which makes it a point of honor to follow the beloved even into hell. For what greater sacrifice could man offer on the altar of love than the sacrifice of his own immortal soul? Heroism in this sacrifice is measured precisely by madness: it is all the greater when it is offered for a more trivial motive. — Thomas Merton

Those who hate, are merely wallowing in self pity. Those who lie about someone to destroy his or her spirit, are simply trying to hide their fragile egos. — Emma Paul

We mustn't leave Seth and the house unguarded," Coulter said. "Unguarded?" Seth complained. "Are you trying to destroy my self-esteem? — Brandon Mull

A tolerance that no longer distinguishes between good and evil would become chaotic and self-destructive, just as a freedom that did not respect the freedom of others or find the common measure of our respective liberties would become anarchy and destroy authority. — Pope Benedict XVI

A wish for the irrational is not to be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not. But men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy
so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving happiness of the recipients. — Ayn Rand

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that? — Ramana Maharshi

We must protect each other against the attacks of those self-appointed watchdogs of patriotism now abroad in the land who irresponsibly pin red labels on anyone whom they wish to destroy ... [Academic professionals are the only person competant to differentiate between honest independents and the Communists.] This is our responsibility. It is not a pleasant task. But if it is left to outsiders, the distinction is not likely to be made and those independent critics of social institutions among us who are one of the glories of a true university could be silenced. — Joel Henry Hildebrand

If you can love death you become deathless; if you can understand non-being then your being becomes the very ground of being-hood, the very ground of God. If you can love non-being then nothing can destroy you, you have transcended time and space. Then you have become one with the total, and this is what holiness is - to become whole is to be holy. — Rajneesh

It can't possibly work. Because the reason the person built the time machine was so that he could go back and destroy Hitler. Now, with Hitler dead, his future self wouldn't have a reason to create a time machine. So his future self would never build that time machine, and he would never go back in time. It's called a paradox. — C. David Milles

He who accepts life for what it is and never allows himself to be overwhelmed by it does not need to seek refuge for his crushed self-confidence in the solace of a 'saving lie'. If the longed-for success is not forthcoming, if the vicissitudes of fate destroy in the twinkling of an eye what had to be painstakingly built up by years of hard work, then he simply multiplies his exertions. He can look disaster in the eye without despairing. — Ludwig Von Mises

Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self-forgetfulness. Hence where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. Each forgets self and lives for others.

But where there is selfishness it mars joy. One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of life in any home. It is like an ugly bush in the midst of a garden of flowers. It was selfishness that destroyed the first home and blighted all the loveliness of Paradise; and it has been blighting lovely things in earth's home ever since. We need to guard against this spirit. — J.R. Miller

It was as if my sould had left my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching me destroy my own career with one deliberately assaultive punch. (Dark City Lights) — Peter Hochstein

Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency. — Joe Abercrombie

If the baser instinct of rampant self-preservation adamantly refuses to surrender itself to the infinitely greater call of self-sacrifice, in attempting to save our lives we will have in reality completely destroyed our lives. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The heart is a weapon - a self-inflicting weapon - that if not trained properly, can destroy a person. — E.K. Blair

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do
out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation
look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing. — Werner Herzog

You are the most dangerous kind of female the world can ever know. You carry the seeds for your own destruction and the destruction of everyone who loves you. And a great many will love you for your beautiful face for your seductive body; but you will fail them all because you will believe they all fail you first. You are an idealist of the worst kind - the romantic idealist. Born to destroy and self destruct. — V.C. Andrews

When I awake, I suddenly understood this propensity for self-destruction was not an abomination, not something to be ashamed of or abhorred; it was our greatest strength. We turn the gun on ourselves not because we are more indifferent and less cultured...on the contrary. We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer, or the person. — Amor Towles

Borrowing other people's culture and adopting other people's way of life does destroy nation's self-respect which is the greatest asset a true citizen can enjoy more than food and clothes, more than all amenities and more than military glory. You can adopt a system of government and a way of life, but can you adopt the past history, travail and tradition out of which that system of government and a way of life were evolved? Can we adopt King Charles, King John, Magna Carta and civil wars and Cromwell as our own? They can always say "We evolved a system and a way of life", but we must always sing in refrain, "We borrowed them". Adopting a culture is not the same as adopting the use of a gadget. It is like tying other peoples' mangoes to your tree, while plucking and throwing away your own. How absurd! — Manasa Rao

Lying damages others. Lying subtly permits us to destroy ourselves as we are caught in the snare and shatter our own self-image and credibility. Freedom from deceit and lying improves self and gives all of us peace of mind. — Marvin J. Ashton

The experience of love and the experience of death destroy the illusion of our self-sufficiency. The two are closely connected, and to become fully human we must experience both of them. — David Steindl-Rast

The love and war in the previous injunctions are of the nature of sport, where one respects, and learns from the opponent, but never interferes with him, outside the actual game. To seek to dominate or influence another is to seek to deform or destroy him; and he is a necessary part of one's own Universe, that is, of one's self. — Aleister Crowley

Yet. I'm starting to think that if the Internet is the CB radio of the nineties, then the home computer is the trailer park of the soul, a dangerous tool in the hands of idiots. Eventually self-imposed fascism will destroy man as he convinces himself he doesn't have to think anymore. SEPTEMBER — Marilyn Manson

Every trauma provides an opportunity for authentic transformation. Trauma amplifies and evokes the expansion and contraction of psyche, body, and soul. It is how we respond to a traumatic event that determines whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Medusa turning us into stone, or whether it will be a spiritual teacher taking us along vast and uncharted pathways. In the Greek myth, blood from Medusa's slain body was taken in two vials; one vial had the power to kill, while the other had the power to resurrect. If we let it, trauma has the power to rob our lives of vitality and destroy it. However, we can also use it for powerful self-renewal and transformation. Trauma, resolved, is a blessing from a greater power. — Ann Frederick

This passion because it is so strong, must destroy in order to be contained within the limits of self-preservation. — Sabina Spielrein

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings — Edvard Munch

According to Callero, "Freedom of choice and self-determination are virtuous principles, but when selfish individual interests threaten to destroy the common good, the limits of individualism are exposed."4 Unfortunately but predictably, Callero is vague when it comes to defining "the common good" - a catchphrase with many variations that has been used by murderous dictators throughout history. May we therefore say that the "common good," when pushed to extremes, results in the likes of Stalin and Hitler? — George H. Smith

Everybody's got skeletons in the closets. Every once in a while, you've got to open up the closet and the let the skeletons breathe. Half the time, the very thing you think is gonna destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to people with skeletons is to dust them off every now and then
as long as your closet's aint full of them. It's not good to have more than two or three. — Tyler Perry

Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self esteem. — Kurt Cobain

When we ask we are owning our needs. Asking for love, comfort or understanding is a transaction between two people. You are saying: I have a need. It's not your problem. It's not your responsibility. You don't have to respond, but I'd like something from you.
This frees the other person to connect with you freely and without obligation. When we own that our needs are our responsibility we allow others to love us because we have something to offer. Asking is a far cry from demanding. When we demand love, we destroy it. — Henry Cloud

We know that productivity suffers when uncertainty is high. But we've failed to realize the equally destructive effects of too little anxiety ... By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people. — Judith M Bardwick

It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person's feeling of self worth, even an opponent's. We all need, constantly, an advance of trust and affirmation. — Bernhard Haring

Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Controversy and contention are weakening habits. If Satan can succeed in creating in us the pastime of arguing, quarreling, and contention, it is easier for him to bind us with heavier sins which can destroy our eternal lives. Anger is a poor substitute for self-mastery and compassionate service. — Marvin J. Ashton

Anyone with a way of thinking that sees and recognizes nothing but their own "EGO" has the potential to destroy their "SELF". — Nimet Erenler Gulkoku

The trouble with these Nazis is that they have no self-critical faculty, so in their efforts to achieve greatness, they achieve nothing but a parody of greatness. Caesar conquered nations, took their leaders captive, picked their brains, and so enriched his empire. Hitler will burn down nations, torture their leaders to death, and destroy the world. — Edith Hahn Beer

The legend of our times, it has been suggested, might be "The Revenge of Failure". This is what Envy has done for us. If we cannot paint well, we will destroy the canons of painting and pass ourselves off as painters. If we will not take the trouble to write poetry, we will destroy the rules of prosody and pass ourselves off as poets. If we are not inclined to the rigors of an academic discipline, we will destroy the standards of that discipline and pass ourselves off as graduates. If we cannot or will not read, we will say that "linear thought" is now irrelevant and so dispense with reading. If we cannot make music, we will simply make a noise and persuade others that it is music. If we can do nothing at all, why! we will strum a guitar all day, and call it self-expression. As long as no talent is required, no apprenticeship to a skill, everyone can do it, and we are all magically made equal. Envy has at least momentarily been appeased,and failure has had its revenge. — Henry Fairlie

I don't think public life in and of itself can destroy you. I think it's the way people react to it, and some people are more sturdy than others ... I don't think any one faction can be blamed for a person's self destruction - a certain amount of that has to be innate. — Patti Smith

Somehow or other, the loving parents had swallowed one of the Tempter's hooks, and the child was given total self-indulgence, which is far from free will. He still tempts. The ancient, primordial battle to destroy Community, to shatter Trinity, still continues. Creation still groans with the pain of it. Like it or not, we're caught in the middle. — Madeleine L'Engle

Uncertainty is everywhere. But I am living in the midst of the uncertainty and risk, amid things that can and do bring physical destruction, because I am running from things that can destroy my soul, complacency, comfort and ignorance. I am much more terrified of living a comfortable life in a self serving society and failing to follow Jesus than I am of any illness or tragedy. — Katie J. Davis

The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new. — Norman O. Brown

The death of our self-worth begins at its appraisal, for such an action erroneously implies that our worth can be quantified. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Cold men destroy women," my mother wrote me years later. "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greenness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes - you hear all you have sacrificed, all you have given, landing with a loud clunk. They lock the greenhouse and you are as tiny as a figure in an architect's drawing, a faceless splotch, a blur of stick limbs abandoned in some voluminous desert of stone. — Lorrie Moore

That Anarchist world, I admit, is our dream; we do believe - well, I, at any rate, believe this present world, this planet, will some day bear a race beyond our most exalted and temerarious dreams, a race begotten of our wills and the substance of our bodies, a race, so I have said it, 'who will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a footstool, and laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars,' but the way to that is through education and discipline and law. Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create a system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling and action. Socialism is the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men. — H.G.Wells

A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty. — Immanuel Kant

Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of such self-awareness. — M. Scott Peck

Self-consciousness can destroy a performance. Getting rid of that is always good. — Joe Dempsie

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. — Hermann Hesse

We cannot rely on trial-and-error approaches to deal with existential risks ... We need to vastly increase our investment in developing specific defensive technologies ... We are at the critical stage today for biotechnology, and we will reach the stage where we need to directly implement defensive technologies for nanotechnology during the late teen years of this century ... A self-replicating pathogen, whether biological or nanotechnology based, could destroy our civilization in a matter of days or weeks. — Ray Kurzweil

A person devolves his or her hardiness from the ark-like powers of love to create, protect, and destroy. When we are in love, we discover what we long to become, we also discover what we lack. When we are in love, we are empowered to seek out our destiny. When we lose at love, our confidence is devastated. In the wake of a breakup with a lover, we languish in solitude. Caught in the riptide of incompleteness, we suffer terribly. — Kilroy J. Oldster

When a man decides to destroy his past,
he automatically ends up destroying the part of his future that he will need the most — Angelos Michalopoulos

Not to know yourself is dangerous, to that self and to others. Those who destroy, who cause great suffering, kill off some portion of themselves first, or hide from the knowledge of their acts and from their own emotion, and their internal landscape fills with partitions, caves, and minefields, blank spots, pit traps, and more, a landscape turned against itself, a landscape that does not know itself, a landscape through which they may not travel. — Rebecca Solnit

Within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me." The — A.W. Tozer