Self Possessed Quotes & Sayings

Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those ... who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite. — Booker T. Washington

When she was younger, she felt that he wanted to know everything about her, but she was sometimes afraid to tell too much. She was afraid he would know her too well, that he would find some weakness in her, some element that would turn him away, maybe even a quality she didn't even realize she possessed. — Michael Stein

It must have meant something, though, that at this turn of my life I grabbed up a book. Because it was in books that I would find, for the next few years, my lovers. They were men, not boys. They were self-possessed and sardonic, with a ferocious streak in them, reserves of gloom. — Alice Munro

Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party. — Arthur Helps

They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. — Herman Melville

Promiscuity does not scare me as long as she is savvy and self possessed when puberty comes to call. My aim is to simply raise my daughter to be secure in her self worth and capable of happiness all on her own. — Ani DiFranco

Majeed was a self-confessed Holocaust denier. I had witnessed his indignant nihilism about the six million condemned to be extinguished infinitely in countless narrow minds like his. Despite his intelligence, he possessed capacities I had never previously encountered. I — Qanta A. Ahmed

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed. — Jack Kornfield

~~You are not alone~~ No, really. Literally. Maybe you have always known (or suspected) this. Maybe this news is shocking, baffling, dismaying, even unbelievable to you. Despite what you might believe or may have been told about yourself, you are not just 'moody'. Nor are you crazy or defective or possessed. You have what is commonly called 'multiple personalities'. — A.T.W.

The kind of self-righteous intolerance once associated with the more puritanical forms of religion and the more extreme forms of Socialism now reappeared to promote the 'rights' of women, homosexuals, racial minorities, the disabled and any group of people who could be portrayed as being 'below the line' and therefore discriminated against...Unconsciously they were using the belief that they were acting in the name of selfless moral principle simply as a cloak for asserting their ego, and as a means to enjoy feelings of moral superiority. In the cause of 'toleration' and promoting collective 'rights,' they had become possessed by a fanatical and humorless intolerance. — Christopher Booker

Depending on how you looked at it, Darren was our Mick Jagger (designated swaggering extrovert) to Simon's Keith Richards (quietly virtuosic, blatantly self-destructive). Or else Darren had been Paul McCartney (chirpily commercial) and Simon had been John Lennon (moody, introspective, possessed of quasi-mystical insights). — Austin Grossman

The motivation I possessed to serve my country is what got me out of the small town of Lyons, Texas where I grew up, and into the world of service, love of country, helping others, and being an American soldier." (Page 90). — Kenneth A. Bracewell

Jim Stavridis is the former NATO commander who is sometimes on people's lists, also very plausible, self-possessed, someone with sobriety. — David Brooks

Ziggy was Jensen's sister. Ziggy was the kid I never knew. Hanna was this uninhibited, self-possessed woman in front of me who I was pretty sure was going to effectively wreck my world. — Christina Lauren

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 was the cause of many of Dad's outrages too, when people elected themselves his personal oracle of Delphi ... They'd made the mistake of abridging Dad, putting Dad in a nutshell, telling Dad How It Was (and getting it all wrong).
...
"The act of being personally misconstrued," Dad said, "informed to one's face one is no more complex than a few words haphazardly strung together like blotchy undershirts on a clothesline
well, it can fall the most self-possessed of individuals. — Marisha Pessl

Atonement theology assumes that we were created in some kind of original perfection. We now know that life has emerged from a single cell that evolved into self-conscious complexity over billions of years. There was no original perfection. If there was no original perfection, then there could never have been a fall from perfection. If there was no fall, then there is no such thing as "original sin" and thus no need for the waters of baptism to wash our sins away. If there was no fall into sin, then there is also no need to be rescued. How can one be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can one be restored to a status of perfection that he or she never possessed? So most of our Christology today is bankrupt. Many popular titles that we have applied to Jesus, such as "savior," "redeemer," and "rescuer," no longer make sense, because they assume — John Shelby Spong

mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood — Charles Dickens

Yet it is only when one is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream one has long cherished, or a privilege one has long possessed, that one is set free ... that one has set oneself free, for higher dreams, for greater privileges. James Baldwin — James Baldwin

Fiddling with damp tarragon left me so intensely irritated that when I was done I had to stick the ramekin/mise en place bowls back in the fridge and go watch both the episode where Xander is possessed by a demon and the one where Giles regresses to his outrageously sexy teen self and has sex with Buffy's mom, just to get over it. — Julie Powell

She'd never shaken off the feeling of being damaged by her ignorance of Love, of what it might be like to be wholly possessed by the archetypal, capitalized djinn, the yearning towards, the blurring of the boundaries of the self, the unbuttoning, until you were open from your adam's-apple to your crotch: just words, because she didn't know the thing. — Salman Rushdie

The gift of self cannot be given to us. It is an incomparable gift that has already been given. We have possessed it from the beginning. — Gerry Spence

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine ... and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

So the divine love is sacrificial love. Love does not mean to have and to own and to possess. It means to be had and to be owned and to be possessed. It is not a circle circumscribed by self, it is arms outstretched to embrace all humanity within its grasp. — Fulton J. Sheen

Moreover, Lincoln possessed an uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress. Indeed, when he is compared with his colleagues, it is clear that he possessed the most even-tempered disposition of them all. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The problem is not that greed is "bad" in early development it is necessary for survival - but that greed has psychological consequences. Specifically, the intention to possess not only intensifies the object self, but it engenders fear of the loss of what is possessed.....It is hard to find a neurotic symptom or a human vice that cannot be traced to the desire to possess or the fear of loss....We can understand that neurotic symptoms might disappear as a by-product of a process that diminishes the dominance of the object self.
Ultimately, renunciation, selflessness, and virtuous behaviour, in general, are necessary because they reflect the nature of reality. — Arthur Deikman

We don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are ... What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted
? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, and civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? p.761, The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt

I think a good role model has to be sexy. Real, empowered, self-possessed women are sexy. When you're really in control of your choices, your mood, your body, and your opinions, people find you sexy. — Amanda Palmer

Vulcan is long gone, almost completely forgotten. It may seem today to be merely a curiosity, just another mistake our ancestors made, about which we now know better. But the issue of what to do with failure in science was tricky right at the start of the Scientific Revolution, and it remains so now. We may - we do - know more than the folks back then. But we are not thus somehow immune to the habits of mind, the leaps of imagination, or the capacity for error that they possessed. Vulcan's biography is one of the human capacity to both discover and self-deceive. It offers a glimpse of how hard it is to make sense of the natural world, and how difficult it is for any of us to unlearn the things we think are so, but aren't. — Thomas Levenson

Why are you kissing me?" she squeaked out breathlessly.
"God, how can I not?" He ran his hands up and down her arms. "I think you're made for me to kiss. I need to kiss you. You need to be kissed," he said firmly, as if he'd reached some decision that brooked no debate. This did not sound like the smooth-talking and self-possessed charmer of his reputation. — Catherine LaRoche

In public, you're Joss Butler. Cool, self-possessed. In bed, you're Jocelyn Butler - you're hot, babe. Uncontrolled. Needy. Sweet," he breathed. "I like that I know that. I don't like the fact that other men do too. — Samantha Young

His mother's favorite, he possessed the self-confidence that told him he would achieve something worth while in life, and the ambition to do so, though for long the direction this would take remained uncertain. — Ernest Jones

Mary Ocher gives me the chills, she frightens me with her feral soul.
Her sound is of a true outsider artist, immaculately self possessed.
Was this recorded this century? Or out of a basement that's she's been imprisoned all her
life? Time to set her loose on the world. I'm so happy she exists. Set me free Mary! — Karen O

Losing a battle or losing everything we thought we possessed will bring us moments of sadness, but when those moments pass, we will discover the hidden strength that exists in each of us, a strength that will surprise us and increase our self-respect. — Paulo Coelho

As self-possessed as he is, when he's tired from working too hard, his whole demeanor softens with vulnerability ... which makes me want to tuck him right beneath my heart and hold on tight. — Nina Lane

In a democracy private citizens see a man of their own rank in life who becomes possessed of riches and power in a few years; this spectacle excites their surprise and envy, and they are led to inquire how the person who was yesterday very equal is today their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Even more than the depression, it was my anxiety and agitation that became the defining symptoms of my illness. Like epileptic seizures, a series of frenzied anxiety attacks would descend upon me without warning. My body was possessed by a chaotic, demonic force which led to my shaking, pacing and violently hitting myself across the chest or in the head. This self-flagellation seemed to provide a physical outlet for my invisible torment, as if I were letting steam out of a pressure cooker. — Douglas Bloch

I was too hard to decide just what she hated most about [Kyleren]. There were so many thing. She hated his humor. It attacked her without fear. She hated the way he laughed. It was too irresponsible. She hated his smile. Full of confidence, it displayed too much self-assurance. She especially loathed his clarity of mind. His singular obsession with achieving the next objective. Kyleren possessed no ambition, no need to prove himself. It made him predictable, honest, and easy to trust. — Amanda Gerry

Washington possessed the superb self-confidence that comes only to those men whose inner life is faint. — William E. Woodward

Theophilus Crowe wrote bad free-verse poetry and played a jimbai drum while sitting on a rock by the ocean. He could play sixteen chords on the guitar and knew five Bob Dylan songs all the way through, allowing for a dampening buzz any time he had to play a bar chord. He had tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and pottery and had even played a minor part in the Pine Cove Little Theater's revival of Arsenic and Old Lace. In all of these endeavors, he had experienced a meteoric rise to mediocrity and quit before total embarrassment and self-loathing set in. Theo was cursed with an artist's soul but no talent. He possessed the angst and the inspiration, but not the means to create. — Christopher Moore

How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and evenly coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed. — Carrie Fisher

A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility. — Hermann Hesse

Part of Obama's persona is self-reliance. He's calm; he's cool; he's self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton's sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism. — Dee Dee Myers

Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification. — Maria Edgeworth

They are, in fact, Cheaters, luring men into the foaming waters of carnality without even the vaguest possibility of conception. What a delight, what a subversion of expectation. The healthiest and most womanly of women are in fact a rendition of Amazon queens, self-possessed and self-defined, women whose bodies have an enviable integrity and a fleshy, nonreplicative beauty that razzes Charles Darwin. The buck, the stud, the bull, stops here. — Natalie Angier

The image of a cleanly, self-possessed man exploiting his solitude was not easy to come by, but then he had not expected that it would be. — John Cheever

As for Miss Merriville, Mr Trevor felt that she was very well able to take care of herself. He had been dazzled by her beautiful companion, but he retained a vague impression of a self-possessed female, with a slightly aquiline nose, and an air of friendly assurance. He did not think that she would be easily taken-in. — Georgette Heyer

Ariya was tall and fine-boned, with large doe-eyes framed by long lashes. She moved about the one-story house with a self-possessed grace in her purple dress. We thought she would make a good model. She could sell anything but perfume, because she always had a smell: parsley, cilantro, chicken, goat, sour sop, shop cheese. — Jenelle Jack Pierre

His voice, with some faint Irish melody running through it, wooed the world, yet she felt the layer of hardness in him, of self-control and of self-discipline, her own virtues. Oh, she chose him, and Nicole, lifting her head saw her choose him, heard a little sigh at the fact that he was already possessed. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of continuous and uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to grave with shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it had and was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold, and was only brass. — Mark Twain

How can you humans actually believe yourselves superior to any truly sentient being? Look at you - self-styled demigods, mired in your own filthy social excrement, possessed of vomitous morals. You kill each other with unnatural impunity, preying upon the weal and helpless... not from necessity, but for gain. Name one other species that maims and destroys to gain glittering trinkets that will not fill one's belly. — Camille Anthony

It is in providing outward display for things and pathways as they exist within the horizons of landscape that places enable memories to become inwardly inscribed and possessed: made one with the memorial self. The visibility without becomes part of the invisibility within. — Edward S. Casey

War is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things. — Barbara Ehrenreich

And my emotions were similarly amplified: The highs were higher; the periods of despair were deeper and darker. To a self-possessed young man inebriated with the unfolding drama of his own life, all of this held enormous appeal. — Jon Krakauer

It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. you feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. — Yann Martel

In contrast to the inorganic thereness of lifeless matter, living beings are not mere appearances. To be alive means to be possessed by an urge toward self-display which answers the fact of one's own appearingness. Living things make their appearance like actors on a stage set for them. — Hannah

Forward thinking doesn't just come with age. It comes with practice and experience. That's why some twenty-two-year-olds are incredibly self-possessed, future-oriented people who already know how to face the unknown, while some thirty-four-year-olds still have brains that run the other way. — Meg Jay

Okay. Let me rephrase. Sometimes being crazy is a demon. And sometimes the demon is me. And I visit quiet sidewalks and loud parties and dark movies, and a small demon looks out at the world with me. Sometimes it sleeps. Sometimes it plays. Sometimes it laughs with me. Sometimes it tries to kill me. But it's always with me. I suppose we're all possessed in some way. Some of us with dependence on pills or wine. Others through sex or gambling. Some of us through self-destruction or anger or fear. And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. — Jenny Lawson

Sheltered by his caste, Sarcellus had not, as the impoverished must, made fear the pivot of his passions. As a result he possessed an immovable self-assurance. He felt. He acted. He judged. The fear of being wrong that so characterized Achamian simply did not exist for Cutias Sarcellus. Where Achamian was ignorant of the answers, Sarcellus was ignorant of the questions. No certitude, she thought, could be greater. — R. Scott Bakker

I am not trapped," Deanna said sharply, surprised and worried by the turn of the conversation. Kelly was so self-possessed that it was sometimes difficult to know what was going on in her mind. "I love you all. I live here and help with money because I choose to, because it makes me happy. I'd be miserable if I just up and left you in the lurch. — Noelle Adams

Alas! how many souls there are full of self, and yet desirous of doing good and serving God, but in such a way as to suit themselves; who desire to impose rules upon God as to His manner of drawing them to Himself. They want to serve and possess Him, but they are not willing to be possessed by Him. — Francois Fenelon

She was probably too cool, too self-possessed. Some of our classmates must have thought her cold and haughty. But I detected something else- something warm and fragile just below the surface. Something very much like a child playing hide-and-seek, hidden deep within her, yet hoping to be found. — Haruki Murakami

Knighthood. Was he even worthy? Just a little while ago, he'd have answered yes without a doubt, but now, facing the cross and his own desires, he wasn't so sure. Courage, loyalty, obedience, faith. If even a man like Ulric could act against those virtues, then they were not something one possessed, but something to be constantly guarded and reclaimed. — Aleksandr Voinov

What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted - ? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? — Donna Tartt

Snowden is almost preternaturally prepossessing and self-possessed. I think of a novelist whose dream character just walks into his or her head. It must have been like that with you and Snowden. But what if he'd been a graying guy with the same documents and far less intelligent things to say about them? In other words, how exactly did who he was make your movie and remake our world? — Laura Poitras

She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful, perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the middle of the porch between us. — Charles Dickens

One day's experience had been the turning point in Joseph's life. Its terrible calamity had transformed him from a petted child to a man, thoughtful, courageous, and self-possessed. - — Ellen G. White

Sometimes being crazy is a demon. And sometimes the demon is me. And I visit quiet sidewalks and loud parties and dark movies, and a small demon looks out at the world with me. Sometimes it sleeps. Sometimes it plays. Sometimes it laughs with me. Sometimes it tries to kill me. But it's always with me. I suppose we're all possessed in some way. Some of us with dependence on pills or wine. Others through sex or gambling. Some of us through self-destruction or anger or fear. And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. Wearing the skins of people we've hurt. Wearing the skins of people we've loved. And sometimes, when it's worst, wearing our skins. — Jenny Lawson

Commonality can most easily be seen in the seven common traits that all explorers possessed: curiosity, hope, passion, courage, independence, self-discipline, and perseverance. Explorers — Martin Dugard

I have a daughter who, when younger, possessed no barrier between her emotional self and the outside world. Her emotional insides spilled out all over, and, especially when I was sleep-deprived and probably a little paranoid, this really threatened me. It was as if she were embodying and expressing the insecurities and freaked-outedness I never express, and which I've learned over the years to keep hidden. — Heidi Julavits

Verbal virtuosities or the gratuitous expense of time or money that is presupposed by material or symbolic appropriation of works of art, or even, at the second power, the self-imposed constraints and restrictions which make up the "asceticism of the privileged" (as Marx said of Seneca) and the refusal of the facile which is the basis of all "pure" aesthetics, are so many repetition of that variant of the master-slave dialectic through which the possessors affirm their possession of their possessions. In so doing, they distance themselves still further from the dispossessed, who, not content with being slaves to necessity in all its forms, are suspected of being possessed by the desire for possession, and so potentially possessed by the possessions they do not, or do not yet, possess. — Pierre Bourdieu

Like the bodies of dancers or athletes, the minds of readers are genuinely happy and self-possessed only when cavorting around, doing their stretches and leaps and jumps to the tune of words. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Recent scholarship confirms the portrait of John F. Kennedy sketched by his brother in Thirteen Days: a remarkably cool, thoughtful, nonhysterical, self-possessed leader, aware of the weight of decision, incisive in his questions, firm in his judgment, always in charge, steering his advisers perseveringly in the direction he wanted to go. "We are only now coming to understand the role he played in it," writes John Lewis Gaddis, the premier historian of the Cold War. — Robert F. Kennedy

Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house. — Sherman Alexie

it's natural that we associate language with such verbal intercourse. Unfortunately, this association has led many to assume that language is an exclusive attribute of our species - we, after all, are the only creatures that use words - and to conclude that all other organisms are entirely bereft of meaningful speech. It is an exceedingly self-serving assumption. Other animals, commonly possessed of senses far more acute than ours, may have much less need for a purely conventional set of signs to communicate with others of their species, or even to glean precise information from members of other species. — David Abram

Both therapy and friendship possessed the common denominator of discovering a self ... — Dorothy Gilman

The real propaganda is what - if we are genuinely a living member of a nation - we tell ourselves because we have hope, hope being a symbol of a nation's instinct of self-preservation. To remain blind to the unjustness of the cause of the individual "Germany," to recognise at every moment the justness of the cause of the individual "France," the surest way was not for a German to be without judgement, or for a Frenchman to possess it, it was, both for the one and for the other, to be possessed of patriotism. — Marcel Proust

After consciously enduring a twelve-inch knitting needle navigated into the unseen recesses of my pelvis and almost passing out at the sensation of my hip inflating with fluid and somehow clinging to my sanity through the hour-long, migraine-inducing blare of the imaging contraption, which resembled a compact wind tunnel, possessed the amplification capability of a Marshall stack, and pushed my patience beyond the limits of superhuman endurance, I was
informed by my orthopedist that the image of my still-smoldering hip had revealed, and I quote, "just a little inflammation." In the world of orthopedic medicine, "a little inflammation" apparently qualifies as sound diagnosis. — Daniel Stern

You happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless hair trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness
a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of the kitchen chair — David Rakoff

In interest-bearing capital, therefore, this automatic fetish is elaborated into its pure form, self-valorizing value, money breeding money, and in this form no longer bears any marks of its origin. The social relation is consummated in the relationship of a thing, money, to itself ... Capital is now a thing, but the thing is capital. The money's body is now by love possessed.
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 516-517, containing a literary reference at the end there to Goethe, Faust, Part I. The context is Marx's discussion of how the commodity fetish's obfuscation of the true relations of capitalist production (i.e. the exploitation of labor) reaches its epitome in the form of interest-bearing capital (i.e. finance capital). — Karl Marx

What possessed them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation? Is it what they do to show that girls too have courage, that they can do more than weep and moan, that they too can face death with panache? And where does the urge come from? Does it begin with defiance, and if so, of what? Of the great leaden suffocating order of things, the great spike-wheeled chariot, the blind tyrants, the blind gods? Are these girls reckless enough or arrogant enough to think that they can stop such things in their tracks by offering themselves up on some theoretical alter, or is it a kind of testifying? Admirable enough, if you admire obsession. Courageous enough, too. But completely useless. — Margaret Atwood

Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence - by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present - but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word 'quarters' the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being. — Slavoj Zizek

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer and precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsbility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one's neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority. — Friedrich Hayek

I keep three framed photographs on my desk: the latest school picture of my daughter; a photo of my wife getting her diploma from the University of Chicago; and Lytton Strachey, looking serenely self-possessed. — Blake Bailey

Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I love working with Liev [Schreiber]. I've known him for a long time. I just think he is a master. Few actors are so self-possessed and so focused and so confident. — Peter Jacobson

A northerner, insensitive in some ways and full of self-righteousness could gravely offend a southerner in a second. The northerner would be giving his general opinion, more than likely unasked for, and all unknowing challenging the southerner's every deeply held belief, not to mention, with sundry looks and expressions, suggesting that the southerner was possessed of numerous flaws of character and person. The southerner was bound to see offense in every suggestion, insult in every difference of opinion, and to act upon his stung pride. — Jane Smiley

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective - even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. — Jeff VanderMeer

Mary was one who possessed power over her own spirit--rare gift, given to none but those who do something toward the taking of it. She was able in no small measure to order her own thoughts. Without any theory of self-rule, she yet ruled her Self. She was not one to slip about in the saddle, or let go the reins for a kick and a plunge or two. There was the thing that should be, and the thing that should not be; the thing that was reasonable, and the thing that was absurd. — George MacDonald

I don't think it's a bad thing to play a character that's not necessarily a super-woman. Even if the character is a little bit stereotypical, as long as the whole story is good and positive, or makes some sort of important statement, I think it's okay. But, on the whole, you can't just do that, especially as a black woman. It's more of a responsibility. You've gotta let the world see black women being successful, strong, smart, with power and who are self-possessed. — Megalyn Echikunwoke

Te Rau Tauwhare was not quite thirty years of age. He was handsomely muscular, and carried himself with assurance and the tightly wound energy of youth; though not openly prideful, he never showed that he was impressed or intimidated by any other man. He possessed a deeply private arrogance, a bedrock of self-certainty that needed neither proof nor explication - for although he had a warrior's reputation, and an honorable standing within his tribe, his self-conception had not been shaped by his achievements. He simply knew that his beauty and his strength were without compare; he simply knew that he was better than most other men. — Eleanor Catton

This, I realized now watching Dienekes rally and tend to his men, was the role of the officer: to prevent those under this command, at all stages of battle
before, during and after
from becoming "possessed." To fire their valor when it flagged and rein in their fury when it threatened to take them out of hand. That was Dienekes' job. That was why he wore the transverse-crested helmet of an officer. His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example. — Steven Pressfield

Sometimes when she thought of Eric, and now more powerfully when she saw him, she felt some achy nostalgia for her old self. For the dauntless, daring soul she used to be. There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone. — Ann Brashares

Every jump of technical progress leaves the relative intellectual development of the masses a step behind, and thus causes a fall in the political-maturity thermometer. It takes sometimes tens of years, sometimes generations, for a people's level of understanding gradually to adapt itself to the changed state of affairs, until it has recovered the same capacity for self-government as it had already possessed at a lower stage of civilization. — Arthur Koestler

I think the reason I was able to get the jobs I did is because I worked for some very strong, self-possessed filmmakers who wouldn't listen to the executive-suited wisdom, and they believed in me from director to actor. Not from salesman to commodity. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? — Charles Darwin

Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man. — Denis Diderot

Perhaps everyone possessed a darker self kept at bay by circumstance. — Mark Haddon

The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self ... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation andsecurity. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. — Hermann Hesse